 Today I have a very unique SKU to unbox and I use terms like SKU with you guys, but I know you don't necessarily know what that means. So SKU stands for stock keeping unit and that means that it is a particular configuration of notebook that has a unique identifier like a part number, whereas the shell, that is what the notebook looks like, could have any number of SKUs associated with it if you had different configurations like different CPUs, amounts of memory, graphics cards or whatever else. So this SKU is unique. This is using MSI's GT685 shell. It is a 15.6 inch notebook. It has their Dyne Audio. In my testing, significantly better than average speaker system. It has their LED lighting strips. It's got a decent keyboard on it. It's not the best, it's not the worst. It's got their built-in overclocking. I'm opening this up as quickly as I can here because the most interesting thing about this notebook is actually nothing to do with the shell, but actually the configuration inside. So we're going to grab the battery because we will need that for later. So it comes with a battery, comes with a copy of Dirt 3 as well as your utilities, quick start guide, manual, all that good stuff. It comes with an enormous power brick. Look at that thing. We're going to do the old iPhone comparison. Oh, actually the iPhone comparison might not necessarily be valid if I have it in a case. So that's how big it is. You can go ahead and get a better angle of that from the side maybe to show them the thickness while I'm sorting out other things over here. So yes, it's an enormous power brick. And the reason for that is that while this is a Core i5 notebook that's actually fairly high priced, this is a $1,700 notebook at retail, what's cool about it is the fact that it has a GTX 580M inside. A 580M. So why would you have a GTX 580M with a Core i5 dual core CPU? And the answer to that is because I thought it was a good idea. So I asked MSI, based on my request to create this skew, what they've done is compared to other similar models, they have downgraded the CPU from a quad core to a dual core, that is from an i7 to an i5. They have downgraded the memory because normally a system of this caliber, that is about a $1,700 system, would come with about 16 gigs of RAM these days. They have downgraded the hard drive. So instead of going with dual hard drives in RAID 0, which they are apt to do with this particular shell because it can hold two drives, which is a very very cool feature. And so now you've got one empty drive which you can throw an SSD in once you receive the notebook. And then they've used all of that extra budget that we saved on all those other things and upgraded the GPU to a 580M. So what does this mean for the usage model of this notebook? Well for one thing, don't buy this notebook if you're a video encoder, or a video editor, or if you're planning on doing any serious 3D modeling work or anything like that because the dual core is going to really slow you down, even though it does have hyperthreading. However, if you are a gamer, this system is going to be delightful because all of the downgrades that have been made to the system are not going to really affect games too much. So yes, we've gone to a dual core CPU but it's clocked higher and most games are still preferring to use fewer cores at higher frequencies, so there's that. The 8 gigs of RAM is still more than adequate for pretty much any game that's out there right now, although you can upgrade it if you want. And the additional graphics card firepower is what's really going to deliver that buttery smooth performance. So what else do we have here that I'm missing? So it has a matte screen which is great. So many gaming shells come with glossy screens these days because they are cheaper in order to achieve the contrast that the manufacturers are going for. It is an LED backlit panel. It has, you know, wireless ends, got your eco button, bluetooth, wifi, all those interesting features. You can actually change, I don't know if it's going to work now when we're not booted up into the OS, but you can actually change the lighting effects so you can turn on and off the ones that are on the sides, the ones that are on the front, and then the MSI logo I think is lit all the time here on the back. We're going to have a bit of a closer look at the notebook itself though. So it's fairly thick, although this is probably about as small and thin of a shell that you're going to find a GTX 580 in at any point in time. Here's a cool thing, going along with their Dynaudio Better Audio for Notebooks theme, you've actually got dedicated 5.1 out ports, which is very cool. You've got USB, you've got a DVD drive on the back, you find your power, your gigabit ethernet, your VGA, your eSATA, your HDMI. This is the perfect combination I think because you still do run into needs for VGA from time to time, but HDMI is smaller and more compact than DVI, so very convenient. You've got huge exhaust vents here and here, and you will need them. The GTX 580 is a beast. You've also got USB 3 ports, two of those, an SD card reader, another USB 2.0 port, and then on the front we just find some vents that, they're not actually vents, they just have lights behind them, so they glow orange when you set it to do so. Upgrading this notebook is a piece of cake. I've actually done it on my channel I think, with this particular shell, not this skew. But yeah, you can see one of your drives there. So you just take off this whole panel and you can access your memory upgrades as well as your hard drive, and you can have a look at that expensive, fancy GPU that you just spent a lot of money on because a GTX 580M is not cheap. So thank you for checking out my unboxing, and first look at it, I never even told you the skew. This is the GT685818US. Oh, he wants me to hold this up. Okay, sure. And it has an HD webcam, which I didn't mention yet, and that's pretty much it. So this is as close to a custom Linus Edition skew as it gets because this skew was crazy created based on my request for a more balanced configuration. So I downgraded everything we didn't need, and I wanted to beef up the GPU as much as possible to deliver the best possible gaming experience on a notebook within a sub-$2,000 budget. And it's actually a few hundred dollars less than that. So we're actually going to be testing it against another notebook on my NCIXCOM channel, so you're going to want to make sure you're subscribed not only to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings and videos like this, but also NCIXCOM so you can see the showdown between this one and the similarly expensive ASUS model with a GTX 560 and a quad core and lots of RAM and all that, all the other bells and whistles.