MSI GS60 Ghost Thin & Light Gaming Notebook
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,295 words · ~11 min read
0:06
with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an
0:11
amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts by popular
0:16
demand here is my video about the MSI gs60 ghost the super thin super sexy
0:22
gaming notebook that made big waves at CES 2014 so let's start with a brief
0:27
rundown of the specs it's got a Haswell 4th gen core i7 4700hq quad core
0:31
processor that's clocked anywhere from 2.4 to 3.4 GHz depending on the turbo
0:35
boost frequency it's got a 15.6 in 1920
0:39
x 1080 matte IPS display that uses
0:43
embedded DisplayPort rather than a more traditional notebook interface
0:46
internally although don't worry too much about that all you guys need to know is
0:49
it looks very beautiful and motion blur doesn't seem to be a concern here huge
0:53
points for using a nice IPS panel and not using a TN panel on a gaming
0:57
notebook I hope those days are behind us it's got 16 gigs or 12 gigs of DDR3
1:02
memory depending on the skew and it comes with a GTX 860m 2 gig with gddr5
1:08
memory graphics card although there's a pro model coming later that will have an
1:12
870m and will upgrade the screen to a 3K IPS panel for storage it has a 128 gig M
1:19
SATA SSD with either a 1 tbte or 750 gig
1:23
7200 RPM drive and for network connectivity it's got a 7260 802.11 AC
1:29
Intel wireless card that also includes Bluetooth as well as a killer e2200 gbit
1:35
landan implementation with packet prioritization the power brick is a
1:39
little bit on the larger side but at least it's thinner than a typical one
1:43
there could be some improvement here especially with what we've seen from
1:46
Razor with respect to how power bricks can be innovated on physically the
1:50
laptop is absolutely stunning it's only
1:54
19.8 mm thick that makes it about 10%
1:57
thinner than gigabytes p34g and 10%
2:00
thicker than the razor blade 14 it weighs only 1.98 kg which makes it
2:06
marginally lighter than the razorblade 14 in spite of its significantly larger
2:11
screen and overall size this is achieved with a special magnesium lithium alloy
2:16
construction that manages to feel solid in spite of the lightness of the
2:20
material the overall build quality of this notebook is a really strong point
2:25
there's about as much Flex in the screen as my gx660 from a few years ago except
2:31
it's much much thinner and better looking so we'll do a short tour of the
2:35
ports around the outside of the notebook just going to drop that there okay so on
2:39
the left hand side we've got a ventilation Port as well as a Kensington lock power in two USB 3 ports microphone
2:44
and headphone Jacks at the front we have all the indicator LEDs with everything
2:49
from Drive activity to wireless to caps lock then on the right hand side we've
2:53
got a usb3 port SD card reader very nice
2:56
thank you MSI for including that I still use them HDMI out mini DisplayPort out
3:01
that hardwired gigabit Lan I was talking about and another ventilation Port then
3:05
at the back we've got two more ventilation ports and that is pretty
3:09
much all she wrote now on the top of the
3:12
notebook once you've opened it up you can see there's a massive Grill here
3:16
that I initially thought was for speakers but actually it's for
3:20
ventilation the speakers are located instead near the bottom of the front of
3:24
the notebook and Beyond pointing out that their performance doesn't feel
3:28
worthy of the Dine Audio co-branding I don't have too much to say about those
3:33
speaking of branding though the back of the notebook is absolutely beautiful the
3:36
brushed aluminum finish here looks even better in person than it does on camera
3:40
and the subtly illuminated gaming series branding reminds me of a performance
3:44
vehicle rather than tacky gamer bling like on MSI's earlier gaming notebooks
3:49
the one disadvantage here as you can see I'm wearing gloves is that it does tend
3:52
to fingerprint pretty uh aggressively
3:56
the keyboard and touchpad locations um both Luke and I noticed almost
4:00
immediately that something was a little bit different about the this layout um
4:04
but it took me about 30 minutes and a measuring tape to find exactly what was
4:08
bothering me first up the touchpad is offset to the left and aligned directly
4:12
below the home row second the touchpad and the keyboard had been moved down to
4:16
make room for the grill and lone power button up at the top this gives it a
4:21
smaller wrist rest surface compared to other notebooks this size the last thing
4:25
I noticed was that the relocation of the start button is an unnecessary decision
4:29
ision on a notebook with a fully programmable keyboard more on that later
4:32
by the way uh shifted the space bar to the left quite a bit and I used my right
4:36
hand for space most often and it threw me off a bit at first to be barely
4:40
hitting the right edge of the space bar rather than being closer to the middle
4:44
but aside from those niggles about the layout the tactile response of this
4:48
steel series co-branded RGB backlit keyboard is surprisingly solid and its
4:54
lack of flex combined with a surprisingly Long Key travel distant
4:58
makes it feel great considering that it's on a notebook this thin all in all
5:02
I was impressed with how quickly and accurately I could type after a short
5:06
adjustment period And I consider the inclusion of the steel series engine
5:09
software powering it a bonus at this point it gives you four layers of
5:13
remapped or macro functionality for every key per profile an unlimited
5:18
number of profiles a wide variety of LED effects including wave breathing and
5:22
multiple colors and even some other neat features like a heat map of your most
5:26
frequently used keys so you can analyze your gaming style and up imize your key
5:30
mappings for the shortest travel distances the touchpad is less
5:34
exceptional so all I'll say is that the subtle chromed accent around the outside
5:37
looks really really sharp other than that it's a touchpad and okay changing
5:42
years a bit I really wasn't sure where in the review to put this but this
5:46
notebook features NVIDIA's new battery boost that lets you save GPU Power by
5:51
entering a limit to the number of frames the GPU will draw per second when the
5:55
laptop is on battery I found a spot in crisis that runs at 50 FPS on wall power
6:01
and 40 FPS on battery normally and I ran
6:04
it both with a 30fps limiter and without
6:08
it then I used a time-lapse camera to see when the battery actually ran down
6:13
my limited scenario I only did one test achieved 47 minutes of Play Time versus
6:18
45 minutes of play time um without the
6:21
limiter so I'll take the 10 FPS over the 2 minutes of extra time in this case but
6:26
it's obvious to me that this feature requires some more inves ation so the
6:30
only real takeaway here is that if you're not playing at low details or
6:34
running older games that your GPU can plow through at really high frame rates
6:38
you're unlikely to see the two times battery life that NVIDIA says the
6:42
technology is capable of delivering some other thoughts now both Razer with the
6:48
blade 14 and Gigabyte with the aurus X7
6:51
made a big fuss about their cooling implementation but MSI has been
6:55
relatively quiet and even covers up the bottom of the notebook with a big
7:00
warranty void if removed sticker to prevent inexperienced users from mucking
7:04
about in there but the good news is that as long as you don't physically damage
7:08
the inside they will still honor the one-year Global and 2-year local
7:11
warranty so let's find out what makes the gs60 so cool while keeping it within
7:16
reasonable noise levels first up it's obvious why MSI doesn't want end users
7:21
trying to upgrade this thing other than the 2 and 1 12 in hard drive and Wi-Fi
7:25
module nothing is accessible without removing the entire motherboard we can
7:29
and get a good look at the cooling solution though so there are two blower
7:33
fan cooling modules that are connected via heat pipes to the CPU and GPU and
7:37
that pull air in from both the top and the bottom of the notebook when it's
7:41
open and then exhaust it out both the sides and the rear we can also see that
7:46
the sound system includes two speakers that I didn't notice before that fire
7:51
down and away from the user at the back of the unit although they didn't help
7:54
much I also noticed while I was poking around that while MSI's website says the
7:58
SSD M SATA the slot it's plugged into is
8:01
in fact m.2 a newer standard that is a
8:05
derivative of SATA Express and capable of higher throughput than M SATA with an
8:09
appropriate SSD on top of that there are actually two of them and MSI confirmed
8:14
that they are both functional and a handy notebook owner could easily throw
8:18
a couple of m.2 ssds in there in raid zero for a hefty storage upgrade with
8:24
that out of the way let's take a look at our actual temperatures for a gaming
8:27
notebook I expect the keyboard to stay relatively cool so as not to heat up
8:31
your hands while you're gaming and I use the chassis temperature near the rear
8:35
exhaust as a gauge of the overall cooling efficiency of the notebook I run
8:40
crisis one for both of these tests and I'd say the results are great to the
8:43
point where the trade-off between Cooling and onboard sound may have been
8:48
worth it but that's going to come down to the individual to make that
8:51
decision all right so who's the competition for this notebook obvious
8:55
ones are the Mac Pro 15in uh the razor blade 14 or maybe the aorus X7 but those
9:01
are all somewhat different sizes with different feature sets and very
9:06
different price points so that makes the conversation here less about how does it
9:11
stack up to the other well-built yet thin and super light 15.6 in gaming
9:16
grade notebooks with HD displays since there ain't really much out there and
9:20
more about who is this product for I mean well the short answer is that it's
9:24
targeted at the same sorts of folks as those other models that is to say on
9:28
the-go Gam but with a couple of features that really differentiate it its weight
9:33
to screen size ratio is a big one and so
9:36
is the inclusion of a full-size number pad something that will be important to
9:40
many Road Warriors who want to get some work done on the thing while they're
9:43
traveling the great feeling keyboard and the fact that all the gamer bling except
9:48
the badge on the back is optional and be can be configured in software is keeps
9:53
this notebook from falling into the no one with the money to afford this would
9:57
want to be seen with it trap and finally the strong specs very limited bloat
10:02
Weare although I did see a copy of Norton there and fairly aggressive
10:06
pricing compared to other well-built thin gaming notebooks makes it a very
10:10
compelling option speaking of compelling
10:13
options chiro is back with another deal for lonus Tech chips viewers their grip
10:18
two portable batteries on for $9.99 at the link in the video description it's
10:22
small and hand-shaped so you can carry it around with you and its 1 amp
10:26
charging port is hooked up to a surprisingly large 5200 milliamp
10:30
internal battery that has enough capacity to charge an iPhone twice with
10:34
capacity to spare and even the beefiest Android phones at least once or more
10:39
it's available in four different colors I've got the blue one here and the
10:43
highquality internal battery can be recharged around 500 times now if this
10:47
sounded like a sales pitch I'm about to make things even worse because act now
10:50
and I'll throw in this flashlight a 999
10:53
value free of charge wait that can't be right wait that can't be right hold on
10:58
sorry no no it's not free of charge it's rechargeable and the grip 2 is the
11:03
flashlight for flashlight so fantastic
11:07
anyway um guys like and share this video
11:10
if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it and leave a comment on the
11:13
linest tech tips Forum Linked In the video description if you want to discuss
11:16
this product or you have any constructive criticism for me and my
11:19
team also linked in the video description is our support link with options to buy T-shirts like this one
11:24
give us a monthly contribution or give us a kickback whenever you buy stuff on
11:28
Amazon including this one that'll be an affiliate link that's in the video
11:31
description check it out if you enjoy our videos it helps us out a whole bunch
11:35
and as always guys thank you for watching and don't forget to
11:48
subscribe