MSI GS30 Revealed

13.3 Laptop 1.3KG with the ability to use ANY DESKTOP GPU as an external GPU with the dock station O.O
Desktop performance at home and super light/thin on the go






1.3 kg in 19.8 mm height.
i7 with iris pro
Jan 2015 release date likely to be broadwell quad cpu


Model namer GS30 Shadow
Operating System Windows 8.1
LED Backlight Display 13.3" , support up to 2560x1440 , Wild view angle, Anti-glare
Processor Intel® 4th Gen Core™ i7
Memory Type DDR3L, up to 1600MHz, Max 16GB
Graphics Intel Iris Pro
Hard Disk Capacity M.2 SSDx2 with Super Raid
Keyboard Backlight Keyboard
Optical Disk Drive N/A
USB 3.0/2.0 2/0
Card Reader SD(XC/HC) /MMC
Video output HDMI 1.4b
Mic-in/Headphone out am 1/1
LAN/WiFi Giga LAN/ Intel 802.11ac
Bluetooth Bluetooth v4.0
Webcam HD type (30fps@720p)
Battery Built in 4-Cell Li-Ion
Power Adapter 65W
Dimension (WxDxH) 320 x 227.3 x 19.8mm
Weight 1.3 Kg (w/ Battery)

 

what is this? Is this true or speculation?

It makes sense to use iris pro internal GPU if it won't sport a dedicated GPU. The dock station for eGPUs will come with the package?I doubt it. If you need that much horsepower for GPU, I suppose this makes it a nice blend of laptop/desktop, where you take it and work with as a laptop but hook it up at your home for massive GPU performance.

 

I would be so in for something like this

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

i kind of agree.... Specially for work. Superportable with quite a lot of performance for most tasks, yet at home I can hook it for max gaming performance. Paired with a powerful Core i7 processor, you have all you need for gaming.

 

Not gon'na lie, don't really care for the aesthetics of how the laptop docks onto the GPU section, but at the same time I'm a huge fan of puddle computing, so laptop on the go and transforms into a desktop at home is pretty damn awesome. Lots of questions on this such as price, release date, and of course what the connection port is for the docking process and performance.

Need more pictures of the Dock/GPU house!

 

This thing is real reported by multiple websites official release date is Jan 2015, will be Broadwell quad CPU i7, Will be easily cooled, CPU only (no dedicated GPU and it's 14nm Broadwell CPU)
1.3KG light as hell and super thin.

This thing with the external GPU will beat A18 during home use lol just connect a usb keyboard+mouse+LCD and you ready to go real Desktop GPU and intel mobile CPUs are actually nearly as good as the desktop cpus and never really bottleneck unless you go SLI+

http://www.msi.com/news/1834.html

I think the coolest thing about this laptop is the fact you can upgrade the Desktop GPU whenever you want and for cheap, since Mobile GPUs cost double the price and still less performance than their desktop equivalent.

 

If it is a Broadwell CPU in it the Iris Pro chip will either be:

Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 - NotebookCheck.net Tech
or
Intel Iris Graphics 6100 - NotebookCheck.net Tech

Which ain't too shabby for on the go usage.

 

That is a neat new idea. Cant wait to see more about this one.

 

It will be Broadwell, the ULV broadwell already being released next month, the Quad ones are coming Q1 2015
Equal to 660m/755m in performance is not bad, my only worry now that it might get noisy being very thin and all

 

Will it be a full normal quad or an ULV variant? I really hope it is a full quad core with full clocks, hopefully somehting over 3.6ghz speed.

 

This isn't the first time a manufacturer has tried the docking solution with a GPU. I think Sony did it with their Z line but it was A.) Extremely expensive, and B.) I *believe* it was only a high end mobile GPU, can't really recall without doing the research.

Others have done the dedicated desktop GPU with thunderbolt, but a custom job and not easy for everyone.

Hoping that MSI can launch this as a bundle with a reasonable price, guessing around $1,100 for the laptop and $100-200 for the dock since the user will be supplying their own GPU.

I also hope that the dock has plenty of ports to connect all yer desktop peripherals too.

EDIT: Yup, it was a mobile gpu in the Sony docking station.

 

There have been several prototypes. If anyone can pull it off msi can but I would wait until banking on it coming out.

 

3 months to go to see if real product or just another R&D experiment.

 

What I will give to get this tech to be a standard.

I would love to my laptop with a dedicated GPU, then I come home - dock with my external SLI box and BAM.




Someone make this happen.

 

This is extremely interesting

I was waiting for something like that for a long time and sincerely it makes perfect sense

What I just hope is that its a tb 2 connection and not a proprietary dock. Simply because that would allow other systems to use it and more propagation to solutions like that. But it will rely heavily on intel and ms to make it work

 

I'm just waiting for the perfect hybrid... the laptop with the bare essentials (CPU, RAM, SSD) and the desktop docking station (GPU, Massive Storage HD, additional RAM). This seems like the first step.

 

there is a TB dock like that.

 

You can already get WD 2TB passport super slim HD as an external, with USB3 it's pretty much as fast as an internal HD, seagate just did launch 8TB HD too, HD dock seems pointless to me, i'd prefer USB3 external HD
Ram 16GB is more than enough for now and games are unlikely to start demanding more than 16GB any time soon for few years at least
The laptop has 2SSD slots anyway and ssd prices are dropping fast still.
the only real con would be the CPU if it was overheating/etc with such a slim/light laptop

if someone need 32gb ram 12TB etc it's unlikely that he will use a 13screen as a workstation and already has a tower for the super serious stuff

 

Hopefully this can be docked by cable so you still get some portability when gaming.

Also would be nice for a 15.6 w/3k option too.

 

I think this will probably be the next big thing, logically it just makes sense to move in this direction.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

This kind of thing interests me alot. I hope it gets a 15" variant and a beefy CPU that is capable of keeping up with GPU upgrades down the road, perhaps even a SLI dock for overkill.

 

I also have a couple of USB 3.0 2TB drives, but I like the simplicity of having the storage in a single setup rather than having 1 or more USB 3.0 drives plugged into my machine (one of the advantages of having a desktop is all the drives your chassis can fit!) Its a simplicity setup of being able to plug your laptop into a docking station that is connected to a large display monitor, keyboard, mouse, gamepad, headset, etc. and also housing all the desktop hardware (GPU, HD, etc,)

I really hope they'll post more photos of the GPU docking station just to see what it has to offer. Since the laptop itself only offers room for an M2 SSD most likely will have to run storage space via USB 3.0 cable... which will be interesting.

 

That or NAS it.

 

Better photo of the docking station:



Looks like a power button, docking lever, audio ports, ethernet port, and 4 usb ports

 

And now a picture of the other side. Wonder if that is a custom PSU or if you can swap that as well.



Source: http://www.notebookinfo.de/artikel/...-notebook-mit-gamingdock-ab-januar-2015/5542/

 

Remember the TB eGPU MSI said they going to put in mass production?

 

with that proprietary dock.... this thing lost all the appeal to me.

who thought that was a good solution? who thought shutting away an entire market was a good idea?

aside that, what is that design? you will NEED to have a keyboard, a monitor and a mouse to make that thing useable... oh no...

msi you fail me yet another time

 

This.

Upgrade/change your laptop and this docking station is useless lol.....

thunderbolt 2 offer enough bandwidth ?

 

I was pretty certain that it would have proprietary connector, it is located wrong though. I mean, you could save a nice chunck of money if you go GS30 + the dock + GPU of choice. The way they did it means that you have to buy display, keyboard and mouse as well. At least it seams that when docked, it would have additional air pulling from the dock, helping with the cooling.

I guess they'll make more than one laptop that can take advantage of this dock. Remember how they were testing the waters with MSI GUS? Why make solution for all the companies, when they can make it their own

There was Amilo SA3650 as well

 

The gs30 would never be a cheap proposition, for some simple reasons

1 it comes with a quad and a expensive one at that, supposedly high quality high DPI display.

2 the line is the premium one

3 The dock alone would cost around 200-400

4 there is the cost of the GPU

And now the cost of all the other things like kB, mouse and monitor

Without a tb solution that would make it possible to be used for other brands this is doomed as a failure from an economic stand point.

The fact that that dock tries to be an overachiever it has to have some mildly decent speakers and probably has other features, while that is a good proposition it also means that adding several other controllers to the board making it more expensive or making the notebook more expensive

Anyway I'm thinking that the gs30 with the dock would cost at least 1500-1700 or even more for that I would prefer to go with the aorus x3 or even the blade

 

The whole point is you keep the base machine for 4-5 years. Keep the CPU fast enough to keep up with gpus for the next generation or two and you upgrade the GPU instead of the rest.

 

that is always the point with egpu machines.

while cheaper to just a change a desktop gpu this design comes with the hurdle of the proprietary connector and that nullifying dock

 

The problem is that standard connectors like thunderbolt offer limited bandwidth.

Thunderbolt two allows for 2x 10Gbit connections, one of which can be used by the GPU and you could use the other for USB3/display.

PCI-E 3.0 gives just under 8Gbit PER LANE, so the custom connector has 14 times the bandwidth.

 

it would be interesting if they were using the PCIE 3.0 available from the cpu, most probable is the PCIE 2.0 from the chipset

and TB 2 allows for a single stream of data, aka the full 20Gbit

 

The chipset could not provide 16 lanes.

 

and it wouldn't, it would provide the x8 that it comes with

 

I can't see why MSI would bill this close to the price of their higher end gaming mobile machines given he additional components that the user will have to supply themselves. Calling around $1,100 to $1,300 for a bundle unit (GS30 base config + GamingDock).

 

But the wireless card and other chips use those.

 

you raise a good point

thus it depends on whichever is cheaper for them to use and how they will syphon the bandwidth

 

MSI rep on overclockers posted that the dock will let you use a normal Harddrive as well.

Our NEW MSI GS30 Shadow & GamingDock - Coming soon! - Overclockers UK Forums

I'm so sold on this assuming it's not ridiculously priced (and available in March 2015).

 

Is there a limit to which GPU you can accomodate in the dock? It sounds like a very good compromise between portability and dekstop like performance. This is only thanks to how capable Intel CPUs are though.

 

According to the MSI rep in the overclockers forum you can put a 780 Ti in it.

 

I am totally in for one - I have been hoping for a nice 13" model for a long time

 

Now this looks amazing but im currently happy with my clevo p170sm i bought last year. The dock will probably cost a fortune and the laptop itself in the UK probably around a grand thats my speculation anyway.

 

Right now my GT60 is still kicking but and chews up any game I throw at it. Still though, I love having something new every couple years or so. I love this idea, and I was about to abandon laptops altogether to just build a nice desktop rig. I was also still considering keeping on the laptop route and getting whatever the next GT60 Maxwell gen is. I think though this might be my next laptop as it satisfies both portability, and desktop like performance when I'm at home. I always game with the laptop at a stationary position and usually connected to an external monitor anyways.

 

I am not sure but I think I read somewhere the dock would be usb 3 and compatible with other notebooks.

 

The hub part might be but the gpu will certainly not be.

 

I know what you mean. I also game most of the time with my laptop hooked to an external monitor. This immediately sounds like a nice idea to me and I might explore it next year, but right now I am also curious about maxwell for high end mobile GPUs, specially since the leaks show some promising performance. I am sure GT60 next gen will be announced soon too, as they always make a 15 inch version of their GT7x laptops. GT62 sounds nice huh?

Yeah, i read that the USB connection between GPU and computer was pure speculation and it makes sense to be only that. If this dock can accomodate "any" GPU it certainly needs the bandwidth as you discussed a page or two back.

 

What conector are you guessing they will use Meaker? DP 1.2, TB 1/2? Isnt the new usb3 (with the new connector) faster than the current usb 3 and don't it have enough bandwidth? the dock will have more than one cable connecting it to the pc then? Regards

 

MSI rep in the overclockers thread said that it is a proprietary docking solution (not USB3), isn't compatible with any other notebook at the moment. However this could change as what was demo'd was only the prototype.

Highlight info from the overclockers thread about the GamingDock:
- any GPU up to 780 Ti can be installed
- can only be used with the GS30
- single internal hard drive bay
- 4 USB 3.0
- Is meant to be used like a desktop, meaning once you plug the laptop into the gaming dock you'll need a keyboard, mouse, monitor, peripherals, etc., shouldn't be using the laptop monitor, keyboard, touch pad once in docking solution.
- Specs not finalized yet.