New Gaming notebook; MSI, Gigabyte or Lenovo. Which to pick?

[kiddingguy]

I'm looking for a new gaming notebook. Technically a 5070Ti will do, but I cannot find a 'decent' non-ASUS brand with respectable specs for around 2500-3000 euro .

My current ASUS G614FR has too many issues, so I would like to stay away from that brand.

I have three notebooks which might be of interest, all have 32 GB RAM.
Which one would you pick, and why?

 

MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2WI [released last week]

• GeForce RTX 5080
• Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus
• 16", WQXGA, 240Hz, 1.000cd/m²
• 2 TB SSD

Gigabyte AORUS Master 16 BYHC5EEE64SP

• GeForce RTX 5080
• Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX
• 16", WQXGA, 240Hz, 500cd/m²
• 1 TB SSD

Lenovo Legion Pro 7 16IAX10H (83F5003QMH)

• GeForce RTX 5080
• Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX
• 16", WQXGA, 240Hz, 500cd/m² - 1000 True Black, OLED display
• 1 TB SSD

 

I (used to) am not a great fan of Lenovo.
The MSI is brand new, with less to none real-world reviews.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Might wanna add your ASUS laptop specs so we know what to look for.

I'm not well versed in laptops, just helping you out.  

[kiddingguy]

On 14/04/2026 at 19:06, Mindovermaster said:

Might wanna add your ASUS laptop specs so we know what to look for.

I'm not well versed in laptops, just helping you out.  

My current setup is:

ASUS ROG Strix G16 G614FR-S5251W

GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX
32 GB RAM
2 TB SSD
16", 2560x1600 (WQXGA), 240Hz, 500cd/m²

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I have a Lenovo Legion 5-17ACH6-82K0 (a review here) that I got about five years ago, and never had any issues with.  That said, the games I was playing on it (Borderland series, Conan Exiles, etc.) were not not known for being the most taxing.

A friend of mine (project manager at a managed security services provider) insisted on getting MSI gaming laptops for employees since he felt they were more upgradeable, had easily replaced parts, and needed to be refreshed less often than business laptops.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[hellowalkman Reporter]

Been using an MSI A15 Thin gaming notebook with Nvidia 4050 + Ryzen 7735HS for the last year. Build quality has been surprisingly good for the price. Also has 2+ years warranty.

[kiddingguy]

Just opted for the MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2WI.
I hope this one won't let me down (as the G614FR did many times, with two devices having 'tested').

I did not expect thís bad quality from ASUS.
But using Claude, I figured out this has been going from 2021 and it's a BIOS/ACPI bug. And that one goes deep down in the system and everything related to us (GPU, Windows, display panel and whatnot).

And the most shocking is that ASUS itself isn't aware of these issues themselves (according the service-employees working there) 

[Arceles]

On 15/04/2026 at 11:22, kiddingguy said:

Just opted for the MSI Raider 16 Max HX B2WI.
I hope this one won't let me down (as the G614FR did many times, with two devices having 'tested').

I did not expect thís bad quality from ASUS.
But using Claude, I figured out this has been going from 2021 and it's a BIOS/ACPI bug. And that one goes deep down in the system and everything related to us (GPU, Windows, display panel and whatnot).

And the most shocking is that ASUS itself isn't aware of these issues themselves (according the service-employees working there) 

Particularly I have several asus products, and haven't had an issue. Right now I own both The Strix amd advantage edition and the flow z13. However, the strix variants other than mine are known to have a lot of issues with asus own software (armory crate) and the mux switch that controls the gpu and ends up freezing the laptop a lot of times.

I also do not deal with these issues as I simply run Arch. HW wise seem alright but SW wise yeah... such a pitty.

[kiddingguy]

On 15/04/2026 at 19:29, Arceles said:

Particularly I have several asus products, and haven't had an issue. Right now I own both The Strix amd advantage edition and the flow z13. However, the strix variants other than mine are known to have a lot of issues with asus own software (armory crate) and the mux switch that controls the gpu and ends up freezing the laptop a lot of times.

I also do not deal with these issues as I simply run Arch. HW wise seem alright but SW wise yeah... such a pitty.

I (used to be) satisfied ASUS (gaming) notebook customer/user. But before 2021 (purchased my last notebooks in 2020).
This G614/G615 and even SCAR (based on same BIOS-'platform') all facing these same issues. From up 2021 until their latest 2026 line-up.

-- -- -- 

A little bit of the Claude conversation I had:

 

The Broader ASUS ROG BIOS/Firmware Issue (Affects Both Models)

Both the G614FR and G615 are caught up in a wider, well-documented ASUS ROG problem. The root cause was traced to a systemic BIOS firmware flaw: ACPI interrupt storms causing improper power cycling of the discrete GPU, leading to DPC latency spikes (1000µs+) that bottleneck a single CPU core, resulting in system-wide lag, audio crackling, and frame drops. [Loadsyn]

LatencyMon tests on different ASUS ROG laptops confirmed the lag was being caused by ACPI.sys, but only on a single core. The investigation also found the system repeatedly attempting to power the discrete GPU on and off every 15–30 seconds, even when it's supposed to be permanently active. [PC Gamer]

ASUS acknowledged the issue in September 2025 and began rolling out beta BIOS updates, initially for select 2023 models (Strix Scar 15 and Zephyrus M16), with more models to follow. Tom's Hardware As of December 2025, the original periodic ACPI/DPC stall was confirmed fixed via an updated ASUS UEFI that rewrites the ACPI ECLV routine, removing the sleep/self-rearm behavior that caused the problem. [GitHub]

[Arceles]

On 15/04/2026 at 14:13, kiddingguy said:

I (used to be) satisfied ASUS (gaming) notebook customer/user. But before 2021 (purchased my last notebooks in 2020).
This G614/G615 and even SCAR (based on same BIOS-'platform') all facing these same issues. From up 2021 until their latest 2026 line-up.

-- -- -- 

A little bit of the Claude conversation I had:

 

The Broader ASUS ROG BIOS/Firmware Issue (Affects Both Models)

Both the G614FR and G615 are caught up in a wider, well-documented ASUS ROG problem. The root cause was traced to a systemic BIOS firmware flaw: ACPI interrupt storms causing improper power cycling of the discrete GPU, leading to DPC latency spikes (1000µs+) that bottleneck a single CPU core, resulting in system-wide lag, audio crackling, and frame drops. [Loadsyn]

LatencyMon tests on different ASUS ROG laptops confirmed the lag was being caused by ACPI.sys, but only on a single core. The investigation also found the system repeatedly attempting to power the discrete GPU on and off every 15–30 seconds, even when it's supposed to be permanently active. [PC Gamer]

ASUS acknowledged the issue in September 2025 and began rolling out beta BIOS updates, initially for select 2023 models (Strix Scar 15 and Zephyrus M16), with more models to follow. Tom's Hardware As of December 2025, the original periodic ACPI/DPC stall was confirmed fixed via an updated ASUS UEFI that rewrites the ACPI ECLV routine, removing the sleep/self-rearm behavior that caused the problem. [GitHub]

Yeah the bios thing is correct for my strix, which  I already flashed a bios for it. However, my laptop simply does not have mux, therefore not an issue with it regarding freezing.