*** MSI WT75 Owners Lounge ***

Howdy! This is the thread for MSI's new WT75 desktop replacement workstation. It uses desktop LGA processors from Intel and MXM Quadro Pascal graphics cards. Specifications can be found here:

https://us.msi.com/Workstation/WT75/Overview

Where to buy:

Eurocom F7W
Newegg
HIDEvolution
XoticPC
GentechPC

Basically Eurocom is a good option if you want the UHD panel configuration for under $4000. HIDEvolution is a good option if you want a white glove experience or already plan to use your own RAM or SSD's as you can optionally remove them to get the price down. They also have a good global warranty service upgrade if needed. XoticPC is similar to HIDEvolution offering upgrades and repasting, they are located in the central USA which may be faster if you are on the east coast (although AFAIK RMA repairs have to go through MSI in California so this may be a moot point). Newegg is good if you just want a stock configuration or are unsure about a purchase. With a premier account (be sure to not order from a marketplace seller) there should be no restocking fees if it does not work out.

I have ordered a base model and will update this thread with a short review. I will try to answer any questions anyone has about it as there is not much information available so far.

My own questions:

• Stock performance benchmarks for 8700 / P3200 (Cinebench, Wprime, Firestrike)
• Photos of disassembly / cooling system / motherboard
• Intel LAN or Atheros LAN? (MSI docs say Atheros, but this is C246 so it should have Intel) - Confirmed to be Intel by @Kevin@GenTechPC
• GPU MUX information (manual says it can switch between Hybrid / Dedicated)
• Linux Compatibility
• HDMI / mDP version
• Battery life
• GTX GPU compatibility if budget exists and I can find a good deal on a card
• CPU compatibility if budget exists (primarily interested in the i9-9900k whenever it is released)
• Warranty information (I will try contacting MSI support to see if they have better turn around time for workstation RMA's than consumer RMA's)
• Bios unlocking information

 

Interesting. If the cooling is good and it can support gaming gpu's it might be something to peek at as an alternative to clevo's stuff.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

 

It comes with Intel LAN.

 

The WT75 arrived yesterday afternoon. Initial impressions out of the box are really good.

The CPU cooling system is very robust. It has five heatpipes and easily keeps the i7-8700 cool. Stock Cinebench R15 was ~1200. Adding a -.150mv undervolt increased the score to ~1400.

So far the Quadro P3200 appears to be at GTX 1060 performance levels. Firestrike link. The display / GPU does not support GSYNC obviously, but it does work fine with Fast SYNC enabled.

The port layout is very nice. The only thing I would change is adding USB-C ports on both the left and right side of the machine as accessing the Thunderbolt 3 port in the back can be cumbersome.

The GPU MUX works and routes just the internal display through the UHD630. The mini DisplayPort, HDMI, and Thunderbolt 3 all route through the Quadro P3200. Switching between Optimus and Dedicated needs two reboots. When the integrated GPU is active the MUX switch button is lit. The stock configuration draws about 25w on light wifi usage, so it should last 3-4 hours on battery.

 

Pics or it doesn't exist.

 

i like the sound of that, 5 heatpipes cpu heatsink and iGPU works incase of dGPU failure.

can you take some pictures of internal heatsink and design?

 

Here is a photo of the bottom panel. The cooling system can be partially seen through it.

I have yet to decide if I will keep the machine or not. The main factor is I will have to sell both my Macbook Pro and Alienware 17R4 in order to do so. It would be an easier decision if this had a GTX card, as the 75W P3200 is definitely a downgrade from the 140W GTX 1070 in the Alienware. I also still like the Alienware's keyboard more than the WT75's.

I did get Linux installed, which runs great. I haven't been able to get MacOS to boot so far, as the usb chipset for the C246 PCH appears to not be in the whitelist for the usb injector kext.

WT75back by win32asmguy posted Sep 26, 2018 at 6:30 AM

 

Well, what is it exactly you want in that laptop that you can't get better elsewhere?

It can be bought with different Quadro GPU's:
https://us.msi.com/Workstation/WT75/Specification

Usually that kind of laptop is for specific design work using Quadro's, so there aren't any mainstream gaming GPU's sku's.

I thought there were several 9900k models coming, probably 17.3" display models, maybe wait for one of those? There were supposed to be Pascal models in October, and I assume Turing models of some form the end of Q1 or beginning of Q2, if they are lucky.

 

The only way it could be better is if it were more configurable, similar to how you can get Clevo DTR's. Then again, it is the 17 inch Tornado F5 that I wanted to buy two years ago, barring the GTX graphics card!

 

I don't think it's been two years, but I guess by the time it finally arrives, it might be two full years.

It's a common theme, and I see many fall to it, waiting and waiting, and then just before the release of what they are waiting for they buy something else, and then the thing they are waiting for releases right afterward. I won't name any names, but right here on NBR I've seen it many times.

Well, the release of the 9900k is right around a very long corner, so you should probably buy the WT75, so they can release the next generation laptop.

 

If a new model is coming out soon to replace the existing model and you can wait then by all means.... do it. But if you need it soon then just pull the trigger. It's not like you are gonna get 50% boost in performance.

 

Actually I am curious if MSI cares if an i9-9900k is installed in place of the included i7-8700. If they do, and I have to hang on to the i7-8700 for any warranty repairs, then its probably better to just wait until its offered as an standard configuration option, or an upgrade through a botique reseller.

 

They don't care what you put in there so you don't need to worry about keeping the stock CPU, but in case you need to do troubleshooting then you have a spare processor for testing use.
So i7-8700 is a 65W and 8th gen processor whilst i9-9900K is 95W and 9th gen. If MSI injects MCU for the 9th gen into the BIOS then most likely it would work, however it may not operate at its full potential or system may suffer premature failure due to over-spec usage.
If there's no plan to support 95W processors then they will for sure preserve enough juice for 65W but no more than that as the extra 30W = $$$$. Plus, the AC adapter is 330W so it is possible to handle 95W CPU + 100W GPU so I think the system can handle it.

 

It's not likely MSI would upgrade a laptop motherboard BIOS to be compatible with a new CPU - but you can ask via a support ticket with MSI, register the laptop - this doesn't keep you from being able to return it, you can follow up with a support ticket telling them you returned it and to remove it from your account after you return it.

Ask if MSI will update the BIOS for the 9xxx series, specifically the CPU models you might want to test in the laptop.

You may need to go back and forth a few times to get a response from engineering, keep asking to escalate to the team that creates BIOS updates for the WT-75.

Given your return period might expire before you get the answer, wait until you get the answer to tell MSI you returned it... and when they tell you they will or won't update it, you can decide when / if to repurchase it.

It would have been better to figure this all out before buying and taking delivery - so the return clock wouldn't start expiring - but you can still work with it, I've done this myself before with Acer, I ended up getting an Asus for that round - Acer didn't have VM / VT extensions enabled for the Haswell CPU in the BIOS, and it ended up taking them 5-8 months to come out with an update - so I am glad I jumped to the Asus.

Good luck

 

this is basically similar design of the gt73? or was it gt75? @Falkentyne will prob know more. from the looks of that picture, looks like GPU is strictly for left fan only while right fan is entirely for CPU.

 

Can't see anything with the cover on. But seems like GT75 except the left fan is cooling the GPU VRM's instead of the CPU fan cooling them. I want to see something like that in a LGA GTX/RTX version. Which will still have some sort of cancer firmware anyway.

 

The chassis is like the GT73VR but it has a second 2.5 inch bay instead of the secondary mxm slot.

@Falkentyne what do you mean by cancerous firmware? I was able to unlock it using the GT73VR method (thanks for the guide!) and it appears to already have references to 8-core processors.

 

Battery Boost, artificial limitations on CPU TDP if too much power is drawn from the system according to the EC, possible inability to override CPU power limits via changing power limit 1 and 2 in the Bios (if accessible, or via bios unlock key combination or manually unlocking bios menus with fptw64, amibcp 5.02, etc), which happened with the MSI 16L13 LGA laptop due to a bug in the EC thinking an "unsupported" CPU was installed, causing all power limit overrides to be ignored. etc etc....

 

Ah that makes sense. So trying to set a higher power limit than 95w may not be possible, even with the proper microcode installed? I suppose the next step would be to pull the heatsink and look at the phases to make an estimate of what it may be able to do? If there is an EC limitation it may be possible to overcome it.

BTW, this model needs the csme tools v12, else it will throw error 367 when trying to read or write the flash memory. I think it is because the C246 PCH was released very recently.

 

It wasn't on the 16L13. You could set a higher power limit in the Bios but it was completely ignored. I explained this was a *bug* in the EC with it not having a valid CPU configuration for LGA versions, as their systems were designed around BGA. Eurocom took "note" of it and said they would try to fix it, but they don't make the EC. MSI does.

The only fix for this was to set IMON OFFSET to -31000 and IMON SLOPE to 50, to make the CPU report it's using less than half the TDP it's actually using.

The GT73VR and GT75VR perform EXACTLY the same way (except 45W instead of 91W) if you manually program an "Invalid" CPU value into EC RAM register E3 (in RW Everything).
Example: Programming a "70" into EC Register E3 will cause a 7820HK (and 6820HK) and 8950HK to be capped at 45W TDP (power limit 2 then power limit 1 will kick in), overriding any bios settings via PECI.

 

this comes with a xeon mobile chipset, can probably have good hopes that it'll have less cancer firmware. given the nature of xeon mobile workstation that will cost a fortune its unthinkable they'll mess with it. if they do, we just need to make it known and hope that it'll explode so people wont ever buy their trash again.

 

The EC is likely the same code base and chip as what the GT75VR is using, just with whatever modifications needed for the WT75 motherboard.

With my 8700, changing PL1 does not increase performance. The Package TDP stays around 80W and I do get power limit throttling. Maybe I can try changing Core/IA VR Settings in the BIOS to see if it helps.

 

What's your VR Current limit set to?

 

Change IMON offset to -31000 and IMON SLOPE to 50 and this will bypass the power limit throttling. (in Core I/A settings).

I believe the 8700 is a fully locked processor that doesn't support exceeding its power limit (basically an "LGA" version of the 8750H), but supports hyperthreading.
While the 8600K is an overclockable version of this chip, with no hyperthreading (supports multiplier changes and changing TDP).
I could be wrong.

 

Is that Processor Core IccMax in XTU? I think the default was 133A. I tried bumping it to 200A which didn't make a difference.

Now, if I apply an undervolt of -0.150 then I get 4.3Ghz on all cores under load, and TDP is less than 80W. Also, If I applied a -.100 undervolt then I get ~4.1Ghz on all cores under load, and TDP is at 80W. Some other people using the 8700 in a desktop seemed to suggest that raising PL1 is needed to reach max turbo speeds without undervolting.

Ideally I could pick up an i9-9900k on Monday from Micro Center if they are released.. although I will need to inject the microcode updates myself (the bios only has the 4 and 6 core microcode injected from what I can see). Hopefully Intel does not want over $500 for the i9.

 

That processor shouldn't cost more than $500 but the tax will bring it up to slightly under $525.

 

Changing IMON offset and IMON slope worked! The monitoring software now inaccurately reports TDP at ~61W but it can now maintain 4.3Ghz on all cores under load, scoring 1394 in Cinebench R15. Package temp is at 91C and the fans get much louder. Voltage is also at ~1.350 under load.

 

Sounds good.
Just wondering: Can the WT75 accept a "Pascal" 1070 or 1080? I assume the heatsink has a certain exact VRM layout for a certain exact video card...
Would be nice to see if someone were able to put a 9900K on a WT75 and see if they could reach 5 ghz on air on all 8 cores, combined with a GTX 1080 at full load.

 

The MS-1W0V1 (GTX 1070) looks like it should fit the Quadro P3200 heatsink. If the P5200 has the same layout and heatsink as the GTX 1080 without the auxiliary connector, then that may be an option too.

 

Today I took the WT75 apart (CPU side only) to swap the wifi card to a Broadcom BCM94352Z. It was a little tough to get the heatsink loose from the CPU, I think it came with a bit too much paste from the factory. After putting everything back together I needed to perform an EC reset to get it to boot again.

 

They don't put paste on these laptops.
They use some phase change thermal stamp.
Why is there a remnant of lairdtech label on your laptop? Looks like soemone didnt do their job at the factory. You should remove that. It's blocking contact.

 

Oh, thats what that was. I will have it apart again whenever Intel releases the i9-9900k. So from the photo does it look like it has a 4+1 phase configuration for the CPU/iGPU?

 

Nope it's 8 phases. It's phase doubled (2 phases per each choke). You count the # of phases by counting the VRM''s (the little tiny squares).
A 4 phase system wouldn't overclock very far at all. I'm no PSU expert but I do know that 2 phases per choke has more ripple than 1 phase per choke.
@Khenglish is this true?

GT75VR/GT73VR btw:

 

Ok. So based on that information the i9-9900k should be able to do ok? I was at Micro Center yesterday looking at a few boards with friends and even some of the very high end ones have 18 phases, etc.

Oh, I also picked up an Everki Titan. Very nice bag that fits the WT75 perfectly. It is the same size and dimensions as the GT73VR so this is no surprise.

I really like having an unlocked bios. The changes allow other OS's to utilize the extra performance even when they don't have tools available like Throttlestop or XTU.

 

Is the GPU standard MXM3.0b shape? Looks like it kinda comes out on one side.

 

The P3200 looks very close to the 1070N in the Tornado F5. The top right corner has the same extra tab, as well as the left edge protruding farther than the MXM connector at the bottom.

 

What temp you get in Cinebench R15 with 4.3GHz and your undervolt as in post below. Would be nice if you could test with max fans also. Thanks

 

Well, when I took the CPU fan off last weekend I repasted with AS5. Probably better than doing nothing but not as good as using other options like Phobya Nanogrease. The package temp peaked at 80C while the benchmark was running, on default fans. The temp peaked at 73C with max fans on.

Also I am not entirely sure if unlocking the bios is needed to make these adjustments - I had only partially unlocked mine, and by pressing the Ctrl-Shift-Alt-F2 combo I pretty much get every other setting available in advanced. It seems to have many more options available than what was given on the Tornado F5 using the same command.

 

80C is pretty good already considering this is a more economical and safer solution. And anyone can do it.

 

I upgraded my WT75 with a 9900k today. Scored ~1700 in Cinebench R15 on first bootup.

 

@Papusan are his scores good?

Wait you didn't need a bios update for this thing?
Can you exceed 95W TDP? Have you tested the power draw?
The MSI 16L13 had a bug where the CPU stock TDP could not be exceeded regardless of what the power limit overrides were set to.

Will this laptop accept a "MSI" GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 ?
I'm assuming your Quadro is a MSI 1070 form factor right?

So what happens if you stick a 1070 in this thing?
I wonder if it will TDP throttle the CPU. I am assuming the " Kaby Lake" 4 core editions of the MSI (or Clevo) 1070s will have POST problems like they have on the Clevo laptops when used on coffee lake platforms?

 

I did need a bios update. I just added the 9th gen microcode and updated the EFI iGPU GOP driver to the latest in case I ever boot in Optimus mode. Here is a link to the updated bios:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QjkELKHujpd4KAOLq7zFYtBh8h00QeKJ

The MSI Quadro P3200 appears to be the same form factor as the MSI GTX 1070. I wanted to try it out but paying $500 for one at this point seems kind of silly given that the P3200 already scores very close to the GTX 1070 and we may see a RTX 2070 MXM in a few months.

 

The point to getting the 1070 is to TDP mod it to 230W, which is at least 15% performance boost.
I can't deal with being TDP capped. But none of the 6 core vbios versions of the 1070 or 1080 will work with the out of date Pascal editor.

And a 1080 version would require a chassis with the 1080 heatsink and VRM heatsink. And I am unsure what form factor the P5200(?) uses on the WT75.

I mean I want the Z390 Clevo with the 9900K and Prema Bios, but if the MSI WT75 is cancer removed, maybe the whitebook version might be worth toying around with.

If you have any free time, do you think you can do a prime95 test to see if you can exceed 95W of TDP without getting power throttled?

In your prime95 folder (latest version), open local.txt and add these lines:

CPUSupportsAVX=0
CPUSupportsFMA3=0

Then run Throttlestop 8.70 and check for CPU throttling under Limit Reasons.

This should keep temps semi decent.

 

Thanks for this bios! Looking forward to trying a 9900k at some point.

I am waiting to hear back on purchasing a P4200 from someone in Korea. Hopefully it should be directly compatible without any other changes needed.

 

Ultimate performance!

 

Why does this Bios have "Thermal Velocity Boost" available in it?
Either MSI decided to use the same code for the GT75 Titan in this laptop, or they used the code for this laptop in the GT75 Titan.

There's even an 8 core CPU ratio option in the 6 core BGA GT75 Titan (except it won't show since it's a 6 core BGA).

The Bioses in the GT75 Titan (E17A3IMS.110) and this laptop has identical options. Except for that weird "blank space" next to "TDC Enable" on the GT75 Titan, which seems to be a bug, and that space isn't there in the WT75 Bios, and System Agent AC DC Loadline is set to 0 (auto) on the WT75 while it's set to 960 (what??) on the GT75 Titan (not even sure if that even does anything). I didn't check all the crazy useless stuff in 'AMT configuration' and 'Platform settings' since no one should mess with those anyway.

 

It definitely still has the same power limitations as before when I tested with the i7-8700. With IMON Offset and IMON Slope set the Cinebench R15 score goes up to 1975.

I am not sure about the bios differences between the GT75 and WT75, but I would hope MSI is considering an LGA GT75 for its next revision, given what Clevo will be offering with the 9900k. Unless Intel is releasing an i9 8-core BGA processor in January.... whew I just threw up in my mouth a little.

 

Did you set the power limit to "200" or 200,000 milliwatts?
And it still throttled at 95W TDP?

@Papusan ?

So MSI still has the exact same TDP bugs that they had in the 16L13?
These bugs exist because the system ID is "unknown" to the embedded controller (EC RAM) register F3 to be exact (in RW Everything), and if the ID is unknown by the EC, it forcibly overrides anything in the bios and reads the CPU MSR for the TDP and forces a TDP cap, ignoring any power limit overrides.

Seems like MSI is just recycling BGA code on its LGAbooks again.
That means the "MS75" or F7 will have a 95W TDP limit on the i9 9900K and i7 8700k / 8086K unless you do Imon tricks...

 

One of the most useful thing is now here

 

P3200 MXM looks just like the GTX 1070 out of my Tornado F5 but with a different version and stamp on the chipset.

Tornado F5 1070: Board Version 1.0 / N17E-G2
WT75 P3200: Board Version 1.2 / N18E-Q1

Spoiler