MSI GX660R Core i7 Radeon 5870 Gaming Notebook Unboxing & First Look
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
3,430 words · ~17 min read
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all right guys so I'm here in my room in the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas I'm just
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looking out the window right now so you can't really see much from the window
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here but uh I guess what do you really expect to see there's an Eiffel Tower
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sort of over there I guess that's not too bad there's the real all right so
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I'm going to sort of head back over here where I'm going to be doing a surprise
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unboxing so this is an MSI notebook this
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is part of their GX 660r series and I'm
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going to tell you guys all about the spec of this particular model coming up
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live from CES 2011 no not really live in
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Las Vegas all right so it's only fitting I break the seals on this bad boy with
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the killer neck killer neck killer Nick heat snc that I got at the MSI
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overclocking event today so we're going to go ahead and break this open I did
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not bring my unboxing knife with me because I did remember about how I had
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it confiscated last time I tried to take it on an air airplane so uh yes lesson
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learned and I will not be repeating that mistake so as a GX okay with GX as the
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first two letters of the part number here it's fairly obvious already that
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this is a gaming series notebook so I can tell you guys right now that it uses
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a core i7 processor it supports up to two internal 2 and 1/2 in hard drives up
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to 12 gigs Max of DDR3 memory and it
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also has a powerful Radeon HD
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5870 graphics card so let's see how much of that M MSI is going to cover on the
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outside of the box for us it looks like most of the features on here are things
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that I covered already you can see the exclusive three times DDR3 sodium slots
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for maximum 12 gigs of RAM with the way that prices are coming down on DDR3 that
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may be a very possible thing that you can upgrade this particular model with
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with we've also got mxi exclusive TDE
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plus that is turbo drive engine plus technology for uh increasing the speed
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of your CPU and GPU we've got a sticker about that as well over here all right
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we've also got yeah that I mentioned before so it comes by default with dual
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SATA hard drives in raid zero but what I would really recommend for a notebook
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like this and I'm probably going to outfit this one with this particular
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setup would be changing one of the drives to a an SSD and then using the
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other drive as a storage hard drive we've got an HD webcam supporting 720p
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with 30 FPS as well as support for USB
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3.0 now sound VI Dine Audio that's kind
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of an interesting interesting thing to call out on a notebook because honestly
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I've been complaining about notebook audio for years and it's good to see
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that there's not only MSI but there's actually a couple companies that are
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really working towards addressing what has been just a a a layering Omission in
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the notebook market and that is uh a
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notebook that is really designed to deliver good quality sound whether
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you're running it off the speakers or off of some headphones so here's the
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overall spec of this particular notebook I'm going to stop saying particular now
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sorry about that guys and this is in French so while I could do it and
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actually sure why not okay so uh the color is uh black black gray and black
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the screen is a 15.6 in 1920 x 1080p
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they're calling it glare type although that's not very flattering I think what they mean to say is glossy or vibrant we
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have an Intel Core i7 740 qm processor
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with dual 320 gig hard drives in raid
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zero those are 7200 RPM drives this is a performance model so it's all about
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performance we've got 6 gigs of DDR3 running in triple Channel and we have a
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blu-ray combo drive so that's pretty cool Wireless has uh we've got Bluetooth
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and wireless n we have Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and the battery is a 9
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cell battery which for a gaming model I guess it better be if you're hoping to
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have any kind of reasonable battery life and it looks like looks like French
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people don't get to know that the VGA is an ATI Radeon HD 58701 gig
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ddr5 I I I really don't think that was on the French side so go ahead and check
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that out yes it's not there so why don't we go ahead and get our our killer seal
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breaker here and let's get this thing opened
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up here we go if I can figure out how to
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open the box which I have done on a number of occasions with various
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products as you guys may or may not already be aware let's see what we got
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inside here so as usual we be accessories first so it looks like the
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notebook is there and got little maybe these are little msim m's
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actually that's probably just for packaging strength so we have our
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accessory box I'm just going to move
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this so that we can get the best possible light I know the lighting is
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not ideal here but I wouldn't be me if I didn't unbox things anywhere and
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everywhere so the first thing we find is a power cord next we find an AC adapter
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so that's where that power cord is going to plug into it is pretty large but you
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do expect that on a gaming model because there is a lot of power needs to be
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delivered I'll tell you guys what this thing's rated for in just a minute here
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so this guy is rated for uh 19 volt
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output and up to 6.32 amps so that would be uh well over
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the maximum of what I would expect this notebook to draw it's actually not that
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heavy for such a large power brick here I'll give you guys my uh my iPhone for
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comparison if I can find it I apologize for the state of my room here I just
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kind of threw my things down down on the
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everywhere when I walked in so here's my iPhone for
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comparison okay so it's a little bit longer than an iPhone it's about the
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same width and in terms of thickness there you can compare that as well so
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hopefully that helps all right we've got some discs
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here we've got a driver's manual and
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utilities we have a Blu-ray and DVD solution okay so we have playback and
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buring Suite for multimedia systems pretty cool we have a Windows 7 Home pre
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thingy I'm just going to make sure my serial number isn't anywhere on there
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cuz last thing I need is uh no serial number for this particular notebook
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there I did it again F3 hotkey recovery function so let's find out what this is
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the purpose is to restore the system back to the factory default settings
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with F3 hotkey always back up important Data
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before using the F3 hotkey recovery that's a very good idea so there you go
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so they've apparently made it quite easy to restore the system to factory
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defaults which is great if you're like buying a system like this for your mom
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and you don't want to go over there every time she has some kind of a problem I mean maybe your mom's a gamer
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my mom isn't but you never know it's still a good feature to have in their
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notebook line uh regardless of which notebook model we're talking about so
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here we have a quick guide which covers the basics as well as some common
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operating features so here let's show you guys what kind of features we have
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with the function keys so we can uh
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enable or disable the touchpad we can change our output we can turn on or off
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the Eco engine which I'm assuming is going to preserve some power we can
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enable or disable our webcam Wireless Len
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Bluetooth uh 3G I don't think that's going to function in
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Canada um not 100% sure about that we can
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adjust brightness uh volume as well as our mute so that's how we can change
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things about the system with the function keys while we are operating it
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we've got a little warranty summary here so it looks like it is a 24mon 2-year
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warranty in the United States and Canada and here is a c compliance booklet which
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I've never seen before and I'm not even remotely interested in so next we have
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our nine cell battery and we're almost there guys we're almost there here's our
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nine cell battery it's uh rated for 7800
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milliamp hours and finally we are ready
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to take the notebook out of the
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package so I have actually just arrived in Las Vegas this morning I had an MSI
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event today I went to uh an ocz event
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today as well um also had a steel series
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thing to do and then tomorrow is another
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very full schedule I'm going to try and get as many videos uploaded while I'm
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down here as possible but uh it's
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sometimes a bit of a challenge and I might have to wait till I'm back in
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Vancouver before I can really give you
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guys the full update MSI has come such a
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long way in terms of their shell Design This is just really slick looking you've
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got kind of a neat scaled finish going on up here hopefully you guys can see
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that okay and then the uh the top of the notebook is oh I wish I wasn't getting
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sort of weird Reflections off it there we go so the top of the notebook has
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kind of an angular shape to it kind of like a stealth biter and it is a glossy
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black finish and then we've got a little
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Chrome accent here that I love Chrome accents there you guys know a little
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something about me there's another one there I love that okay so let's go ahead
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and sort of turn it on its side and let's see what we're going to find here
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so we're going to find a vent pole oh
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two USB 3.0 ports that's outstanding actually we have an SSD slot as well as
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a USB 2.0 I hope I didn't say 2.0 I meant 3.0 they are color-coded blue and
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they have the little super speed logo above them and then finally we have an
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Express there we go uh whatever that is
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it's PCIe or whatever expansion slot
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that you probably won't use but you'll be kicking yourself if you don't have
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one and you do need something for it here on the back we're going to find
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pretty much the usual Fair a Kensington lock a covered ventilation hole so
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that's kind of that's kind of peculiar I wonder if they're using this shell for
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another model as well that does require ventilation over here interesting to say
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the least here we have our power in as well as our Lan we do have support for
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VGA as well as HDMI video out and we
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also have an EA port on the back finally moving around to the other
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side hey look at that looks like we've got dedicated Jacks for 5.1 audio out as
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well as a microphone that's pretty cool so they really are taking audio
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seriously on this model we've got another USB 2.0 Port I love having one
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on the other side just in case you want to run a mouse off this port or if it's
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not convenient to have it up against the other side so that's a nice thing to see
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and then here we have our blu-ray combo Drive which is uh nicely angled with the
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shape of the overall notebook all right let's have a quick look at the bottom
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although I'm not going to let you guys see that just yet so that uh my product
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key can remain uh not all over YouTube and I'm
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just going to install the battery really quick here or rather I'll show you guys
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how to install the battery so you just put that in there lower it in and that's
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it you've installed the battery so I'll show you guys the bottom of the notebook
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here you can see that we have easy access to upgrade the RAM as well as the
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optical drive as well as the hard drive
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so just by pulling off this whole plate you can get access to pretty much the
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entire internals of the notebook for user upgrades and you can bet that I
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will be doing some user upgrades on this guy we got what appears to be
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a speaker I I I guess that's a subwoofer
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actually so please correct me if I'm wrong but that looks like a subwoofer on
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the bottom of this notebook that's a pretty cool feature all right so let's
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have a look at the inside
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here okay so it's covered in plastic so
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we won't have any problems with it getting damaged and shipping here's our
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HD webcam up here at the top I'm going to go ahead and remove this and uh you
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guys can come along for the ride because I don't have a cameraman to sort of
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conveniently and shots for me when I need it and all that good stuff so I'm
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pulling all of the protective film off oh my goodness I'm undressing it oh yeah
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let's see what this says got a question or problem contact MSI customer service
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good thinking okay so here you can see that the screen is quite glossy you can
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clearly see me in the reflection off the screen oh there's your microphone for
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the webcam so it's right up there uh once again we've got sort of some Chrome
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accents up here Chrome accents down here love that
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overall a glossy black finish and then there's also some matte black accents in
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here as well so I'm going to go ahead and remove this as
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well um hopefully I can uh get a fingernail under that and I can lift
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that up there we go so there are our our
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stereo speakers and here is their Sound by Dine Audio again I'm just going to
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try and get an angle here where you guys can see it more easily and you don't
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have so much uh reflection off of my lamp but I also don't
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completely block my light as well so here why don't we do that that's not a
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bad angle okay so let's get in here so we've got our 2.1 speaker setup so that
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looks like two speakers up here one subwoofer down in the bottom we've got
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our power switch here as well as a nice Chrome MSI logo we've got some buttons
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up here which look to be touch sensitive buttons or either that or these are just
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indicators so I'm going to have to find that out for you guys and I'm going to
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be giving you guys my full Impressions on this notebook once I have a chance
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down here in CES I don't know how realistic that is but once I do get back
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I'm going to tell you everything that I have to say about this
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notebook overall build of it seems so far quite sturdy although it's really
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hard to tell until I've really typed a lot on the keyboard and really played
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around with the shell opened it up in terms of keyboard layout it looks pretty
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strong so far this is not a bilingual layout I hate bilingual layouts to be
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perfectly honest with you guys I've got a properly positioned shift key I have
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short shift key here but I don't mind that because it would be very rare that
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I would actually reach over here to hit the shift key it's much closer here so I
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really like this design choice that they've made here to put the arrow keys
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there to condense the keyboard to give me a number pad because I do actually
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work on my notebook even though it is a GX gaming notebook yeah I'm still going
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to do some work so it's great to have a number pad if I have to do any data
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entry the enter and backspace keys are also the appropriate size and look at
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this I've got conveniently highlighted wa as SD keys so yeah yeah there's a
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little gaming focus in there for sure we have one Windows key here and then we do
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not on the other side but that doesn't really bother me very much and I think
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that's pretty much all I need to say about the keyboard the touchpad uses
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kind of a uh textured finish so you shouldn't get too much grease built up I
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don't really like uh very very smooth touch pads and I'm glad to see that
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everyone seems to be pretty much moving away from that same thing here we've got
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a bit of a glossy uh shiny Chrome finished outer portion here but the
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actual buttons themselves are using like a brushed finish so that they're not
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going to be too bad in terms of finger magnetism and you've also got a little
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bit of a grip on it so you can really feel um where your finger goes without
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it sliding off or anything like that we've got some stickers here something
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about ATI Mobility radon hd5870 Graphics
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Windows 7 core i7 energy star and DTS
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surround sensation
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PC look at that I wonder if what are
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these H interesting okay well we've got
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another little summary of the technology that's present in this notebook although
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I've covered that already and I think that pretty much concludes my
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unboxing I'm going to take a moment and actually fire it up here with you guys
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there we go we got an MSI boot screen we've got uh appears to be
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Western Digital 3 120 gig drives in raid
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zero you can see they are configured in the raid BIOS that's such a cool feature
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being able to have raid in a in a notebook I mean you could even throw two
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ssds in here throw those in raid zero and get just crazy speed for a notebook
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I'm also going to play around uh in the near future I'll do another video for
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you guys uh I want to play around with the overclocking feature for this CPU
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because I will be using this notebook for some video rendering and I want to
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find out how much of a performance Improvement I can get by overclocking
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the CPU so there we go we're fired up and I'm going to spend some time now to
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do some setup thank you for checking out my unboxing of the MSI GX
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660r 060 us this is a core i7 and Mobility
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Radeon HD 5870 gaming notebook