MSI Titan GT77HX V13 (RTX 4090 & 13980HX) Review

[TheNaitsyrk]

Hello!

 

Wanted to share my experiences with this laptop. Mostly positive, some negative.

 

I paid £5303 for the laptop and I received a free MSI plush worth £25 which is nice.

 

I previously had Lenovo Legion 7i with i9 12900HX and 3080 Ti (175W) so I'll compare to that.

 

First of all, this laptop comes with 32GB of DDR5 (Samsung memory) and 2TB of OEM (980 Pro equivalent) Samsung NVMe, the screen is MiniLED 4K 144Hz screen which is really really good also.

 

Two Thunderbolt 4 ports work great. I tested them both with ACASIS TB4 external NVMe enclosure and with Sabrent Rocket Plus 2TB inside I was getting consistently 3GB sequential read and writes. The only negative is that they are not directly linked to the dGPU which means if you use external displays (as I do) you have to go into Hybrid mode which reduces performance in games as Optimus is basically disabled.

 

Expansion is great also, 3x NVMe slots and one of the being PCI-E 5.0. I have added 3x2TB Sabrent Rocket Plus 2TB so they all match.

 

Another feature that I took advantage of is 4x RAM slots, I bought 4x32GB HyperX Impact RAM @5600Mhz but RAM only runs at 3600Mhz CL27. Although, I can increase voltage and speed in the BIOS, so adjustment will be possible. Stock RAM only clocks at 4000Mhz with 2 sticks but adjusting to 4800Mhz (RAMs real speed) works fine, although laptop takes much longer to boot as memory training takes place each time it's turned on.

 

I am not actually sure if this laptop has liquid metal thermal pads or not, but thermals indicate that it does. All of the fans are fully controllable from the MSI Center app from Microsoft Store. I have set them to full speed for testing purposes. GPU fans even when set to 100% will only ramp up if GPU is in use.

 

I have ran Cinebench R23 and Cinebench R15 tests and I can say with pleasure that scores are very high. At stock MSI Titan maxes the cores out on the first run at around 80c and little cores at around 75c. The score is 33200. Single core is 2150 due to 5.6Ghz 2 core boost.

 

Lenovo Legion 7i with overclocked / undervolted optimum settings managed to get 25200 score in Cinebench R23, and around 2020 in single core, so the CPU performance uplift is next level.

 

I have managed to leave voltage stock, but overclock two cores to 5.8Ghz effortlessly, which enabled single core of 2250. I will be trying to get some cores to 6.0Ghz for gaming purposes (although that's not possible yet which I will explain later why).

 

4090 in the laptop is incredibly fast and much faster than the 3080 Ti I had in my previous laptop. I managed to overclock the GPU +230 to the core and +1400 to memory without fail, although I haven't finished testing yet for reasons I'll explain later.

 

The memory started clocking over 10000 as reported in MSI afterburner and GPU core started clocking at 2540Mhz during Heaven 4 1440p Extreme presets. Very happy with both CPU, GPU, and cooling solution.

 

I won't comment on battery as this laptop could probably pull 4 hours if GPU is disabled due to 4K MiniLED screen I suppose.

 

Laptop is quite heavy and the power brick also, but I still think it's very portable if you drive to places with a car, it's a lot of portable power.

 

I like the fact that the laptop comes with 128GB USB Drive with both USB and USB C ends, a really nice RGB MSI gaming mouse, and a lucky dragon keychain, very nice additions. I wished they included the backpack which is advertised on the page (optional) as standard with the laptop due to its cost.

 

However, what wasn't so nice is the fact that when I opened my laptop to add RAM and NVMes, I noticed that two heatpipes on the CPU are dented in, Sharpie marks on the rear of the heatsink, and one bent heatsink fin. For £5300 this is beyond unacceptable and I have sent it back for repair, although I ideally should be seeking replacement, however the retailer I purchased from would take such a long time to sort it (due to laptop cost apparently) that I just gave up and went with a fix.

 

 

Overall ratings that I give are:

Performance - 5*

Cooling - 5*

Factory Defects - 0*

Cost - 2*

Screen - 5*

Accessories - 4*

 

When it comes to MSI support it's mostly positive. They have ordered the courier to pick up my laptop very swiftly. Their support service is close to where I live so I asked them if I can just drop it off myself and I was told no, but then I called again when courier complications started and the lovely agent said that it's actually not a problem and just give them a ring once I'm there to drop it off. So slightly mixed signals of what I can do, but in the end I am allowed to drop it off and that's great. Once you call, someone is with you in a matter of a minute or two which is also brilliant. I love that I can connect to an actual human being quickly without having to go through a lot of automated questions.

 

I will update this review post the fix and include more pictures as I test the RAM more and other aspects of this laptop.