GPU Surgical procedure: MSI Toy Story Pre-Constructed PC Overview, Benchmarks, and Thermals
And so the GN Curse continues. It seems that we have now been chosen.
The PC got here with a useless GPU, broken PCIe slot, caved-in prime panel, and XMP that’s off.
However there are additionally good issues:
The BIOS was custom-skinned to be themed round Toy Story, which is consideration to element we didn’t anticipate. A lot of the core elements are additionally custom-made, together with the Buzz GPU, Woody motherboard, and claw-themed case.
That is the Toy Story thirtieth Anniversary restricted version pre-built gaming PC, constructed by MSI, cross-branded with Disney Pixar. We bought quantity 91 out of 500 and we purchased it in Taiwan for $2,700 US {dollars}. It’s equal elements whimsy and catastrophe. It even comes with sensible battle injury.
Regardless of tons of issues going improper, we benchmarked it anyway. On the pc facet of issues, as soon as we bought it working by doing a GPU transplant, it’s not unhealthy. The OS is clear and the thermals are okay. The BIOS was sadly not configured. That’s unhealthy, nevertheless it’s custom-made, which is cool.
Overview and Advertising
So like we mentioned within the intro, this pre-built gaming PC is a collaboration between MSI and Disney/Pixar for Toy Story’s thirtieth anniversary.
It’s restricted to 500 models and solely accessible in Taiwan, so we paid lots to have it shipped over – a variety of good that did us.
Being a Taiwan unique, MSI’s touchdown web page for the system is in Chinese language. Machine translation, yields unintentionally humorous outcomes. The toys’ names, for instance: “…Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Three-Eyed Monster, Zack King, and ‘others accompanied us via childhood’…”
Zack King is Emperor Zurg. It should have been his stage title.
The {custom} Toy Story Version elements are surprisingly high-effort. Woody motherboard, Buzz Lightyear GPU, alien CPU cooler, Emperor Zurg PSU, and “House Crane” claw machine case.
Much more high-effort are the product photographs, undoubtedly dealt with by Disney/Pixar as a result of high quality of the set. Additionally as a result of even when the PC is on the desk, there’s no monitor, keyboard, or the rest that it’s worthwhile to truly use the pc.
So this can be a cool challenge, and this sort of collaboration is one thing we’d prefer to see extra of. Sadly, elements of it weren’t executed effectively, which appear to pertain to MSI. However with Disney and MSI alike concerned, it’s costly.
Specs and Worth
MSI Toy Story Pre-built | Half and Worth Breakdown | GamersNexus
| Half Identify | DIY Equal Half | DIY Half Worth | |
| CPU | Intel Extremely 5 245K (not TSE) | An identical | $270 |
| CPU Cooler | MAG CORELIQUID Toy Story Version | MSI MAG CORELIQUID A13 | $108 |
| Motherboard | Z890 Gaming Plus Toy Story Version | MSI Z890 GAMING PLUS WIFI | $267 |
| Reminiscence | Kingston FURY Beast RGB DDR5-6400 32GB (not TSE) | An identical | $163 |
| Storage | MSI Spatium M450 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD (not TSE) | MSI SPATIUM M480 PRO 1TB PCIe 4 | $70 |
| GPU | RTX 5070 GAMING TRIO Toy Story Version | RTX 5070 GAMING TRIO OC | $650 |
| Case | MSI MAG PANO 110R Toy Story Version | MSI MAG PANO 110R PZ | $99 |
| Energy Provide | MAG A850GL PCIE5 Toy Story Version | MSI MAG A850GL PCIE5 II | $130 |
| Pre-built Worth: NT$ 80,900 / US$ 2,726 | DIY Whole: $1,757 | ||
| Pre-built Premium Over DIY: $969 |
Right here’s an in depth have a look at the specs and the equal DIY elements. All the Toy Story Version elements have direct non-Toy Story Version counterparts, making this simple. The draw back is that not one of the particular person Toy Story elements can be found on the market standalone on the time of writing.
We don’t have any points with the half choice in isolation, the 245K (learn our evaluate) and RTX 5070 (learn our evaluate) will have the ability to sustain with one another in gaming situations with out heavy imbalance.
The worth is the proverbial snake within the boot.
The worth may be very unhealthy from an goal standpoint, because the transformed worth from NTD to USD has nearly $1,000 of improve over DIY. It’s exhausting to place a precise worth on the custom-made limited-run elements, as that’s completely as much as how a lot the customer needs the look or how a lot they purchase into the system as a collectible. Additionally, unusually, a $1,000 improve over DIY elements isn’t the worst we’ve seen from pre-builts we’ve reviewed just lately. At the least this PC is custom-made.
MSI Toy Story Pre-built Tear-down
Usually, we do tear downs after we take a look at pre-built PCs, however we have now to do it in reverse order right here as a result of the system had a variety of injury.
To begin with, the GPU energy connector was not plugged in.
Ignoring that, the increasing foam contained in the PC was not correctly expanded. This was accomplished incorrectly by MSI when the corporate was packing the pc.
The very first thing that jumped out at us after we seemed on the laptop was an enormous inflection on the prime nook of the case, which appears to be like like drop injury throughout transport. We’re going to be somewhat extra lenient right here as a result of we did ship it the world over.
On the prime, you’ll see that it’s deflected and the screws have principally popped out. Although, like we mentioned, we did have it ship the world over, so we’ll be somewhat extra lenient. Although the froth concern contained in the PC isn’t excusable.
We additionally noticed unfastened bits floating across the case, which ended up being from the PCIe retention clamp. The final time we noticed this was on an iBUYPOWER system a few years in the past.
The PCIe slot will nonetheless work, however if you insert a video card, all of its gold connectors aren’t totally within the slot; the cardboard is simply form of “floating” and unsecured. Pushing it in firmly does assist.
Whereas making an attempt to check the system, we found that the video card’s PCIe slot was broken and has a crack that forestalls the cardboard from working. That is an MSI concern and never a transport concern. Almost certainly, it was attributable to MSI not inserting the increasing foam across the GPU accurately.
The excellent news is that the Buzz Lightyear card is a rebadge of MSI’s Gaming Trio OC 5070 card, which we bought. It makes use of the identical PCB and MOSFETs. So what we did was swap the cardboard’s shroud.
We began by eradicating the steel shroud from the damaged card. It had a thermal pad on one of many backplates.
We needed to pull some cables to take away the shroud.
We then eliminated the shroud from the alternative card they usually seemed an identical side-by-side.
The toughest half about all of this was re-installing the fan cables into the PCB.
From there, we simply screwed the shroud again in place to finish the GPU swapping operation.
Persevering with with the remainder of our tear-down, we observed a picture of the Binocular toy over the CMOS battery, which is a pleasant consideration to element.
Wanting on the motherboard, it has textual content which reads that it was established in 1995, which is a nod to the primary Toy Story film. It additionally has a Woody Sheriff imagery coupled with the Disney and Pixar logos on prime of the chipset heatsink, which is one other good consideration to element.
The screws are individually painted, which can be good.
Subsequent we eliminated all of the cables and the RAM sticks, which have been totally seated.
After that, we eliminated the CPU cooler, which was secured firmly in place. The paste utility was good total.
Subsequent we seemed on the thermal pad on prime of the NVMe SSD. It luckily had its plastic peel eliminated, which hasn’t all the time been the case with pre-builts.
Wanting on the 1TB drive beneath, we will gladly report that it wasn’t bent, which we’ve seen Alienware mess up.
The very last thing we did was to examine and see if all the screws have been safe, they usually have been.
Equipment
Shifting on to equipment: We usually don’t give a lot time to the non-functional gimmicks of a pre-built, however right here the gimmicks are the explanation somebody would purchase it within the first place.
The outer containers are marked “Sunnyside,” referencing the daycare in Toy Story 3. The internal field for the PC has {custom} printing, together with a Pizza Planet receipt for Al’s Toy Barn. The accent field had 5 Toy Story-themed magnetic case badges, the same old case toss-ins, and a GPU assist. We should always in all probability put the assist in after we’re accomplished right here, contemplating the slot injury.
The PC additionally got here with a serialized certificates of authenticity, “celebrating three a long time of creativeness, creativity, and innovation.”
The second field had all the person element containers. The Toy Story-themed ones for the motherboard, GPU, PSU, and CPU cooler look ok that we marvel if Disney had extra to do with them than MSI did. They’re in all probability the one PC elements that include Disney’s holographic authenticity stickers on the containers they usually do truly match the final toy-themed aesthetic with the plastic home windows, similar to in Toy Story.
With all this cross-branding we wouldn’t be stunned to see Fortunate the Dragon make a cameo in a future Toy Story film…perhaps thrown into the incinerator.
There’s additionally an entire field of vinyl figures and blocks thrown in as collectibles.
Spare and unused PSU and inner cables have been within the PSU field, which is nice to see. Some firms prior to now have uncared for to incorporate unused modular cables, however there’s no purpose to not and loads of causes to incorporate them so it’s good that they’re right here.
There’s no fast begin information or setup leaflet. It is a main oversight and is one thing we need to see in each pre-built, as even one thing as fundamental as which port to plug the show into will have an effect on the expertise and usefulness.
Packaging and Injury
We’ll transfer to the packaging now.
The system arrived with injury: An insane quantity of injury, contemplating how little the outside containers are screwed up.
The unique Buzz Lightyear-themed RTX 5070 tried to fly round inside the case, and solely averted falling with (or with out) type by being screwed in on the rear slot brackets. It lit up and the followers spun, nevertheless it didn’t give any video out, and the motherboard sat on the VGA gentle throughout boot. It didn’t attain infinity however did go to the past.
Consequently, the Woody-themed Z890 motherboard suffered some injury to the first PCIe slot. The locking latch was damaged in two, rattling round contained in the case, and the slot “armor” bought bent. Not as badly because the iBUYPOWER Slate from 4 years in the past, however this could by no means occur. Fortunately, the slot remains to be purposeful.
As for the Emperor Zurg-purple GPU energy cable that wasn’t even plugged in, we checked the GPU finish of the cable underneath a microscope to attempt to decide if it ever was plugged in. There are two clear put on traces on one facet that make us suppose it may have been partially inserted at one level – perhaps even at an angle. It’s tough to make a conclusive judgment since we didn’t see any visible change after inserting the cable ourselves. Both this was improperly and partially linked or it by no means was linked in any respect. Regardless, it’s not proper.
The blame for that is shared. MSI bears duty for the GPU-based injury. The increasing foam bag is uninflated, due to this fact doing nothing to assist the GPU, which might have prevented the injury. We predict correct use of the froth would have been sufficient.
The case/cooler injury wouldn’t have been stopped by the increasing foam. It both occurred previous to being boxed, or throughout transport. We will’t know if it occurred in Taiwan or on its approach to the US, nevertheless it did journey a good distance, so we’ll break up that blame.
BIOS and OS Setup
The MSI Z890 Gaming Plus Toy Story Version has essentially the most cosmetically custom-made UEFI we’ve ever seen. It’s Woody-themed, with flannel and denim backgrounds, cow print menus, and stitched leather-based sidebars. It’s truly fairly cool. Woody’s boot is the cursor, full with a tiny “ANDY” signature. We assume Disney/Pixar was actually hands-on for the method, as a result of it appears larger high quality than MSI’s customary. This consideration to element is great and goes past what we anticipated. Our expectations stopped at externally themed elements, so that is nice to see.
Sadly for MSI, that’s the place the customization stops. There’s no saved profile and the whole lot is about to default auto settings. Which means the RAM’s profile isn’t set, leaving the DDR5-6400 equipment working at 4800. It is a enormous mistake and is tantamount to false promoting on the product web page: Though the RAM can run at DDR5-6400, it wasn’t set that manner, and so claiming DDR5-6400 within the specs is deceptive and incorrect. A lot of the pre-builts we’ve reviewed just lately have no less than cleared this hurdle, which wasn’t all the time true, however right here’s MSI resetting expectations again to five years in the past.
Additionally, we’re unsure why Woody’s going out of body on the exit display and so unusually removed from his hat.
We aren’t positive how BIOS updates are going to work. For now, MSI’s touchdown web page hyperlinks to the conventional model of the Z890 Gaming Plus WiFi. Our assumption is that future BIOS updates on this web page would wipe the customization, however we received’t know till there’s one to check. Our suggestion could be to not replace the BIOS until the corporate releases a particular one for this construct.
Shifting to Home windows 11 setup, MSI took the freedom of getting a profile already in place, skipping the OOBE on the person’s behalf. It’s simply: {custom} BIOS splash, whimsical wallpaper jumpscare, sus-looking command home windows that blink out and in of existence, and that’s it. Being a Taiwan unique, the language was set to Chinese language characters, which is smart and is simple to vary.
Home windows itself was very clear, with out bloatware on the desktop, begin menu, or system tray. The wallpaper mysteriously disappeared at one level, however we’ve seen that as a normal Home windows bug earlier than. Gadget Supervisor confirmed no lacking drivers, which is all the time nice to see. They bought the whole lot put in.
So total, MSI missed on the BIOS setup by the use of doing nothing, however hit with the OS setup. The one unusual factor was booting straight right into a pre-loaded person profile.
Benchmarks
Stepping into the benchmarks, we’ll run thermals first.
Thermals – Full System Load
System thermals at steady-state in our ordinary full system torture load look good total. The key elements require comparatively low energy and are simply dealt with by their respective cooling options.
The NVIDIA RTX 5070 averaged 61 levels celsius, with the reminiscence junction at 60C. The Intel 245K managed to have its E-cores common larger at 55C than its P-cores at 53C. This matches the conduct we noticed in our authentic evaluate.
MOS, PCH, SPD Hub, and Drive temperatures all fall effectively inside acceptable ranges – although not particularly loaded throughout this take a look at. All the pieces is ok right here.
CPU Thermals vs. Fan Speeds – Over Time
Subsequent is a plot of CPU thermals and fan speeds over time throughout our full-torture workload. The CPU P-cores and E-cores instantly leap to the excessive 40s when the load begins, then ramp slowly to regular state by roughly the five hundred second mark. PCH temperature follows the same however slower rise.
The untouched fan configuration is by nature devoid of nuance or care. The CPU cooler’s pump runs flat out the complete time. The CPU fan goes from simply over 1000 RPM at idle to 1500 RPM at regular state, with a ramp that mimics the rise in CPU temperature. The reverse-blade case followers on the proper facet panel don’t change pace a lot over the length of the take a look at, going from slightly below to only over 1200 RPM.
GPU Thermals vs. Fan Speeds – Over Time
Now for a fast have a look at GPU thermals over time. Though it’s not the unique GPU board and warmth sink underneath the shroud, it must be functionally an identical because it’s all the identical elements. The thermal interfaces by no means got here off through the transplant both.
It’s utterly positive. GPU temperature goes from 25C at idle to 60C in just some minutes, sustaining a flat trajectory. The fan pace does likewise, settling at 40% PWM responsibility cycle. That is nice and tells us the GPU has entry to loads of air.
CPU Frequency
We checked the Intel 245K’s frequency conduct with the identical Blender load that we use for frequency validation in our standalone CPU critiques. Each the P-cores and E-cores sit 16MHz common under the unique evaluate pattern. That’s very shut contemplating how completely different the take a look at platforms are. That is effectively inside silicon variance.
Acoustic Testing
Acoustic testing is subsequent, carried out in our hemi-anechoic chamber. Right here we see the adverse consequence of MSI doing no fan tuning and working all of the fan headers at their default curves. Although the system isn’t “loud” per-se, it doesn’t change very a lot through the take a look at.
The Toy Story pre-built averaged 31.5dBA throughout idle, which shortly rose to 33.3dBA at steady-state. There’s undoubtedly room to decrease the fan speeds at idle to get it right down to a barely-audible stage if they’d bothered to.
Energy Testing
Measuring full system energy consumption on the wall can assist us perceive the general stability of our workload on the system underneath take a look at and extra importantly helps us know if the facility provide is enough. On this case, nothing uncommon jumps out. The system idles at about 60W earlier than the CPU load begins at 180 seconds in, bringing the system as much as 190-200W, then snaps to the 420-440W vary when the GPU joins in.
MSI Toy Story Pre-built Conclusion
Backside line, MSI’s Toy Story Pre-built isn’t value shopping for from any goal {hardware} worth standpoint at nearly $3,000 – that’s ignoring the truth that it’s restricted to 500 models and solely formally accessible in Taiwan. The added worth is completely subjective and as much as the customer’s willingness to spring for the novelty and “collectible” nature of it. From that perspective, we don’t actually decide this the identical manner we might a traditional prebuilt — so long as everybody is aware of you’re paying for licensing.
We just like the willingness from MSI to strive one thing new aesthetically. We predict it’s factor any time producers supply actual selection like this. Though these are reskins of elements, they’re accomplished effectively. The colours are match for Toy Story.
As a whole PC, the principle positives are good thermal efficiency and a clear OS.
The record of negatives is longer. First off, MSI utterly failed at packing the within of the PC appropriately by not ensuring the increasing foam bag truly expanded to fill the house and assist the GPU. The remainder of the injury might be on the truth that it shipped 1000’s of miles farther than it’s alleged to, however the GPU is on MSI.
Different negatives embrace the value of just about $1,000 over DIY, the entire lack of BIOS settings customization and due to this fact XMP being left off, the shortage of directions or fast begin information. The followers may even have been managed higher to permit for quieter idle operation.
In different phrases, as Woody said, “You’re a toy!”
However we do like how they executed on the Toy Story components. The product containers are cool and match the theme, the colours are good, and the custom-made UEFI is fairly cool. It’s too unhealthy in regards to the main errors from MSI.