Received My MSI 16L-G-1080 Today, Questions and Concerns

Hey all,

Finally got my laptop today, I have a couple things I want to ask. Here is a picture of the back of it opened:



I have to install an m.2 ssd into this, and it looks like the cmos extension is right in the middle of where this is supposed to go. Any idea on where I can stick this so that it isn't in the way? I'm thought it was just going to be a little switch and not the whole battery moved out. Was hard to see in the blurry picture.


Another thing that I noticed is, the plate sitting on top of the CPU heatsink is rattling and I'm wondering if there was supposed to be something to keep it flush or not because turning the laptop over I her it tinking and if I touch it it isn't really making contact with the metal underneath it's even so slightly hovering over it. Below is a short video I took and I just want to know if all owners of this laptop have the same noise on that heatsink. Thanks in advance for any assistance!




Edit: One other thing I noticed is that it looks almost like there is a tape up the CPU heatsink, but I'm not sure exactly what it is for. I've never had this under any desktop cpu cooler so any ideas on this would also be appreciated.




Edit 2: While waiting for response, I actually had to go through and tighten down a good amount of screws. This was most likely due to just shipment, but always good to make sure things are tight!


Edit: 3 So after looking closer at the M2 slots I didn't realize that they would sit above the taped down battery. So that's no longer an issue. the main thing I'm concerned about is just the CPU tape looking stuff and the loose top metal piece that slightly tinks and squeaks when pressed down.

 

Top heatsink that connected with GPU has to be screwed. Check out link below.

http://pile1.gaminglaptopsjunky.com...6/12/Eurocom-Tornado-F5-motherboard-side-.jpg

 

Wow, should this have come screwed down? I feel like it should have but could be wrong. Do you know if these 4 screws that came with is in a separate baggy are used for that purpose? If they were supposed to come screwed down already @Donald@HIDevolution might have to have a talk with whomever was assigned to work on my laptop and forgot to do that, kind of a big oversight if so.

 

I dont think so. Probably HIDevolution forgot to put them after delidding. Contact with support.

 

The idea is to be able to get at the CMOS battery, so just move it aside when installing your M.2 SSD.

The part that is on top that you keep tapping down on is the arm that reaches from the GPU down to the CPU heatsink. Usually there are 4 screws holding it down. If the screws are present and the GPU arm is screwed onto the CPU heatsink....the CPU tends to run hotter. We leave it unscrewed with a bit of a gap to allow some air flow. @Mr. Fox has even experimented with putting cardboard between the GPU arm and CPU heatsink. If you insist on screwing it down, be sure to take your temps both before, and after, and you will see why we do it that way.

The Kapon tape is there for a good reason and should not be tampered.

If you have technical questions, it is always better to contact our Tech Support Team for help. We build the EVOC 16L-G-1080 certain ways for good reasons. Before tampering with anything, you should contact them first. 1-888-666-3418 Extension 3, [email protected] or open a ticket through your account dashboard, or a Chat with Tech Support on our website.

 

@XiCynx - here are some photos of what you are seeing. Ignore the white stuff on top of the CPU in the first photo. That is pre-scale pressure test film. The Kaptop tape around the CPU seals off the underlying socket so you can use liquid metal thermal paste without any fear of it going someplace it should not be and frying your laptop. Along with the foam dam to contain it, you can haul it in a backpack or briefcase and knock it around in confidence. There is no way for the liquid metal to escape if you travel with it, or take it to school or work every day.

Leaving the screws out of the plate connecting the CPU to the GPU provides a small benefit in temperatures. You don't have the CPU and GPU puking heat onto one another. If one is going to run hotter (generally the CPU) it is pointless to force the other one to run hotter than it needs to by shedding heat its direction. If it is rattling and making noise, you can slide some electrical tape between them and put the sticky side against the plate from the GPU as a silencer or cushion. It will not get hot enough to melt the electrical tape.




I use Kapton tape on my GPUs as well...

This is great advice. Everything HIDevolution does is for a specific reason and supported by their own in-house testing. It makes sense to have questions about something you see if it is not clear what you are looking at (and Lord knows all of us make mistakes) but they can explain it in a way that transforms your questions into peace of mind.

 

Thank you both for this reassurance. Have willing tech support at the standby is something I'm really going to have to get used to. I have the mindset from years of overseas support that they just don't really care and are always reading from scripts on a screen. This really helps clear things up and I think I am definitely going to try out that electrical tape on the gpu piece as it is just a bit awkward sounding. I'm not really sure what liquid metal entails so I'm just going to leave that be as is.

I'm getting ready to install the bloat-free windows 10 and then I should be on my way to greatness!

 

I always love when I see people putting on free insurance from my Conductive Balls of Doom ™
And an excellent explanation by @Donald@HIDevolution as always.

 

let me know when you want me to tweak your taptop. I am free now

These are the Phoenix magical Tweaks:

1- Uninstallation of all the Windows Store Garbage Apps
2- Removing all Windows 10 Privacy Invasion stuff like Telemetry, sending your keystrokes to Microsoft, automatically installing suggested apps in the background, allowing Microsoft to conduct experiments on your laptop, disabling automatic driver updates through Windows updates, disabling Windows 10 ads, disabling cortana, etc.
3- Removal of nVIDIA and Intel Telemetry
4- Adjusting a lot of options in PC Settings like disabling Windows Tablet Mode (you have a laptop not a tablet), disabling suggestions appearing in the start menu, disabling automatically connecting to Paid WiFi Hotspots, disabling Game DVR which reduced performance in games, and a lot more.
5- Replacing Cortana with a much better search tool that finds results instantly
6- Restoring the classic Windows 7 Calculator and Windows Photo Viewer
7- Restoring the Classic Windows 7 Start Menu
8- Turning off smart multi-homed DNS name resolution in Windows which may lead to DNS Leakage when using a VPN (must have Windows 10 Pro for disabling it as it can only be disabled via the Group Policy Editor)

 

Well I just finished installing your bloat-free windows 10 image which had a lot of that done already. However, I am running into a slight bump in trying to find which are the correct drivers to install for this system. I enjoy the windows 10 scheme and would like to keep that over Windows 7, same with the start menu. One thing that I noticed is missing is the ability to search for items in the start menu and that was from the get-go of the image install. If you can advise me on how to bring that feature back, or want to assist in doing so, that would be awesome. I haven't connect it to the internet yet but think I am at the part where I am about to do so. But I think I want to install all of my drivers prior to going online correct?

Edit: Where in the world are the drivers for this thing? I can't find them anywhere and don't have a cd drive to pull whatever is on the disc off. MSI's website doesn't have anything either and it's technically their laptop. Lol @MSIGeno @MSI Myco Heeeeelp

 

Ive said it over 10 times already. The Bloatware Free Edition Windows has Cortana Disabled, thus, the Start menu search won't work. Most of us use Classic Shell where the search would work.

If that is so important to you then I'm afraid you installed the wrong edition of Windows since you say that you like how Windows 10 looks

 

Hmmm, decision decision.... Well, worst case scenario I'll install Windows Classic Shell if need be. Still having issues with these drivers though. Unless Chipset, Intel Management Engine Interface Driver, Intel AHCI-RAID Driver, Audio Drivers, LAN Drivers, WLAN Drivers, Card Reader Drivers are all built into windows 10 already then I'm fine with just downloading the Graphics Card Drivers from Nvidia's website.

 

check this thread, it has the latest Intel drivers and others from MSI, might be applicable to j00
MSI GT73VR 7RF TITAN PRO Drivers

Why didn't you order the drivers USB with your laptop man

 

I just figured things were modern enough these days that there would be a website from which I could download them from and wouldn't actually need a USB with the drivers pre-downloaded on them. Lol. It's been at least 6 years since I've had to use a disc to install drivers for anything. I'll check out that link and see what it brings me to.

 

Not trying to be mean man but really, you just sit and complain and you've never contacted HIDevolution's Tech Support! you buy a laptop from a reputed system builder not only for the laptop itself, but for the good tech support and customer service. Try it for once maybe you'll get your answers solved

 

Other than the KLM and SCM software for keyboard and Webcam, etc. Most of the drivers are native to W10. The primary place I generally get the latest drivers is from http://station-drivers.com/index.ph...ntainers&id=5&sort_order=0&Itemid=353&lang=en

I just installed the latest abortion (RS3) on both of my Clevo laptops and everything but the fingerprint readers was ready to go after setup finished. I never use Windows graphics or audio drivers, as they are not the best and tend to be too generic and missing features. But, other than graphics and audio, they are relatively new and fully functional. Unless they accidentally deploy a buggy driver with the OS or Windows Update, in most cases it is a waste of time and energy to seek out and install newer drivers.

The 16L13 should require very little, almost nothing, in terms of installing additional drivers. Open Device Manager and see what components in the tree are expanded and have a device that reflects a problem status. You should not expect to see more than maybe 1 or 2 devices that are malfunctioning due to missing drivers.

 

I use Keypirinha. It's HIGHLY customizable. I like spotlight so much on OS X I spent some time going through a ton of apps finding a good version of it for Windows. Alt+Space your way to bliss.


My 2nd choice would be Launchy, but it doesn't play nice with HiDPI and it seems it has been abandoned.

 

Called Zoltan today and he got me up and going good. They didn't have drivers specifically but her said that drivers for the MSI GT62 series is the closest they have for my laptop and they should work fine. Most of the GT73VR drivers you linked me to worked and were newer than what the GT62 had available for it. So that's that. I was also having issues with my overclock not going above 4.2GHz even though it was set to that in the BIOS. We went through about an hour and a half of troubleshooting but finally got it working as well. Really grateful for him helping me that long and getting everything working as intended.

One other things. If say, sometime down the road, I decide I want to upgrade the LCD Panel on the laptop. Is this something that can be done? I know it won't be the easiest project to do and would probably require taking the whole motherboard out, but I'm just curious. I found this 3k 120Hz IPS Panel on ebay that is 15.6" and I think it could work great if it is something that can be attempted on these laptops.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Aorus-X5-V6...083051?hash=item2a7e45152b:g:54gAAOSwmgJY2r6x

 

This is really neat and I may look into it. Right now I am using Start 10 from StarDock and it seems to be working really well, but the one you linked seems WAY more customizable and that is really intriguing. Any suggestions on what all I should download for it to get the more efficient use out of it?

 

I still don't know if I did something wrong but when I set up my laptop Cortana and the original Windows 10 start menu and search features worked and wok fine for me without me needing to install classic shell or anything special to be able to search? = \ I'm not complaining because I like to ability to just use the built in search feature and imo it works better than previous iterations of it but I am kind of confused what happened there. Also miss how my lock/login screen is just a blank blue page now instead of randomly rotation images through microsoft/bing, I know this is something probably removed with the telemetry etc but I wish there was a way I could turn it back on. Maybe I will download the latest bloatware free version of your OS again and try reinstalling it, but everything is working fine for me now and I don't want to wipe out my system and redo everything for a few small quirks if I don't have to. If I did I may just end up installing an official copy of 10 and then manually going through and removing or disabling the things myself that I want as best as I can. Decisions decisions.

Edit: For what it's worth, this is the page where I got certain drivers from that I needed http://www.eurocom.com/drivers(384)ec however I do not know why Eurocom removed them from their website? Not sure when this happened, or why. I also have a flash drive with Windows and drivers on it that I got from HID (and then ended up going with the bloatware free version anyway) which I'm sure are older drivers at this point but will get me started and back up and running if I need to. Not sure what happened to Eurocoms website though and why all the drivers are missing.

 

The screen in that link is 1080p, not 3K. Maybe it is the wrong link? (Link worked on the second try.)

For 15-inch I personally think 1080p is the highest you will want to go. I have had the opportunity to test multiple 15 inch 4K laptops and those are miserable. 3K (2560x1440) is OK for 17 inch, but any higher resolution is miserable. I can tolerate my 17-inch 3K laptop screen, but it's right on the borderline of being too much. I have also had my hands on a couple of 17-inch 4K laptops for testing and 4K resolution is miserable on such a small screen unless you crank the scaling up to 200% with makes sizing the same as 1080p, rendering zero benefit in terms of usable screen real estate. On top of that, TONS of stuff still scales like crap on 4K and gaming at 4K still mostly sucks with single GPU unless you turn down the quality settings. These are my personal opinions based on my experience. Others with experience may differ. I offer my experience as fair warning. I despise 4K laptop screens of any size. You need a minimum of at least 21", better 24" or higher, for 4K to be pleasant for the eyes and text comfortably readable at 100% scaling. Please do not do it just because it is popular. You may regret it as many others have.

From my YouTube channel...

 

I was going to post a link to Eurocom's drivers yesterday and saw they were gone. I have not heard why. Maybe @woodzstack knows why or was told what the deal is.

It really doesn't matter if the drivers are older. In most cases (excluding graphics drivers) driver versions are totally irrelevant as long as they are stable. It is very rare that they add any meaningful new features. If one's machine is stable and running well, updating drivers is not very smart. It might not be stable when you are done with it. Best approach is, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" LOL. Once in a while the Intel ME driver version can matter, but then only if a newer BIOS version is released that has some added overclocking features or something of that nature.

 

then you probably didn't install the bloatware Free Edition Windows 10 because if you did, no way the start menu search would work. Cortana is not there to begin with

 

I did though = \, we had this discussion in your thread a while back when I received my laptop. There's other things missing or disabled that should have normally been there, something like the bing images loading on the login/lock screen should have been working if it was normal. Like I said I'm not complaining just a little confused and haven't been able to figure out what happened. I only had your Bloatware free version and then the copy of 10 that HID sent me which is on a separate flash drive that I never took out of the packaging since receiving my laptop. It's not a big deal but something definitely went funky and not normal when I installed this version. I've just been too lazy to go back and wipe my machine and reinstall windows again to try and get it 100% working.

 

I wouldn't worry about it. RS3 has some funkiness crap going on. Your experience just might be another example of it. It may be updating things behind your back, too. The crooks that made it are good about assuming too many things and taking liberties that should not be theirs for the taking.

 

I'm going to download the most up to date copy of the bloatware free version and slap a spare 120gb ssd in my laptop and remove my HDD and SSD currently in it and quickly install Windows 10 on it again and see how it responds, if things are there again that shouldn't, if the login/lock screen pictures are definitely gone or if that was some other error etc. This version has seemed a little odd and given me small problems here and there since having it, I was just so happy to have the laptop I did not want to wipe it and set it up again but I think it's time now that I have Prema and everything else is done with it and it's not going back to HID again anytime soon, I should actually get it set up for real how I'd like to whether that means using this version, or learning how to use the tool to remove only the things I want and leave things I don't care as much about etc. We'll see what happens.

I've been having an issue with one or 2 of the recent cumulative updates for Windows 10 getting an error code 0x80073701 and it just seems to fail to download or install the update and just says to retry, tried some stuff to fix it but didn't put a whole lot of time into it but it has not been updating for a month or 2 now so I had been meaning to reinstall Windows anyway. Thought it might be related to my other weird issues I seemed to have after installing windows this time.

 

Which drivers you need, I can supply them if needed, no issues.

 

I usually change some windows settings for my customers too, but usually a few small things for improved experience, never disabling the search bar in windows.
Be thankful that HID and some other resellers do the same and gets rid of extra bloatware's you'd normally get with OEM and windows pre-installs!

You shouldn't have to reinstall it from scratch per se - there's a way to reinstall without having to even use a USB, like windows 10 has the ability to reinstall itself, and grab all updates.
Hopefully that will do the trick, I've had to do it pretty much once a year ever since windows 10 came out, because all these updates every so often screw up your install.

Actually come to think of it, Windows 10 is getting old....

 

I have all of them, but another person in the thread is asking and noticed @Eurocom Support has removed all of the drivers from the product page. We thought maybe it had been mentioned to you.

See here... nothing... http://www.eurocom.com/ec/drivers(384)TornadoF5
" Drivers are currently not available. Please check back later."

It appears to be all models, not just the Tornado F5. Maybe the server that handles those files is offline or something.

 

I'm just using the apps, URL, Steam, and WebSearch plugins right now. Configured a bunch of directory paths and extension wildcards. I think I just about covered everything. The only thing I'm really using it for is to launch apps right now. I do like how it's algorithm can recognize shorthand really well.

 

Anyone needing the F5 drivers, I have this for you : http://cloud.alezka.com:8080/F5 Tornado/

They might be out of date, or if for whatever reason EUROCOM took them down, there is an issue with a driver, I take no responsibility for that, nor should anyone bother EUROCOM because I shared the drivers.

So these were the last I backed up, myself, personally, and the ones I use on customers laptops when installing and testing, though I get the latest NVidia and anything relevant from windows update 99% of the time.

 

Speaking about drivers, I know way back in the owners thread there was a post with a link to a specific synaptics driver that solved issues with fn+f3 not disabling the track pad, is this a specific driver version or if I just try and download the latest ones should it work? The ones Windows 10 auto installed for me are not responding to the hotkey to disable the trackpad, I have not tested auto disable when a usb mouse is plugged in yet.

 

I would like to know this as well.

 

Here guys... I believe this is what you are looking for...

This should give you the taskbar tray icon back and the option to automatically disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected. The crappy and cumbersome W10 way of doing things buries it in the goofy Settings App and the option to automatically disable the touchpad is often missing.

Be sure to uninstall all current Synaptics drivers and reboot before installing this one or it usually will not work correctly.

EDIT: You may need to disable Driver Signature Enforcement temporarily for installation of this driver. Some people do and others do not.

 

Thanks for this, I was running some ****ty older version 19.0.x.xx, this will definitely get me up to date, I didn't have a lot of those options.

 

Thanks @Mr. Fox I uninstalled, rebooted, installed the one you posted and now disabling when a usb device is connected seems to be working properly but I am unable to use fn+f3 to manually turn it off. Is there a setting somewhere I am missing, or a driver I am missing? All other hot keys seem to be functioning properly. At the end of the day it is not the biggest deal if I can disable it by plugging in a mouse but there may be times I don't want it to always be disabled with a mouse etc.

@XiCynx Sorry I didn't mean to hijack your thread but it seems some of the things I am asking or looking for are applicable to both of us so hopefully some of it is helping.

 

Once you have those drivers installed, you can disable Windows Update automatically overwriting them by following the instructions here. It requires Group Policy Editor, which is built in to Windows 10 Pro and higher and can apparently be added to Home.

 

I went through the control panel rather than group policy, and under advanced system settings there is a hardware tab, and in there is an option to disable downloading device driver updates through windows update. This should not require group policy editor and should in theory disable any drivers from being downloaded through windows update. I do not know if it is because I enabled this after Windows may have already checked for updates but in my updates now I have a synaptics driver sitting there saying it is ready to be installed and it installed it when I asked it to. I will uninstall again, reinstall the older driver and see if it goes away completely now from Windows update. Still a little curious why my fn+f3 combo is not working and if there is a setting I am missing or another driver/hotkey app or something I need but it's not the end of the world, just slightly annoying.

Edit: So I forcefully asked windows to install the update that was sitting in my que, it installed and I rebooted and upon coming back into Windows, my "Disable touchpad when USB mouse is connected" is still checked off and functioning properly disabling my mouse pad and I still seem to have all the normal options one should in the Synaptics driver. So essentially even after this updated through Windows, everything seems to be functioning properly except the fn+f3 hotkey to manually disable the touchpad.

 

That option has never worked for me, nor lots of others. Even if it did, that option is a carte blanche ban on all drivers from Windows Update. The method I outlined targets specific pieces of hardware.

 

I did not look into your link but thanks for posting that now that I read through it in case I ever need it. To be honest I'd almost rather disable everything entirely (if this option even works) rather than going back for individual hw ids but it's nice to know that I can if I ever need to. Previously I would just disable the setting through the control panel for everything, and set my main connections I stay on to metered to try and prevent it from downloading anything. I never noticed it downloading drivers for me so it's possible it was working in the past, but I was usually not checking everything it installed if it ever did an auto update and I know it was at least not downloading latest nvidia drivers for me (if that is something updates normally does). Will definitely book mark your link about using GPE to block things in case I ever need that in the future. I know with some of the Lenovo computers our clients use, Win 10 was auto downloading intel HD driver updates and installing them and there was an update that would break something with the back light and essentially make the machine unusable for these people and require uninstalling the driver and installing an old one and then I would use the control panel options to try and disable it altogether. This group policy would be perfect for when we have situations like that that may affect multiple of our customers using the same model machines etc.

 

I have no experience trying this trackpad disabling on the F5... should I load a system with my drivers and test it for you ?
I have one ready for some testing (got one for myself again, so gonna do those thermal paste testing and the copper IHS once I get time) and will need o do the drivers anyways... two birds one stone ?

 

Do you guys think if i ordered the EVOC 16l-g that it will be somewhat future proof?? You think ill still be able to play AAA rpgs and games in 2018 with ultra settings while still getting 100 plus frames? I wanna get this laptop but im afraid if i get it now right before the new coffelake and volta comes out. I wont be able to upgrade to volta once it comes out right?? Cuz im sure itll use a different socket than pascal. I really want a new gaming laptop but the new gpus r right around the corner. Help me lol what should i do?? Buy now or wait??

 

You will get more help if you post this in the Owner's Lounge at http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...16l-g-1080-15-6-owners-lounge.797128/page-848

 

it will handle games with decent framerates for a few years. The new GPUs are not coming anytime soon I don't know where you got that impression but yes Coffeelake would be. Although it is better, it may not necessarily translate into better frame rates as most games rely heavily on the GPU these days with a minor few exceptions.

In my opinion, if you have nothing else to play games on decently then stop waiting as the're always something new coming right around the corner, you'd waste your time waiting and miss on the joy.

On the other hand, if you have something decent to game on and don't mind waiting for another 6 months until the new nVIDIA GPUs are out to get a laptop with the Volta GPU + Coffee Lake then waiting makes more sense.

Me personally, I always get the best that's out there right *now* and worry about tomorrow the next year.

Look at the laptop in my signature, I've had it since January 2017 and I seriously don't need anything more right now at least as it can handle anything I throw at it with a breeze, has the best screen out there, 120hz/5ms FHD GSYNC screen and a SteelSeries Keyboard for the best typing experience as I do type a lot.

 

It's possible using Fn+F3 is part of the SCM (System Control Manager) software. Did you install that?

 

@Phoenix what laptop do you have in your signature? Im on my phone right now so i cant see it at the moment.

 

MSI GT73VR 7RF Titan Pro-425 Review By Phoenix http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/msi-gt73vr-7rf-titan-pro-425-review-by-phoenix.801314/

 

I get the whole dont wait buy now argument i really do. And i dont have anything to game on at the moment for pc gaming. This will be my first gaming pc but i do have a ps4 slim and an xbox 1s. Im just trying to make sure i make the right choice because Ive wanted a gaming pc for a while now and i finally convinced my wife to let me buy one LOL. so i only get one shot at this for at least a couple years when i can upgrade again. My wife is not a gamer n she sees my ps4 and xbox and thinks im nuts for wanting something else...she just doesnt get it

 

I had an 870M for over 3 years and it was still able to play games pretty well when I stopped using it. I'm planning on this 1080 lasting another 3 years.

 

Ya thats good to hear. Im not so concerned about coffeelake since for gaming i dont think itll make that much of a difference that i would need to wait for it. Its really volta and the new gpus im concerned about. And i know theyre still a ways off but theyre def coming in 2018 and thats not that far off. From what ive read volta is going to be a pretty big tehnilogical leap as far as gaming gpus r concerned. At least thats what ive heard