A Laptop Sized Desktop... and it’s GREAT! - MSI Vortex G25
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,228 words · ~6 min read
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with its six core 12 thread core i7
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processor the machine in my hands is not only
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more powerful than the impressively compact MSI trident that we reviewed
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before it is less than half
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of the size the MSI vortex g25 is a totally
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different kind of beast is it a desktop
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is it a gaming laptop with the screen ripped off
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and also no keyboard and hopefully no noise or heating issues
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i mean is anyone really expecting us to answer these questions before we tell
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at a total internal volume of two and a half liters and a weight of two and a
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half kilograms the vortex g25 is a
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strikingly slim machine it is so tiny
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that you could easily hide it on the back of your tv or monitor using the
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included vase amount if you didn't want to see it though honestly if you aren't
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totally turned off by the gamer aesthetic it actually looks pretty good
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both horizontally in a tv console or vertically on the included stand
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though i would recommend fine-tuning the RGB lighting a little bit for the latter
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to keep things classy io is curious
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it's got two HDMI 2.0 ports that'll handle 4k 60hz so it's vr ready but
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there's no freaking displayport port i mean okay yes there is a Thunderbolt 3
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on the back that can be used for that purpose
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but would even a mini dp or an included
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dongle have been too much to ask MSI out of the box there was no way for alex to
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hook the g25 up to the older HDMI 1.4 4k monitor on
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his desk while he was working on this review
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that said the rest of the i o is pretty solid a good mix of usb and networking
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and a couple of strong indications that MSI thinks that one of these would go
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great in your living room a digital audio out and a 12 volt dc out so that
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you can power a room scale vr headset like the htc vive without an additional
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wall adapter nice inside this thing is a
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monster it features Intel's core i7 8700
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with six cores of up to 4.6 gigahertz
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turbo madness and a gtx 1070 GPU so i'm
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expecting some phenomenal gaming performance in our benchmarks if that is
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MSI can stop that hardware from getting hotter than the seat of my pants after
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an evening of dining at taco bell gross and
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good news i wouldn't quite call the g25 silent but
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from an ARM's length away it's hardly noticeable with a sound quality that is
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easily forgotten and our CPU leveled out in the
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mid 70s while maintaining a respectable
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four gigahertz on all six cores and when
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it comes to gaming our gtx 1070 ended up
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at a comfortable 1900 megahertz at 70
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degrees celsius that is right up there with a desktop card
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though it should be noted that when the vortex is placed horizontally you can
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expect your temps to rise by about 10 degrees
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now we didn't see any performance drop due to that in our 24 degree office but
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this could be a problem if you don't have air conditioning now it should come
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as no surprise that when you combine impressive hardware with impressive
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cooling you get impressive gaming performance and the g25 hung right in
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there with our standard desktop hardware test bench and while it did actually
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lose out to the asrock desk mini another
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impressively small gaming system it should be noted that that one costs a
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lot more due to its more expensive gtx
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1080 graphics card and it wasn't even able to take full
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advantage of that card due to its thermal throttling so let's rip this
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thing open and have a look at the secret sauce that MSI calls cooler boost titan
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it's a dumb name sure but i can't argue with the results i mean look at this
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eight heat pipes like
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MSI system team clearly took some inspiration from the trident 3's
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notebook-like cooling system and improved on it before cramming it in
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here it's just that instead of a regular
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full-size PCIe 16x GPU we get a notebook
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GPU on an mxm module
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so that is what allows the vortex to be
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so slim but it also brings along the
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disadvantage of making future upgrades more difficult or even impossible if
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NVIDIA decides to stop supporting this form factor while we were poking around
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inside we noticed that our 16 gig RAM model had an empty slot making an
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upgrade to 32 gigs easy
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nice then with the back screws out the top
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also comes off with a bit of love from a prying tool to give us access to the
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other side of the motherboard where you can upgrade the two and a half inch
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drive add another m.2 or even no way
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there's two more empty sodium slots for
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up to 64 gigs of RAM i mean
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badass book sized workstation anyone
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badass yes cheap no
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as we learned from the asrock desk mini video mxm cards cost significantly more
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than their standard counterparts and this hurts the vortex g25s value
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proposition the good news is that compared to
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similar small form factor solutions it's not that far off but the bad news is
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that for the 1070 model with an i7 you're looking at a cool two thousand
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dollars bringing us back to the original question is this a tiny high-performance
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desktop or is it a bulky laptop without a screen
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and a keyboard well with this kind of performance i'm
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inclined to go with the former and it gets a solid recommendation if you're
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willing to spend the extra to save a little space on your desk
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speaking of spending a little extra skillshare is an online learning
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community with more than 17 000 classes in design photo editing and more if
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you're looking for a way to pick up some new skills so you can
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afford a fancy vortex g25 premium
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membership gives you unlimited access to high quality classes from experts
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working in their fields and skillshare is also more affordable than most
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learning platforms out there with an annual subscription coming in at less
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than 10 dollars a month now since skillshare is sponsoring this
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video the first 200 people to use the promo link in the description will get
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their first two months for free to try it out totally risk-free so go check it
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out so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to
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where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also linked in the
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description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our
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community forum which you should totally join