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Third Laptop I've Owned.. 
Better than my HP but still dealt with spec woes. 

Had to have this due to events at that time.
 

Much better speced laptop I've owned.

Had to have this during the pandemic.

FYI: I still own this laptop.

MSI GP62M 7RDX LEOPARD

Backstory of my MSI Laptop

It was Early April 2020. I was just about to start my Second Semester at Lasalle College but there was a problem
The Covid-19 was at full height and we all had no choice but to stay home as per part of a Stay-At-Home initiative
to prevent the spread of the virus but I had no up-to-date computer at this Point.

This was before I learned about building computers but at the time, I needed a new computer since my MacBook Pro was
no good due to outdated hardware.
I could have installed Windows 10 on it since it used an Intel CPU but still, I need up-to-date hardware so I went to my local London Drugs at 41st and Victoria Street in Vancouver so I can buy a new laptop and That's how I ended up with this beast.

I managed to make it through my college years with this thing and that's all I'm going to say...

Oh, and a few days later after I bought my laptop, I rushed to another London Drugs, this time at Cambie and Broadway, so I can purchase my first Wacom Tablet: A small Wacom Intuos Bluetooth Tablet.

 

What were my specs?

While it still pales in comparison to a desktop, I was thrilled to have better specs from a laptop.

The MSI laptop had a Kaby Lake Intel i7 7700HQ CPU. 
It's base speed is 2.8 GHZ but I always tune this thing to Turbo so it can reach up to 3.6 GHZ.

The ram configuration is a single stick of Crucial 16GB DDR4 SO-DIMM ram but thank god it's a dual channel laptop so adding another stick is essential.

It had two graphics options. It still had a lackluster Intel HD Integrated Graphics but I was thrilled to see that my
laptop had an NVIDIA GTX 1050 GPU built in.

The storage was two fold. I had a 128GB Kingston M.2 SSD which had my Windows 10 Installation.

It also had a D Drive but unlike the SSD, it was a traditional hard drive. It was a 1TB hard drive from HGST.

 

What did I use my MSI Laptop for?

I mostly used it for schoolwork... Art School related.

I used it for Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, Toon Boom, Adobe Animate, Substance Painter, Premiere Pro, etc..

And yes, I did game on it since I had that NVIDIA GPU built in so I was able to play some games such as GTA V.

I did fight with the 128GB SSD most of the time though.

Most of the time when I installed software or drivers, the results are mixed.

Drivers are always stored in the C Drive and very few software let me choose the D Drive. As such, I dealt with this laptop's
C Drive's 128 GB of storage and my god, you can't understate the amount of Frustration I had to deal with trying to 
make sure I don't run out of storage. I mean really!! 128GB for a C Drive in the 2020s is not what I call ideal.


 

What are my thoughts?

Ran into many hurdles.

Due to the 128GB SSD, I constantly fought with the machine for resources.
Ram was also temperamental later on... I think.

And I may have broken the original OEM Windows 10 installation in May 2022 but I reinstalled it. 
Almost lost all my files due to this but I was able to recover most of it.

Also, while emulation was a cinch, playing games that are meant for PC was a hassle. Games such as GTA V made my laptop run hot even when I had the fans turned on.
(I never bought a laptop cooling tray to begin with.)

On top of that, My laptop is locked at Windows 10. As it turns out, the Kaby Lake CPU in there is not compatible with Windows 11.(Not that I need it in my laptop since I already run Windows 11 in my Custom Built PC.)

But I still like this machine and I'm not at the position to sell it or recycle it anytime soon
Though I moved all my apps to my custom built Maverick Warhawk PC so now my Laptop is just for portable and work purposes.

Around December 5 2023, I discovered a crack on the bottom cover of my Laptop. I can't believe that after 3 years of owning that Laptop, It finally broke on me.
The motherboard still works but the outer shell has deteriorated to the point that I don't want to use it much anymore.

At this moment, I'm currently browsing options to buy a new laptop in the future. Again, mostly just for portable uses but this time, I want my future laptop to use an AMD CPU instead of an Intel CPU. 

I'm still going for an updated NVIDIA RTX Chipset.

 

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