MSI GT70 Dragon Edition Notebook Review: Haswell and the GTX 780M
by Dustin Sklavos on June 18, 2013 12:01 AM ESTBattery Life
Even if it's enjoying NVIDIA's Optimus, the MSI GT70 Dragon Edition is still a gaming notebook with a 47W quad-core processor at its heart along with a 17.3" 1080p display. That means that battery life is going to be better than the old days of the battery being a glorified UPS, but still nowhere near competitive with smaller and sleeker notebooks.
Haswell is doing wonders on the ultrabook side, but for any kind of performance system, it's basically a wash. The i7-4700MQ isn't offering any better battery life than the outgoing i7-3630QM. There shouldn't be any major surprises here; Haswell has been more or less a bust for desktop enthusiasts. Notebooks like these just don't see the benefits of what Haswell was geared for, and at most just enjoy slightly better IPC.
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ickibar1234 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
That single fan is enough. Notice that it keeps the CPU in the low 80s at full utilization and the GPU in the 70s Celsius. That is perfectly fine. Yes, you need to press the Cooler boost button to bring the fan to full speed but it is adequate.The fan is a different beast compared to normal laptop fans; It is 12 Volts! Yes, 12 Volts.
brand/model/amperage; NSTECH PABD19735BM -N153 0.65 Amps @ 12V. That is over 6 watts of cooling power in a laptop.
There have been some reports of bad paste jobs during assembly. Re-paste and temperatures should be very good especially with Cooler Boost on.
Nocturnal32GB - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
If you really knew anything about mobile gaming you would never buy a laptop from MSI, Asus or Dell / Alienware in the first place. Those machines are cheap junk to begin with, you can purchase a gaming laptop from M-Tech with better features and way better cooling for less money. Even sager is a better way to go than throwing your money out the window on proprietary garbage like MSI Alienware and the like.MDX - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Sager / Clevo laptops are fat, hideous, and bulky. At least Alienware does bulky with style, and they're definitely not low quality (mine's lasted 6 years so far, and I beat the crap out of my laptops). I'm not spending thousands to get something with a hideous clevo case, regardless of the internals.MDX - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I trust you guys over Tom's Hardware, but why does they seem to think the cooling system is just fine and not seem to have an issue with heat?MDX - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Can't edit comments >< http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gt70-dragon-ed...It almost seems like MSI updated the fan or something?