13lbs of RAW POWER?! - MSI GT83 Titan SLI
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,489 words · ~7 min read
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compact lightweight
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subdued inexpensive dongle if any of those words
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are part of your vocabulary go ahead and delete them
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right now because when MSI called us and
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asked if we wanted to check out their latest and greatest iteration of the gt8
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series we actually had to go check and see if we had enough space in the
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warehouse and after careful consideration and a
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game of Tetris in real life we realized that this photo on MSI's website was not
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to scale so as big as it was we could
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make it happen so fast forward two weeks and here we are with the MSI
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gt83 vr7 RF Titan SLI by MSI or as I'll
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be calling it Ryan but is its
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performance as big as its name
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let's find out shall we cuz that's what
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we
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do the Phoenix oour is a full-sized
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minimalistically designed keyboard complete with Cherry MX switches and a
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new white backlit variant check it out at the link below the first thing you'll
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notice about Ryan aside from his aggressive shape is that he's freaking
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uh huge if you know what I mean the
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second thing you'll notice is that he is freaking heavy the laptop itself weighs
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over 13 lb and when you add on the Twin
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power bricks at 3 lb each that a evoke a
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certain you know failed 9s game console
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you end up with a total carry weight of
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19 lb I hope you've been working out but
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what all will you get to bring with you no dongles me thinks with a diagonal
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screen size of 18.4 in and a maximum
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thickness at the back of 69 mm Ryan has
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plenty of room in the trunk for Hardware
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he's packing dual GTX 1080s in SLI a
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Ballin cooling system with 15 heat pipes
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two 29 blade fans and a smaller 25 blade
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fan and he's got room for io2 you get
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support for up to three external 4K 60 HZ displays if you use the Thunderbolt 3
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Port as a DisplayPort Port he's got a
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Blu-ray burner and a plethora of audio outputs
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including toss link and an extra
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headphone jack for the excellent included ESS saber DAC for your portable
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headphones not that you'll be using Ryan on the go much balancing the gt83 on my
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bony frail lap is an exercise in
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frustration a laptop this is not especially when you
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consider the placement of the steel series designed keyboard on the subject
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of which linear RGB Cherry MX speed
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switches May appeal to some but I actually personally miss the tactile
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bump of the previous models Brown key
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switches to be clear this is still a
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full mechanical keyboard on a laptop which is dope as as the kids say but
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that doesn't make it immune to criticism not only did they again replicate this
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key for some reason the significant lip around the edge of the keyboard returns
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with no wrist rest included to make it more comfortable it is something you'll
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get used to but there's definitely a learning curve and the same goes for the
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trackpad I tell you guys the number of times that I typed something and reached
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down to yeah right to its credit it's got a
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smooth consistent feel with satisfyingly tactile buttons and touching this corner
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turns it into a lackluster numpad for
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emergencies but it clear clearly sidelined by the keyboard and the
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internals meaning that's just another usability disadvantage though In
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fairness to MSI if you're carrying this monstrosity around they probably expect
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you to have a mouse in Your Wagon as well and you could even throw in a USB
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numpad if you were into that sort of thing but will you also need some
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speakers MSI doesn't think so and in
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this case we actually agree the Titan's
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four speaker one subwoofer setup got
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plenty loud in our testing with a surprising fullness to the sound even if
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it's a little light on the subbase and the aforementioned ESS saber DAC allowed
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us to drive even high-end headphones with MSI's nemic 2 providing excellent
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virtual surround for gaming before we move on to Performance testing though we
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really need to talk about the display you don't often see an 18.4 in LA top
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monitor but its strange size doesn't
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make its Factory calibrated 100% srgb
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IPS panel any less beautiful where it
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does lose points is its resolution
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refresh rate and lack of standout
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features like g-sync a balls to thewall
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gaming laptop powering a 1080p 60hz
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gaming experience with screen tearing
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feels a little like watching Emma Watson
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get married to a gopher it's just a
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total mismatch so then with all of that out of the way let's move on to testing
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our Ryan is speced to the max with a one
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terabyte twin mvme raid zero storage array that MSI calls super raid load
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games Works in seconds all right then let's load games
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we'll be comparing against our Sager
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np9873 and the Acer Predator 21x on the
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laptop side as well as two comparable desktop setups with the answer to the
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most important question coming first is
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Ryan worth his weight in frames per
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second actually yes the Sager tops the
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charts but the Titan gt83 crushes the rest of the competition
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with our Predator 21x actually coming in
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below our desktops to the surprise of
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nobody who has ever picked it up
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waited averages aside though the Titan found itself near the bottom of our
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performance laptop pack with the direct X11 modes of both DSX mankind divided
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and Rise of the Tomb Raider but gained significant traction with the DirectX 12
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modes for Honor saw the Titan in turbo
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mode pick back up to become the highest
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of our minimum frame rate performers and only the GTX 1080ti desktop surpassed
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the Titan turbo minimum in GTA 5 with
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that said though its average frame rates were again at the back of the lineup
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with Ghost Recon wildlands echoing that average result Under full ID to 64 load
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our CPU got up to a Coy 88° while fermar
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worked our heat pipes over time with toasty gpus at 85 and 90° with cooler
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boost enabled temperatures dropped to 85 on the CPU with the gpus at 85 and 81
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but of course it gets uh shall we say a
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fair bit louder so who is the Titan gt83
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Ryan Edition 4 exactly with its MSRP of
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$5,400 and minimum effort one-ear
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warranty it's not going to be winning any Top Value Awards I mean seriously
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MSI you could have at least given us the full version of windzip to go along with
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our Norton trial but I can't fault the
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performance and while our desktops
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obviously come ahead in terms of performance per dollar they aren't as
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portable as Ryan and compared to
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similarly spec offerings from Acer and sagger the gt83 Titan is right in the
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ballpark or should I say baller
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Park yeah I went there so you heard from your nephew or
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niece or whatever that a VPN is a good idea and you go and you look into it and
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you're like what DNS configuration port
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forwarding are you kidding me tunnel bear takes all that crap out of setting
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up a VPN for personal use you download tunnel bear it's available for PC Mac
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Android iOS they even have a Chrome extension you press like one button and
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boom your internet connection gets encrypted with AES 256-bit encryption
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and you appear to the websites and services that you want to use online as
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though you are some Anonymous person from some other random country allowing
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you to access services that maybe you normally wouldn't be able to they've got
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a top rated privacy policy and they do not log your user activity and the best
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part of all of this is you don't have to take my word for it you can try it for
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free with 500 megabytes of data and no
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credit card required when you choose to get a year of unlimited data you can
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even save 10% too by going to Tunnel bear.com
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or check out where to buy the
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stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is a
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link to our community Forum which you should totally join and our merch store
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which you should totally go check out