 Alright guys, so I'm here in my room in the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas. I'm just looking out the window right now So you can't really see much from the window here But I guess what do you really expect to see there's an Eiffel Tower sort of over there. I guess that's not too bad There's the Rio. All right, so I'm gonna sort of head back over here where I'm going to be doing a surprise Unboxing so this is an MSI notebook. This is part of their GX 660R series and I'm gonna tell you guys all about the spec of this particular model coming up Live from CES 2011 now not really live in Las Vegas Alright, so it's only fitting I break the seals on this bad boy with the killer neck killer neck killer Nick heatsink that I got at the MSI overclocking event today. So we're gonna go ahead and break this open I did not bring my unboxing knife with me because I did remember about how I had it Confiscated last time I tried to take it on an airplane So yes lesson learned and I will not be repeating that mistake So as a GX, okay with GX as the first two letters of the part number here It's fairly obvious already that this is a gaming series notebook So I can tell you guys right now that it uses a core i7 processor. It supports up to two internal two and a half inch hard drives up to 12 gigs max of DDR3 memory and it also has a powerful Radeon HD 5870 graphics card. So let's see how much of that in MSI is going to cover on the outside of the box for us It looks like most of the features on here are things that I covered already You can see the exclusive three times DDR3 sodium slots for maximum 12 gigs of RAM with the way that Prices are coming down on DDR3 That may be a very possible thing that you can upgrade this particular model with we've also got MXI exclusive TDE plus that is turbo drive engine plus technology for Increasing the speed of your CPU and GPU got a sticker about that as well over here All right, we've also got yeah that I mentioned before so it comes by default with dual SATA hard drives in Rade 0 But what I would really recommend for a notebook like this and I'm probably gonna outfit this one with this particular setup would be changing one of the drives to a an SSD and then using the other drive as a storage hard drive We've got an HD webcam supporting 720p with 30 FPS as well as support for USB 3.0 now sound by Dynaudio that's kind of an interesting interesting thing to call out on a notebook because honestly I've been complaining about notebook audio for years, and it's good to see that there's not only MSI But there's actually a couple companies that are really working towards addressing what has been just a glaring omission in the notebook market and that is a A notebook that is really designed to deliver good quality sound whether you're running it off the speakers or off of some headphones So here's the overall spec of this particular notebook and stop saying particular now. Sorry about that guys, and this is in French So while I could do it and actually sure why not okay? So the color is black black gray and black the screen is a 15.6 inch 1920 by 1080p they're calling it glare type although. That's not very flattering I think what they mean to say is glossy or vibrant we have an Intel core i7 740 QM processor with dual 320 gig hard drives in raid 0 those are 7200 rpm drives This is a performance model, so it's all about performance We've got 6 gigs of DDR 3 running in triple channel, and we have a blu-ray combo drive So that's pretty cool wireless has we've got bluetooth and wireless and we have Windows 7 home premium 64-bit and the battery is a 9 cell battery which for a gaming model I guess it better be if you're hoping to have any kind of reasonable battery life And it looks like looks like French people don't get to know that the VGA is an ATI Radeon HD 5870 1 gig DDR 5 I Really don't think that was on the French side So go ahead and check that out. Yes. It's not there, so why don't we go ahead and get our our killer? Seal breaker here, and let's get this thing opened up Here we go I'm going to figure out how to open the box which I have done on a number of occasions With various products as you guys may or may not already be aware. Let's see what we got inside here So as usual these accessories first, so it looks like the notebook is there and you got maybe these are little MSI ends Actually, that's probably just for packaging strength, so we have our accessory box Just gonna move this so that we can get the best possible light I know the lighting is not ideal here But I wouldn't be me if I didn't unbox things anywhere and everywhere so the first thing we find is a power cord Next we find an AC adapter, so that's where that power cord is going to plug into it is pretty large But you do expect that on a gaming model because there is a lot of power that needs to be delivered I'll tell you guys what this thing's rated for in just a minute here, so this guy is rated for 19 volt output and up to 6.32 amps so that would be well over the maximum of what I would expect this notebook to draw It's actually not that heavy for such a large power brick here. I'll give you guys my My iPhone for comparison if I can find it I apologize for the state of my room here. I just kind of threw my things down on the Everywhere when I walked in so here's my iPhone for comparison Okay, so it's a little bit longer than an iPhone It's about the same width and in terms of thickness there you can compare that as well, so hopefully that helps All right, we've got some discs here. We've got drivers manual and utilities We have a blue rain DVD solution, okay, so we have playback and burning suite for multimedia systems pretty cool We have a Windows 7 home premium I'm just going to make sure my serial number isn't anywhere on there because the last thing I need is No serial number for this particular notebook there. I did it again F3 hotkey recovery function so let's find out what this is The purpose is to restore the system back to the factory default settings with F3 hotkey Always back up important data before using the F3 hotkey recovery. That's a very good idea So there you go, so they've apparently made it quite easy to restore the system to factory defaults Which is great if you're like buying a system like this for your mom And you don't want to go over there every time she has some kind of a problem Maybe your mom's a gamer my mom isn't but you never know it's still a good feature to have in their notebook line Regardless of which notebook model we're talking about so here. We have a quick start guide Which covers the basics as well as some common operating features so here? Let's show you guys what kind of features we have with the function keys so we can Enable or disable the touchpad we can change our output we can turn on or off the eco engine Which I'm assuming is going to preserve some power we can enable or disable our webcam wireless LAN Bluetooth 3G I don't think that's going to function in Canada Not a hundred percent sure about that we can adjust brightness volume as well as our mute so that's how We can change things about the system with the function keys while we are operating it We've got a little warranty summary here So it looks like it is a 24 month two-year warranty in the United States and Canada and here's a CE compliance booklet Which I've never seen before and I'm not even remotely interested in so next we have our nine cell battery And we're almost there guys. We're almost there. Here's our nine cell battery rated for 7800 milliamp hours and Finally we are ready to take the notebook out of the package So I actually just arrived in Las Vegas this morning I had an MSI event today. I went to an OCZ event today as well Also had a steel series thing to do and then tomorrow is another very full schedule I'm going to try and get as many videos uploaded while I'm down here as possible But it's sometimes a bit of a challenge and I might have to wait till I'm back in Vancouver Really give you guys the full update MSI has come such a long way in terms of their shell design This is just really slick looking you've got kind of a neat scaled finish going on up here Hopefully you guys can see that okay, and then the the top of the notebook is small I wish I wasn't getting sort of weird reflections off it there we go So the top of the notebook has kind of an angular shape to it kind of like a stealth fighter And it is a glossy black fin And then we've got a little chrome accent here that I love chrome accents there You guys know a little something about me. There's another one there. I love that okay So let's go ahead and sort of turn it on its side and let's see what we're gonna find here So we're gonna find a vent hole oh two USB 3.0 ports. That's outstanding actually We have an SSD slot as well as a USB 2.0. I hope I didn't say 2.0. I meant 3.0 They are color-coded blue and they have the little super speed logo above them and then finally we have an express There we go Whatever that is it's PCIe or Whatever expansion slot that you probably won't use but you'll be kicking yourself if you don't have one and you do need something for it Here on the back. We're gonna find pretty much the usual fare a Kensington lock a Covered ventilation hole so that's kind of cool Covered ventilation hole so that's kind of that's kind of peculiar I wonder if they're using the shelf for another model as well that does require ventilation over here Interesting to say the least here. We have our power in as well as our LAN We do have support for VGA as well as HDMI video out and we also have an eSATA port on the back Finally moving around to the other side hey look at that Looks like we've got dedicated jacks for 5.1 audio out as well as a microphone. That's pretty cool So they really are taking audio seriously on this model. We've got another USB 2.0 port I love having one on the other side just in case you want to run a mouse off this port or if it's Not convenient to have it up against the other side So that's a really nice thing to see and then here we have our blu-ray combo drive Which is nicely angled with the shape of the overall notebook alright Let's have a quick look at the bottom although. I'm not going to let you guys see that just yet so that My product key can remain Not all over YouTube, and I'm just going to install the battery really quick here I'd rather I'll show you guys how to install the battery So you just put that in there lower it in and that's it you've installed the battery So I'll show you guys the bottom of the notebook Here you can see that we have easy access to upgrade the RAM as well as the optical drive as well as the hard drive So just by pulling off this whole plate you can get access to pretty much the entire internals of the notebook for user upgrades And you can bet that I will be doing some user upgrades on this guy. We got what appears to be a speaker I guess that's a subwoofer actually so please correct me if I'm wrong But that looks like a subwoofer on the bottom of this notebook. That's a pretty cool feature All right, so let's have a look at the inside here Okay, so it's covered in plastic so we won't have any problems with it getting damaged and shipping Here's our HD webcam up here at the top. I'm going to go ahead and remove this and And you guys can come along for the ride because I don't have a cameraman to sort of conveniently End shots for me when I need it and all that good stuff, so I'm pulling all of the protective film off Oh my goodness, I'm undressing it. Oh, yeah, let's see what this says got a question or problem Contact MSI customer service good thinking okay, so here you can see that the screen is quite glossy You can clearly see me in the reflection off the screen. Oh, there's your microphone for the webcam So it's right up there once again. We've got a sort of some chrome accents up here chrome accents down here Love that overall a glossy black finish, and then there's also some matte black accents in here as well So I'm going to go ahead and remove this as well Hopefully I can get a fingernail under that and I can lift that up there we go so there are our Our stereo speakers and here is their sound by Dine audio again I'm just going to try and get an angle here where you guys can see it more easily, and you don't have so much Reflection off of my lamp, but I also don't completely block my light as well so here. Why don't we do that? That's not a bad angle. Okay, so let's get in here, so we've got our 2.1 speaker setup so that looks like two speakers up here one subwoofer down in the bottom We've got our power switch here as well as a nice chrome MSI logo We've got some buttons up here which look to be touch sensitive buttons or either that or these are just indicators so I'm going to have to find that out for you guys and I'm going to be giving you guys my full impressions on this notebook once. I have a chance down here in CES I don't know how realistic that is but once I do get back I'm going to tell you everything that I have to say about this notebook Overall build of it seems so far quite sturdy although It's really hard to tell until I've really typed a lot on the keyboard and really played around with the shell Opened it up in terms of keyboard layout. It looks pretty strong so far. This is not a bilingual layout I hate bilingual layouts to be perfectly honest with you guys. I've got a properly positioned shift key I have a short shift key here But I don't mind that because it would be very rare that I would actually reach over here to hit the shift key It's much closer here, so I really like this design choice that they've made here to put the arrow keys there to condense the keyboard To give me a number pad because I do actually work on my notebook even though it is a GX gaming notebook Yeah, I'm still going to do some work So it's great to have a number pad if I have to do any data entry the enter and backspace keys are also the appropriate size And look at this. I've got conveniently highlighted WASD keys, so yeah, yeah There's a little gaming focus in there for sure We have one Windows key here, and then we do not on the other side But that doesn't really bother me very much And I think that's pretty much all I need to say about the keyboard the touchpad uses kind of a textured finish So you shouldn't get too much grease built up I don't really like very very smooth touch pads And I'm glad to see that everyone seems to be pretty much moving away from that same thing here We've got a bit of a glossy shiny chrome finished outer portion here But the actual buttons themselves are using like a brushed finish so that they're not going to be too bad in terms of finger magnetism And you've also got a little bit of a grip on it so you can really feel where your finger goes without it sliding off or anything like that We've got some stickers here Something about ATI mobility Radeon HD 5870 graphics Windows 7, Core i7, Energy Star and DTS surround sensation PC, look at that, I wonder if... what are these? Hmm, interesting Okay, well we've got another little summary of the technology that's present in this notebook Although I've covered that already and I think that pretty much concludes my unboxing I'm going to take a moment and actually fire it up here with you guys There we go, we've got an MSI boot screen We've got, appears to be Western Digital 320 gig drives in RAID 0 You can see they are configured in the RAID BIOS That's such a cool feature, being able to have RAID in a notebook I mean you could even throw two SSDs in here, throw those in RAID 0 and get just crazy speed for a notebook I'm also going to play around in the near future, I'll do another video for you guys I want to play around with the overclocking feature for the CPU Because I will be using this notebook for some video rendering And I want to find out how much of a performance improvement I can get by overclocking the CPU So there we go, we're fired up and I'm going to spend some time now to do some setup Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the MSI GX660R 060US This is a Core i7 and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 gaming notebook