iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-17 Notebook Review: MSI and iBuyPower Tangle With Alienware

Battery Life

NVIDIA's Optimus technology has done some pretty crazy things to the gaming notebook market. Batteries in gaming notebooks used to be glorified UPS systems, but now you can actually get halfway decent running time out of a hulking gaming notebook. iBuyPower's Valkyrie CZ-17 isn't going to compete with an ultrabook or even an 11" monster like the Clevo W110ER, but it puts in a strong showing nonetheless.

Probably owing to the increased efficiency of Ivy Bridge, the CZ-17 is competitive with the Alienware M17x R3, which is really the test we wanted to see. More importantly, we have a hulking desktop replacement notebook that's still able to run off the mains for more than four hours (gaming notwithstanding). Progress is good, and it's doubly nice to see an ODM notebook that's able to hang with a bigger vendor as battery life optimization is often one of the first things to go in systems like these.

Noise and Heat

iBuyPower's Valkyrie CZ-17 comes built on MSI's extra thick GT70 chassis, but the GT70 bulk doesn't go to waste. The cooling system is remarkably efficient and because of the increased thickness of the fan, the actual pitch of the system noise is lower as well. Despite hitting 47dB over an extremely heavy load (100% load on both CPU and GPU), the low whooshing noise is much more tolerable than the high-pitched whine smaller fans like the ones in the Razer Blade produce.

Thermals are actually pretty strong, too. The CPU is still running in the low 80s instead of at spec as most vendors like to push them these days, and the GTX 675M, despite being a 100W TDP part in a seven pound notebook, still peaks at just 80C.

Display Quality

The display employed in the iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-17 is manufactured by Chi Mei, and while some of its measurements aren't excellent and it's still a TN panel, I found it to be a tangible improvement over the display on my M17x R3 in practice owing chiefly to the matte finish. Viewing angles are also quite good, but some users may take issue with the slightly grainy matte finish used.

As you can see it's among our best and brightest, producing good to excellent results in all of our tests. While it's not on the level of an IPS display, the Chi Mei panel in the CZ-17 will be more than adequate for most users and is in a completely different class than the panels typically used in consumer notebooks.