NEW PCS Recoil 16" RTX4090 I9

[Daniel.winyard]

New Recoil: 16” Laptop Review.
Specs,
New Laptop Recoil Series: 16" Matte QHD 240Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1600), Intel® Core™ i9 24 Core Processor 13900HX (5.4GHz Turbo), 64GB Corsair 4800MHz SODIMM DDR5 (2 x 32GB), NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 4090(Mobile (M)) - 16.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1, 2TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)

Reasons for purchasing.
I felt it was time to purchase a new laptop to improve my gaming and workstation experience. I intend to use the laptop for multiple purposes including a lot of gaming. I am currently using excel, pdf editing, accounting all at the same time. I would like to use the new system to do photo and video editing at home, voluntary work and at work for underground mine 3d profiling.
Why did I order so much RAM? Simple answer is if one module fails will still have one working. Why not have two similar SSD drives, I have a 980 Pro as a secondary drive on my current laptop, if I want to use two of the same, I will swap between the two.
I currently have two laptops one I purchased from PC specialist in 2013 to 2014 which is;
Laptop, Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080) , Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4910MQ (2.90GHz) 8MB, 6GB KINGSTON HYPER-X IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB), 2 x NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980M - 8.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11. 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW).

My daughter is currently using this for following influencers, gaming, research into drawing and schoolwork.
In 2019 after I had moved to Zimbabwe, I wanted an upgrade bought a RTX2080(M) system as follows;
Laptop, MSI GE75 Raider 8SG 17 inch Screen 144hz, Intel i7-8750H CPU 4,091 MHz (2,200 MHz), 6 cores 12 logical, Nvidia RTX2080 8GB 1,950 MHz (1,380 MHz), 32GB Samsung RAM 2x 16,384 MB Crucial Technology DDR4 @ 2,660 MHz, 1X 2,048 GB INTEL SSDPEKNW020T8 SSD.

It’s been over 4 years since purchasing this computer and to be fair is still a great system that runs nearly every Game well in 1080p. Seeing all the hype and desiring a newer more modern system, that would have better rendering distance on RTX Minecraft (lol) among other things. I thought it was time for an upgrade to improve frame rates in games on max settings having at least min framerates at around 60fps. I do a lot of gaming on 1080p, but I desire to game at higher resolutions with better frame rates. Looking at the reviews and benchmark results from last season’s RTX 3080ti (M) it offered about a 64% increase on my RTX 2080 (M) graphics system. I initially thought at buying from South Africa but looking at benchmarks on the rtx 4090 (M) it offered nearly a 109% increase in performance. In terms of cost per performance though I did look at getting a custom-built desktop from south Africa which would offer astronomical performance increases in comparison. But since our company is paying it was suggested by the boss that I wait for the newer graphics cards and get a laptop for ease of use, mobility, power consumption (we have lots of power cuts and low power consumptions puts less load on solar backup systems at home and at work). In terms of price, it would have been more expensive to buy 4090 laptop system in South Africa than it would have to bring in from the UK with a friend. Our geologist business partner has a geo physicist coming to do some work for us and he agreed he would be able to bring it in for us, so I opted to buy from PC Specialist. Having bought a laptops from them in the past I was happy to wait for him to bring it in, the last one I bought from PCS was in 2013-14 a 980M Vortex 17” laptop. Which is still going strong after nearly 10 Years can’t really fault buying it from PCS. Hopefully the new laptop will meet the longevity as my old 17” Vortex.

I did a bit of research I added the RTX 4070 (m) and the RTX 4080 benchmarks after I ordered the 4090 system to see if I had been a bit of plonker going for top end of the new graphics card line up. The 4090 is only a fraction ahead of the 4080 really not too much difference with the 4090 just ahead of the 4080 by 17% increase in performance using my GE75 raider as the standard. It’s the 19-03-2023 and I get the new system on the 23 of March. Looking forward to giving it a spin and then just comparing it in real time to see if it is 209% increase… Part of me wishes I bought the PCS water cooling unit to go with it as I am sure it would make it easier to meet that 209% increase as the unknown online result gave. Getting excited hoping geo engineer friend will not forget to bring it.

23-03-23 First impressions.

Keyboard layout….. Well I am very pleased to say its a SteelSeries Mechanical Keyboard my MSI raider which it is replacing has a steel series keybourd they are excellent and I have had no problems with my old one on my laptop so continuity here is brilliant.

Screen size… display quality… The screen size is a little smaller than the MSI raider but its QHD 240hz refresh rate and picture Quality is crisp, sharp and clear. Really pleased with graphics quality and frame rates whilst benching some games. Ray-Tracying in Shadow of the tomb raider is absolutely remarkable when it bench marks through the jungle trees look a let boxy light effects make you feel like your in the jungle with Lara.

Its feels Surprisingly light, the chassis is not to swar-ve but its modesty is growing on me.

Wow but how does it bench.... Does my market research meet expectations upon real time comparison?

	My results (3dmark.com)
Test	CurrentGE75 Raider 8SG 17 inch RTX2080	NEW PCS Recoil 16" RTX4090
firestrike 1080P	20101​	35225​
firestrike extreme QHD	11648​	23465​
firestrike ultra UHD	6046​	14033​
port royal	6216​	12576​
time spy	8614​	19365​
ratracing feauture test	20.78​	110.78​

Overall from my initial benchmarking I am a tiny bit disappointed its not performing as good as its peers on fire strike part of me wishes the i bought the liquid cooling kit that wasn't available when I ordered the system. BUT it still a massive improvement on my last system and it looks like 4K will be playable on the new system.
Over all I am very happy with the performance going to busy benchmarking the games over the next couple of days so watch this space for an update. Its the 23rd of March and I only got the laptop delivered to me in Zimbabwe today.

24-03-23
I ve Managed to bench a few Games here are the results so far If your going to one of these laptops I expect the water cooling will really push up the performance but I am very Happy that I am getting nearly a 100% increase in performance whist benchmarking the games. Its still was worth the buy in my opinion. And overall the quality of the machine and the build is excellent. Like most laptops under load in the games the fans are pretty fast and loud...

Will definitely test some more games as I go, and will post the results. Unfortunately I am unable to get the 4K to work on my other monitor so cant up date on that yet. Really happy so far there's little loss in performance in QHD on most of the games which is great as that's the native resolution.

Blue is RTX2080, Orange HD on RTX 4090 and Purple Is UHD.
HD (1080) Improvement from my last system is pretty impressive.
81% In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, 101% in Warhammer 3, 81% in Assassins Creed Odyssey, 116% in Farcry 6, 67% in Assassins Creed Valhalla, 97% in Forza 4.
UHD is not far behind, I am pleased with the results as this native resolution of this machine so I will be playing an working in that resolution most of the time.
Overall this is a great compact laptop it is a considerable improvement on my last one I am very happy. The only thing I would want to do in the future is buy the water cooler...

 

[SpyderTracks]

Overall from my initial benchmarking I am a tiny bit disappointed its not performing as good as its peers on fire strike part of me wishes the i bought the liquid cooling kit that wasn't available when I ordered the system. BUT it still a massive improvement on my last system and it looks like 4K will be playable on the new system.

You can still buy the watercooler part, if you go to the upgrades section of your main PCS account on the order, it should be available as a standalone purchase. I believe it's £132 inc VAT.

Fantastic review. I do think this chassis is fully designed to be used with the watercooler, and it's just the nature of the thinness, can't keep temps low enough without it for maximum performance.

 

[Daniel.winyard]

You can still buy the watercooler part, if you go to the upgrades section of your main PCS account on the order, it should be available as a standalone purchase. I believe it's £132 inc VAT.

Fantastic review. I do think this chassis is fully designed to be used with the watercooler, and it's just the nature of the thinness, can't keep temps low enough without it for maximum performance.

If I get a chance will definitely look into doing that.

 

[Tron1982]

AWESOME !

 

[Daniel.winyard]

You can still buy the watercooler part, if you go to the upgrades section of your main PCS account on the order, it should be available as a standalone purchase. I believe it's £132 inc VAT.

Fantastic review. I do think this chassis is fully designed to be used with the watercooler, and it's just the nature of the thinness, can't keep temps low enough without it for maximum performance.

Water cooler incoming should have it by the 20th of August...

 

[SpyderTracks]

Water cooler incoming should have it by the 20th of August...

Would love to hear your findings when you get it through.

 

[Daniel.winyard]

Expecting the water cooler on Wednesday or Thursday next week so I have done a bit of pre prep research, and wanted to share some more thoughts on the the system before I publish the comparison on water cooling verses non water cooling.

After 5 Months with the laptop without water cooling, I am still very pleased with the quality and performance. Overall I am very happy with the purchase of this laptop for work and gaming. Having been born in the 1980s i have witnessed the the advancement of computer technology over the years and have been gaming ever since my Uncle introduced me to his Amstrad 1510. At first technology seemed to struggle with the demands that software put on it but over the last two decades technology has caught up with the demand, and with this laptop I think anyone would struggle to find a well optimized game that would struggle to run on it. This laptop readdresses the balance exceedingly well on pretty much everything I have played on it with stable and smooth picture quality all round.
Is it future proof its hard to tell with the speed of technological advancements in Ai and hardware, i would safely say its safe for now and for a laptop it pretty ahead of its game for a decent system. The Nvidia graphics and options takes visual appearance in leaps and bounds it turns the humble laptop into a gaming powerhouse handling even the most demanding games with ease. Its 240hz screen brings colour and picture quality to life with its native 2K screen its ideal for mobile gaming, and fun. Pretty much all the games I have played on it was well over 60 fps.

The pre installed laptops "control centre" offers three modes; office. game and turbo. Having tested game and turbo modes on 3d mark even without water-cooling it takes performance from just shy of average to good and above average with an overall range of 6-10% performance increase (can't wait to see what water cooling does). Its been a real pleasure fine tuning graphics settings on newer game titles and with NVidia's DLSS frame generation its smashes FPS out of the ball park and through a few city blocks. Although at 4 K is does struggle on the more advanced DLAA at 2k it was still smashing the fps over 60 and the picture quality was out of this world.
Even without water-cooling this system is one the best money can buy well worth the bucks if you can find them. What a pleasure it is looking forward to comparing the results and seeing them in game. I am very pleased to say that this system doesn't struggleView attachment Picture1.png at all in terms of performance smashing those frame rates out of the 60 fps ball park in 4 K and 2K even more so. 1080p seems like a resolution from the past as the framerates are so good in QHD an UHD. Only problem now is can my brain keep up with the performance.

 

[Daniel.winyard]

Would love to hear your findings when you get it through.

I have received the water cooler is there any recommended settings to get started with or a good guide for the water cooler over clocking and undervolting?

 

[SpyderTracks]

I have received the water cooler is there any recommended settings to get started with or a good guide for the water cooler over clocking and undervolting?

There’s a good video guide which takes you through connecting the cooler

Video guide for Recoil watercooler

Hi all The Recoil chassis watercooler can be a little tricky to set up. Below is a video on how to set them up, it also has a tear down so you can see the internal cooling system if you're interested. Skip to 28:48 for the teardown Skip to 48:28 for the watercooler setup

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

 

[Daniel.winyard]

ok so here are my bench mark results and bar chart. Will write up my water cooling written review later as its now 00:17 in Zimbabwe and this Brit needs his bed. 3d mark results https://www.3dmark.com/results

 

[Daniel.winyard]

Water cooling.



Well in short, its blooming marvellous, is it worth the extra £115 I paid for it? Having had to wait, too right it is. Some companies have added a lot of value to some of their flag ship titles by including NVidia DLSS features, and raytracing makes a real difference to gaming. No one likes spending a lot of money on AAA titles which fails to deliver this and it can be seen by the benchmark results that some big developers have dropped the ball in this regard. Games like the Witcher though old have added the DLS features to really add future to their past flagship projects, and it makes it a real pleasure to see Game developers really care about the quality of their products rather than just churn out AAA flagships that are; similar, so close together and fail when it comes to value for price tag. I believe in short game developers that have taken the time and care to really improve their current games have really made this a pleasure to test.

I am 42 and feel the call of my father telling me it’s probably time to hang up my gaming boots for good… Since Being a bit of globe trotter laptops have been my first choice of PC. Since my first laptop I bought with pcs, a 15inch laptop with Nvidia 540 card in it have been my first choice of Personal computer. And that old thing was bought in 2011 and is still functioning in my local church projecting the worship lyrics….

Gaming really isn’t as fun anymore as it was for me as I get older because morality begins to matter much, much, more and we tend to take life a bit more seriously. Even though I have a picture of Jesus displayed on my laptop screen (that’s his portrait as you look up north on the milky way, it’s amazing what an iPhone can discovered at night), I gave into the temptation to buy a new laptop and test it on the games in my library. Anyway, although I pretty much grew up gaming and enjoying games and watching PCs develop over the years, I am really impressed with the performance water cooling has added to this laptop on most games apart from the continental breakfast from hell. Spiderman seems to just smash it out of the atmosphere in terms of adding value. Although Console ports aren’t really my thing… I do enjoy RPGS because of choice matters where we still have the option to choose the right thing, after all that's why I believe free will is important. I like being a Chaotic good kind of adventurer and really like titles like Skyrim, the Witcher and Mass effect. And avoid all that sexual nonsense, really like clean gaming but these days it’s rare to find games that allow us to avoid the sex and occult influence we have in things. Cyberpunk is morally frightening, and I hope we never literally go there ever as human a race, but the benchmarking options and the raytracing is first class. I also am enthusiastic about strategy games armchair general since I bought my first toy soldiers and played risk with my uncle.

So, what does a retiring middle-aged gamer/enthusiast think enough of the personal talk lets get down to business. Without water-cooling this is still a fantastic laptop it benches just below average on turbo and that’s still breaking those old timers 60 fps barriers. If you have the money to spend on this laptop without water cooling try and push those purse strings, it’s worth it.

My table shows the difference between water cooling and non-water cooling and water cooling makes a huge performance difference even with out using the manual overclocking options, the factory turbo setting is smart and more than good enough than to take a guess at what to do.

I did find an over clocking guide on the oasis water cooler that recommended turning off core isolation by my system crashed a couple of times and I had to re install the control centre and start the benchmarks all over again. So, my benchmarks were done with all the windows security features enabled, I did notice that the core isolation improved performance, but I really didn’t want to risk damaging the system when getting the laptop repaired in the UK from Zimbabwe would be a mission.

I didn’t unbox it as my geologist friend from the mine Mr Fawcet who incidentally is very much an older timer more into gold mining here in Zimbabwe than gaming. He got stuck in the Congo on route from the UK with the water cooler and some lab equipment on the suspicion he was a drug dealer. The lab equipment was for the mine and has nothing to do with drugs. I don’t have a clue why anyone would think a 76 year old gentleman from the midlands would be a drug dealer.

Anyway, back to the water cooler the DLSS support is definitely worth its weight in minerals and its noted that only distilled water should be used with it Spider tracks has a great link in how to set it up and its pretty straightforward its on this thread a couple of responses above. The native 2K resolution is a great solution and the performance that goes with it is excellent.

Testing the Ubisoft and Microsoft titles were very disappointing in terms of dlss there were literally no option at all on their games, so they really did drag my averages on quality into the pits.

The tests were done on turbo mode I think without water cooling on max setting cyberpunk was a bit more complicated though as I didn’t use some of the newer more advanced settings. When I do play games, I will probably play in 2K as its easier on my eyes and quality is always a bit better than throttling it down the way. But saying that the results for Ultra High definition 4k are really impressive in ultra dllss adding huge amounts of value with just a small liquid cooler ok not desktop equivalent performance but I can't take my desktop 4000 miles to visit my mum or my brother in the UK. Or 8000 miles to Australia to see my brother-in-law and sister in-law.

Average performance across all games in max settings in dlss is improved by about 15% on average(table 1), the highest percentage on this was spider man with 103% increase on 1080HD but I am unlikely to play games on standard HD ever again. On quality with water cooling, we get £469.48 on average, for quality dlss performance increase this might have been better if Ubisoft had come to the party on DLSS on my first table 1 so removed their games from the analysis to give a better picture. This sort of stuff does matter to gamers/enthusiasts which have paid top dollar for AAA titles. The averages on cost performance was worked out but dividing what I paid for the laptop dividing it by 100 hundred and multiplying it by the % of the with water cooling frames per second worked from 100% of the without water cooling %. I know I must be a bit of a geek to work it out but necessary to see what £115 worth of water cooling is worth, in terms of money. The ultra Dlss NVidia feature on average improved the value of the water-cooling feature I mean come on £115 buying £1918.25 quid’s worth of extra performance.

My testing conditions were not perfect but on the whole, I am very happy with laptop and its performance being in the 97% region on fire strike extreme or was it time spy extreme getting excellent and good 3dmark score with water cooling was a great feeling, Some have call the recoil a bit of a for festa with a F1 engine so what a small car with a big heart is just fine with me. You all know what they say about men who drive big cars. 19% increase on average, with quality dlss with the games that offer the setting is brilliant. Ultra Dlss pushes out of the playing field though with a 62.53% increase in performance with the pcs water cooler. definitely worth 100-115 quid.

In terms of work station this this is great the I9 is great for work and the extra ram helps with all the programs and windows I have open concurrently.

Added the results by resolution as well 4K has a stunning 77% increase in performance on average with games that offer dlss ultra performance with water cooling. 2K 62% and 1K 47%. Quality dlss with water-cooling increase performance; 1K 26%., 2K 15%, 4K, 17%.

Was it worth the price I paid for it? I'd say yes it was worth it and some... highly recommend it if to anyone who can afford it, when I bought it similar system in south Africa would of cost much more at least and although big brands are ok this is slightly ahead of my MSI laptop in terms of quality of build and robustness. Might look plain, but for a cheap high end laptop it superb, the water cooling has been pretty stable with the stress of benching... My wife needs me and I am already in trouble for not sleeping in my bed this morning.... eeek.... this system is a lot of fun, when I bought it it would of cost the company well over £4000 from south Africa not to mention the runners fee on top of 30% and import duty. Ok so it doesn't look like a sports car but boy does it play like one. £3068 price tag plus £115 for the water cooler well worth it, great value for money. Great for office work too cough cough..... tad bit of overkill on that one.

Happy to answer any questions.

My results (3dmark.com)

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/threads/video-guide-for-recoil-watercooler.93915/ (spydertracks link).
https://www.xmg.gg/en/xmg-oasis-mk1/ Water cooler manual

 

[Daniel.winyard]

Handy tip for the water cooler when setting up try and get as much air out of the cooling system as possible.

Repeating the water input method over an over a few time makes a huge difference in performance when setting up the cooler.

Before not repeating the water input method.

After repeating the water input method.

 

[Tron1982]

Wow, that's some nice data !
well presented

 

[SpyderTracks]

The whole review from start to finish is more professional than a lot of tech outfits, very impressive indeed and so helpful for others!

 

[Daniel.winyard]

Wow, that's some nice data !
well presented

Thank you, ha the best things in life are free. Was a real pleasure putting the Hardware through its paces...

 

[Daniel.winyard]

The whole review from start to finish is more professional than a lot of tech outfits, very impressive indeed and so helpful for others!

Thank you really appreciate that. Its good to give it a try, although I will probably need to re-test the games now I have the water cooling mastered. I think testing computers like this would be dream job or side hustle, although I don't see myself leaving Zimbabwe any time soon, i think its good to dust off some of those old skills and apply them to this although I am sure I can polish it up a bit, always room for improvement i guess. Plus it feels good to promote a good product... from a company I have bought 3 laptops from and a desktop all of which are good products. Customer service has been excellent so far... A lot goes into supplying a customer a decent product, keeping them happy and supporting them when needed. Thankyou PCS you do that well.