GT60 w/ 680m unboxing / pictures / review

Well,

It should have been here at 10:30am, but didn't get here til 6pm.. so it kind of ruined my plans..

I'm going to try and stream it to youtube / take lots of pictures.

I'm also going to install an extra 4gb of ram and a Samsung 840-pro 256gb ssd.

Let me know if there's anything you want me to focus on.

 

Now on the gt60, making recovery discs about to install the ssd and ram. The keyboard clicks loudly, but feels great. Not sure how I feel about it quite yet, but I'm leaning towards amazing. I'm sure it will quiet down as it breaks in, which truthfully won't take long.

 

I'm interested in build, if you can get some photos or video. Also how much pressure is needed for the keyboard keypresses. Previous version of the GT60 SteelSeries keyboards were rather bad for light typers.

 

Sorry guys. It seems the Samsung 840-pro SSD I received is partially doa.

It works, but is slow, and checking Windows Event Log viewer, there is 10-20 disk read errors per second. I was going to use this laptop to make/edit the video, but messing with the SSD to get it running properly wasted the entire weekend.

However, there's a few interesting things to note:

I used the MSI One Recovery program to make the USB stick recovery. It requires a 32gb stick, as it's around 18-20gb large. When doing so, I removed the factory drive in case I pressed the wrong button etc.

Option 2 won't work on a new drive, even if you set it in windows by formatting it and naming is OS_Install. It will say the partition tables aren't correct. So option one takes around ~30 minutes even though it says it will take 90. Keep in mind this is with a crappy 20 dollar 2.0 drive.

Using option one sets up the stock disc with the data partition, the os partition, and believe it or not, the 16gb recovery partition and reinstalls onerecovery. I deleted the data partition after booting and extended the windows partition to take up the space, since the stock drive is going to be the 'data' drive. Strangely enough, the wifi card didn't work. The driver wasn't installed correctly by the BigFoot utility. Now, it was late and I was tired from doing this (3) times by this point, so I just reinstalled the software, but I'm sure you could probably find the driver file in the program files section.

Hopefully NewEgg can send me a new drive soon. When it did work, it was blazing fast.. sigh.

So many wasted hours on an ssd that was doa. :/

 

Sucks about the ssd, but hopefully it will be an easy replacement.

How do you like the keyboard so far? And what about the trackpad?

 

Seems to be a few issues with the 840 series at the moment. It's always a gamble to get an SSD early in its product cycle.

 

My original comment on the keyboard was based on me being an idiot. I didn't remove the plastic covering between the keys, and when I would press the button they would scrape.

I removed it right after I posted that comment. So far I like it. It has a great feeling, that's for sure. I don't know exactly what typing style I have, but when I was in my early 20's, I could do 130wpm typing page after page. Now days I think I'm right around ~110-100 or so (job related injuries). I do like the keyboard, and that's from coming from a 2011 mbp. The trackpad is actually pretty nice. Takes some getting used to windows gestures coming from osx, but I don't have any complaints. It isn't as sensitive as the mbp, but I haven't touched any settings on it yet. Truthfully, 90% of the time I have on this laptop was messing with the SSD and the problems it caused. Just today I went back to stock hdd and am pretty happy with it so far!

 

Great, good to hear about the keyboard(I type around 110wpm, and was worried it would slow me down!)

I have a 750gb momentus XT, so I'm getting no stock hard drive.

Might get a ssd if Black Friday has good sales.

 

I'm actually pretty sad at the fact that I had so much work to do this weekend, barely any time on the laptop. And the time I did have, was wasted on the SSD.

A few things I didn't see posted anywhere, if you don't upgrade the ram, it comes with 12gb. I was hoping it was in the easily accessible lower cover, and not under the keyboard. Lucky me, that's exactly how it was!

The wireless card is under the button/power button panel.

Be careful with the lower cover, the clasps are rather strong, but the straight locating pins are very delicate when prying it open. The SSD by the track pad is sata2, the one in back is sata3. Stock hard drive is Sata 2 in the Sata 3 slot.

The longest (only 1) screw for the lower panel goes in the hole furthest back next to the heatsink.

Using the MSI recovery program:
USB needs to be 32gb
Need 5 dvd's

Won't install just the OS partition on the ssd. Either all or nothing, so it will partition the SSD into 2 small partitions, os partition, data partition, and recovery partition (16gb). So it sets up recovery on the ssd. It's not necessary in my opinion. I deleted both the data and recovery partition on the ssd and expanded the os partition to take up the rest of the space, since the stock harddrive would be used to store data.

So far I love this thing, and I haven't even put any games on it. The screen is extremely bright, I find myself setting it to 25% and being extremely happy with it.

I just noticed the keyboard colors are off. Checking settings now, because FN - nor the quick button turned them on.

 

Hey,
What do you mean the colours are off? Like will backlighting not turn on, or are colours not correct?

 

If I'm not wrong, I think he means the buttons next to FN and such, they tend to have the colours a little off for a weird reason on most MSi laptops... but I feel its ok

 

Sorry guys. The LED manager program had crashed somehow, probably with me updating quite a few things without rebooting. Upon reboot everything was functioning perfectly. SO far I'm in love with this laptop. I've only been able to play 1 game, Borderlands 2, on it, but with everything set to high, and it sitting on my lap I managed to game for 6 hours straight on it without it getting too warm. Although my sense of 'warm' tends to differ than most, as I live in a place with 115F summers, and I'm a weldor. Ha!