The Official 1722/GX720 Lounge

true, though in limited quantities...

 

Absolutely....when they are gone, they're gone.

 

I just got done installing Windows 7 x64. Touch panel working, Dolby Control Center is working, Camera is working, etc.

I swear, I thought the compusa ad said 1900 rez, but I'm gonna have to love the display I have... it works.

Nothing broken yet.... Graphics card is the weak link in the performance chain right now. Keeping the score stuck at a 5.3 experience. I've not seen anything about someone being successful with the 280 or a 4750 swap. Anyone know better?

 

The 9600m GT is not that weak, Overclock it to 645/985/1585 then it flies, when I had my 1722 thats what I had it set to and it gave it much better preformance..

 

I'll give that a spin!
*Props*

 

Is there a way to use 24% turbo with ddr 800mhz in the bios? Does upgrading the ram to lets say 8gb help?

 

Im running 24% overclock with 800mhz ram with no issues at all. I feel like pushing it further lol.

 

I noticed you upgraded your ram to G.Skill! The stock ram can't handle it if I turbo it 24% and switched it to 800mhz, but its fine at 667mhz.

Time to upgrade my ram then!

 

Yeah the G.Skill is good stuff.

 

Oh, I also picked up a backpack that Im really digging that fits the 1722 snuggly. Has a fair amount of room for all that extra tech stuff I like to carry around lol. Not bad for 49 bucks either.

 

I plan on getting a mxm-3 card. What stuff should I get to make a modded heatsink?

 

I would use a stock HS tube/exhaust 9600 piece and custom fit a 1/16"-1/12" inch copper plate to cover the needed surface space. Find a machine shop that can cut a piece to your exact dimensions.

 

Lol, something more "diy"? Stuff I can buy online and do it myself (nothing involving power tools).

Does the ram need active cooling? If not, then I have some video-ram heatsinks that will fit.

Will the 9600m heatsink fit the actual gpu of mxm-3 cards (the diode thing, not the ram) without any modding?

 

Hey people. Very interesting reading here and very good information. But, what I'm looking for has been very hard to find. I have bought one of the ms-1722 GX720 barebones from ebay, probably one of the stolen ones since it doesn't have a serial number.

The thing is, I need a replacement part. I need to replace what some call the power board or usb board. Any body have any ideals where I can get one of those? I have the part out, but don't see any viable part number to reference from. If any one could help me find this part, I would really appreciate it.

 

Is there a way to buy a blu-ray with the fancy bezel thing

 

i i bought a msi gx720 barebone off ebay and it looks like this http://i39.tinypic.com/242g6le.jpg how come it doesnt look like the msi gx720 with the silver grill and crome strip in between keyboard and palmrest is that the only diffrence ?

 

that's what a gx720 barebone supposed to look like. You have to buy it retail (at a shop, like RK Computers) to get the fancy silver grill.

 

darth from what ive seen, the bezels are usually impossible to find, especially with the lack of stock, however if you get a blu ray drive, it is possible to fit it with the bezel. any drive can have its bezel replaced, theres just a few retention clips. as for the ram on the cards, they themselves dont neccesarily need cooling IF they are left at stock speeds, however a ramsink cant hurt. The physical dimensions im not sure of, if youre really wanting to extend the bracket some, an option is to get a thin copper sheet and extend it over from the closest area that touches ram. i wouldnt put it over the actual GPU, you can get really really thin thermal tape and use that as an option to bind the copper sheet to the bottom of the heatsink, that should extend coverage and possibly give you some extra cooling.

 

I am currently crudely modding my gx720... Should make a thread by Saturday on what develops. ...

 

Good luck on your mod, I sold my GT725 to my brother and I will miss it. My AW is awesome and worth every penny I paid for it. Money well spent..

 

so thats the only diffrence? because ive orderd a plamrest and touch sensor bezel and wondering if i can just stick it in?the plugs should be the same ?

 

hey MentalGiant try msi spares and repairs and ask for the part could be pricey but allways worth a shot

 

Hi guys
Basically I want to buy a Gateway P-7809u FX from US (I am from Romania , EU) ,if is not available my second choice can be MSI GX720
This meets my demands, 17" screen, graphic card that can run Counter Strike Source without frame drop or low frame, most important to not have keyboard that bends under pressure, good chassis construction
I found in local stores model MSI GX720X-025EU for ~ 1400$
I think that somehow is built for Europe, can be worst that yours?
Any issues with reliability in time for this specific model ?
Thank you

Can be Windows 7 64 Bit installed on this laptop?

 

Well, I can overclock my qx9300 a good bit now and my new video works (i can game with it), but it refuses to run at full clocks which I think is due to not enough power. After testing a new ac adapter and trying to find better heatsinks, I will post with pics and go into greater detail.

 

so are you using a software overlock or how are you getting past that bit, also lets hear about your new card, which one did you get?

also one of the things i forgot to mention, im kinda wondering if the reason why the oc is limited on the quadcores is something related to how much power can actually get into the machine,

sort of how you need a better psu to oc stuff or run better hardware, if you think about it in laptops the wattage is significantly lower to decrease heat, and increase battery life, im just not sure how scalable that power supply is, a quadcore is already gonna consume double the power though thats under max load, i wonder how well the machine is gonna be able to take the increased power demands of an oced quad core, as well as from what it sounds like a new gpu, keep us posted it sounds like youre gonna be pushing msi engineering a little bit and then some.

 

What video card did you get??

 

hey im i got a ms-1722 id2 barebone and im wanting to upgrade my gpu from9600gt to ati 4850 .and did a bit of reshearch ..

a-is the motherboard in the gx720 same to gt725 ?

b-is there a higher wattage with the ati 4850

c-if i get a gt725 heatsink will it fit gx720 with the 4850 gpu

d-has anyone done this ?

thanks any help would be great ....

 

Yes they are the same Motherboard GX720 and GT725. The heatsink will work from the GT725 for the GX720, the 4850 fits right in the GX720, I tried this and it worked like a charm.. The problem is finding a 4850.. I used the power adapter from my GT725 for the GX720 and had no problems at all..

 

darthbane, did to manage to clock your quad core furthur? I max out at 2.33 ghz (stock is 2.26), its a q9100, but bios dectects as core 2 extreme q9100 (it its an engineering sample). Any way to push higher than 2.3?

 

thanks nacro05

 

oh and does any one know of the best thermal paste to use for msi 1722 barebone id2 for cpu,gpu and southbridge

 

Di, ive had great results with the tried and true arctic silver 5, best cooling, used in on the gpu and cpu and northbride, stuff works wonders, as for the thermal pads on the ram, those will do fine. however Ceramique from the guys that makes as5 is good too, its a more permanent solution if you dont want to have to reapply as often with as5, though it wont cool as well.

but whatever you use, get arctic clean, its a two stage cleaner for heatsinks and dies, removes all the gunk from old applications or gets rid of the stuff that they put on new heatsinks, it comes off like a charm, though you can use rubbing alcohol also, though this stuff i think works alot better, give it a shot, its like $7 on newegg.

as for temps you can expect, they vary per cpu, but the graphics cards gonna run hot like an 8800, but its quite capable, as well, the cooler in this laptop does an awesome job of cooling while remaining quiet.

 

Wow what a great thread! I recently was lucky enough to grab one of the
GX720-032US from Tiger Direct for $699 just before they sold out. I also
bought a Seagate 7200RPM 320 Gb/s drive to replace the Fujitsu 5400RPM
320 Gb/s drive it came stock with. Everything's working fine with the stock
drive. When I try installing the 7200 RPM Seagate the BIOS doesn't
recognize it & I can't format & partition it. BIOS is V 1.0R. I've checked &
double checked the drive installation to make sure it's plugged in & seated well
in the drive bay. All is fine when I put back in my original stock Fujitsu drive.
Do you think it's safe to say at this point the new Seagate drive is DOA?

 

Can you test it in another laptop or external enclosure? It's probably dead. I find it interesting yours came with 1.0R. My barebone came with 1.0N. There's also a 1.0S and the newer 1.0U, lol.

 

Personally Seagate drives are garbage.. best option is to go with a Western Digital 320GB, There fast and stay cool.. Thats all I ever owned and never had any problems with them.
When you put the new drive in are you using an OS disk to install windows? If not try it and see what happens.. Keep us updated..

 

Unfortunately I don't have anything else to test the drive in. I have an external
eSATA doc on the way but it may not arrive till past my 30 day return policy
from Tiger Direct. I purchased the drive & laptop 07-22-09. I'm inclined to think
the drive is dead so I may just get going to pursue an RMA tomorrow. I've
tried getting the drive to load Windows from The Vista Restore disks I made
from the laptop when I got it. I've tried to install from a Win XP OEM disk
I have & I've tried formatting & partitioning with Partition logic, which runs
from it's own bootable CD independent of any OS install. None of that would
work & that's when I went & looked into BIOS to see the drive was not even
recognized as being installed. BIOS displays "no SATA drive found" or
something like that. Time to send it back. I hope I can exchange it for a
Western Digital. This is the 1st Seagate I've ever bought. I've always bought
WD or Maxtor in the past. My intent is to upgrade the internal drive to
a 7200RPM & still make use of the stock 5400 RPM drive it came with for
backup through the eSATA port.

To Darth Bane - The BIOS my GX720 came with is 1.0R dated 01/06/2009
& the EC Build it came with is 4.28 dated 12/05/2008

That does seem strange. I'll have to look back over this thread but it seems
I didn't see mention of those versions showing up on the MSI website till later
than those dates.

 

If you are not having any problems, then I don't suggest upgrading to 1.0U/4.29
(after you get your hard drive fixed)

 

Darth Bane, did you manage to overclock the quad core to the full 24% increase?

Also, i am thinking of uprading my components in my laptop:
Toshiba 320GB 5400RPM => Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM
3Gb DDR2-667 Unknown => OCZ 4GB DDR2-800 5-5-5-15 OR Mushkin 4gb DDR2-800 5-5-5-18

Good enough? And how do i flash my video card bios to that of a 9700M GT?

 

That's my thinking to. I don't plan to be upgrading anything more than the
hard drive in the near future so after I get that going I'm a happy camper.
I'm not interested in overclocking or even gaming much. I just want this for
a solid stable running main all purpose laptop. Plan to use it for 3D work
with Blender, graphics & Audio/video editing & general purpose netbook.

One of the few things I would like to tweak in BIOS is the RAM speed. It's
default set to 667 & I'd like to set it to 800 as the option is there to do so
but I'm not sure I can just change that setting alone without it affecting CPU
timing. I want the P8600 clock speed to remain at it's stock 2.4 GHz.
Anyone know?

 

I haven't done any serious OC because I am still waiting on some other components. But I did test at 3.0GHZ and it was fine. I think I need to tweak the memory to get higher. Link

 

You can set the ram too 800 and with out using turbo your cpu speed will remain stock..

 

darth, you are running a qx9300? I have a Q9100 (i don't know why the bios and OS detect as a core 2 extreme QX9100?) but the turbo button, (with 24% in my bios) only boosts it by 3%. I tried that link, and it also failed to provide a boost in power. When i upgrade my components, do you think it will overclock?

Also, is there a difference between 1.0u and 1.0s that allows different overclocking? Or the EC firmwares for that matter? because all mine are upto date.

 

That's the problem, they are up to date. The whole point of that thread was to inform us that we need to flash to the older stuff to undo the locks msi put into place. Yes, i am running a qx9300.

When you flash to the older stuff, the turbo button will return back to being the internet button, but you gain the ability to OC with setfsb.

 

thanks for that! I pushed my measly 2.26ghz q9100, to a whopping 2.891GHz for an overclock percentage of 26.74%

 

Got an RMA from Tiger Direct for the Seagate drive & an OK to exchange it
for a WD Scorpio Black Mobile. I'll post how that goes when it arrives.

 

Is it true that the gt725 uses the EXACT motherboard of a barebone gx720?

I thought they were, but my gx720 does not want to supply 1V on the gpu with a quad core. However, the ati 4850 uses a min of 1v and the gt725's also use a quad core... odd.

 

Got mine from tigerdirect.com as well and upgraded my hdd to a Seagate 500GB 7200 16mb without any issues. I'm currently running an unactivated Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (RTM) because my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit upgrade is not here yet.

 

hey darth bane what do u mean buy wont supply 1 v to gpu

 

@boog, yeah you can set your speed manually to 800mhz, just gotta use the ctrl+ins command in the bios, itll unlock the secret menu which will give you the option to switch the ram speeds between 667/800/auto, i just forced it as 800, as for ram, ocz gives this notebook problems, see the past posts in this thread, as for mushkin im not sure, i trust em, but id say for this machine to grab g.skill, just the regular gskill 4gb kit from newegg will let you oc quite a bit, not to mention its more than able to handle higher ram speeds, oced i run ddr ~946 or something, and its like $50 for the kit, its been confirmed also that 8gb will work in this notebook, once again from g.skill, those are dropping to almost $100 for 2x4gb, im soo tempted.

As for flashing this card to 9700 specs, im not sure how well that would work especially with a notebook version of a card, who knows what extra crap was added to the firmware for heat/power management, but from what i hear this card ocs pretty well, so just give it a little nudge if you want some more out of it, just be careful of how far you push your ram. one of the chips is only half protected.

@darth, sounds like youre having a power issue with the card? my guess is like i said before, too much power being used, that would make sense why msi restricted the oc for quaddies, not enough power to oc and run a stepped up gpu in a machine, sure they may offer them built like that, but that doesnt mean they are giving you in writing that youre gonna be able to get a massive oc.
grats on getting it to 3ghz, i just dont think theres gonna be enough power physically getting to the machine or the card to power both of those upgrades as well as youd like. try the card and the processor at stock, if that doesnt work, then its possible that its a firmware issue with either the machine or the gpu, sorta like how theres those wifi cards thatll only work with ibm machines.

 

A video card operates at different levels/modes depending on what the user is doing. For nvidia, there are 4 modes. My card operates at 0.85V for the lower 3 levels, while 1V for the 4th level which is normally used in gaming. My card will only go the 3rd level, which means it is not supplying the 1V. It is not a powermizer issue.

But it doesn't really matter, I have a 180w power brick coming and I can always undervolt.