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A single panel is held in place by 7 or 8 screws and once this is removed we can see the FX600, up close and personal. Several large heatpipes run across the width of the machine to keep the components cool.
The hard drive, is a 500GB Toshiba product which while offering plenty of storage is only a 5,400 rpm unit.
There are two 2GB DDR3 ram modules installed which is a perfect partner for the 64 bit Windows operating system.
At the top left is the wireless card – an Intel Link 1000 product offering a wide array of support.
On the far right (from the back) is a fan housing which is connected to a dual heatpipe system. This is next to a vented area to allow for hot air to escape directly out the rear and side. Both processor and graphics are cooled by this. We will look later into the cooling performance.
The layout is a proven design which should work well long term. We know a lot of people never remove the rear covering of their laptop, but we always tend to blow out the fan system on these computers with a quality air duster a couple of times a year, at least.
The MSI FX600 has both Intel HD and Vidia GT 325M dedicated graphics onboard with 1GB of GDDR3.
When you first start the machine, MSI have the software suite specially configured to offer prompts to the user. If you don't wish any of the software installed you can tell the machine to use a barebones configuration. I enabled installation of all software, which you can see in the image above. I like the fact they are allowing the user to choose, and I hope more manufacturers switch to this way of thinking.
A strong windows rating, let down by the hard drive, which we expected as it is a low performance 2.5 inch Toshiba 5,400 rpm drive.
Today we will be comparing against an Intel Atom powered ASRock Ion3d system which we reviewed last month. This is a good way to be able to measure potential upgrade benefits if you are finding your current Atom powered laptop too slow.
Heh, I was waiting for this after seeing your news post a few weeks ago, for the 610. This the UK model? great price in argos, 500 quid for core i3 and nvidia 1gb graphics with an LED screen?
Interesting about the hard drive choice, thats why reviews are so helpful.
Fair and unbiased review with good technical data. 5,400 rpms should be ditched completely in these machines, especially with a core i3 processor! fine in a playstation 3, but this? no way.
Still its worth buying, the 2.5 inch 500gb could be taken out and used in an external drive caddy as a storage drive and a smallish SSD slotted in. Would make sense for me, and with the 100 quid saved, it covers most of the SSD cost.
the styling is great. the specs are good, and the price is brilliant,. I saw that on argos last week and wondered if it sucked. thanks for the review via google !
Ordered it, but ive no idea how to change out the hard drive, hopefully its ok for me, im not that picky :p
good review Zardon, loads of testing.
yay! my parents are buying me this for christmas,. thank god its good..
That price is hard to fault really. I would like a smaller 7,200 rpm drive though, thats about it.