***The Official MSI GT80S Titan (w/desktop 980 GPU's) Owner's Lounge***

Thanks for the link! Will give it a try.

Also how did you contact MSI? Is it possible to contact MSI regarding the software w/o creating an account? I couldn't find anything on their website on first glimpse.

 

If you don't have a login account, then you haven't registered your laptop either, so you need to do that right away.

If you register within a certain time period after purchase you get an extra +3 months of warranty.

You need to register your product to file a support request against it.

So, set up a login, register, and file the support request.

 

Oh okay that's also the conclusion I came up with after browsing their website. Gonna try the audio drivers first then and call MSI tomorrow. The shop I bought the laptop from explicitly states that registered products can't be returned easily.

 

That's wrong. You can't get support without being registered. And, if you notify MSI that you returned it, they will unregister it.

You need to verify from the Seller what their conditions are, and if you can't register it and therefore can't get support on it, then you need to return it and find a seller without that restriction.

 

And I may be returning my 950 Pros , they are fast but I prefer more capacity and slower over faster but smaller SSDs. Even the "slow" SATA M.2's are crazy fast compared to large capacity hard drives.

When surfing, youtube, movies and music I use external speakers. I have a 5.1 setup connected. When gaming, I have been using a headset. The headset not only sounds good, but blocks the fan noise too. The external speakers sound good too but can't really cover up the loud fan noise during a demanding gaming session.

Even if I did use my internal speakers when at my desk, the whole notebook is way off to one side so it would make the sound even worse.

The only time I will use the internals is when traveling and even much of that time I will still use a headset. Speakers are about as important to me as the type of rubber they use in the footpads

 

Although the throughput benchmarks and results were ok, they heavily glossed over the Thermals.

They didn't list temperatures at all, just showing a thermal image - which shows white hot centers over the controller chip - way hotter than the surrounding "hot spots" - and those at least had Heatsinks!!

They also completely got wrong the wattage/power draw, saying the 6w max was spread out over the 3 SSD's "because they were sharing the load".

Actually the load was 3x the load of 1 SSD, as one would expect from scaling up to 3x performance numbers

"Thermals
Each Samsung 950 Pro draws 6 watts at max load, but based on what we saw on the previous page, that load is spread across three SSDs, meaning it will become even harder to reach the thermal throttling point of the drives."

That basic misunderstanding gave them an excuse to not follow through on getting real temperature readings, which IMHO is a huge disservice to the reader. And an ongoing problem with PCIE SSD's, and even M.2 SATA SSD's

Look at how hot those suckers are @ ~70c - not measured at highest load


And, since they don't throttle until 100c, they are likely riding right around 100c all the time during the heavy load tests.

Imagine what that will be like when there are 2 or 3 GPU's absorbing their radiated heat, and the heat from the GPU's radiating back into the SSD's... ouch. And, these test were done on an open test bench, without being boxed in to a case with all the other components blocking air flow.

If CPU/GPU temps are so important, I would think the temperature of storage based on the effectively the same elements as the CPU/GPU should also be important to monitor and reduce.

You wouldn't want to run your CPU/GPU at a constant 100c - 110c (951's throttle at 110c) under load, why is it ok to run your storage with no cooling at that same temperature. It's not, if you were wondering.

 

few things would like to point out is that, this is a desktop board although no direct airflow, it is open space compared to laptop. as for share workload, they are correct. as you have mentioned "They also completely got wrong the wattage/power draw, saying the 6w max was spread out over the 3 SSD's "because they were sharing the load". Actually the load was 3x the load of 1 SSD, as one would expect from scaling up to 3x performance numbers" nothing would scale perfectly, an 8c is not 2x faster than 4c cpu at same clock, just how it is, but vast majority of bandwidth drop is due to cpu dmi bandwidth limitation. share the workload, share the heat as all SSD would not be running at max performance.

in SATA SSDs, u'd raid for better latency, faster 4k random read/write at qd1 however in NVMe as driver not yet matured from both intel and samsung, its ashame to see raid would increase latency on low QD but at high qd its excellent. right now 950 pro comes with samsung NVMe driver supposingly better than intel's but i mean, a driver coming from samsung? i wouldnt put too much trust behind it.

 

if i own GT80S, i'd keep 950 pro for 2x 512GB and wait for 4TB samsung 850 pro SSD coming out this year, u can put two of those in GT80s, even 3 if you were to mod it.

and no, M.2 and M.2 PCIE SSD specification are similar in dimension, max u'd see this year is probably 1TB or if lucky 1.5TB, 2.5" always have more space, its just depends on samsung if they make a 1TB 950 pro or not.

 

There isn't perfect scaling of the throughput, as there is overhead for the RAID0.

They didn't hit the maxium throughput possible through the shared bus - I have seen faster - with that 3x RAID0.

But, what I was refering to was they missed the point that the 3 SSD's were running at full performance, pulling full wattage, so the power draw was 3x the power draw of just 1 SSD.

If 1 SSD draws 6w at full load, and 3x SSDs are 3x the throughput - with scaling factor - then all 3 are running at full load and drawing full power.

When I ran 3x and 4x RAID'd M.2 SSD's the load on the SSD's was 100% on all 3 and all 4, even though the throughput wasn't 4x.

And, more importantly, at 3x and 4x the M.2 SATA SSD's all peaked at the same top temperature under the same load.

It's hot, either way, way too hot for bare silicon without heatsinks or active cooling

 

I bought 3 of the 1TB SATA M.2 for about the same as the two 512GB PCIe and one 512 SATA M.2. The PCIe setup is half the capacity, and some of it is faster but also sucks to have my games all split up. I will RAID the three SATA for a single 3TB drive, and I already have a 2TB in the 2.5" slot. That will cover me for a while

 

10C and 102 I believe?

Where did you find 1TB M.2s? I can't find any anywhere. D: The ones which are listed on Amazon and Newegg are actually 2.5" despite the listing titles.

 

Sandisk has it but it's not widely available yet.
P/N: SD8SN8U-1T00
https://www.sandisk.com/content/dam...nterprise/data-sheets/X400_datasheet_v1.0.pdf

 

Yes, I know, but they don't seem to actually be available for retail anywhere.

 

Perhaps it needs time for more to arrive, also, its speeds aren't as nice as Samsung 950 Pro.

 

Yeah that is the one Kevin mentioned. I bought them off Amazon, and after the sale the page I bought from disappeared so I can't even link to it at all. The pictures showed M.2, and the part numbers and text all showed M.2 SATA 2280.

The seller hasn't responded to my question to confirm what I will be shipped. No tracking yet either. It's a tough decision because I need to return my existing drives quick to get refunded, but don't want to until I test out these other three. Ugh. On top of all this I just found out I'm likely going to get screwed on a ebay/paypal sale. Buyer will win and I will be out the game and the money

 

Samsung 950 Pro gives you 2200MB/s of performance, why stick around with older technology with speeds less than 600MB/s?

 

Yup, I got that too, and promptly returned it because it was the 2.5" version. Sorry to hear about that... that's why I never sell on eBay. Way too biased towards the buyers. D:

 

5 year warranty should cover that but most of the time of normal use data is just going to be read of the storage and loaded into RAM where it will be used. Other than backup/restore and especially benchmarks they are going to be idle most of the time, no?

 

They idle hot too, adding heat to the laptop.

One of the reasons I recommend replacing 2.5" HDD's with 2.5" SSD's is they were a net benefit dropping power draw and heat added to the laptop. I recommended removing HDD's from internal use. and moving the power/heat to an external case.

That was fine until M.2 SATA drives ran so hot, even at idle, that they interfere with the base heat idle on my CPU. And, with no active cooling, they feed on each others heat.

If I do high CPU and high IO runs, I can see the difference depending on which slots I put the M.2 drives - nearer to the CPU and performance drops - heat becomes more of a factor.

Now M.2 PCIE drives bring even more heat.

It's true that highest usage, backups and intensive data use are more rare for most people, but the idle and normal operating heat is too high.

It's also the thought that I need to be concerned with using my SSD's to avoid high heat situations affecting CPU performance.

The warranty is only as solid as the company supporting it.

After N years of overheating on a daily basis, how will that effect the lifespan?

What happens if XX% of a companies drives fail in rapid fashion due to high thermals?

It's an unknown, but not a pleasant thought. I have been through droves of HDD failures hitting a data center due to design problems. The same could happen by ignoring the effect of high thermals on these new SSD's.

It used to be we didn't have heatsinks on Northbridges, and they would fail, ruining an otherwise perfectly good motherboard. I was one of the ones early on adding heatsinks and active cooling to avoid those failures.

Now that I think about it, I did the same for CPU's before they all came with active cooling.

I think it's the same, or worse, without actively cooling the M.2 SSD's... time will tell

 

Didn't know they idled hot too.

Well massive failures would see whoever spec'd them likely fired but the Company should be big enough to ride through it.

I would guess they likely could be run temperature throttled and probably run past their wear level guarantee well before their 5 years was up. I'm assuming they don't reach throttling temps at idle, maybe wrongly.

I do understand your concern as I use to have a lot of trouble with a certain manufacturers mechanical drives that seemed to fail on a regular basis when run hot.

 

Spoiler

It depends on the density of the packing of the M.2's. Often they are side by side, but sometimes they overlap each other by half, which means they heat each other up, like in the GT80's.

And, so far I haven't seen active cooling added for M.2 drives in any new motherboard / laptop. Hopefully that changes.

When the hot M.2 SSD's are close to another hot device, like a CPU socket or GPU, the actively cooled part radiates heat and the static uncooled SSD absorbs the heat and the base temperature rises.

The SSD's aren't actively cooled, so they retain heat gained under load, and it takes a long time to quiesce back to minimum idle.

If you are constantly hitting the SSD, even with gaps in between, the temps hang higher and longer than an actively cooled device.

When you benchmark a CPU you wait in between high temp runs to let the CPU cool back down to the starting temp before doing another test run, well with the uncooled SSD's that doesn't happen for a very long time unless you manually stick a fan over them.

The GT80 stock drive 128GB M.2 SATA (single) alone without any other SSD's the idle temp is 42c at 20c ambient, right now. My 2.5" SSD is at 32C.

The M.2 SATA SSD's in my G750JH used to idle at 35c.

In the G750JH the M.2 SATA temps would also get high, but the temps dropped much quicker because the drives were hosted on a daughter card in one of the actively cooled 2.5" bays.

All the other M.2 SSD's I tried in the GT80 ran at 50c+, and when all 3x or 4x were in use quickly jumping into the 60c+ range under light use, and under heavy load ran at 75c - 85c.

I think they could have run hotter if I pressed them, but fortunately I was watching the temps from the start, so I never ran more than I needed to.

The M.2 SATA SSD's ran hot enough for the label glue to get soft and 1 of the SSD labels sluffed off as I uninstalled it...the others were "slidy" too, but I carefully avoided accidentally removing another lable.

I tested 512GB/500GB M.2 SATA SSD's in the GT80; Samsung Evo 850's, Micron M600's, Crucial MX200, and they all ran too hot, so I pulled them and put back the 2 x 128GB stock drives, but spread them out instead of the default of mounting them 1 on top of the other.

I decided to sell the GT80 partially due to the M.2 drive temps coupling with the CPU. I just couldn't see running 4x 1TB hot drives (later to find it's only 3x in the GT80S) in there for a long time. And, the M.2 PCIE's with the GT80S run hotter, and the 2 M.2 PCIE mounting points overlap.

The good news is MSI pulled the 4th M.2 SSD slot in the GT80S - so the CPU on the opposite side of the motherboard now only has 1 hot M.2 SATA drive bracketing it instead of a hot M.2 SATA SSD drive on either side of the CPU.

It's something I hoped would get addressed in the new releases of M.2 SSD's, they would come with heatsinks, or even heatsinks with fans. Or, the new laptops would have added active cooling air flow across and through the M.2 bay(s), but so far I haven't seen any releases addressing the high temperature problem.

The GT80S has a silver cover over the M.2 bay, I am not sure if this is to keep the heat away from the user - insulating the M.2 slots from the metal panel on the top of the laptop where the user could get burned by 100c load temps, or if the silver cover is helping direct cooling through the M.2 bay. Hopefully both.

Compounding this problem is that many (most?) of the M.2 PCIE SSD drives ship without temperature probes, so you can't keep track of the real-time M.2 PCIE SSD temps inside the box - unless you run your own probes.

If I had a GT80S to test I would use an M.2 SATA drive with temperature probe in slot SD2 to watch the M.2 bay temps and indirectly monitor the M.2 PCIE drive temps.

 

there are some details that weren't shown, those guys use default intel driver instead of samsung, also they run at stock, not overclocked, wihtout cstate disabled without ASPM disabled etc. they could crank it way up, in raid limited by dmi, 3 SSDs will never run at full load unless full LBA high QD at 4k random write, then yes it'll overheat. for consumer that will not happen when u raid so many together.

 

in terms of storage, sata would win because theres only 2 pcie slots for NVME ssd in gt80s. but sequential performance wise in loading games its like half the speed.

 

I am a consumer, I RAID0'd 3x and 4x M.2 SATA SSD's, and it got too hot for me too.

It can and will happen, especially if you aren't paying attention to it.

That's why I post, so people are aware of it and can monitor it for themselves.

 

upon reading through the pcie specification of z170 chipset realized why GT80S had only 2 SATA 6Gbps port and its likely the PCIE SSD taking them up. on that same review link i linked, it shows one of PCIE SSD slot takes up two SATA SSD likely share lanes or something. gotta wait for x101 or something lol

 

You do make a solid point. I have 100% SSDs in my system and after sometime did notice performance drops from raided Samsung 950 PRO 512s. It's kinda noticeable, seen it when I started playing Fallout 4 again and noticed the load times were not as fast as before.

Another thing I noticed was CPU jumps randomly in temps and that could be due to the 950s.

Lowest I've seen the laptop drop to was 28° © and this was while playing a game with the fans on high and lots of cold air breeze from having windows in the office open.

I wonder how long they will last, they may have to redesign the laptop enclosure for SSDs in the future.

 

It's good you noticed, I don't think most people notice the heat problem with M.2 SATA/PCIE SSD's.

It's not something we are used to worrying about, SSD's have been running cooler than HDD's for so long it's not something we would expect.

I didn't really think about it myself until I was testing several models of new M.2 SATA SSD's for performance tests with long batch jobs.

It didn't take long to figure it out, but unless I was doing timed runs and measurements already, I also might not have noticed.

I was hoping MSI would put in some active cooling for the new M.2 PCIE SSD bay in the GT80S's.

I haven't seen a GT80S or opened one up to check while the SSD's are under load to know for sure. The silver covered area might provide additional cooling, but it looks like a thermal shroud to protect the owner from getting burned through the top cover.

From the pictures of the silver shroud covering the M.2 PCIE/SATA SSD's it looks it is more a kind of shielding to keep the heat from making it through the top cover, where 100c would be dangerous to the owner should they touch it while the SSD's are under load.

Maybe someone with a GT80S can run a Crystaldiskmark benchmark, or other load generator, to see how hot the stock M.2 PCIE SSD's get. And, then again after upgrading to the 950's / 951's.

IDK if the stock M.2 PCIE SSD's have temperature probes, so you may need to use a Non-Contact Infrared IR Temperature Gun Digital Thermometer to get readings

That's unfortunate because removing the top cover, and lifting the silver shroud will likely allow better cooling, so measure temps will run lower than actual running temps with everything buttoned up. Lift and measure quickly

Use it to measure the temp of the top cover, open it, measure the temp of the silver shroud, and lift it, and measure the SSD's temps.

At least MSI reduced the heat load by reducing the M.2 SSD's from 4x to 3x, that should help keep the heat load off the CPU (on the opposite side of the M.2 SSD bay.

 

The 2.5" bay, ODD bay, and rightmost M.2 slot are all 6Gbps... plus apparently the left two M.2 slots work with SATA drives too. The chipset specs say that it can handle up to 8 6Gbps ports.

It's actually designed to dissipate heat. There are thermal pads above and below the drives, and the metal shroud is connected with metallic tape to the ODD. Can't read temps though!

 

Thanks for the info

The thermal pads are absorbing heat, but how are they disappating the absorbed heat?

There needs to be conduction of the heat from the thermal pads to some heat disappation system.

Are the thermal pads conducting heat through to a heat pipe or heat spreader to the exhaust fan ports?

Otherwise the thermal pads are holding heat built up from the SSD's radiant heat, and the heat isn't going anywhere.

It's nice if the thermal pads are protecting the rest of the laptop from the heat the SSD's are generating, but that's not going to cool the SSD's.

 

It's just adding the optical drive into the system, so it increases the total heat capacity and surface area to some extent. Far from optimal, but probably the best solution without modifying the chassis.

 

So the heat generated by the M.2 PCIE SSD's is cooking the Blu-ray drive mechinism?

Does the BD optical drive metal get hot to the touch? How about DVD/BD's do they come out hot after play?

I don't think the Blu-ray drive is designed to operate at such elevated temperatures. Yipe.

Next time you open the lid, could you please take a photo of the conduction path between the M.2 PCIE thermal pads and the Blu-ray drive?

 

At the 15:35 mark.

I looked at a 35 min gaming session HWinfo64 file, and even with the CPU and GPUs being used the M.2 SATA peaked at 47C and the 2.5" SATA peaked at 42C. Both are Samsung 850 EVO. I don't know about the temp of the PCIe ones.

 

It's literally just a piece of aluminum tape. Cooking might be a bit of an exaggeration. The 512GB 950 Pro only uses 7W at the very most, so 14W for two, and the reason why it heats up so much is because the drive is way too tiny to dissipate that kind of power. The drive that I have in the optical bay barely heats up at all, even when the M.2s are under load.

Spoiler

 

Cool, thanks for the photo.

Well, if the optical drive isn't getting hot, then the transfer of heat isn't very effective.

The 14w power disappation in that small space is enough to get the M.2 SSD's up to 100c+, and their small size without heatsink or active cooling is the problem, there was/is nowhere for the heat to do.

It's dumping some heat into the metal frame of the OD, but from there were does it go? The heat is still staying in the laptop.

When someone gets an M.2 SSD that has a temperature probe, or someone has a meter to measure, it will be interesting to see how that eco-system is responding to the heat.

Update: after further thought and looking at that video again posted by @Porter I don't think the silver tape is meant to conduct heat, it's there to hold on the silver cover. So that means there is no real removal of heat from the M.2 area, it's just dumping it into the thermal pads and staying there.

 

Those hwinfo logged temps during gaming would be the mostly idle temps for the SSD's. There wasn't any heavy load on the SSD's at the time.

My idle temps vary depending on what I am doing too, it's the load temps that are interesting, and how long the heat is held afterwards - how long it takes to cool down.

I saw that video, and remember seeing the taped on silver shroud, and although that "tape" might conduct some heat, the tape isn't in direct contact with the SSD's or their thermal pads, it only touches the metal cover.

I don't think that silver tape is meant to conduct heat, although it might conduct some heat, it's mainly used to secure the silver metal cover.

The silver tape on the other side of the cover, taped to the plastic, can't be meant to conduct heat - that looks like it is only for support.

 

Are you saying the GT80S is using a Z170 chipset and not a CM236 chipset

FWIW IIRC CM236 supports up to 10 Sata ports and also supports Xeons unlike the Z170, shame it's BGA though.

 

Yeah gaming is the biggest load I put on my SSD's normally. I guess there is the occasional backup, that would be a higher load over a longer time, but it's not something I do often, so the temps during that rare occasion just doesn't matter to me and obviously I won't be gaming or using the cpu much so the entire system will be cooler during those times.

I do think it's heat conducting tape, and it contacts the thermal pads, the optical drive chassis and probably cover as well. It's better than the M.2 SATA slot on the other side I bet.

If I ever get my 3 like SATA 1TB SSDs I will be able to monitor all three and see how they do.

 

Ah, ok, it's hard to tell from the photo - it looks like the tape just touches the top cover, not the thermal pads under / over the M.2 drives.

Is the silver metal cover hot? How about the M.2 SATA vs M.2 PCIE, how hot to the touch are they?

You can measure the M.2 SATA temp, how does the M.2 PCIE feel compared to the M.2 SATA? That might give a relative reading for the M.2 PCIE - please don't burn yourself.

I look forward to your report(s) on the 1TB M.2 performance

How hot does the M.2 SATA peak at during/after a run of Crystaldiskmark?

 

1000MB Crystal mark peaked at 63C for the M.2 SATA, and 48 for the 2.5" SATA. Sport mode, normal fans (not max fan).

As Katiecat reported similarly earlier, I am unsure if I will get the correct drives. The seller basically responded that everything is completely automated so they can't check anything. Also they said to be sure to read the details before ordering. They didn't seem to understand that my order says one thing, and the current page (which changed after I ordered) says something different. They never even responded to me this last time. The seller will get a bad rating from me even if I get the correct drives, and if I get the incorrect ones I will leave a very bad one.

I have a suspicion I will be returning three 2.5" drives. Makes me mad because not only does it look bad on me having so many returns in a short time, but I even tried to get answers that could have saved them shipping costs but they sent it anyway, and answered it a couple days later.

 

The same thing happened to me when I special ordered M.2 SATA drives the first time from a local shop.

They called and told me they were in and ready to pick up, and when I drove in, they started ringing up a stack of 2.5" model SSD's

I had already pre-paid because it was a special order, fortunately it is a good business that I have been going to for years. But, it still took weeks before that got straightend out and the correct drives arrived.

 

If these don't arrive correctly then I'll just stick with what I got for a while. I can return these I am using for only a few more days. I got 3TB worth of (slower) drives for the same price as 1.5TB a few weeks ago.

 

63c-65c is about right for a single M.2 drive first run from "cold", now run that test consecutively a few times, and see how hot it gets, and how long it takes to cool down.

Here is my single 128GB M.2 SATA drive, it went from 37c cold idle to 67c. That's 10c+ cooler running than the 500GB/512GB SSD's ran during the same kind of tests.

Spoiler

I tried other benchmarks, and simple large file copies from/to the same RAID0 x4 - and when I had RAID0 3x I copied to the 4th single M.2 SATA, all got the temps high.

Maybe also try to run the test on the M.2 PCIE drives (RAID0'd ?), and watch to see if the M.2 temps start to rise.

Max fan didn't seem to affect the M.2 SATA RAID0 x4 temps...[/spoiler]

 

Well, the same place it goes normally... radiation losses and the air. Just there's a lot more area to do it in. I have no idea how well it works with the complete lack of airflow, but it's gotta be better than nothing!

http://ark.intel.com/products/90593/Intel-GL82CM236-PCH
That does say 8, right? My vision's not that bad yet.

 

no, it is using the mobile chipset but it won't be much different in design from z170. layout would probably be very similar with some added features or some disabled features for both desktop/laptop.

 

odd should be sata 3Gbps instead of 6G because one M.2 already SATA3 while the other 2.5" is also SATA3. with 2 pcie SSD that leaves other SATA probably not 6. if ODD is 6Gbps then thats great.

 

Well, I tested it, and it's 6Gbps. Maybe that'll change if I plug in an M.2 drive in the third slot, but for now it's benching at full speed and everything.

 

No, your vision's not that bad but looks like my memory is. :/

Still, the server boards should allow 2 more SATA ports over the Z170.

 

good find, again though this is probably not the mobile PCH but they should all be similar for consumer, z170, h170, cm blah blah blah etc

 

Buy today GT80S 6QF and can't use calculator and etc. classic apps because windows 10 store isn't supported this device(as windows problem diagnostic say)

 

Did you run through and install all the available Windows Updates?

If you haven't the MS Store might not like the version installed, and needs to communicate with the updated version. There have been several large updates to Windows 10 since the image for the new GT80S was released.

Like TH2 update, and the soon to be released Redstone Update - hint hint - you will need to do that updating ritual again soon again