1634 or 1651 Barebones - Quality?

Unfortunately, this forum likes to merge all sorts of specific threads into one giant thread (GPU thread, for example), thus making it difficult to scan through and see if any of the questions have been discussed/answered.

I have been actively keeping my eye on the Mobile GPU market or quite some time. It seems like the last 18 months or so, not much has evolved on the mid-range front, which makes it difficult for me to determine if now is a decent time to upgrade, or if the recent die shrinks of both nVidia and ATi will allow some more powerful mid-range GPU into notebooks of 14/15.4" sizes...

But, no one really has that answer, so I will just cut to the chase. How is the quality of MSI Barebone laptops? I am specifically addressing the 1634, which has been out for some time, and the newly released 1651. My concern is over a few posters mentioning that their GX600's were nothing but problems for them and gave the impression that the entire laptop design was problematic. I'd like to know if that is relatively true and if that happens to creap into their other laptop designs (GX610/620).

Do these laptops become very hot when gaming? Is the cooling well thought out? If a fan bearing goes, can the fans be replaced (spare parts, etc...) is the latop loud? Does the laptop have a larger foot-printer than other 15.4" sized competitors? Example, Asus 15.4" is significantly larger than HP 15.4".

Thanks to anyone who can help provide me some information.

 

If you are able to check Taiwanese website you can see that it's an above average laptop. All laptops generate heat so you gotta makes sure the air around the system can circulate freely.
MSI GX620 - Best Choice Award from Computex Taipei 2008
http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=241&t=714953&r=2&last=7696806

Picture showing the Mr. Hsu (MSI CEO, Taiwan) with the president Ma.

If the fan dies, you can always contact the manufacturer for replacement parts. For example, ASUS has an e-store for accessories and parts.

 

Hi ArchAngel,

Laptop GPU heating comes from primarily from Bad/Faulty GPU (Graphic Card), but it could also come from Bad Heat Exchange ... but very UNLIKELY!

I bet most of the posts that you read that said they had "Heating" problem ... they had an NVIDIA GPU in int and most likely was a G8400 or G8600 series or even some of the newer NVIDIA Cards.

There are also rumors that NVIDIA G92 and G94 chipset might be prone to OverHeating problem.

I personally have not come across any reports talking about ATI having any "Heating" problems. But then again most of the Gaming laptops use the darn NVIDIA chips ... so!!!

Can you post back and tell us what GPU was being reported as "OverHeating".

As far as comparing MSI-1634 vs MSI-1651 ... 1634 with ATI card most likely less chance of "overheating" ... but then it seems you are forced to go with AMD CPU ... if that is OK with you ... I guess it would be a safer choice ...

I personally would want an INTEL CPU (since all the reviews tend to like INTEL over AMD for intensive CPU work) .... and an ATI Video Card if I want to game ... otherwise I go with INTEL CPU and INTEL X4500 for graphics ... at least I know Intel X4500 will not be OverHeating.

Hope this was of some help ...

G!