MSI GT80 Titan - Upgradeable SLI Gaming Notebook with Cherry MX Keyboard! - CES 2015
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,374 words · ~6 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of CES 2015 is brought to you by Phantom glass visit
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store. phantom.in screen protectors out there
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as well as hyperx so I've got my lovely Vanna White
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here who thought he was going to hide throughout the video but of course I'm
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not going to not going to let him get away with that showing off the gt80
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Titan SLI
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-009 this has been all over the internet
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as the world's first maybe for a reason
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gaming notebook with a builtin Cherry MX
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mechanical keyboard so MSI has uh has
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was quick to pull out the keycap puller and show off that these are not just any
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mechanical key switches these are genuine cherrymx key switches they also
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pointed out that they went to Great Lengths to find exactly the right red
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LEDs these are not just the standard provided ones for red LED illuminated
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switches so that the keyboard itself is extremely vibrant even in a bright
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situation like the suite that we're standing in right next to a window right
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now now some compromises have to be made
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if you're going to make a gaming notebook with a full thickness
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mechanical keyboard so number one is that you're not going to want to Stack
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any components under the section of the notebook where the mechanical keyboard
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is here can you turn it to the side so they can see the profile there we go so
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this thickness right here is pure keyboard along the side all the
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components for the notebook itself including the optical drive the quad
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core CPU and two gtx980m graphics cards have to be in
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this position right here now the other compromise you have to make is that you
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don't end up with much of a wrist rest then in this scenario and I talked to
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MSI about this and they kind of went well you know ho hum you know
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engineering is hard and all that kind of stuff and I and they made some very good
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points so I kind of said well I'd love to have the keyboard here and they kind
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of went well then you're going to have heat from the components on your wrist
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then you're not necessarily going to get that exact profile that people are used
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to with mechanical keyboard because the way that they're shipping this is with a wrist rest so it's designed to be used
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from here now I kind of went well then I'm a little bit far away from the screen and the response was okay well
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hold on a second it's a 1080p screen and this is an 18 whatever 18.4 in screen so
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you're going to want to sit a little bit further away from it anyway and I kind of went okay Touche on that again and I
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kind of went well okay I still think it's huge and it's still not necessarily
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made for me and they went well hold on but wait line is there's more we throw
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in a backpack that actually fits this monstrosity so people can use it and
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with their new upgrade program that they introduced last Friday this is I'm not
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going to say world's worst worst excuse me world's first upgradable notebook
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because there have been notebooks that have been upgradeable before but this is
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the first one I'm aware of where there is actually a plan for an upgrade path
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so their upgrade program promises that for two product Generations on gpus MSI
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will have available new mxm modules and
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new cooling modules that you can install to move to the next two generations of
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high-end graphics cards in here which I think is a very unique and B pretty
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freaking cool they also made it easily accessible to get at most of the other
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upgrades you might want to do so it's two screws to pull off this panel U I
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had them take them off before the video It Doesn't just slide off like that don't worry it's okay and you can get at
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the optical drive you can get at all four of the m.2 M SATA SS D so you can
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run quad raid you can get at the 2 and 1/2 in hard drive you can get at two of
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the four memory slots the other two are at the bottom and I guess that's pretty
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much all you would really want to get at Wireless module is that accessible from
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the bottom yes okay well there you go so you can get at the wireless module from
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the bottom so the idea sorry I'll let you I'll let you stop being actually can
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you turn around and we can look at the back um so the idea here is that someone
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paying what was it $3,600 for a gaming notebook is probably
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going to want to get more than one typical notebook life cycle out of it so
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they wanted to make it highly upgradeable in terms of IO you're going
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to have that massive this power brick is hilarious what is this a 300 watt power
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brick 350 350 watt power brick all right and it uses a four pin connector here at
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the back so you've got Ethernet dual mini DisplayPort and HDMI back here on
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this side you got a couple usb3 super speed and then over on this side you've
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got three more usb3 Super Speed Optical out Kensington lock SD card reader and a
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couple audio jack now the last thing that I haven't talked about yet is the
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unique shape of the touchpad thank you
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very much you're being an excellent Vana so in order to make room for the
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mechanical keyboard here uh they didn't have a whole lot of space for an
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additional touchpad and while I looked at this initially and I kind of went
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yeah you guys you guys done goofed because the screen is shaped this way
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and the touchpad is shaped this way it's actually surprisingly not bad I found
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that using it one-handed with my thumb on the click and my finger on the rest
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of the touchpad was actually not a bad use case scenario for it and another
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really cool thing is there's actually a numlock button up in the corner that you can press that brings up a I mean
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there's no tactile feel other than a frankly fairly delayed haptic feedback
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but it does at least give you a touchpad or a number pad if you so desire so um
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as usual the keyboard is in conjunction with steel Series so I'm assuming it
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supports steel series engine okay so it's only red backlighting so you won't
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be doing like fancy Rainbow Lighting like on this uh GT series right here but
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you will be able to fully reprogram all the keys just like you would be able to
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on a normal MSI gaming notebook very cool stuff so that's the gt80 Titan SLI
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009 guys thanks for checking out this video don't miss any of our CES coverage
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remember our trip to the show this year is brought to you by Phantom glass the
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makers of in our minds the best screen protectors for your phone on the market
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