@kistaro Cards right now..

So thoughts after a month of owning my current blade 15"

I love everything about except the fan management. It is fucking terrible. MSI came out of the box with amazing fan management, overclocking, downclocking and hardware control software.

By comparision Synapse is terri-bad. Especially since it does not let you set fan profiles. The automatic fan control lets the laptop get very warm before turning them to max rpm until cool and then shutting them down..

@kistaro Manual fan control lets you set the fans between 4k and 5k (max) rpm.. no lower.

The lighting controller for Synapse loses all of its settings if the laptop goes to sleep. (So things like disabling the glowing logo.. have to turn on.. and off again to get it to stay off)

But.. it has a fantastic keyboard, amazing trackpad.. like just as good as the macbook pro I use for work stuff. I do wish it had a dedicated ethernet port like the GS65 (which is somehow lighter and thinner)

@kistaro And unlike my original razerblade 14" from 2014.. opening the it up does not void the warranty.. and the ram is swapable, fans replaceable and SSD serviceable. In fact none off the components are soldered to the mobo except the stuff that is build into it (GPU, wireless etc)

So it is extremely serviceable.. the battery is easily replaceable* (razer does not sell them but it is a more standard cell arrangement and easy to buy 3rd party compared to their older offerings)

@kistaro Supposedly some of the older 10 series Max-Q units had some QC issues and coil whine.. mine doesn't.

Other than the fan controller and the finish (mine got scratched up in my bag by the charging plug.. but I'm probably going to skin it anyway to get rid of the glowing logo) I can't find anything I don't like about it after a month. Which is surprising because after how my 14" blade died I had pretty much sworn razer off for ever.

@kistaro But the razerblade advanced 15" was literally everything I was looking for in a laptop.. at a fairly reasonable price (1400 USD)

The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin was perfect on paper but they skimped on the trackpad and keyboard and that killed it for me.

@wobblewuffess Hm. If the MSI laptop I ordered last night (arrives tomorrow) doesn’t work out, I might go back to Razer. I was specifically looking for a higher performance card than a Max-Q so right now I’ve got a not-lightweight short-battery laptop 2080 (but not Max-Q) machine on the way.

I’m specifically looking for a desktop replacement. The keyboard problems sound bad, but I take it for granted that Windows trackpads suck (even the Microsoft Surface Laptop can’t get it quite right). I’m going back to gaming laptops after we discovered I had no way to use the 3-year warranty on a gaming desktop that is randomly crashing under gaming load because, without a car, I can’t ship it in for repair (and it costs over $100 to ship anyway and requires expanding foam inserts for the inside of the case). So I have to evaluate all desktop PCs as “no warranty”, and given the decaying reliability of the last two years of graphics cards (at least as I’ve experienced them), I feel like I have to assume I will need warranty repairs - which turned out to be distressingly and immediately true for the ASUS laptop, except they couldn’t give me parts that worked on the second try either. My looking into buying another laptop now is because I have a second computer to replace - its 960M and i5 can’t keep up with my gaming preferences.

@kistaro That is completely fair. I wasn't willing to throw down for a RTX serious card but I have a gaming rig that is still cutting it for the most part for now. (Though I really want to move to 2k @ 144hz eventually.. since I love my aging 2k Dell Ultrasharp.. but 60hz has been.. frustrating in some of the things I play with friends.. but that would require a full rebuild most likely and that is probably not in my budget until next year.)

Looks like the GS75 uses a different keyboard so hopefully you don't have the same issues I had with the G65.

On trackpads.. I've definitely been spoiled.. the razerblade 14" used for 5 years had the best trackpad I've ever used on Windows only machine prior to the razerblade 15". Which is almost as good as the 2017 MBP work issued me and miles better than my bootcamped 2008 MBP that I used for years prior to buying the razerblade 14" in 2014

@wobblewuffess My reflexes and object identification abilities are bad enough that I don’t think 144 Hz would help me, but being able to push a steady 60 (to an ultrawide-QHD) would be nice. Of course, my *monitor* only does 50hz over HDMI (but up to 100 and maybe 120 over DisplayPort), so getting a laptop with DisplayPort out and not only HDMI was a priority, but not dropping to 25 FPS in the middle of a Deep Rock Galactic run would be nice. :p

@kistaro Yeah that would definitely be helpful.. oof.. I didn't realize the 960m had fallen that far behind.
On the subject of display out.. thankfully USB-C has become pretty standard on anything made in the last year. I wish more manufacturers would use display port or mini display port over HDMI.

@wobblewuffess The entire computer is kind of flaky in a few ways, so it might be localized bad performance rather than a realistic trait of 960Ms. I just tend not to upgrade computers *slightly* if at all possible; if I’m replacing them for performance reasons I tend to go to extremes. Not necessarily a prudent habit. >..>

@kistaro Gotcha! No judgment here as long as it fits your economic situation!

@wobblewuffess And, of course, shipping got screwed up so I won’t get my new laptop until after the weekend. Thanks, UPS. :p

@kistaro Ughhh.. that always sucks :(

@wobblewuffess And then it just showed up today instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now for the ritual of installing everything (ninite.com is awesome), deleting shovelware, and making Comcast hate me as I redownload a few hundred gigabytes of games