MSI GT60 2PC Dominator Review: A Fast Notebook With Battery Boost

[HT]

The single stick of memory and rotational drive are inexcusable. If they allowed people to upgrade, I'd say it's a great idea as it lets people put in more memory and an SSD for a lower price than the manufacturer would charge. However, it voids your warranty!!

Like many MSI notebooks, this one will only be good if you get it rebranded by a manufacturer who allows upgrades or equips it properly.

they allow people to upgrade, i've done it without voiding my warranty. the only thing that will void it is if you touch the gpu and/or cpu.

but drives and ram, wifi, go fo it.

 

[HT]

It's always good to see new stuff like "battery-boost" but sadly it screams, "We need new battery tech!"

Or, maybe 18-cell batteries.

the only real thing that will make a difference is to have Optimus back in there. they couldn't figure out how to make it work back in 2011/2012 i hope they've fixed that since then.

Switching off that power hungry gaming video card will go a long way towards battery life.

 

[HT]

You can upgrade the RAM and hard drive without voiding the warranty. Their aren't any warranty-void sticker to tear off to replace those items, at leas the DIMM slots on the bottom side of the laptop & hard drives/mSATA. You have to break a warranty-void sticker to mess with the CPU though but I have heard in the forums that that doesn't necessarily void the warranty if you check with MSI first, for the purpose of repasting.

Take another look at the photos and description, the sticker covers a screw that needs to be removed to get into the notebook from either side.

so what? email msi and ask them.

They are gamers, they know gamers will want to upgrade stuff.

You can upgrade ram, ssd, wifi , the little stuff that makes a big difference. the gpu and cpu must'nt be changed, but you can redo the thermal paste. i'm not sure about changing screen.

But please go ahead and verify that with msi. if anything it'll be good info to pass along for the next review.

cheers

 

[Menigmand]

A festering eyesore...

 

[BlasterX]

A great way that would've boosted the battery life and performance without adding hundreds of dollars more like an SSD would've been a hybrid drive. That would've saved 33% of power (~8 watts), and still would be 50%-75% faster. Sad that MSi didn't do this.

 

[danwat1234]

1 mobile hard drive takes about 1 watt at idle, a couple watts with 100% write operations.

SSDs take less but it is only a bit of power savings.maybe .1 watts at HIPM/DIPM idle, maybe 1-3 watts at full load (brief spurts because it's so fast).

A hybrid drive doesn't spin down until some minutes of no activity. We have to wait for more advanced hybrid drives to come out before they can be spun down a lot of the time. More cache with write caching.
WD does make the Black^2 but it's basically an SSD and hard drive in one.

 

[falchard]

One question, Who buys an MSI laptop and thinks they are going to have any battery life? I always think of MSIs as portable desktops which must be plugged in all the time.
Also didn't they just update the 15" laptops with 3k res monitors?

 

[Dblkk]

I actually just called msi about this today. They said that the warranty sticker is just a formality. And in the States, they don't care if its removed. He then stated that you can upgrade any part of the laptop you want (including repasting or anything), as long as you don't physically damage the laptop, your warranty will still be fully intact. He also put a note on my account for my peace of mind.

 

[danwat1234]

Falchard, over 3 hours when doing basic tasks is really good for a performance laptop

 

[Dblkk]

One question, Who buys an MSI laptop and thinks they are going to have any battery life? I always think of MSIs as portable desktops which must be plugged in all the time.
Also didn't they just update the 15" laptops with 3k res monitors?

yes, there is msi gt60 with 3k screens. 870m about $2100
theres alsothe gs60 with 3k screen for about $200 as well

 

[danwat1234]

Argh, the new MSI GT72 (and probably the ~15.6" variant) has an "HQ" processor, meaning soldered! Why? Now it's not an enthusiast laptop. With the GT60 and GT70, you can upgrade the CPU all the way up to the 4940MX extreme CPU, but not with MSI's latest gaming laptop.
Shame