Pros: The laptop cosmetics are beautiful and the case seems sturdy. The laptop doesn't get as hot as some that I've experienced. I can play any game with at least medium graphics and get 25+ FPS. The keyboard is very nice and the touchpad is a large enough to not annoy you. The speakers give a quality sound as long as you don't turn them all the way up.

Cons: The DvD drive is loud, the 5400RPM hard drive is slow and the processor isn't the best but manages just fine. The screen can be annoying, you have to keep it in the perfect position to get the best picture. If you use the laptop consistantly then your battery life is only about an hour, though, it does charge fast. The graphics drivers can be a pain the first time you try to update them.

Overall Review: At the $500 price range, you can't really expect a laptop to be super fast or come with all the bells and whistles. I was pretty amazed at how well this laptop can handle games. If you are on a budget and want a laptop that can play games, I would definitely choose this one. Most laptops in this price range won't come with a dedicated GPU as well as some in the $600 price range. For the price, I wouldn't choose any other.

Pros: This notebook can handle anything you throw at it. I can play ALL my games at 1920x1080 completely maxed out and retain no less than 40FPS. Most of the time I an Vsync capped at 60FPS. - Very fast -Good cooling -Decent screen, Bright and colors are vibrant when adjusted properly -Audio has great quality and can be loud -Battery Life (I get around 7 hours surfing the net with a low brightness screen and low processor state) -Backlighting is awesome and customizable Overall this notebook does exactly what it was designed to do, that is gaming, and it does it very well.

Cons: BEWARE: MSI doesn't provide any Windows licensing! In the future if you want to upgrade this notebook with a solid state or just want/need to reformat then you can't without purchasing a license. I am very disappointed because for the price you pay for this thing a license should be included. I already contacted them about it and they basically flipped me off with a tough cookie kid you need to use OUR provided restore disk. Some may think me childish because of it, but I won't purchase nor recommend an MSI product again because of this. The screen shutoff button stopped working barely 3 days after I received it. It's not really worth the wait for a warranty replacement because they won't cross ship a new notebook. This notebook is critical for work and not just gaming. This Notebook is very heavy compared to others in it's class. You can get similar performance with less weight. But for me it isn't too much of an issue. I rather have the good cooling capabilities. Though, the backlighting on the keyboard is awesome, the keyboard itself is horrible. It feels clunky and at times can be unresponsive in situations such as typing double letters in words or typing too fast. The keyboard prevents you from typing at any decent speed. The 17.3" size never was an issue because I've owned them in the past, but it's the thickness that may be a problem for some people. I have notebook backpack and it barely fits with the enormous brick size power supply (AC Adapter) it comes with. It's because of this thickness, as it has massive internal heat sinks, that it has excellent cooling capabilities. I am taking off one egg for the cons and another egg because Newegg mis-advertised this notebook when it was first released. Otherwise I would have rated this notebook a 4/5. Newegg had a flawless record with me until now.

Overall Review: MSI needs to get their **** together and provide their loyal customers with proper licensing like other companies do. When your paying $1600+ out the door for a notebook I expect to get EVERYTHING! I don't want your stupid restore disk containing bloat-ware, even if it isn't as much as the other companies provide. I get a weird error with Netflix and Sleep Mode. I had my notebook set to sleep after a couple hours for when I fall asleep watching Netflix. Every time it went to sleep I would wake up in the morning with an error because of an unexpected shutdown. It has only occurred when the notebook slept playing Netflix. This is a very good notebook regardless of my extensive CON list. They are only minor in opinion, except the license issue. If you want Slim and Light then don't purchase a Gaming notebook.

Pros: Unbelievably Fast! Stays really cool even with hours upon hours of gaming. Comes with a back plate which provides excellent support. Overclocks really well! This is the only GPU you will ever need for a single card system!

Cons: This card is MASSIVE! I have a full tower case and it barely cleared the hard drive bays by an inch.

Overall Review: If you want excellent overclocks you need to flash the bios to a previous version to get the unlocked voltage. I would rate this 5/5 but I don't believe that anything is perfect, so a 4/5 is as good as it's going to get. Otherwise consider this a 5/5 rating.

Pros: The Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B works great! With my CPU at stock speeds it keeps my temperature below 40 Celsius under load. This will give me plenty of room for overclocking. The fan is very quite and I guess can become more quite with the PWM control attached, if need be. The Black Pearl plating makes the heatsink look great and keeps the edges of the fins dull enough to prevent yourself from getting cut. I have had problems in the past with heatsinks covering the A1 ram slot, this one doesn't, though I can't say it won't with micro ATX boards.

Cons: The only thing keeping me from giving this 5 out of 5 eggs is that this heatsink/fan is difficult to install. It requires you to remove the motherboard out of the case to install and replace the stock back plate with the one provided (Intel or AMD). The instruction manual is vague on details and forces some guess work on what they are trying to tell you.

Overall Review: The total installation time took me about 45min, mainly because I was trying to figure out what the manual was trying to say. As well as the fact I had to pull my motherboard out, which meant disconnecting everything and back again! If Zalman kept the AMD bar clip setup, then it would be a lot faster and easier to install. I can understand the reasoning behind this, the heatsink is among the heaviest I have come across.

Pros: This GPU runs cool and very quite as advertised, i was surprised. Maxed every game at 1920X1080 including Crysis: Warhead and the lowest FPS i got was 36. Under load the temps don't even reach 65C with the IceQ cooler. Excellent bang for the buck.

Cons: The IceQ cooling shroud looks may not be everyone's taste. The shroud also seems kind of flimsy, but is still sturdy none the less. 10.5 inch length may hinder installation in some cases

Overall Review: If you are only planning on using one monitor, this GPU is perfect for all types of gaming. I haven't tried it yet as the 920MHz clock is fine as it is, but i heard this card can easily reach the 1000MHz+ mark stably and stay cool. I highly recommend this GPU for the sub $200 market. I upgraded from an HD4850 512MB and currently using a Coolermaster Centurion 5 case.

Pros: It was really easy to setup. This systems uses a mouse/GUI interface which is really cool and even my boss who doesn't know much about this stuff can easily navigate through the menus. The old DVR we had was an alright one, didn't last very long, but once i plugged this one in the image quality jumped (this may not be the case for everyone). We extended the 500GB to 1TB, this was also an easy task since it was basically plug and play. Overall its an easy system to use, we are very satisfied with it so far.

Cons: None so far. I will have to wait and see how reliability goes.

Overall Review: The only reason i won't give this product a 5/5 is for that very reason i don't know how reliable it is yet.