GS60 6QE Thunderbolt 3 and PD

Hello guys! I read somewhere that the new gs60 supports the thunderbolt 3 (can you confirm?) but it seems it does not support Power Delivery, then something is missing. Do you know anything about it? Thank you

 

It can deliver up to 3 amps out of the connector.

 

Sorry, I was not clear. I meant, can I charge the laptop? Maybe in a future, can I connect it and charge it with a smartphone charger (or whatever)?

 

No, as such adapters would not be able to provide a reasonable amount of power for safe operation while the machine is working.

 

Can not the laptop take all the power from the battery and meanwhile charge a little bit the battery or at least make it last longer? I don't know what I'm speaking about, but it could be a nice feature.

 

But then you may as well have the brick with you and plugged in.

 

The 'brick' should be the smartphone charger adapter? In that case, I think that is much easier to obtain than an AC adapter. If I go to a friend, he will have for sure a charger adapter type c in a short future. Or if I take my laptop around the house, in the kitchen for ex, I could use a charger adapter that, at least in my house, they are everywhere, instead of bringing back the AC adapter. Or at the university...

 

Maybe they could add a hybrid mode in the future that disables 3 of the 4 cores, goes single channel and turns of the DGPU while restricting the screen brightness to accommodate that, but for now the power requirements are too high for any phone charger.

 

It does have TB3

 

What I'd like to see is be able to run it over TB off an external battery pack. MSI's batteries can be on the small side, so it'd be nice being able to plug in a 10000mAh battery for extra longevity in places with limited power, such as a plane or a car.

I don't think there are any battery packs out there that would support this anyway, but it would be a very nice concept.

 

Today I went to a MSI retailer and they told me the new GS60 does not support TB3. Can you confirm 100% it does? Why the specs say 'up to 10 Gbps'? Thank you and sorry for the insistence.

 

TB3 = Thunderbolt 3? As in USB Type C?

This system has the port I think you're looking for: http://www.msi.com/product/notebook/GS60-6QE-Ghost-Pro.html#hero-overview

 

It just says it has the usb 3.1 performance (10 Gbps) on the type C port. Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) with 40 Gbps is not mentioned.

 

Physically they're the same connection, but it doesn't support the speed/protocol used by Thunderbolt 3.

 

Physically that port can do a thousand things . It dipends on the manufacturer to make them available. Anyway someone still says it does support TB3 and someone else it does not. I think that if you want a longevous laptop, now TB3 is one of the things to consider.

 

I'm typing on one of these right now and I still can't figure out if it properly supports Thunderbolt 3 or not.

There is Thunderbolt driver software installed on it and Thunderbolt drivers available on the MSI website, but I can't find a way to test if it actually works or not without plugging in a Thunderbolt 3 device, which don't seem to exist yet!

 

If it has the Intel Alpine Ridge controller, it should support TB3.

 

That's right, but they're not called Alpine Ridge, and they appear to be an add-in controller, which doesn't necessarily come with the chipset. After a bit of searching I found this page:

https://thunderbolttechnology.net/b...unch-6th-gen-intel®-core™-processors-ifa-show

Which says: "The Intel Thunderbolt 3 controllers that power all this capability, codenamed Alpine Ridge, are formally called DSL6540 for the dual-port version, and DSL6340 for the single-port version."

But I can't find anything like that in device manager, so the only way to check seems to be opening up the computer and trying to find a chip with one of those models numbers written on it.


I've also been looking through the USB specifications about power and Power Delivery and it looks like the Superport supports the maximum amount of power under the USB-C spec, 3A @ 5V (15W), but doesn't support the optional PD spec that allows up to 5A @ 20V (100W). Even if it did, the GS60 6QE power brick is rated for 7.7A @ 19.5V (150W), so it would mean disabling the dGPU and possibly running in a low-power mode to make use of it.

However, there is the question of if the USB-C spec requires power transfer to be bi-directional, in which case there might be a chance that you could still charge a laptop using a Superport, but only if it's switched off and the battery is flat.

 

So this Superport is everything but super! I asked to MSI a bit of clarity but still did not respond. Assuming it is TB3, the optional PD up to 100W is only a software implementation, or I can resign?

 

The more I read about USB 3.1 and USB-C, the more I realise it's a total mess of optional specs that will confuse people for years. It's even possible to have USB-C ports that only support USB 2.0, which is just crazy.

TB3 and PD are both separate options, so having one doesn't mean you have the other.

As the PD spec relies on changing the voltage, it would have to be a hardware implementation, so the GS60 probably doesn't have it. The good news is that if you connect the port to a 100W USB-C power supply, it shouldn't do it any harm as the power supply will ask the laptop how much power it wants and at what voltage.

 

Good find dude.

Intel doesn't make only USB 3.1 controller. ASMedia does and it's a bit on the cheaper side. Maybe if you can't find the Intel one, look for the ASMedia instead. They're cheaper than Intel controllers, so it's possible MSI went with them.

Though God only knows why on the high end laptops.

 

That is very plausible! I know some MSI motherboard uses ASMedia usb 3.1 controller. The mistery deepens...

 

I found another piece of the puzzle:

http://www.msi.com/product/notebook/support/GS60-6QE-Ghost-Pro.html#down-driver&Win10 64

At the bottom of the page it has the Thunderbolt drivers titled "Thunderbolt Intel 6540", which sounds like the DSL6540 dual-port Alpine Ridge controller mentioned in the blog post I linked.

So it does appear that the new GS60 has Thunderbolt, but it seems strange that MSI would use the dual-port chip in a machine with only one port.

 

What does the US version of the page say? I've seen the global page say one thing while the US page says another. An example of this is the global page saying the GT72S series has 75 Hz panels while the US drops that. Our vendor friends here have confirmed that US models indeed only have a 60 Hz panel.

Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me to see MSI go cheap on US models while others got the better parts.

 

Almost nothing: http://us.msi.com/support/nb/GS60-Ghost-Pro-6th-Gen-GTX-970M.html#support_download

It only lists the Helpdesk software as a download.

Though that is better then the UK site, which doesn't even have a page for the 6QE yet.

 

Guys, I' m here to bring light! MSI answered and I can confirm 100% it does NOT support Thunderbolt 3, only 3.1 up to 10 Gbps.

 

So they went cheap. Makes absolutely no sense.

Seems like there's not a whole lot of difference between the GS and GE series - the cheaper GE series may even be better in some cases.

I'm starting to be glad I'm sitting this round out.

 

The main difference between the GE and GS is the form factor and construction materials.

 

I'm still confused as to why I've got the Thunderbolt drivers and software pre-installed on this machine if they say there's no support, unless it will be available in the future.

I've also been trying to find the specs of the ASMedia, but there's not much to find. This is because the Superport is supposed to support two 4K monitors at once, but it only seems to be Intel's Alpine Ridge that definitely has that capability.

I'm wondering if it's just a problem of MSI having to wait for Intel to give them certifications, like Gigabyte who recently unlocked Thunderbolt 3 for some of their motherboards with a firmware update: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2015/10/26/gigabyte-unlocks-thunderbolt-3/1

Still, I'm getting bored of wondering, so if someone can confirm for me that I can open up my computer without voiding the warranty, I'll take some photos of my motherboard so we can actually see which chip it's using.

 

So does this affect the possibility of external GPUs in the future for this model?

 

Exactly