win32asmguy

Yeah MSI really came through as I was not sure if I would get any kind of extended warranty given that it was an open box model. Not that there was a choice because they discontinued the config with 9955HX3D and 5090 instead of just modifying it to have 2x16GB RAM. Ended up having to dial it back to C38 and tREFI 11677. I only ever used the stock 2x16GB Hynix in the 5080 variant. These have factory seals and I was hesitant on keeping that 5080 due to price so I never opened it up. The 5080 variant however definitely could do 3000:3000:2000 with 1000mv VSOC stable. The OEM memory had locked PMIC so 1100mv VDD/VDDQ pretty much. Fan noise was essentially the same, very good. Its one of the few that can have good performance, good noise and just warm palm rests. Not X170 levels of palm rest temps which could stay at ambient temp but the chassis is simply too thin to ever really be that good. This has much better fans than the old 2024 7945HX3D. Maybe it is better with heat dissipation. They use PTM7958SP from the factory so if the old model was using a paste this might be part of the difference too.

Got warranty activated today including the start date being adjusted to my purchase date so its a full three years. Swapped in A-die. It did not want to boot at 3000/3000/2000 with 1050mv VSOC. 1200mv worked but is probably too much. XMP 6000 C36 equivalent timings (and tREFI 16k) at 1200mv VDD/VDDQ/VDDIO but need to stability test.

Yeah, I was definitely surprised to see it. I want to take it apart and swap memory but there is a factory seal sticker in place. Its MSI warranty expires in September 2026 so I provided the B&H invoice and was told I can extend it by two years for $140. However I want to be charged and have the extension confirmed before I open it up. B&H did have an AllState warranty option but those are $500 for two years (no ADH included) and less likely it could actually get repaired if the mobo failed. The stock memory is 2x32GB Hynix M-die dual rank. It actually was not stable at 6000MT JEDEC with VSOC 1.2v and like all of the new OEM ram I have seen is PMIC locked so no VDD/VDDQ beyond 1.1v. I am guessing / hoping the issue is just dual rank is harder on the IMC as the 2x16GB on the 5080 model had no problem running at 6000MT JEDEC. I do know that all of the 2025 and newer Raider and Titan models have upgraded fans with more blades and are much quieter. I think they also tuned the fan profiles though as it seems like the fans are not ramping up and down as agressively as before. Supposedly these newer fans have the same shroud, connector and power spec so they can be installed in the old models as well to improve them which is nice. The 2025 also has a heatpipe to cool the Gen5 SSD which is good.

Yes I did. These are definitely a unicorn spec so it was too rare to pass up. Hopefully it can run the 2x16GB A-die as well as the 7945HX3D did. Maybe eventually find all of the screen assembly parts to downgrade it to 1600p 240hz IPS as well. The 2400p 120hz miniLED is not horrible using Nvidia integer scaling at 1200p but I still would prefer native 1200p or 1600p.

As it turns out B&H had an open box 9955HX3D + 5090 model for $3375. Supposedly that config was discontinued by MSI as they ran out of Hynix 32GB modules (Micron and Samsung have compatibility issues with Fire Range).

I still use my laptop every day at home and taking it with me to work or when traveling. My wife has now switched to either using the desktop connected to our TV or the Lunar Lake MSI Claw 8. Its a shame that Thin and Light dominates the market. I have heard Nvidia prefers those types of designs and could even refuse to supply their chips into something that they deem would go against their marketing direction like the old X170 or GT75. Then we have the BIOS lockdown cartel where even if you have the right combination of hardware you may not be able to tune it. It is cool that they sent those laptops to you for free. Is that a deal through your work? The pricing is getting pretty crazy, especially when you get into these preconfigured models where there is no option for less RAM or SSD. 9955HX3D Raider 18 is definitely a good option if you can find a deal. B&H sometimes has good pricing on open box MSI models if they also have a sale active on the new model. I still think Fire Range is superior to Arrow Lake when it applies to mobile platforms. Not even 290HX Plus can really boost 1% lows up with how difficult it is to run tuned SODIMMs stability.

Mine came from System76, so its got their open source coreboot BIOS and EC. I just switched the GPU subsystem ID over to the X170KM so all drivers install without modding. I never backported NVPCF ACPI code for Dynamic Boost so it always runs at 150W, and I believe one of the display outputs no longer work (mDP maybe) because of physical wiring differences on the SM vs. KM board. The TB3 on the back definitely works as that is what I use all of the time. Oh and I am not sure if the seller on taobao is active anymore but back then I got a set of fans modded from the A51m R2 to work in the X170. More CFM and quieter!

You may be able to get the heatsink from rjtech / sager. That is where I purchased mine. It was around $300 total including shipping. I still have my x170sm with the 10900k LTT golden sample and 3080m. Thought about selling it though to fund some new purchases.

Well in the process of talking about the Raider A18 value I eventually decided to return it. I found a good deal for a used Titan 18 with 14900HX, 4090M and UHD+ 120hz. The build quality is top notch and the vapor chamber is a good boost above the Raider 18 heatpipe solution. The 14th Gen chip does almost as good as the X3D in WoW with some memory tuning. The only thing I want is to do is downgrade the display to either 1600p or ideally 1200p. I reopened my eBay store and am pretty steadily selling off my excess hardware. This week Nvidia released a hotfix driver that addresses DX12 issues in WoW which has been great. A lot of the problems like the screen going black and slowly rerendering everything after opening the transmog window in certain areas has been fixed.

No idea why they started with UHD and later released this QHD option. So far as I can tell the mobile X3D pairs better with QHD than UHD just like on desktop. FHD would be nice but it seems to be paired only with low end laptops at this point. Eventually they should put it on sale. The price for its specs are pretty high right now and honestly not worth it. A few weeks ago I saw the X3D + 5080 + UHD 120hz config priced at $2800 at B&H and there is no reason this should be more than that with its lower specs.

I have a bunch of alts with each profession + engineering (for wormhole toys / etc). I did not really want another 16 incher either, despite Eluktronics offering the Hydroc G2 with 9955HX3D + 5090. This Raider was a higher price as it is being sold for $3299 only at Best Buy (not Newegg, MSI direct or other usual resellers). So far it has been behaving better than the older model. The balanced profile has very good fan noise. It only does sustained 55W CPU + 115W GPU. For higher performance I have a custom profile with all points set to 55% because otherwise the fans just constantly ramp up and down. The RGB controller at some point reverted to the rainbow puke effect on boot, so I ended up having to install Steelseries GG. For a while it was just static red on all zones without any control software which was really nice. This time around I am running W11 Enterprise LTSC IoT which has been great. Sadly the OEM Hynix A-die memory is PMIC locked so no VDD/VDDQ beyond 1.1v. The 5080M has been plenty for WoW at QHD. I would just need to sell the other 5090 laptops as the Raider A18 can replace the function of the Hydroc G2 and Legion 9i G10 both. It is only a loss of battery life which is not a major concern for me.

I am glad that this cache saturation does not seem to occur around Silvermoon Bazaar as I am running around there often with my profession alts daily. Abundance raids felt pretty smooth. I still need to try world bosses and run the raids with it. I made an decent effort tuning the Hydroc G2 with 275HX. I just came to the conclusion that it needs the water cooling addon to go further with memory. Carrying that around with the laptop is not something I want to really do. I actually get better memory temps under load with the Legion 9i G10 as its got the massive vapor chamber to dump the heat generated by the CPU and GPU. Not that it really mattered as the 2DPC SODIMM design limits speed and timings.

I picked up a MSI Raider A18, this one with the 9955HX3D, 5080M and QHD+ 240hz display. The X3D cache is hands down curb stomping the 275HX in WoW. Easily getting 80-90fps compared to 40-50fps in Silvermoon bazaar at the same settings at QHD and significantly better 1% lows. This new revision of Raider A18 is pretty refined as well compared to the last gen. So far no audio system dropouts, no standby or display blanking issues, no problems with dGPU mode switching to iGPU mode randomly while a game was running. The Mediatek 7925 wifi card had some issues dropping the connection with the provided driver but it seems like a newer revision on Windows Update addressed that issue. Swapping to an AX210 is also an option if the problems persist. Delightfully this model has static red by default for all of the RGB instead of the rainbow puke on the Intel Raider 18. Its a shame the 275HX is limited by memory latency in WoW. The 285K does really well paired with good memory but on mobile it is very limited by heat. Maybe Nova Lake HX will help this if it has an on-die memory controller again and/or bLLC.

Yeah not exactly sure how the memory cover is supposed to help temps. I'd be willing to try heatsinks to see if they are more effective. On the legion 9i I get significantly lower memory temps. I think it helps that it has four slots with only two populated so plenty of room around each module. It also has a vapor chamber so there is less heat bleed from the CPU and GPU to the memory. Unfortunately the insyde h2o bios is very picky with memory tuning so any real tuning has to be done in the OS post boot.

Sounds like the heatsinks help. Where did you get those? Mine definitely warm up under combined loads. I think WoW puts more load on the CPU than other games.

How are temps on your dual rank kits? I use the single rank A-die and M-die modules (2x16GB or 2x24GB). I had them tuned pretty decently but ran into heat related memory stability issues when the modules would get up to 85C in combined loads. I do not have the water cooling addon so its probably limited by the air cooling capability. M-die can go up to 8000MT with VDD2 adjusted to 1.2v although I never really used it as I run in Hybrid graphics mode which still has glitches over 7200MT depending on the memory kit used.

165fps does seem pretty high unless he is light on addons or not active during the really busy times. I also cannot really buy the 142fps (9800X3D) vs 98fps (9950X) either. I wonder if WoW had its threads across both CCDs. Back when I tested the 7945HX3D it seemed like the drivers + Game Bar mode did not always pin the game to CCD0 so I resolved to just using Process Lasso. 285K in simple 200S boost mode continues to outperform any laptop or desktop chip I tested in the past. No lag or stutter even in the busy areas or raids. His article also has no mention of Arrow Lake which was a pretty mature platform by late 2025 so at least worth a paragraph of discussion in my opinion.. I guess a 9950X3D2 is probably not going to give a meaningful performance boost in WoW either.

Very cool. This makes me wonder if Coreboot could boot this chip too. I still have the MSI Pro Z690-A that supports Dashero. Might try hacking support in once summer hits and things calm down at work. Why Intel did not make a 10 P-core 12th Gen chip and 12 P-core 13th+ Gen chip is beyond me. Its not like 10850 and 10900K were poor sellers so far as I remember. Their team even binned that set of Golden Samples for LTT. It really shows just how much the company has shifted in the past few years. I guess Sapphire Rapids could have been considered a viable alternative to this but then you have to deal with mesh binning and the extra latency from registered memory.

Actually, after I took the MSI back to micro center they asked if I wanted to exchange for anything so I got one of their open box a51-18 with the 5090. After I got that one home and a few tools installed I found that it came with dual rank hynix a-die csodimms. I want to see what those sticks can do, maybe even testing them out in the hydroc g2 which is easier to tune memory with. I also can confirm that UMAF still works with the latest 2.xx bios and have had D2D and NGU running at a more proper 30x. The memory modules also peaked at 90C when running OCCT. Much cooler than the MSI raider 18 and closer to what I see with the hydroc using single rank modules. The midnight dark edition card is definitely a looker. I'd need to get a riser to show it off in the case as well but it may look a bit goofy contrasted with the white pcb z890 apex. Next id probably end up looking for a deal on a z890 unify or something... I don't know how she can keep up with all of the weekly activities. I barely have time to get my daily knowledge points and try to get enough stuff completed to get some hero track gear.

To be completely honest that is a tough one. I also tested out the Micro Center Raider 18 with 285HX, 5090m and 1600p 240hz. While it does have the advanced bios available I ran into issues with its audio getting distorted under combined loads, very high temperatures (over 110C on the stock system memory) and eventual crashes under load that needed an EC reset to recover. Maybe just a bad sample? Maybe single rank memory would run cooler or just something about the Micron 32GB modules? Although I found many others had similar issues on MSI's Global Forums with 2025 Intel Vector/Raider/Titan models... Today's project has been turning the media center back into a gaming machine for use on our 4k living room TV for my wife. We picked up one of those Midnight edition 5070 GPU's at Micro Center which seems to perform fine. With the 285K in 200S boost mode with the 48GB memory at 8000 CL40 WoW we are seeing 100fps running around Silvermoon without RT enabled. I need to find a nicer looking ATX case that has space for 3x3.5 inch HDDs and preferably a single 5.25 inch Bluray drive. The Fractal Design Define R7 XL is far too big for the space we have available under the TV.

Yeah, UMAF did work with both the A51 18 and Dell Pro Max 18 Plus. Sometimes it would freeze or fail to apply settings though so you have keep trying if something did not stick. Just be aware that with any later bios update Dell may write-protect the EFI setup variable region which effectively disables modifying any hidden settings. With the Legion 9i SREP worked on the shipping bios but none of the updates. NGU and D2D can be adjusted but on this one memory timing changes always fail to train. Its basically stuck at 5200MT CL38 Dual Rank (the 64GB Kingston Fury kit). M-die also worked at 5600MT but timings were much worse than the Kingston kit. There will be an 18 inch Uniwill chassis but this year it only gets up to 5070 mobile. Next year its supposed to have better GPU options according to Prema, so Eluktronics should end up carrying it.

I think its supposed to be 30x NGU and D2D, 40x Ring. My 275HX in the Hydroc G2 can do that easily with Premamod, but the real advantage comes from memory tuning. I have seen a few post sub-80ns AIDA64 scores, but I find heat is a big limitation on combined load stability so realistically for me 85ns is the best it can do on air with reasonable ambient temperatures. I think the A51 18 could do better temperature wise with the memory as the modules sit on the side opposite of the vapor chamber. You would have to use Smokeless UMAF to modify timings and test. Sadly max MT would be somewhat limited compared to even a mediocre desktop board as you cannot adjust VDD2 up beyond 1.1v (except on the Hydroc G2 with Premamod).

The 250W limit is on the CPU. So far as I know there is no GPU shunt mod on the Eluktronics Hydroc G2 other than the one that was made for Gizmosliptech's youtube video review.

So far I have found that increasing Cache to 4.0Ghz actually increased latency. There is a VF Curve applied by default, but Cache overclocking only works with VF offset and needs higher voltage to be stable. I think its only offered for Eluktronics laptops. From what I was told Bootguard is enabled by default with most OEMs so flashing an unsigned bios would not boot regardless. I was even told to not load the XMG bios (while I was waiting for Premamod to become available) as that would fuse Bootguard and lock out any modded bios on that motherboard going forward. I cannot even take advantage of the 250W limit without the liquid cooling addon, but do appreciate all of the other adjustment options. As it stands I think yours still has better latency number than mine, and I have yet to even approach the sub-80ns range I have seen from Legion 7i Pro G10 users.

Out of curiousity what are you running for tREFI at 6400MT to get 84ns in Aida64? I currently have my 2x16GB A-die kit at 6400 38-40-40-80, tREFI 24k, NGU & D2D 30x, Ring 38x which results in around 88ns in Aida64. I also have a 2x24GB M-die kit which can do 7200 at similar timings but I have not long term stability tested it in combined loads, especially given that I do not use the watercooling addon so memory temps have been observed up to 87C. It can do a bit better in Aida64, around 85ns. I did get the final Premamod bios recently so its tuning capabilities are better than the stock bios along with updated microcode and other throttling fixes.