titan MSi Titan 18 HX AI 2025 (Intel Arrow Lake/nVidia Blackwell)

[br2]

44 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

I actually ended up returning the X580 to Sager. Primarily due to its lack of tuning features for the price...

Welll, whaddyagonnado?... there's always something. I don't want to deal with bios mods. I expect I'll be happy enough; the Xotic has better options than the Sager. They do have 30 day return if it's bad. 🤞

[SACbomber]

2 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

Hydroc G2 from Eluktronics

Will certainly be faster than other laptops when it's on water cooling. Curious about pure air cooling performance, however.

 

2 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

AIDA64 at 6400 CL38 Gear2

Nice, only got there by increasing both D2D and NGU to 30x on my Titan. Did you OC your RAM? Wonder why CSODIMM sticks all have such loose timings. Waiting for this monster RAM kit to become available. Expecting significant performance gains combined with NGU and D2D overclocking.

[win32asmguy]

11 hours ago, SACbomber said:

Will certainly be faster than other laptops when it's on water cooling. Curious about pure air cooling performance, however.

 

Nice, only got there by increasing both D2D and NGU to 30x on my Titan. Did you OC your RAM? Wonder why CSODIMM sticks all have such loose timings. Waiting for this monster RAM kit to become available. Expecting significant performance gains combined with NGU and D2D overclocking.

 

It's pretty good on air actually. I do not have or want the water-cooling addon.

 

The memory is just using the xmp timings but at 1.25v. It should be able to go further once the premamod bios is ready.

 

That kit looks like a good one and could probably boot in the hydroc or titan. I'm surprised there is no updated Kingston fury options yet. From what prema has tested with some binned memory from eluk at similar speeds it could be under 80ns latency!

[1610ftw]

On 5/14/2025 at 12:25 AM, win32asmguy said:

 

I actually ended up returning the X580 to Sager. Primarily due to its lack of tuning features for the price. I expect undervolting and memory tuning to be available.

 

Back in late February I had also pre-ordered a Hydroc G2 from Eluktronics. It shipped last week and this laptop has it all. Here is its run down of good points:

• Premamod bios - full CPU and memory tuning
• Tuning of GPU TDP and dynamic boost configuration up to 175W
• 420W Power supply
• 2x SODIMM with supplemental cooling for better memory tuning
• Full sized right shift key and more solid keyboard with better travel
• miniLED with local dimming switch
• TB4 port wired to iGPU (also mDP and HDMI wired to dGPU)
• modular GPU board
• excellent fan noise - no whine, along with full fan curve and hysteresis control
• decent speakers (unsure of their wattage)
• boot override configurability for all RGB zones

Here is a run of AIDA64 at 6400 CL38 Gear2. I guess there is the Raider 18 with 285HX + 5090M + QHD+ at Micro Center for $4100 but to be honest I don't like its RGB configuration support so its not something I would be interested in regardless of its performance. There is still no solid information about if its TB5 ports can be driven by the iGPU either.

 

 

Looks very good indeed! There is a reason I wish they'd do an 18" workstation.

 

I know you have been considering to go with a 16" laptop and for your use case this always looked like the strongest option with the TB4 connection, the impressive TDP and the Prema Bios. Glad to hear that the quality is also pretty good now which I am told wasn't always the case.

 

I read up a bit on undervolting of the new Intel chips and it seems to me that the gains are rather limited with values like -50mV. If that was the case then maybe it is not such a big deal if it isn't available as power savings would be pretty small at only -50mV.

[SACbomber]

On 5/14/2025 at 8:35 AM, win32asmguy said:

It's pretty good on air actually. I do not have or want the water-cooling addon.

Same chassis as this one, the XMG Neo 16 E25, right?

 

 

Looks like the waterblock/chamber is between the CPU/GPU dies and the heatpipes. Is it empty or filled with water at the factory? If it's empty then the pure air cooling can't be the best.

[win32asmguy]

11 hours ago, SACbomber said:

Same chassis as this one, the XMG Neo 16 E25, right?

 

 

Looks like the waterblock/chamber is between the CPU/GPU dies and the heatpipes. Is it empty or filled with water at the factory? If it's empty then the pure air cooling can't be the best.

 

Yes, same chassis. The cooling system works fine for air-only operation. Probably not as powerful as a vapor chamber but that is a tradeoff that I am fine with for a more professional looking chassis and no gaudy RGB defaults.

[1610ftw]

On 5/16/2025 at 2:15 PM, win32asmguy said:

 

Yes, same chassis. The cooling system works fine for air-only operation. Probably not as powerful as a vapor chamber but that is a tradeoff that I am fine with for a more professional looking chassis and no gaudy RGB defaults.

 

I doubt that you are lacking much with a CB R23 score of almost 41000 without undervolting - that is a huge score:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-fastest-gaming-laptop-is-now-even-better-thanks-to-300-Hz-mini-LED-XMG-Neo-16-E25-RTX-5090-laptop-review.1016705.0.html

 

 

[SACbomber]

On 5/16/2025 at 8:15 AM, win32asmguy said:

Yes, same chassis. The cooling system works fine for air-only operation. Probably not as powerful as a vapor chamber but that is a tradeoff that I am fine with for a more professional looking chassis and no gaudy RGB defaults.

Neat. Enjoy your laptop!

 

2 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

CB R23 score of almost 41000

Will try CineBench R23 on mine at some point.

[1610ftw]

19 hours ago, SACbomber said:

Neat. Enjoy your laptop!

 

Will try CineBench R23 on mine at some point.

 

Looking forward to hear how much you can get although MSI is notorious for sometimes having rather useless presets for this. I think that in stock condition my Raider 18 HX did not get much above 30000 and later with some tweaking and for single runs I managed to get around 37000 out of it and a bit more than 39000 when pushing it to the max - big difference. With the 285HX and its seemingly limited undervolting potential I do not expect that much of a difference but I would assume that while you will see around 39K at first you will eventually be able to get closer to 41K.

[SACbomber]

48 minutes ago, 1610ftw said:

Looking forward to hear how much you can get although MSI is notorious for sometimes having rather useless presets for this. I think that in stock condition my Raider 18 HX did not get much above 30000 and later with some tweaking and for single runs I managed to get around 37000 out of it and a bit more than 39000 when pushing it to the max - big difference. With the 285HX and its seemingly limited undervolting potential I do not expect that much of a difference but I would assume that while you will see around 39K at first you will eventually be able to get closer to 41K.

 

Conditions: -30 mV on all cores and cache, 30x D2D, 30x NGU/SA fabric, +25 mV SA fabric voltage offset

 

-50 mV on all cores and cache crashed the system immediately. Same with -45 mV. -40 mV crashed a few minutes in. Decided to go back to -30 mV. Funny, because -50 mV on all cores and cache passed every stress test and benchmark previously thrown at it (Linpack Xtreme, OCCT, CB 2024, XTU stress test).

[1610ftw]

3 hours ago, SACbomber said:

 

Conditions: -30 mV on all cores and cache, 30x D2D, 30x NGU/SA fabric, +25 mV SA fabric voltage offset

 

-50 mV on all cores and cache crashed the system immediately. Same with -45 mV. -40 mV crashed a few minutes in. Decided to go back to -30 mV. Funny, because -50 mV on all cores and cache passed every stress test and benchmark previously thrown at it (Linpack Xtreme, OCCT, CB 2024, XTU stress test).

 

So this is for the ten minute run? That is very impressive!

[SACbomber]

3 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

So this is for the ten minute run? That is very impressive!

Yep, standard ten-minute run.

[1610ftw]

7 hours ago, SACbomber said:

Yep, standard ten-minute run.

 

From my experience a setting that works well enough for a ten minute CB R23 will be good enough for stable everyday use. Not that it matters much any more as after all that tweaking I have to activate virtualization again which voids all the nice undervolting I did so it is basically for fun only on my main laptop.

[SACbomber]

9 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

From my experience a setting that works well enough for a ten minute CB R23 will be good enough for stable everyday use.

Hope so, even though my previous -50 mV undervolt passed all the 30-minute OCCT runs I threw at it. 

[epguy3]

Bios, Driver & Utility downloads for MSI Titan 18 HX AI 2025 series laptops posted on the MSI web site late April 2025