New Owner Question: Raid on the Titan-427??

I've ordered my GT73VR Titan-427 and while waiting I've picked up an M.2 Samsung 970 Evo 500mb to clone the OS onto from the HDD when it arrives.

Can I do raid from the M.2 bays? I can't get a firm answer on the number and kind of M.2 ports. I saw a video that indicated (2) PCIE M.2 NVME ports and (1) M.2 SATA III port, all above the 2.5" Sata bay.

However in research I'm seeing (1) PCIE M.2 NVME port and (1) M.2 SATA III port, with no header on the third spot. And then the 2.5" Sata bay under these.

I'd like to get another 500mb Evo NVME and do raid mirror, because the speed should be plenty fast on NVME with those drives. BUT, if there is only 1 NVME and the other slot is SATA III, then running raid like that (if possible) would then slow down both drives to SATA III speeds, correct?

I probably won't mess with raid if there aren't two NVME slots. It's just been hard to verify.

 

The GT73VR Titan Pro has:

2 m.2 slots NVMe
1 m.2 slot SATA
1 2.5" bay

The newer GT75 has all the 3 m.2 slots as NVMe that's how I have my storage setup the way you see it in my signature, the three m.2 Samsung 960 PRO 2TB are in a RAID 0 Array (AKA Super RAID 4 in MSI Terms) and then the 4TB 850 EVO is on its own

 

This is would be great but is my model a Pro? I thought the Pro had a 1080/sli option with a better motherboard than the standard/1070 version. If the boards are the same then I'll go ahead and get another NVME drive.

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I had the MSI GT73VR Titan Pro-425 I wasn't aware that there are Pro and non Pro variants or if there is any difference with regards to how many NVMe ports there are.

Maybe @Kevin@GenTechPC can shed some light here

 

MSI Naming convention can be confusing sometimes.
If you look up this model MSI GT73VR 7RE Titan SLI 4K 423, it has 1070 in SLI. And regarding both M.2 slots you have 1st M.2 NVMe/SATA capable, and 2nd M.2 slot NVMe only.
https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GT73VR-TITAN-PRO-4K-SLI-7th-Gen-GEFORCE<sup>®<sup>-GTX-1070-SLI/Specification

GT73VR TITAN PRO 4K (7th Gen) (GEFORCE® GTX 1080) is not SLI, and MSI did not release any SKU with 1080 SLI.
Certain models from the 7th gen line up are limited and you may not be able to get certain models unless someone stocks it.

All GT73VR models with Intel 7th gen (US only).
https://us.msi.com/search/GT73VR/product/1

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

That link is for the -423 though he has the -427.

This is the correct link:

https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GT73VR-TITAN-PRO-7th-Gen-GEFORCE<sup>®<sup>-GTX-1070/Specification

I was under the impression that all GT73VR titan Pro models, came with:

Slot = NVMe + Sata m.2
Slot 2 = NVMe + SATA m.2
Slot 3= SATA M.2 only (with no NVMe)

Please correct me if I'm wrong unless the motherboards are different across different variants.

 

You are right on the slots, there are other details I am looking into right now so I will update you guys shortly.

 

Update:
GT73 427 only has 1x M.2 slot + 1x 2.5" bay.
The rest of GT73 or GT75 has 3x M.2 slots + 1x 2.5" bay.

 

Ok that sucks. My second M.2 Samsung EVO 500mb just shipped this morning. Sigh. Well maybe I can return it when it comes in lol. Thanks for the update, Kevin. Guess I won't be doing Raid after all.

 

I wonder why XoticPC was offering to populate at least 2 M.2 drives in their configuration. And on HIDEvolution's page, they were offering RAID setups with M.2, on the 427. This was why it was so hard to figure out exactly what slots were available.

 

Where did you see that on HIDevolution? because when I was trying to get the answer for you, I actually checked if they had the -427 variant and they didn't. Do you have a link?

 

It's gone. Everyone sold out of those older models so I can't bring up those configuration pages anywhere now. I tried Google Cache and Wayback Machine but no luck.

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NP Man

 

Well ok. So I took a gamble and lost. There was no 100% way to find out the M.2 ports on my model until it came it. Black Friday came and was going fast, so I bit the bullet and bought two Samsung 970 Evo 500gb NVMe drives.

My mobo has: PCIE-1 m-keyed nvme port (right-most port); PCIE-2 Blank--no header on board (middle port); SATA-1 b-keyed sata3 port (left-most port).

No Raid this way unless it works with slot 1 and 3, but they are not the same. And now I've got two MVMe drives and one slot. I can't use one of them in the Sata slot because it's keyed wrong for the drive (it isn't b/m, just b). I will probably use the other Evo in my desktop.

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I got here too late... on xoticpc website ( https://www.xoticpc.com/msi-gt73vr-titan-427.html), in specs it clearly states it has the lower HM175 chipset. That one indeed is robbed of the extra M2 slots just like the gt72vr. I did not know they also came with a 7820HK though, thought only the gt73EVR with 7700HQ had this crappy chipset. For some more decently fast storage you can just get a samsung 860 evo (2.5 inch) and replace the hdd with it, but no raid for you. You can also use the hdd from the laptop if it came with one in your pc for backups (cause the msi hdds are no good for anything else than that or trash).
PS. the xoticpc website actually says it has more ssd slots... so it all smells fishy anyway. HM175 does not have those. Which cpu did you get in it?

 

I got the 7820HK in it. I was hoping it had the newer chipset but I was kinda thinking, probably not since this was the low-end model. I've never used raid before so it's ok - just would have been nice to try it out. Actually even having the third M.2 slot would be nice. Maybe I can sell my extra Samsung 970 Evo 500MB drive and buy a hard case for this monster.
The web site was a little misleading, but it may not have been their fault. HIDEvolution's site actually had a raid option in the configuration for this model, so there may be some unhappy customers over there if they ordered it with raid only to be called up and told it can't do that. It looks like MSI is probably to blame for sketchy information on these models. I bet once they started rolling in and getting opened up for customization, these shops were probably just as surprised at what they found.
I wonder what other cool things I will miss out on using the older chipset. So far I'm happy with the laptop. I put the OS on my 970 Evo NVMe drive and nuked the 1TB HGST HDD that came with it, and now I'm loading games on that. I had bought a Western Digital Easyshare 2TB external drive so that when the laptop came in, I could put that drive in the laptop for games, but when I opened the external enclosure I found that they had actually soldered the USB3 connector onto the controller board of the drive. Nice of them for that.

 

You have the HM175 chipset version.
This was discussed in another thread recently
The HM175 chipset version (aka "GT73EVR" outside of USA) removes the 2nd M2 NVME slot for some reason only MSI knows.
The only one that has both NVME slots and the SATA m.2 slot is the CM238 version.

Feel free to download HWinfo64 and check. 100% sure it will say HM175.

 

I had looked at CPU-Z last night but didn't see it there and went on to bed. Thanks I forgot about HWINFO. It is what it is. It's still the best laptop I've ever owned so I'm not gonna cry about it. I am glad that I upgraded the RAM so it would have dual-channel, though.

 

I have the GT73 VR 7RE 427, stock it comes with 1TB 7200 rpm

I added a 960 Evo nvme and there is another slot for a second nvme gen 3x 4 drive and then a regular M.2 SATA port. I replaced the original 1atB drive a a Seagate 1TB SSHD. Mine has the 1070

Great unit and I am really hoping there is the final GT upgrade option. The guy who helped me out at MSI and recently clarified my remaining warranty said the unit is eligible for their next GT upgrade but question is will it actually happen after the last fiasco they had

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See I don't have a second nvme port. The slot is empty on my board. Mine came with the 1070, an hgst 1tb 7200rpm sata hard drive. I put a samsung 970 M.2 NVME in the first m.2 port, which has an M slot notch. The middle m.2 port is gone. I see the solder points on the motherboard but there is no header mounted on the motherboard. On the other side is an m.2 port with a B notch, labeled sata. I migrated windows to the Evo 970 and formatted the hard disk for games. I need to get an m.2 sata drive with either a B notch or B/M notches to add more storage. Apparently I have the older 175 chipset which doesn't have raid or 3 nvme ports. It's a gt73vr 7re 427 like yours, so I'm surprised they would be different. However, MSI web site does list the gt73vr as having either chipset so I guess I got the short straw. However I still love the laptop. I noticed there was a 16gb ram in one of the bottom slots and I thought both upper slots had to be used first for dual-channel. I do indeed show 32GB in dual-channel mode when checking, so it's all good.

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The labelling is irrelevant on a non-standard gt73vr I would say. The gt75 has the same chassis and same sata only label, while it actually is an nvme slot in that place. I'd give that a shot just for the heck of it and see if it might also be an nvme slot despite the markings (cause we love how clear msi is on a lot of things). You really have nothing to lose, worst case it won't recognize the drive and you will take it out again... Honestly, I would say you should be happy you cannot do the raid config. In raid, if one drive fails or gets corrupted, it will take all the data from both drives to hell with it... With non-raid config, the other drive will always be safe and you will only lose the data on the failed drive rather than everything.

 

you are so right about the raid thing. I know they were advertising raid 0 for performance, but if I was gonna try it, I was going to do mirroring and not striping, for redundancy (I don't trust any drives and I make weekly backups.) However I don't even know if raid 1 was available because nobody ever talked about it, so either way, I'm not upset I can't do raid. I do wish I had 3 m.2 ports tho, just to add as much storage as possible. The other port, the one labeled sata, is keyed opposite of the nvme (pcie1) port. My NVME drives are both M-key style, so I can't try one of them in the sata labelled port unless I flip it around upside down, and then it still won't fit because the number of pins to the outside of the notch is different (M-key has 5 pins on the edge and B-key has 6 pins.) I just need to get a drive with the opposite key style (or even one with both would work) to put in that spot. I will likely put my other Evo 970 in my desktop which boots from an older Adata 256gb m.2 nvme drive, which runs about 3 times slower than the 970 Evo.

 

Yeah, it's really a difficult choice when you look at this.
Supposedly, SSD is more durable than HDD but when something goes wrong with them.
Data on a failed HDD sometimes is recoverable by luck but on SSD is nearly non-recoverable and requires miracle.

 

Thats a different one. I actually just sold my GT73 Vr Titan yesterday. I was and am unsure if the second GT upgrade will actually ever happen so after owning it for 20 mths I decided to get some value out of it , it had warranty remaining until April/19 based on my inquiry with the rep who assisted on the original upgrade.

I pocketed some cash and got a like new but used in mint shape GT72S 6QF-061 4K unit w 6820HK/16GB DDR4 & 980 GTX 8GB along w 2x128GB nvme in raid 0 w 1TB hgst. The screen is beautiful on this one w 4K res but I am unsure if these support G Sync. So far enjoyng it and seems 980 GTX equal or a tad faster than a 1060 so I am happy, just not as efficient..

 

I went in the BIOS finally to edit my vr setting from auto to 800, and noticed that my model is GT73EVR, however I bought this unit inside the USA where I live so I wonder if MSI just used this holiday season to move all remaining stock of these, no matter where they sold. Or, maybe both the "E" and non-"E" versions share the same BIOS. Everything about it says GT73VR, except inside the BIOS. Interesting.

 

They share the same bios.
They have a different EC because the EVR doesn't support an SLI configuration, however the .108 EC does work on the EVR and the .112 EC works on the VR. The .112 EC has a max power draw cap of 330W, going any higher instantly throttles the CPU to 800 mhz without any throttling flags being set. This doesn't happen on the .108 EC.

I do NOT know if you flash the .108 EC on the GT73EVR, if you will get a >330W power cap (since .108 has to support SLI) or even if SLI would work if you installed a 2nd 1070 card and the SLI heatsinks. I have no idea if the second MXM slot is there or physically removed.

Bioses are identical.
GT73EVR name is set via SMBUS, not by bios. If you look in the bios in AMIBCP, you will see the product name says "Please change product name".

 

Gotcha. As far as I can tell the second MXM header doesn't exist on my board. I just have a lot of wasted space there. The mobo has a clean edge going around that bay so I don't even think there's tracers for a slot header. Makes sense tho with the lower chipset and everything - I got the tail-end of the Titans haha. But it's my first gaming laptop and I like it. I've already learned a lot so if I do this again I will know more when I research. Only quirk I've noticed so far is the Killer Networks card (1435) doesn't come back after the laptop goes to sleep. Even a soft reboot doesn't help - I have to power cycle. It was one of the things I was gonna have XoticPC upgrade but I figured I could change it myself later if I needed to.