I try to be unbiased I really do but the truth is I came into this review
desperately wanting this notebook to be the one my Neo because it promises
something that's never been delivered before a teaser for the upcoming Yeti
Pro review no we do that all the time no
I'm talking about the full portability of like an ultra class type form factor
device with the gaming capability of a desktop and even some upgrade ability to
boot putting it in the tough position where the only possible results are the
Deep satisfaction of the longtime desire being finally fulfilled or the
disappointment that follows when said desire rips a gigantic fart right in the
middle that kills the whole mood so which one is it
we'll have to start with a physical tour of the portable components by itself
because while alone it doesn't redefine a product category anything and it
certainly doesn't justify the price tag by itself it's a pretty darn fine little
notebook packed into this thin astonishingly light magnesium aluminum
blend chassis is a core i7 4870hq quad
core processor 16 gigs of RAM 256 gigs
of raid zero SSD storage Intel Iris Pro 5200 Graphics a really nice 13.3 in
matte finish IPS 1080p display which only needed to be touched to be perfect
for me and a 47w hour battery that lasted for 2 hours and 25 minutes in the
PC Mark 8 work battery life test on the left of the unit is a lock ventilation
Port USB 3.0 and discrete headphone and microphone jacks a nice touch for a
gaming notebook around the front is this kind of weird
illuminated strip thing that I personally think looks pretty cool but I
think should be possible to turn off since the rest of the notebook is so
professional and non- gamery looking by comparison on the right is an SD card
slot another USB 3.0 Port an HDMI 1.4b
port a killer gigabit Ethernet Jack and a power input for the unremarkable but
reasonably sized included power brick the only Improvement I'd probably make
to I/O would be mini DisplayPort instead of HDMI and maybe another USB 3
Port if it could be done the keyboard is
white LED back lit with a stiffer than
usual tactile feel to it but reasonable key travels I rate it okay uh the layout
is solid with no cardinal sins committed and my only real complaint is that while
somehow it bothered me less than on the Dell X ps13 I reviewed recently you can
watch that here by the way there is a lot more Flex in the deck than I like to
see giving it a mushy feel when you bottom out your keystrokes improving
this might add some weight to the chassis but it would make this notebook
feel much more premium under my fingers while working on it and while Ms SI at
it $22,000 notebooks need glass touchpads the XPS 13 taught me that too
flipping the unit over we find not a whole lot some vent holes and a metal
bottom plate that reveals unfortunately downward firing speakers and fortunately
easy access to two sodum slots and the storage upgrade slot while we've got it
open seems like a good time to show off the obnoxiously loud cooling solution I
really wish a better job had been done of this even under light loads this
notebook is not very quiet and the proprietary interface connector that
sticks out the back and makes the whole desktop Graphics thing possible because
that's right we missed the back of this notebook where there's another vent and
these plastic flaps that fold back to plug this baby into a desktop Graphics
box now total biscuits initial reaction to
this thing on Twitter is one that I bet a lot of you share I mean wtf man it's
basically the size of a single GPU gaming desktop anyway so what's the
bleeding point and the point of it is that this is pretty different from any
other gaming desktop or notebook out there for someone who wants to buy one
device that they carry around with them a lot and then normally only use for
lightweight tasks but then can without actually owning two full computers dock
for the full desktop gaming experience this is a pretty compelling little piece
because with how little development there's been in CPU performance of late
and how little is on the road map most of this machine will actually keep up
fine possibly for years to come with only graphics needing a shot of
adrenaline now and then and that's what this box does and a bit more too just
like a normal notebook dock you get ample data connectivity for the right
side iio over here so next to that 92 mm intake fan is a four port USB 3 hub gigb
Ethernet and audio jacks that you can just leave permanently plugged in
there's a power button over here and a plug for the 450 W included power supply
that powers everything inside and the doc's notebook so you don't need to fuss
with your power adapter on the other side but you also get a PCI Express gen
3 16x link and SATA 3 6 gbit per second
so while I could take you on a full tour of the outside of this thing there
frankly isn't much you haven't seen already there's an MSI logo on the mesh
front that conceals a speaker that's functional if not particularly immersive
since it only comes from One Direction and that's pretty much it let's take
that piece off and find out all that cool stuff inside ah yes here it is
inside the dock is room for officially any MSI graphics card you desire or any
reference AMD or NVIDIA design and realistically most other ones it's not
locked down in anyway there's also a power supply the one I mentioned before
a 3 and 1/2 in Drive Mount so it can be plugged in here then screwed in here and
used for up to 8 terabytes of game and mass storage um anything that you don't
need with you when you're on the go and finally the custom PCB that powers the
whole thing now one little trick I did find was to flip this fan control switch
to low since it only makes a couple of degrees difference under load but I
would like to see a more elegant solution next time around because it is
freaking loud on high and honestly that should be speed controlled anyway by the
system there needs to be some communication there and I mean while I'm wishing for things with how big this
dock is maybe the option to have a single PCI e6x or split adex adex for
some other expansion card on the next rision would be nice and maybe some
smart ducting for a larger 120 mm fan so
that it forces air into the laptop docked on top of it so it doesn't need
its own cooling fan to unleash an Unholy wine upon my ears when I'm gaming which
I guess leads us pretty well into the usage experience doesn't it
it's loud like the CPU fan in the notebook overpowers the fan in the dock
and the graphics card underload but with that aside the gs30 shadow is simply put
awesome you do have to shut down
every time you switch Graphics configs so here we'll we'll we'll do this live
this is kind of an interesting little demo here Boop whenever you want to
switch Graphics configs so for the first time ever I actually care about boot up
speed and thankfully it is is shockingly
fast and that's not the only thing that's fast about it I mean the machine
absolutely flies even with the CPU over
90° in some tests it turbos up to 3.5 to
3.6 GHz in games which puts it on par with some pretty capable desktop CPUs of
course you've got to pay to play without
a dedicated graphics card for the dock it's over two grand and then you've got
to buy one of those Pro tip for you guys by the way get a reference card using a
rear exhaust 980 at the same clock speed as the MSI gaming 980 that they sent me
resulted in higher GPU temps by 6° but still under the throttle point but 5
degree lower CPU temps thanks to less um
heat energy being transferred from the dock up into the notebook so much more
reasonable CPU temperatures a worthwhile trade which leads us to the conclusion
the gs30 Shadow from MSI is the first of its kind I mean yes there are janky DIY
Solutions and yes Alienware also has an
external graphics card box that works with a handful of its notebooks but MSI
is different to me because they're the ones that I believe are doing this the
way that I want it done with a lightweight legitimately super portable
notebook rather than something that's already a gaming laptop and already has
a gaming graphics card in it but it's
got some first gen Growing Pains cooling needs to be quieter Standalone battery
life could definitely be better and I'm sure that MSI can tune the base to be a
bit more compact or offer some additional functionality but with all of
that said this is a great start and I'm hyper excited about the future of a
technology that I've been eagerly awaiting for years now speaking of the
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