The Official MSI GE40-2OC Owner's Lounge

The way you worded it sounded like you installed the 320.49 in 8.1.

At any rate, it's not uncommon for laptops to have custom / different versions of the same cards, even though they might have the same "common name" sometimes they're very different despite being based on the same chip.

You could try to hit MSI support, although I doubt anything useful would come from them.

 

Anyone know if this rig will be 1866 compatible? Is it worth it?

I figure that once DDR4 comes out and gets mainstream, DDR3 1866 should see a price drop.

 

DDR3 is actually getting more expensive, due to the massive struggles the pc industry is going through. Once price stabilizes, it will remain there untill ddr4 gains significant share. By that point, DDR3 will start getting phased out, and will only get more expensive. Barring a massive market shift for memory in general, DDR3 will not lower in price due to DDR4. DDR4 will simply be very expensive for early adopters. 1866 is a negligible boost for a mobile cpu anyways, even if the board can support it.

 

Hey all.

Heres a modified INF I made up for the latest 320.49 drivers to allow them to install correctly on the GE40 (I'm using W7, but it should work fine with W8).

Just extract the .inf attached and replace the relevant file in the 320.49 driver downloaded from Nvidia.com, then run setup as normal.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38160572/NVMIn.zip

Everything seems fine with them but I haven't done any game testing with them yet, so YMMV!

 

hey, I see it already started shipping, but I can't find any reviews, are there any?

 

Doesn't work with Windows 8, it will still reject the card after replacing the inf. Running the installer in w7 compatibility mode starts the install, but it fails immediately.

 

Be glad that it didn't install for you. That 320.49 is known to brick laptop cards.

The latest is sometimes not a good thing. Wait out and see. Stick with what works.

 

Thats 320.18

 

Looks like the Razer got the same abortion of a screen that this laptop has AnandTech | Razer Blade 14-Inch Gaming Notebook Review

 

And that thing costs a lot more being basically the same as the MSI.

 

Yeah, I'm glad I didn't bother with it. MSI couldv'e one upped them by using a better screen and backlit keyboard, and have decisively won. I wonder why two companies made the same horrible decision, was auo giving these things away or something?

 

I got my GE40 with the standard European configuration (128 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD) yesterday. So far, I'm quite pleased. The little bugger packs quite a punch, scoring 2200 points in 3DMark Firestrike with a slight GPU overclock. While the build quality is not quite as good as the Alienware M14x R1 it replaces, it is not bad either. And it's really unbelievably Slim and lightweight!

The screen is definitely the weak spot, but I can live with it. It is not that bad, especially not in games. It could use a little more brightness and probably a bit more contrast, but I do not consider it a deal breaker. I have not tested battery life, but judging by the estimate given by Windows, it should be awesome ... on energy savings profile with medium screen brightness, it claimed a whopping 10+ hours run time fully charged.

While I'm typing this, I'm running the balanced profile with wifi on and medium brightness, and it claims 4 hours, which is probably more reasonable and still very good considering the powerful hardware. Furthermore, it's totally silent when not stressed.

In comparison to the new AW14, it definitely offers a much better price/performance, so I'm quite satisfied with my purchase. Just hoping we will be able to use the new NVidia driver for it soon, someone should make a custom inf that works in Windows 8

 

Just pull harder on the bay and the 750gb hd will come out. The two msata ssds are under the bottom just pull the cover and add another stick of ram while your at it. MacMall has the Sandisk 128gb ssd on sale now for $126 MacMall | Sandisk 128GB X110 SSD MSATA SD6SF1M-128G-1022 perfect for raid o.

 

Thanks Paul,

So just to clarify when you say pull hard on the ODD from which way should i be pulling? The ODD appears to be attached to the chassis so I am unsure how i should be accessing it as it seems to be sealed seperately to the rest of the back.

I've already got another 8GB stick on order from Crucial.

Unfortunately the Scandisk mSata drives are still very expensive here in the UK, the cheapest i have found so far is Sandisk X110 128GB mSATA Solid State Drive (SD6SF1M-128G-1022) - www.misco.co.uk (£112) but thats probably the equivilant to around $200 so im going to hold off for now.

 

The ODD bay is connected to the body with two screws. One is by the RAM and another is by the CPU. Once you've removed those two screws, you can easily slide the ODD bay out, which houses the 750GB HDD.

Have a look at this photo of how it splits up.

 

Thanks Im glad I didn't continue to "pull hard" as instructed above without knowing about the internal securing screws!

Does anyone have a working INF file for a newer Windows8 driver than OEM? 320.49 seems to be a stable driver currently but I get the generic "unsupported hardware" error if I try Nvidias release

 

Sorry I should have gone into more detail please forgive me.

 

Just popping in to say that I'm about to head back from 2 weeks abroad, during which my new GE40 has been an invaluable gaming companion - playing everything I've chucked at it without incident (stock, but with Windows 7, and extra 500r/480w 256gb mSATA SSD)

Heating is not an issue (though I have been using a coolermaster U2 fan riser). The screen is absolutely fine for gaming - though does suffer a bit on viewing angles on dark scenes (hard to find a happy compromise between too dark and washed out in skyrim for example) - anything brighter/more colourful is no problem at all.

I'm very, very happy with it, all of the "compromises" have been well selected to keep price reasonable and gaming performance high - and I've owned a lot of gaming laptops over the years as a zone of reference.

Good spot on those screws retaining the HD btw webusermy - Means I can stick another big gen2 SSD in there later for bulk storage instead of the spinner.

 

That's pretty cool, that mSATA bay is interesting.

If you are going to push a lot of IO I'd also be tempted to pop a small passive heatsink on the southbridge.

 

Have some questions, need to purchase a new college/gaming/professional laptop in a week and really considering the MSI GE40/Force 1492.

Has anyone bought the Force 1492? It's identical correct? Just curious because I rather not have the "Dragon Eyes" design on my lid for professional purposes.

What's the non-gaming battery life seem to be here? 4 hours or 6 hours?

How is the touchpad? Do I need to use a mouse with this to make it bearable, or is the pad really good? It does look a bit small.

Maingear has the Pulse 14 listed at 3.8lbs which also uses the MSI GE40 chasis. Has anyone weighed their machine? Could you tell me the exact weight?

And the thickness is listed as .87-1.14". Does that just mean it slims down from back to front? Is this a very thin portable laptop in your opinion for any current owners?

 

I can't give you an exact number for the battery life, but i would guess it easily trumps the 6 hours if the brightness isn't maxed out and you only do light tasks. The touchpad is a tad small, but actually works really well and the button below it is a big plus for me. And yes, considering the hardware this thing is really thin. Of course you can't compare it to an highend ultrabook, but for me this thing has ideal dimensions.

After using mine for some time now, I actually am still pleased. Batterylife if nice, it plays games well and is pretty fast all around with the ssd. My biggest gripe would be the heat and buildquality. It is a nightmare to keep the surfaces clean and the display is a bit wobbly. Nothing to be worried about right now, but they difinitely skimped there. After playing Planetside 2 for hours, which is bad news for any CPU, a single core reached 95°C, but it never thottled back to 800MHz or so, it stayed at 2,8GHz. I am tempted to open it up and repaste it.

Still, I am not sure if I'd recommend the GE40 to everyone. I would wait for the Clevo W230ST to hit the resellers and compare the price. I seems like that thing will be easier to keep clean, have an awesome display, better hardware, a backlit keyboard and potentially a better cooling system, while losing at least 2 hours in battery life.

 

For whatever reason (perhaps driver related), switching the preferred graphics device to integrated graphics in the nvidia control panel seems to have a tremendous effect on battery life for me ... went up from 95 % charge and 4 hours 5 minutes estimated life to 94 % charge and 7 hours 22 minutes!

So yes, this thing has really awesome battery life!

 

I am thinking about either picking up or building myself a notebook cooler. The Coolermaster NotePal U2 or U3 seem to be the best choice so far, because of the accumulation of heat on the left side. You can actually see the heatpipe through the vents on the bottom of the notebook, which makes me faithfull that a pad could make a noteworthy difference. Have any of you other owners also got a cooling pad and which one do you use? How much did it reduce the temperatures?

 

I was also looking at getting a U2. I notice that this is the solution that Wonderdog uses. The U3 looks like it is a bit too big for this laptop.

 

I use a Zalman NC2500 for mine, simply because i prefer the fans to be pointed away from the surface and not aimed at it (like the Coolermaster NotePal U2) acting like a hoover.

::: Zalman, leading the world of Quiet Computing Solutions :::

This means you have the flexibility to use on different surfaces as well (such as bedding) without worry about it blocking the fans.

I've still not had any luck finding a new Win8 Nvidia driver than OEM!

 

That's because something has been activating your graphics card.

A cooling pad should not be required, raising the back legs a little with bottle caps or some such will provide all the cooling benefit.

 

Well summer just hit over here and as the temperatures outside went up so of course also did the internal temperatures of my notebook. It now reached up to 97°C on the GPU, and well over 80°C on the GPU. All of that with the back of the laptop elevated, no blocked vents, etc. .To be honest this does touble me a lot, because otherwise I am quite pleased with the GE40.

 

I'm having problems installing nvidia drivers on this laptop i tried installing the new driver but it said its incompatible and now i cant revert back to the older driver which was pre installed on my system.

Does anyone know which driver that was the one which came with the system ?.

Also here is the driver which is not working for me = NVIDIA DRIVERS 320.49WHQL.

Please help guys all my video games now run very choppy since i cant get my old driver back.

wolfmenseyes

 

311.43 or 311.70 are available on the MSI site (the .70's are on the G70 page iirc)

 

I've installed 2 Intel msata ssd 120gb 525 in Raid 0 best scores so far are 1100 read and 400-500 write. I just got the other msata Sandisk 128gb today going to see what I score with those 2 in raid 0. The Sandisk says 2A and the Intel say 1A I wonder what the impact on battery life will be.

 

MSI Global – Download Center
That is the direct link to the OEM 311.70 drivers in case you are having difficulty finding them. I am having the same problem as you with newer drivers which is why I have had to re-download these as well.

 

I bought the Targus HD3 Gaming Chill Mat. It is large, but has 3 speeds and 3 fans. I ran some benchmarks today to see the difference in Temps. Ok here are the results:
Three Games, Dirt 3, Bio Shock, and BF3 Multiplayer. I have all four cores Max temp and GPU Max temp during the same test settings. Test was on a desk surface without the laptop raised up. The test with the cooling pad was in the same spot just placed the cooling pad under the laptop on the desk.

Dirt 3 without the pad: CPU 4 Cores in order MAX (92,91,88,85) GPU MAX (81)
Dirt 3 with game pad: CPU MAX (86,85,83,81) GPU MAX (74)

Bio Shock Infinite without pad: CPU MAX (92,92,90,88) GPU MAX (75)
Bio Shock Infinite with pad: CPU MAX (80,79,76,75) GPU MAX (69)

BF3 Multiplayer 45 min playtime without pad: CPU MAX (98,98,96,94) GPU MAX (85)
BF3 Multiplayer 45 min playtime with pad: CPU MAX (97,96,94,92) GPU MAX (79)

As you can see from the results the pad helps the GPU more than the CPU, but it does help the CPU as well. BF3 is heavy on the CPU usage and thus that is why it was so high. These games all looked the same with or without the pad. There was no throttling at all, but we did get close to the 100c temp max. This was a very long process with each test being over 30 min long, and I ran BF3 last for a reason. Hope this helps.

I have had my GE40 for about 2 and half weeks and have traveled with it. The size is perfect to travel with, I have a MBP Retina that I travel with as well, so they fit nicely in my bag together. The temps do get hot, but what gaming laptop that is this size does not get hot. I love my GE40, It is very fast at everything and for the price you cant beat it at this point. Good job MSI. Yes it is not perfect, but I like it.

 

I am using the U3 instead of the U2. The U3 might be a little big for the GE40, but its not something 4 small circular anti slip mats, positioned correctly to meet the 4 corner rubber grips of the GE40, slapped on to the cooler pad couldn't solve. The U3 has 3 fans as well over the 2 fans U2 has.

 

This is worrying me a lot actually - I just ordered a GE40, but this might make me cancel.
I've had issues with non-standard graphics-card with similar names as official products before.

Anyone know why they don't work?


Also, anyone tried running Linux on this thing?

 

Nvidia are a bit slow to update their main driver package, don't unistall the originals first for a start.

Try ones at laptopvideo2go.com

 

Are these heat levels acceptable? I am going to be doing mostly video editing and some gaming on the laptop so the fan being a little loud on high loads is OK with me. Just think this is a happy medium of a high performance and a portable/long battery life laptop. Does it run real hot when doing simple things like browsing or using word/on the battery?

I guess I could use a cooling pad too.

 

Tried it, there isnt any that work (currently).

And you dont get a choice not to uninstall, the laptopvideo2go provided driver removes any traces then reboots, upon rebooting it attempts to finish off the installation and fails without giving any details as to why.

Then you are left in limbo and have to reinstall the OEM driver i linked above from MSI.

 

No, this does of course stay cool while doing simple tasks like browsing, etc. .The heat should not be critical at those levels and it only gets that hot on very CPU hungry games or benchmarks. The reasons for buying a cooling pad are to keep your keyboard cooler and thus more comfortbale, to counter a high room temperature to begin with, to make sure your CPU is able to stay at max frequency all the time w/o those slight dips below that and of course one's own peace of mind. If the heat was acutally harmful I believe it would kill the notebook before the warranty expires, so there's nothing to worry about.

 

Hi!

Have a few questions about this laptop:

1) How fast is the RAM that is included in the laptop? Thinking about buying another 8GB of RAM and want the same speed as the old one (I know that if I buy a faster RAM it will "downclock" to the other RAM:s speed).
2) Does this computer really have 2x mSATA ports? Thinking about buying a Plextor M5M Series 256GB mSATA SSD (PX-256M5M) to replace the primary HDD (the 750GB traditional HDD).
3) Thinking about replacing the wifi-card with Intel 7260 and wondering if the current WiFi card is mPCIE and if the current card has Bluetooth integrated on it?
Guess it has two antennas and not three?

 

I'd like to install Linux on mine, so I would kind of need the nvidia support... unless MSI supply linux drivers now?

 

Got mine a couple of days ago.

1) The wi-fi reception is bad. I had a plethora of broken Skype and other VoIP calls. Has anyone encountered same issues? I've ordered a replacement mini PCI express wi-fi card (Intel 6235AN.HMWWB), but if it's antenna placement/quality, then the new card won't be of a big help. What's your experience been?

2) MSI put out a new firmware in the download section. Has anyone tried flashing their system with it yet?

3) I had a weird scenario when my laptop went to sleep and I couldn't wake it up. I wrote it off onto Intel Rapid Start Technology and set it to kick in in 1 min (instead of 0 minutes). It's not a biggie so far, the only reason I bring this is up is that the firmware fix says something about DC (although, it's not verbal enough to understand if that's applicable).

 

Also saw the new firmware today. "3.Improve the skin temperature." Srsly, what does that mean? If that does indicate better temperatures it would be pretty awesome.

 

I’ve read in the GE60 forum that the WiFi problem is related to the WiFi/BT card interference and if you are not using BT, disable it and your reception in WiFi will improve.

 

By skin they may mean the outer part of the machine.

 

Don't own it but thinking about buying this and Intel AC-7260 mPCIE, you might want to order that instead. Just be careful of which 7260 you order (see links).

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/net...7260-wireless-card-5ghz-test.html#post9257093
Also this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/networking-wireless/716325-intel-7260-a.html

If this helped you please check out my post a page or so back, need info from people owning the computer about hardware specs that can't be found online.

 

Yeah, figured that much, But what could they do via firmware to decrease the surface temperatures? Change the fan settings? Mess with the CPU/GPU somehow?

 

Dear all,

Many thanks for your input. After reading all of your post, I have decided to give the GE40 20C a try. I am certainly very impressed with the size of the machine. It reminds me of an old Acer Aspire Timeline 3820T which I have own.

Anyway, I have just done a clean installation of Windows 7 on a Samsung 840 SSD and I have purchased an Intel N6235 wireless and Bluetooth combo card. I am also thinking of repasting the thermal compound as the fan is simply spinning too loud even though I am merely doing word document on a flat surface.

Is there any other alternative thermal paste which is good apart from IC7?

Many thanks for looking into this post.

 

Yes its like my old 3820TG TimelineX. That was a very good machine. I modded mine to have a backlit keyboard and a super hot overclocked i5 580M . If you want the best try IC Diamond 24, its slightly better than IC 7. And others in the thread here recommend a cooler too.

 

Allright, for some time now I have noticed some sort of high pitched whine coming from the notebook. A quick google search revealed that it might very well be CPU whining. The odd thing is that most people write that CPU whining gets louder while scrolling, while mine actually almost disappears while constantly scrolling. I think I read a post of someone in the thread before who also noticed the whining. Has anyone got an idea on how to fix this?
One thing this has teached me so far is that a notebook can have the most awesome portability, gaming performance and battery life, but all those don't matter at all when the whining makes you want to sell it after using it for 5 mins