In 2020, I abandoned gaming laptops as a class and built a desktop based on the latest line of processors and graphics cards at that time – Intel 10700K, EVGA RTX 3080, 32GB RAM Corsair Dominator Platinum 3600MHz DDR4.
I was completely satisfied with the build, with only the poorly optimized nektgen version of The Witcher 3 and the new location in Cyberpunk 2077 slowing down at ultra settings with ray tracing, all other games were flying, not to mention applications. But since then, new lines of almost all components have appeared on the market, and I wanted to try something new. In addition, I spend a lot of time out of the house, and the question of buying a laptop arose. And then I had the opportunity to test the MSI Raider GE78HX 13VI (full specification – Raider GE78HX 13VI-209UA) slowly and over a few months.
For the sake of the purity of the experiment, I completely replaced the desktop with the laptop, left a 27-inch LG monitor (144hz, 2k, sold out at the time of writing, waiting for ALIENWARE AW3225QF / AW3423DWF) and a Razer BlackWidow v4 Pro mechanical keyboard complete with a Pro Thunderbolt 4 Dock hub. The hub is convenient because all the peripherals, monitor and LAN cable are connected directly to it, and it connects to the laptop with a single Thunderbolt cable. And when you need to disconnect the laptop for a trip or move to another room with it, it’s done in one motion. But enough of the introduction, let’s get down to business.
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| MSI technical specifications Raider GE78HX 13VI-209UA | |
| Screen | 17″ QHD+ (2560×1600), 240 Hz, IPS |
| Processor | Core™ i9-13980HX |
| RAM | 64 GB, DDR5-5600 |
| Drive | 2 TB, GB PCI-E 4.0 NVMe SSD Samsung |
| Video card | GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop |
| Wireless interfaces | Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth v5.3 |
| Wired interfaces | HDMI, 2x USB A, 3x USB C, 3.5 mm, SD Card Reader |
| Power supply | 330 W |
| Battery | 99 W*h |
| Weight | 3.1 kg |
| Dimensions | 380 x 298 x 23 mm |
| OS | Windows 11 Home |
The look of the laptop is a dream come true for any schoolboy. Strict black color is enlivened by design inserts – red stripes that refer to racing cars, built-in and shimmering like a Christmas tree, RGB backlighting on the front panel, and a luminous dragon emblem on the back panel. All this “happiness” is controlled by the proprietary Steelseries GG application. The lid and screen bezel are made of black aluminum alloy. The hinges seem to be made reliably, the screen does not wobble, and there are no signs that they may fail after a year or two of use. The laptop is definitely not small and light. The monster power supply adds to the weight, which in theory can successfully swat away a couple of zombies. In total, the laptop and power supply weigh more than 4 kg. Accordingly, when buying such a device, you should immediately plan a backpack of the appropriate size. I was relatively lucky here, as my old Bellroy backpack, designed for devices up to 16 inches, fit my laptop, albeit with some difficulty. The power supply and mouse go into an external pocket, and thus the main space of the backpack remains free for other things.”
In front we have a 17-inch screen with a resolution of 2560×1600 dots and an aspect ratio of 16:10. The bezels on the sides are quite narrow, only 6 mm, the top, where the FULL-HD webcam with a security curtain is located, is slightly thicker – 13.5 mm, and the bottom is 16.5 mm. Let’s move on to the ports. There’s plenty of room to roam here – the number of different inputs is not much worse than desktop computers. On the left we have an SD card reader and a Type-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support and 40 Gbps bandwidth. On the right are two USB 3.2b ports and another Type-C port with Power Delivery support, or in plain English, fast charging of devices. For fun, I tested its speed on my Pixel 8 Pro and got the following results.
Next to it, for comparison, is the charging speed from the Pixel Stand Gen 2. The same cable was used for the purity of the experiment. Still, the native Google charger turned out to be almost twice as fast. And to complete the boring but obligatory list of ports, let’s move on to the back panel. There is a power adapter jack, another Type-C port, an RJ-45 network port and HDMI 2.1. An interesting point: absolutely all Type-C ports are DP-compatible, which means that you can connect up to four monitors to the laptop at the same time. I don’t know why this is necessary, I have enough of one, but if someone wants to do this, there is a possibility for it! A metal mesh with small holes for air intake, which takes up almost half the case, catches the eye from below. On the right and left sides, next to the ports, there is a series of holes through which the cooling system releases hot air.”
Below are a few more tests made in different benchmarks.
Of interest, I note the performance of the built-in M.2 disk from Samsung – this model turned out to be almost twice as slow as my Samsung 990 Pro. That’s why I used it for the system and Google Drive, and a more advanced model for games. An extra couple of seconds of bootup is a trifle, but it’s nice.”
To summarize this section, we can confidently say that MSI Raider copes with its main task with flying colors. The system boots up in a few seconds, and the performance is 30-50 percent better than the desktop I described at the beginning of the article. There are zero complaints in this regard, and the only significant drawback is the high noise level, which I will mention later in the article.
The MSI Raider GE78HX 13VI uses a 17-inch IPS matrix with a resolution of 2560×1600, an aspect ratio of 16:10, and a screen refresh rate of 240 Hz. 16:10 was probably used for the sake of performance rather than gaming, as the extra unit gives you a taller screen where more information fits. For gaming, it doesn’t matter much. To control colors, MSI has added a special MSI True Color utility where you can choose one of the preset options to customize the screen. For work, I use the less bright Office mode, for everything else I use the Player mode. This program is compatible with several models of calibrators, but the laptop software did not want to be friends with my Calibrite Display Pro HL model, so I calibrated through the calibrator software. According to the results of the calibration, I managed to achieve a peak brightness of 470 nits (400 is enough for me to work) and a white point temperature of almost 7000K (I use 6500).
The color space covers 163% of sRGB and 115.4% of DCI-P3. The color reproduction in games and movies does not cause any complaints, the colors are bright and saturated, but sometimes at dark levels in games or in dark scenes in movies, I wanted to increase the brightness a little.
To be honest, I can’t say anything special about the touchpad, I’m a confident mouse user, and I hate touchpads with all my heart. It is quite large and responsive. It works. It doesn’t annoy, as is often the case with inexpensive laptops. In general, it does its job well. But the keyboard made me happy. Yes, it’s not the mechanics of the older Titan model, which I’m used to at home, but a full-size SteelSeries membrane keyboard, but it’s damned comfortable and pleasant to use. It uses linear switches, as far as I can tell, and requires medium pressure to type, and the keys are responsive and comfortable. I haven’t had a single double-click during the entire time I’ve been using it. After a few days, I practically don’t make mistakes, as is often the case with uncomfortable keyboards. For the first week I got used to the shortened left Shift key, but now it feels normal. The keyboard has a backlight, which, like the front panel backlight, can be adjusted through the proprietary Steelseries GG utility. WASD keys are made in a transparent style, which makes them stand out from the rest. For those who like spreadsheets and calculators, there is a number pad. I found it less convenient than in a traditional keyboard, primarily because of its size, but it is there, and thank you for that.
I also did not like MSI’s decision to move the FN function key to the right, to press it with your little finger in combination with other keys, to put it mildly, is not very convenient.
I made several measurements of WiFi speed, comparing it with the speed of the cable connection and the WiFi speed on the Pixel 8 Pro in the same location. The results were almost identical, and this is great, in my opinion, because manufacturers often skimp on WiFi and install cheap transceivers even in premium devices.
As for the webcam, it uses a 1080p model with a built-in protective shutter. The standard camera is paired with an IR camera compatible with the Windows Hello face recognition system. This allows you to log in without pin codes or other authorization methods. The laptop does not have a fingerprint scanner. On average, the recognition takes less than a second, but about once every couple of weeks, when you turn on the computer, Windows Hello may freeze and you need to enter a pin code. In other scenarios, it works without any problems. The main camera shoots video in good quality, it is not a shame to use it on calls. Yes, of course, it can’t be compared to the Razer Kiyo Ultra that I use at home, but as a laptop, it’s a good solution overall.
The sound is excellent for a laptop. Bass and low frequencies are audible, and you can clearly distinguish different instruments when listening to music. In games, both the character’s steps and the sounds of distant enemy shots are perfectly audible. There are six speakers under the hood – two regular and four low-frequency speakers that produce a loud enough sound that fills the entire room.
Sound is controlled using the built-in Nahimic software. You can choose a profile for the style of use – Music, Movie, Communication or Game. It’s hard to classify me as an audiophile, although I like music, and I didn’t feel much difference between the modes. Therefore, I chose the Intelligent profile, which, according to the developers, adjusts the sound to a specific usage scenario, and forgot about this setting (at home I have stationary Harman Kardon speakers, and when traveling, I don’t have much time to listen to music).
The first thing I did after receiving the MSI Raider GE78HX 13VI laptop was to open the back cover. I had done this many times before, but now I suddenly had problems. After I unscrewed all the bolts, I started looking for a place to pry the lid with a pry bar to get to the inside. This turned out to be a difficult task, the parts of the case fit together quite tightly, and I even had to watch a few YouTube videos, which, however, did not help much. In about 15 minutes, however, I managed to do it, added another 2 GB disk without any problems, and closed the lid for another 15 minutes, because for some reason the audio jack did not want to go into the slot intended for it. The disks and RAM are located at the top of the laptop, and they are quite easy to replace. At the same time, I had to break the warranty seal, so I’m not sure how this would affect the warranty if it were a purchased laptop.
In the MSI Center app, you can select three battery modes – Discrete mode (using RTX 4090), MSI Hybrid (discrete graphics card is used in certain scenarios), or Integrated graphics card. In fact, you can work comfortably only in the first mode. In the other two, the laptop begins to slow down significantly, losing smoothness, even in normal work applications. In addition, when you change the mode, Bitlocker starts sounding the alarm and every time you need to unlock the disk. All this makes Discrete Mode virtually unavailable. There are four more sub-modes in Discrete Mode: Smart Auto (based on AI, the laptop chooses the mode that is most suitable for work, I didn’t really like it because in games it sometimes turns on cooling late when the laptop has had time to warm up decently), Extreme Performance (for games it’s just right), Balanced, Silent (I use it for work) and Super Battery.
In normal operating mode – typing, surfing, chatting in instant messengers, watching short videos – the charge lasted about two and a half hours. To be honest, it’s not enough, but it would be hard to expect any other result when using the 4090 as the main video processor.
This is perhaps the weakest point of the MSI Raider GE78HX 13VI. When playing a conditional Cyberpunk 2077 or any other hardware-demanding game for more than an hour, the processor temperature reaches 95-97 degrees, and several times the laptop simply turned off due to overheating when the temperature exceeded 100 degrees.
The stand is a little better. The processor temperature reaches 85-90 degrees, but at least the laptop doesn’t shut down. To quickly solve the problem, I bought an inexpensive version from Cooler Master with two small fans. If readers are interested, I will make a short post about different models of laptop cooling stands with temperature measurements with and without them. Below are the stress tests of the processor and video card with the cooling stand.
The noise level is also not good. But this is the price of high performance. Sometimes you feel like you’re in an airplane that is taking off. The laptop makes more than 50 decibels of noise, and it’s quite loud. Among the pleasant details, even when it gets very hot, the keyboard remains slightly warm, hot air comes out of the side vents and only the metal strip between the screen and the keyboard, which I don’t touch under normal conditions, gets hot.