MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro (072UK) Review

1. Introduction2. MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro (Packing & Accessories)3. MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro4. MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro (High Res Gallery)5. Testing Methodology & Configuration6. SiSoft Sandra7. Cinebench R11.5 64 bit8. Cinebench R159. 3DMark Vantage10. 3DMark 1111. 3DMark12. SSD & HDD Performance13. USB 3.0 Bandwidth Testing14. GRID Autosport15. Tomb Raider16. Total War: Rome 217. Wolfenstein: The New Order18. Thief 201419. Thermal Dynamics20. Acoustics Performance21. Battery Performance22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

If you are in the market for the ‘ultimate no expense spared desktop replacement laptop' then today's review will certainly interest you. The new MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro ships with the latest high end mobile hardware. How does this checklist sound? 32GB of DDR3 memory, 8GB Nvidia GTX880M graphics, Intel Core i7 4710HQ quad core processor, 4x Raid 0 Solid State Drives, 1TB storage drive, Steelseries keyboard, Dynaudio sound system with Killer AC capable wireless.

So now we have you drooling let us take a closer look…

It will become apparent later in the review, but MSI are clearly targeting the audience who normally consider Alienware in the high end. MSI are selling four different versions of the GT72 from £1,399 to £2,199. We review the most expensive (072UK) model today, available from Overclockers UK.
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Product Specification:

• Product Code: GT72 2PE (Dominator Pro)-072UK
• OS: Windows 8.1
• CPU: Sharkbay Core i7-4710HQ (2.5GHz – 3.5GHz)
• Display: 17.3″ FHD, Anti-Glare (1920*1080) eDP
• Memory Supplied: 4 x 8GB
• Memory Type: DDR3L
• Memory Speed: 1600
• Max Memory Support: 32GB
• Graphics Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce GTX880M
• Graphics Memory: GDDR5 8GB
• Storage: 4 x 128GB M.2 SSD + 1TB 7200RPM
• Keyboard Type: SteelSeries FULL back lit keyboard with SteelSeries Engine
• USB3.0 Ports: 6
• USB2.0 Ports: 0
• HDMI Port(s): 1(v1.4)
• mini Display port(s): 2(v1.2)
• LAN Port(s): 1
• Microphone Jack(s): 1
• Headphone Jack(s) (SPDIF): 1
• Card Reader: SD (XC/HC)
• Audio: -Sound by Dynaudio with subwoofer
  -Support 7.1 channel SPDIF output
  -Exclusive Audio Boost technology -Creative Sound Blaster Cinema
• LAN: Killer DoubleShot Pro Gb LAN
• Wireless: Killer DoubleShot Pro 11ac
• Bluetooth: V4.0
• Webcam: FULL HD Camera 1080p
• CD Drive : BD Writer
• Security: Kensington Lock
• Battery: 9-Cell Lithium Ion (83wHr)
• Dimension: 428(W) x 294(D) x 48(H)mm
• Weight: 3.78Kg (W/ Battery)
• EXTRAS : SUPER PACK (SteelSeries Headset/Mouse/Mouse pad/Bag)
• Warranty: 2yr

The MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro arrived in a very large brown box. Inside, alongside the main system box, was an MSI branded backpack – useful for LAN events.

The laptop box is colourful, featuring MSI's red dragon mascot on the front.

Inside are two boxes, one containing the laptop itself. The other contains the accessories.

No shortage of extras in this box, thats for sure!

You get: an MSI branded Siberia V2 Steelseries headset, Kinzu V2 Steelseries mouse, literature galore, power adapter, CD and driver disc, keyboard and screen cover and MSI branded dog tags!

You can't really get much better than a DELTA power supply. This one is rated 100-240V, 19.5V.

The laptop is protected inside a soft felt bag, with two thick pieces of foam on either end.

The MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro is a beautiful looking desktop replacement laptop. The red MSI badge takes center stage on the lid.

On the left we have four USB 3.0 ports, headphone, microphone and speaker audio out, and a card reader.

On the right we have another two USB 3.0 ports, and the optical drive.

At the rear, we have two large cooling vents, alongside the power connector, GB Lan connector, HDMI connector, and finally two mini DisplayPort connectors.

The GT72 2PE ships with an internal 1080p panel, however you can connect up to 3 external displays to expand your work/gaming space.

MSI ship the laptop with a soft cover between the keyboard and screen. The GT72 2PE Dominator Pro measures 428 (W) x 294 (D) x 48 (H) and weighs 3.78kg. As a desktop replacement this is perfectly portable to a LAN event, but not the kind of system you want to carry around all the time.

The GT72 2PE Dominator Pro is a great looking machine. It looks a little like the high end Alienware gaming machines, which isn't a bad thing. The built in webcam is rated to 1080p @ 30 fps.

This laptop has the Killer N1525 802.11AC wireless card built in, which delivers excellent performance. I use a Netgear R7000 Nighthawk router at home with a EX6200 range extender and I managed to get transfer rates around 40 Megabytes per second over the network to my NAS. It was able to easily max out my Virgin Media 120Mbit internet connection on STEAM (although STEAM doesn't always deliver the full download speed anyway).

This will be a very welcome addition for those people who have recently upgraded their home network to 802.11AC.

The trackpad is about as good as you are likely to find. It is large, responds very well to touch and had a separate area for left and right buttons. It is still not an acceptable replacement for a good gaming mouse however.

The eDP 1080p 17.3 inch LED backlit TN panel has an anti glare coating to reduce annoying distractions. In use, it is a very good panel, with reasonable viewing angles and colour reproduction. Brightness is acceptable, although we would have liked another couple of notches on the slider for brighter conditions. It will not be useable in direct sunlight.


The keyboard is a custom design by Steelseries and makes typing a pleasure. We still rate the keyboard on the ThinkPad X1 series of laptop's at a higher level, but this is a close second. There is a full numpad on the right which we find very useful.

There is minimal flex on the keyboard, due to a strong metal underside for support. The only real negative is the single height return key which always causes an issue for me. We would hope the UK model would have a double depth key here.

The power switch is on the left side of the chassis, at the top of a row in chrome.

The keyboard is fully backlit and looks great in action. There are various colour modes for the keyboard – and you can set it up to display a single colour, or have three areas with different colours. More information on this can be seen here.

MSI have installed red cooling vents underneath the laptop which looks beautiful. Nvidia also get their logo highlighted at the rear of the machine. The high end GTX880M is installed in this particular laptop, so we expect fantastic gaming performance.

MSI told us that the GPU in this machine will be upgradeable, although they couldn't go into specifics on servicing or whether MSI will be selling the upgrades directly to the consumer.

Windows 8, Sound Blast Cinema 2 stickers are on the left hand side. A Dynaudio speaker cover is visible in the same area.

Audio quality is excellent – for a laptop. There is even a little bass response, and the volume level goes quite high before distortion kicks in. Obviously this is not going to replace a dedicated set of external speakers or headphones, but it is more than acceptable for general duties.

We would recommend you don't remove the back cover to get a look at the insides of this machine. There is a white sticker in the middle of the laptop over one of the screws – if this is punctured then you invalidate the warranty. I do find this surprising, because many educated enthusiast users would use a compressed air canister on the fans to keep them running well throughout the years.

The warranty sticker issue isn't so clean cut however. MSI representatives have posted information before on the Overclockers UK forums which states ‘I can confirm that the warranty will not be affected on the NB as long as nothing is damaged within. Of course our warranty will not cover your new parts. Please remember to be careful when installing anything new as not to damage anything.'

So it appears if you need to claim for problems under warranty and your sloppy handiwork isn't the source of the problems, then MSI will honor it. Ideally I think they should just remove the sticker completely as it is going to cause confusion.




It is evident that MSI haven't cut any corners in this particular build. There are two coolers over both CPU and GPU, which lead into large heatsinks on either side of the laptop – cooled by dedicated fans. MSI have painted the heatpipes black with only a little section exposed to show the copper.

We checked the SSD configuration in the BIOS and we can see that there are four TOSHIBA flash drives configured in RAID 0 (striped) for maximum performance. The 1TB 7,200 rpm mechanical drive is ideal for storage and backup duties.

The battery is sealed under a protective cover – not designed to be removed. It is however a hefty 9 cell rated unit (83wHr).

Overall build quality is exceptionally high.
On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken in our professional studio. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.














There is a lot of software installed ‘out of the box' although to be fair most of it is relevant to the hardware in the GT72 2PE Dominator Pro. I was however a little disappointed to see Norton software installed – I would prefer the option to install my own anti virus software. I admit I deinstalled this software before running any tests as it kept popping up reminders to register or pay for it. I also consider Norton software to be a resource hog.

An overview of the hardware in CPUz and GPUz. You can get an overview of the system from our link, here. The 32GB of DDR1600 memory is running at 11-11-11-28-2T timings. The Nvidia GTX880M is a powerful mobile discrete graphics card – it is built on the 28nm process and has 1,536 CUDA cores, 32 ROPs and 128 Texture units. The massive 8GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective) and is connected via a 256 bit memory interface.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
MSI GS60 2PE Ghost Pro 15.6 inch (Intel I7-4700HQ).
MSI GT70 2OC (Intel Core i7 4700MQ).
MSI GS70 2OD Stealth (Intel Core i7 4700HQ).
MSI GE40-20C Dragon Eyes (Intel Core i7 4702MQ).
PCSpecialist Inferno 11.6 inch (Intel Core i7 3630QM).
MSI GX60 (AMD A10 4600M).
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (featuring Core i5 3427U).
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S430 (featuring Core i5 3210M).
PC Specialist Vortex III HD72 (featuring Core i7 3610QM).
Asus G74SX-91013Z (featuring Core i7 2360QM).
Dell XPS 14z (featuring Core i7 2640M).
AlienWare M18X (featuring Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition).
MSI CX640 (featuring Core i5 2410M).
Intel Core i7 2600k desktop processor.
Intel Core i5 2500k desktop processor.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cinebench R15 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley
SiSoft Sandra
CrystalDiskMark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 12
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
GRID AutoSport (Direct X 11)
Tomb Raider (Direct X 11)
Total War: Rome 2 (Direct X 11)
Wolfenstein The New Order (Direct X 11)
Thief (Direct X 11)

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Fuji XT-1 with 18-50mm lens and Sony RX100.

Game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The Core i7 4710HQ processor is excellent, as we already know from previous reviews. Memory performance from the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro is higher than many laptops we have reviewed recently peaking at just below 20GB/s.
CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.


A new mobile record for the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro – scoring over 7 in the Cinebench render test.
CINEBENCH 15 is a cross-platform testing suite that measures hardware performance and is the de facto standard benchmarking tool for leading companies and trade journals for conducting real-world hardware performance tests. With the new Release 15, systems with up to 256 threads can be tested. CINEBENCH is available for both Windows and OS X and is used by almost all hardware manufacturers and trade journals for comparing CPUs and graphics cards.

If you have more serious duties in mind, then the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro should be right at the top of your shortlist – this is a machine capable of handling semi serious 3D rendering duties in a hotel room.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

A good indication that this system will have no problems powering older Direct X 10 titles at 1080p.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Excellent results, scoring 8,477 points.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

The Fire Strike test is the important one – and the score of 5,452 indicates that the machine should be capable of powering many of the latest Direct X 11 games at the native resolution of 1080p.

The MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro has four Solid State Drives configured in RAID 0 for high performance. There is also a 1TB 7,200 rpm drive included for storage and backup duties.

The SSD configuration is able to hit around 1.1GB/s, which while very impressive is a little short of MSI's official 1,600MB/s claims. The mechanical hard drive is about as good as a 2.5 inch drive will deliver – hitting almost 130 MB/s in the sequential read and write tests.

The ATTO results are very closely matched against Crystalmark and confirm the findings.
We recently replaced our long term Patriot Supersonic Magnum 256GB with the faster Corsair Flash Voyager GTX 128GB. You can read our review of the product over here. This page explains differences in performance with or without a UASP driver. The MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro has Windows 8.1 installed, so we don’t expect issues.

Excellent results, hitting close to 400 MB/s in the sequential read test. Sequential write tests are always low with this drive in Crystaldiskmark.

ATTO highlights excellent performance, peaking at 450MB/s read and 140 MB/s write. No problems with the USB 3.0 configuration on this machine.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014.

We test at 1080p with the ULTRA profile enabled. Image quality is maximised by enabling 16x QCSAA as well.

Performance is excellent, averaging almost 60 frames per second.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.


These settings are very demanding and can even bring some desktop graphics cards to their knees. The Nvidia GTX880M however delivers a stellar result, holding well above 30 frames per second at all times. The same runs smooth and looks great.
Total War: Rome II is set in classical antiquity, and focuses on portraying each culture of the classical era as accurately and in-depth as possible, as opposed to its predecessor, which portrayed many factions anachronistically. The grand campaign begins in 272 BC, and lasts for 300 years. However, the player also has the option to play further, as there are no timed victory conditions in Rome II.

We set the game to run at 1080p with the ULTRA profile. The EXTREME profile was almost playable but the frame rate dropped below 20 a couple of times.

A very smooth gaming experience, holding close to an average of 60 frames per second.
Three years after the events of Wolfenstein, the Nazis have developed advanced technologies in Wolfenstein: The New Order, enabling them to turn the tide against the Allies. In July 1946, U.S. special forces operative Captain William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, accompanied by pilot Fergus Reid and Private Probst Wyatt III, takes part in a massive Allied raid against a fortress and weapons laboratory run by his arch nemesis, General Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse.

We set the resolution to 1080p and the image quality to ULTRA.

This is a great game and it runs very well on the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro – averaging over 50 frames per second, with a few dips to 30 – 40 frames per second.
Thief is a first person sneak style strategy game. Players control Garrett, a master thief, as he goes about a series of missions, most of which are focused around stealing from the rich. As with the previous games in the series, players must use stealth in order to overcome challenges, while violence is left as a minimally effective last resort.

We select 1080p resolution and maximise the image quality settings as far as possible.

A demanding engine which tends to favour AMD graphics cards. Still even at the maxed out settings, the engine is smooth and playable – with only a single drop below 30 frames per second.
The tests were performed in an air conditioned room, holding temperatures at a constant 23c. This is a comfortable environment for most people reading.

Idle temperatures were measured after 30 minutes from initial boot up with the system inactive.

Load temperatures were measured when playing Tomb Raider – a Direct X 11 game that taxes both CPU and GPU extensively. All fan settings were left on BIOS defaults.

The cooling system inside the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro is remarkable, the CPU holds at 72c under extended load (over an hour of stress testing).

We attached five diodes to the back of the chassis and measured the temperature (Celcius) after one hour of intensive work and gaming.

The venting system on the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro works very well – sucking in cool air from underneath and subsequently out the rear vents. With such high level hot running hardware, it is important not to cover these vents. We wouldn't recommend using the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro on a lap or even on a bed, as the vents are likely to get partially blocked. A flat table surface is the perfect home for this monster.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3DMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

Considering the class leading performance, this laptop is extremely quiet.

Under load the fans don't actually spin that high, thanks to the big heatsinks and copper heatpipes. Under full load it is audible, but I was surprised by the modest noise levels. MSI have created one of the quietest high performance desktop replacement laptops we have ever tested.
To test today, we are putting the machine through a variety of ‘real world’ situations, mirroring the real world usage of a potential customer.

One as a media movie lover on the move (wearing headphones), a person wanting to watch high definition media on a train journey or bus with screen brightness two notches from maximum.

Second as a businessman, with screen brightness around half way. Wireless was enabled. A mixture of checking, answering emails using Microsoft Office and editing pictures in Adobe Photoshop.

Lastly as a gamer, playing Tomb Raider until the machine turned itself off.

Battery life is reasonable, but the powerful CPU and GPU will drain it pretty quickly if you task the system hard when gaming. Realistically however, this is the kind of laptop you carry to a LAN event, and then back home. It will really only be used on battery for very short periods of time.
Alienware have earned a reputation by creating expensive, high performance gaming laptops for the wealthy enthusiast user. It is clear that MSI want a slice of the pie, because there is no doubt in my mind that the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro has been designed specifically to beat any machine that the Dell subdivision are currently selling.

First impressions of the GT72 2PE Dominator Pro are positive. The bundle is both extensive and carefully thought out – MSI include a fancy backpack and a MSI branded Siberia V2 Steelseries headset, Kinzu V2 Steelseries mouse and dog tags. While many will scoff at ‘unnecessary accessories' – it all adds to the feeling of purchasing an exclusive, luxury product. Apple have been doing it successfully for years.

Onboard audio is covered by the Dynaudio system, and as far as laptop sound goes – they have created something surprisingly good. It is one of the few desktop replacement laptops that manages to deliver some bass presence. The audio is on a similar level to the Alienware M18x that we reviewed several years ago. Obviously it is important to note that adding a pair of speakers, or using the bundled pair of Siberia V2 headphones will dramatically improve the overall media and gaming experience. Laptop speakers all have limitations.

The 17.3 inch full HD LED monitor delivers a great image, with nicely saturated colours and decent viewing angles. Blacks are deep, and white purity is well above what we would consider as average in the class. If we were being critical we would like a little more maximum brightness in strong daylight conditions, but overall we can't see anyone complaining about image quality.

The Steelseries keyboard and high grade trackpad are at the top of their class, although we wouldn't be using a trackpad if at all possible. The bundled, limited edition Steelseries Kinzu V2 Steelseries mouse is a quality product which will improve the gaming experience.

The option to add another three screens (for four in total) to the GT72 2PE Dominator Pro is certainly a welcome feature. It even supports 4K resolutions. We did test with a single 4K ASUS PQ321Q monitor and the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro supported it well. That said, dealing with the latest Direct X games at 3840×2160 will prove too much …. even for Nvidia's GTX880M.

The combination of powerful Core i7 4710HQ, 32GB of DDR3 memory and Nvidia GTX880M ensures that the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro is unlikely to run out of steam. It broke our previous mobile record in Cinebench R11.5- scoring over 7 points. You could feasibly even rely on the MSI laptop for 3D rendering or video editing in a hotel room.

The adoption of 4x SSD Raid 0 (or ‘Super RAID 3' as MSI call it) is certainly a talking point. Our results show a maximum performance figure around 1,100MB/s, which this does fall a little short of MSI's 1,600MB/s claims. It would be bordering on the criminal to have hampered such a powerful desktop replacement with a mere mechanical drive. That said, MSI have found physical space to also include a 1TB 7,200 rpm storage drive as well.

One of the most remarkable selling points for this laptop is actually the way it deals with heat. MSI have opted for a sophisticated dual heatsink/fan cooling system which in the real world works exceptionally well. The hardware is held well within thermal limits and the lack of noise was a real surprise for me. I have tested many desktop replacements over the years and I always expect to deal with a lot of fan noise. The MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro at idle is completely silent, and under load the fans spin at modest levels – it is certainly audible, but no louder than a smaller business based laptop when watching a 1080p movie. I consider this a remarkable achievement.

If you are in the market for a large, desktop replacement system to handle the latest games, and have perhaps even more serious 3d rendering or video editing duties then the MSI GT72 2PE Dominator Pro should be right at the top of your shortlist. It is one of the finest laptops money can buy and will cost considerably less than a similarly specified Alienware desktop replacement.

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You can buy direct from Overclockers UK for £2,299.99 inc vat.

Pros:

• GTX880M is a powerhouse.
• Core i7 4710HQ broke previous records.
• cooling system is powerful and surprisingly quiet.
• Steelseries keyboard.
• onboard dynaudio sound system.
• 1080p panel has great colour reproduction.
• support for a total of 4 screens.
• 4K support.
• built to high standards.
• 4x SSD RAID with 1TB HDD.
• backlit multi zone/multi colour keyboard.
• trackpad is as good as a trackpad will ever get.
• optical drive.
• 6 USB 3.0 ports.
• well priced beside comparable Alienware.
• red vents look great.
• 802.11ac wireless performance.

Cons:

• Isn't cheap.
• Raid 0 performance wasn't quite as good as MSI claimed. (1,100MB/s not 1,600MB/s).
• vents need plenty of space for the high volume airflow.

Kitguru says: A complete gaming powerhouse which sets a new benchmark in the high end.

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