Gaming laptops, particularly in the high-end price range, are always vying to deliver the fastest performance and the coolest new features. The MSI GT80 Titan SLI ($3,399.99 as tested) certainly does that, with a unique chassis that you can open easily for upgrades, an industry-first built-in mechanical keyboard, and two potent Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M graphics cards. But being first doesn't automatically make you the best, so how does the GT80 stack up against other premium gaming machines like the Aorus X7 Pro or the Editors' Choice Asus ROG G751JY-DH72X?

Design
The first feature that jumps out is the mechanical keyboard, much like those seen on dedicated keyboards, like the Das Keyboard 4C Ultimate and the Corsair K95 RGB. With Cherry MX Brown key switches—they are tactile, but without as much of the clicky sound as MX Blue switches have—and an aggressive-looking red backlight, the keyboard looks and feels great. It's comparable to an excellent dedicated  gaming keyboard, and it easily surpasses the shallow scissor-switch keys used on other gaming laptops. For an extra touch that competitive players may appreciate, MSI also throws in a keycap kit with gold-colored metal keycaps for the WASD keys, and another key (ostensibly for the Escape key, but it should work on any other key) bearing the MSI dragon logo. The swappable keycaps provide a visual and tactile distinction for the frequently used keys.

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The mechanical keyboard also takes up a lot of room. In fact, it requires far more physical space than the usual chiclet-style keys used on most laptops, totally changes the dimensions and design of the system. The depth required by the keys and key switches affects the thickness of the laptop, while also changing how much of that space can be allocated to internal components. To compensate for this, all of the components that would normally share chassis space with the keyboard are instead moved up and packed into a lidded 6-by-18-inch box.

The giant 18.4-inch display is a size that we haven't seen on a laptop since the Alienware 18. With 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, it's big and beautiful, but almost as important as the display itself is the width that an 18-inch screen allows in a laptop design. That extra room provides enough space for a touchpad that sits alongside the keyboard. It sits right where you might expect a 10-key numeric pad to be, and if you tap the glowing number icon in the upper left corner of the pad, it lights up with a touchpad version instead.

Obviously, the depth requirements of the keyboard and the width of the massive 18.4-inch display make it clear that this machine isn't built for mobility, but wow. The GT80 measures 1.93 by 13.02 by 17.95 inches (HWD), and weighs a hefty 9.9 pounds, making it one of the largest gaming laptops we've seen in a long time. It even makes the 1.7-inch-thick Asus G751JY-DH72X look svelte. And that's not all you'll need to haul if you want to drag this laptop to a LAN party; it also comes with a massive power supply—a large brick that weighs nearly 5 pounds—and a silicone wrist rest to compensate for the lack of a palm rest on the chassis.

With Dynaudio stereo speakers and a built-in subwoofer, audio output is good with powerful volume and no distortion, even when the volume is turned up quite high. Headphone and headset users get an extra treat, with dedicated amplifier chips that also boost the sound quality and volume for headphone and audio-out connections. You can also tweak the audio in the included Sound Blaster Cinema 2 control panel to optimize the settings for your game or media.

Components and Upgrades
That back half of the chassis holds a lot
of hardware, but it's unique from most laptops in that it's all fairly accessible. The aluminum lid can be opened up, providing access to the components for upgrades. Inside, you'll find that the storage drives are easily accessible, with two 128GB solid-state drives (SSD)—which appear as a single 256GB drive in the system—filling two drive slots, and a 1TB hard drive for storage. For upgrades and maintenance, there are two open M.2 slots for adding SSDs, and two empty SO-DIMM slots for bumping up the RAM (the existing 16GB of RAM filled two RAM slots accessible from the underside of the laptop).

The top panel does not, however, give you access to the dual GPUs. To access the graphics cards, you'll need to open up the bottom panel on the base of the chassis. With the bottom panel off, you'll have access to the system RAM, the dual cooling fans, and two Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M graphics cards, installed as swappable Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM) cards, which should make it easier to switch out to another MXM-mounted card in the future. You will also be able to access the system's Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor.

Features
On the sides of the laptop you'll find a total of five USB 3.0 ports, a Blu-ray burner, an SD card slot, an S/PDIF connection for 5.1 surround sound, and audio jacks for headphones and a microphone. But there are more ports around the back of the system, with two miniDisplayPorts and an HDMI output for connecting external displays—the dual GPUs can handle up to three additional monitors, all running at full HD, and still support most games at full detail settings. On the back you'll also find the system's power jack, which utilizes a four-pin connector instead of the barrel connector used on most gaming notebooks. It's perfectly functional, but the pinned connector does need to plugged in with the proper alignment, and can be prone to damage from an otherwise harmless bump.