MSI GS30 Shadow 13.3" Ultrabook with External Desktop GPU Dock - CES 2015
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
897 words · ~4 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 we're here in the MSI Suite with
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what for me personally is the most exciting thing I've seen at the show yet
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which isn't really saying much this is only the second Suite we've been to but
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this is something that I'm pretty stoked on anyway this is the gs30 shadow 001
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it's a gaming notebook that has a very thin and light design so they're using
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what appears to the same material as as their GS Series so like a like a blasted
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finished magnesium kind of shell it's
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got an extremely thin display two usb3
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ports Intel gigabit Lan HDMI out an SD
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card reader audio ports an Intel Core i7 4870hq quad core processor and Iris Pro
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Graphics yeah that's right gaming laptop
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$2,000 Iris Pro Graphics no no hold on it gets it gets better than that so
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what's going on over here is we're running exter an external display not
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off of The Notebook itself but off of this included box underneath it so I'm
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actually going to go ahead and shut it down because right now the way it works
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is in order to switch between Standalone notebook mode and notebook with like
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beastly Graphics mode you do have to shut down the machine because here at
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the back we can go ahead and is it shut down unlock it this like mechanism it
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it's like Lock and Load your notebook right here here at the back is a PCI
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Express 16x gen 3 interface so that is a
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full speed link any high-end GPU you
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could possibly want to want you can run off of that and you don't just you don't
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just stick it in the slot at the at the back of the notebook no no that's that's
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not how it works it's much more elegant than that this box down here contains a
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speaker just in case you don't have speakers for whatever reason or
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something like that it's got some more IO for the notebook so four more USB
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ports killer l two more audio ports power button as well as a cooling fan
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and then inside this is awesome just
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going to open it up here try not to break it this time whoops okay yep and
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then inside we've got a PCI Express 16x
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slot a 450 W power supply and then we
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can see now that that cooling fan is going to allow us to run well MSI says
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any of their graphics cards and any reference card up to a GTX Titan black
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or R9 290x pretty much anything you could want to put in it compar to alien
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wear solution this is still proprietary
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so it's not the you know most elegant thing in the world we're a little ways
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away from just plugging in a Thunderbolt cable and hot swapping graphics cards
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but compared to Alienware solution it has four times the bandwidth because the
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Alienware one runs at PCIe 4X so this
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and and while that's not normally going to be a bottleneck anyway it's something
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that gives you well in my mind a little bit more room for the future because
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CPUs don't affect gaming performance the same way that gpus do and this could
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last you through several GPU upgrades and who knows what the bandwidth
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requirements will look like a couple years from now so this is what's got my
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attention because for me carrying around a bulky gaming notebook like this 18inch
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monstrosity over here that we're also going to have a video of by the way I
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can't even lift it with one hand it's so heavy carrying around something like
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that is not necessarily an option but being able to carry something like this
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around with me most of the time and then grab my dock that actually uh maybe it
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does weigh more than that notebook but not by much being able to just grab an
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extra dock when I really need the gaming horse power is an unbelievable use case
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scenario that I think is fantastic so guys thank you for checking out our
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video of the gs30
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shadow-1 don't miss any of our CES coverage our trip to the show here is
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brought to you by oh yeah these guys see they're right on the left or on the
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microphone Phantom glass visit store.
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phantom.in protector in our mind it's Gorilla Glass so it's as clear and as
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satisfying to touch as the glass that's already on your phone if you have a high-end smartphone and it has a nano
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coating on the back so it goes on completely bubble free also check out
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the hyperx YouTube channel they also sent us here to the show they've got
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some great gaming content over there you can find links to both of those places in the video description also click that
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