- Supercharged Process: The 13th Gen. Intel Core i7 processor delivers the ultimate immersive experience in gameplay, multi-task work and productivity.
- Simplistic Design: Enjoy the latest generation of Windows 11 Home for your everyday needs. *MSI recommends Windows 11 Pro for business use.
- Beyond Fast: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU powered by the Ada architecture unleashes the full glory of ray tracing, which simulates how light behaves in the real world.
- QHD Display: The 15.6” 165 Hz QHD display brings more vivid colors and pixel density for the ultimate gaming experience.
- Powerful Cooling: Cooler Boost 5 to ensure optimal thermal dissipation and provide the best gaming experience.
LAPTOPS
MSI Katana 15 15.6” 165Hz QHD Gaming Laptop: Intel Core i7-13620H, NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4070, 16GB DDR5, 1TB NVMe SSD, Cooler Boost 5, Win 11: Black B13VGK-2000US
$1,351.77
+ Free Shipping| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 2560 x 1600 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 2560×1600 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.4 GHz core_i7 |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR5 |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth, 802.11ax |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Average Battery Life in hours | 10 Hours |
| Brand | MSI |
| Series | Katana 15 B13VGK-2000US |
| Item model number | KATANA15132000 |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
| Item Weight | 4.96 pounds |
| Product Dimensions | 14.13 x 0.98 x 10.2 inches |
| Item Dimensions LxWxH | 14.13 x 0.98 x 10.2 inches |
| Color | Black |
| Processor Brand | Intel |
| Number of Processors | 1 |
| Computer Memory Type | DDR5 RAM |
| Flash Memory Size | 1 TB |
| Voltage | 230 Volts |
| Batteries | 1 Lithium Polymer batteries required. (included) |
| Date First Available | January 20, 2024 |
Peter K. Ledoux –
Después de un año y medio puedo decir con certeza que es una excelente laptop. Me gusta que es silenciosa y no se calienta mucho. Corriendo un juego pesado llega a los 72 grados pero si le pongo turbo al ventilador, baja aun más. Lo uso normalmente para trabajar pues soy arquitecto y manejo programas pesados, 3D y renders y la verdad es que no flaquea. El único inconveniente es que al querer anexar una SSD, no viene con la base y adaptador con la que debe de venir. Le tuve que adaptar una especie de esponja para que se sostuviera. Por ahí leí que debes de pedir a MSI la pieza y que no te cobran ni nada y te lo mandan pero… nunca encontré el modo de hacerlo. En todo lo demás, esta perfecto.
Si sirve de referencia a algún arquitecto, corre Lumion perfectamente y cualquier programa de 3D básicamente, pues Lumion es de los más pesados.
P.D. me encantó su RGB, se va modificando gradualmente por si solo.
Fernando Salas –
For the specs, is a bargain in my opinion. Great graphics, great drive room and fast as you spect. The box came a bit damaged in the front with a scratch and there were some marks on the case that looked like something sticky was on it before, so I was worried at first, then it didn’t turn up, so I was even more worried, but then I realized there were no scratches directly in the laptop case, the marks in the case were easily cleaned with a paper towel and as soon as I connected it to the power supply and turned it on, it started working perfectly. Windows is always easy to set up, although would prefer windows 10 but 11 is ok I guess.
Mauricio Luna –
La mejor computadora que he tenido en muchisimo tiempo. Viene perfecta para todo lo que uno necesite
Peter K. Ledoux –
TLDR; both were missing heatsink grease causing overheating. Two laptops same model/specs bought 3 months apart, both had shoddy assembling and overheating out of the box. see photos.
Purchased two of these, one for my wife, one for me to replace our older GT72/GT62 laptops, and immediatelly right away while gaming or doing anything with heavy processor load, we encountered full-on lock-ups. Freezing, BSoD, whether it was Windows 10 or Windows 11, both encountered same issue, with same load conditions/same symptoms.
I finally got sick of it and opened them up. My wife’s first, once open, showed that part of the CPU had *NO* heatsink grease. The nVidia GPU was done correctly, but the CPU chip (which has a longer rectangular die and a smaller square die) had part of the chips (Small square, maybe northbridge?) Completely devoid of any heatsink compound. I put Arctic Silver MX-5 on it, and put the laptop together (along with some memory upgrades and an SSD Upgrade). I wanted to see if this was endemic, or isolated, and did the same to mine (Same model/specs, older purchase by 3 months, same upgrades) and my shock and horror as I found the same thing. I attached two pictures showing each CPU. Both are different machines, with slightly different coverages.
This is unacceptable, and MSI, if you are reading this: You have some serious quality control issues. I shouldn’t find this on two laptops 3 months assembly apart, with the same fatal flaw. This is the flaw that can KILL these laptops. Even if it’s the northbridge, anything reminiscent of high bandwidth transfers on the bus could in essence, kill the soldered-on CPU. I implore you to change how you do grease, because if it was done with pre-made pads of grease, it’s not covering everything. I found no grease on either the CPU die part, nor the copper block that mates with it, and it shows that more than my laptops are afflicted by this. Please review quality control methods, and redo your manufacturing to fix this issue. This is how you end up with dead laptops.
Anyone who has purchased this, Please, at minimum, redo your heatsink compound if you wish for the laptop to live longer than 6 months. I can’t imagine this being a small issue, considering the chiplet die and what it’s used for. This is very shoddy assembly, and I’ve seen this stuff kill computers before, when they eventually overheat and scorch a hole right through the chip.
For reference, when I was playing Diablo IV, I could only play by setting the GPU to be primary without passing through CPU, unless I wanted it to crash. I was able to get 76FPS at 2560×1280 on an Ultra-Wide LG (External HDMI) with GPU direct (no hybrid GPU), and once the CPU was properly cooled, that number shot up to 98-102fps, with all settings on high. Gone were lags and tearing, and gone was small stutters that would affect game play. Even did a speedtest with SSD-> SSD transfer, and it went from 788MB/s -> 1280MB/s transfer on even random IO of 64-Byte/8KB Blocks. So this is a huge issue and seriously affects performance, let alone reliability.
That said, I’m happy with the performance, the fact it has another SSD slot available, and two upgradeable memory slots, but I’m docking a star as this is a huge quality control issue capable of killing what is otherwise a decent laptop.
I’m not concerned about audio (It’s a bit tinny sounding), and the screen is nice, the ports are Ok-ish, number wise, and the trackpad is usuable, plus kudo’s for allowing you to switch to 100% dedicated GPU option for GPU-> display without going through CPU (You can control this) and keyboard is decent, but for the love of god, PLEASE fix this issue, or your warranty center is going to see a LOT of dead laptops that will die for no good reason other than junk assembly quality control.
Cope –
I’ve had this laptop for about 2 months and at first it was awesome, everything looked great and worked smoothly; but for some reason running games and applications became a major issue. Certain games would stutter all the time and some would even freeze the screen so bad I’d have to manually restart the laptop.
For anyone looking to pick this up, I recommend being careful about this one. Test it out but possibly be ready for these issues.
The Bearcat –
I bought the Katana 15 B13V with 16 GB of DDR5 Ram, RTX 4070 gpu, and i7-13620H cpu on Prime Day marked down to $1349 from $1599.
I primarily bought this because my desktop’s motherboard uses DDR4 and is becoming dated and I wanted to play Baldur’s Gate 3 at max settings. I’d like to build another desktop, but want to drop that kind of money until DDR6 is a thing instead of building it in the middle of the DDR5 Lifecycle. That’s still a few years out.
So this was a great purchase for my needs. It is literally desktop performance in a laptop at a mid-range price.
Let’s start with the cons and why I don’t care
The display isn’t the best. Don’t get me wrong, its great, but not anything special. That doesn’t bother me, because its connected to my 4k monitor. Who cares about laptop screens anyway. 4k resolution doesn’t make much of a functional difference on a small screen. Costs were cut there for sure. Costs were probably also cut on the battery. It doesn’t last long not plugged in on normal loads, and its probably not even feasible to use it unplugged while gaming. This would suck if I planned to use it unplugged, but again, this matters not to me. There is also a technology implemented called CoolerBoost 5. Its pretty necessary to run when gaming newer games at max settings. It gets PlayStation loud. If you’re an audiophile, then you’re going to need some good noise-canceling headphones to really enjoy anything on this machine. This doesn’t bother me, because I’m not an audiophile, and even if I was, I have a couple great sets of noise-canceling headphones. It also doesn’t bother me because without it, all of the great things about this thing wouldn’t mean squat…. let me explain…
Now for the Pro’s
This thing runs great without load on balanced power settings (No CoolerBoost). Without CoolerBoost, its about as quiet as it comes. I only use it for browsing and playing music outside of gaming. It does great. I haven’t tried watching any 4k videos on it yet, but I imagine it would handle that well on balanced power settings as well.
Remember when I mentioned the noise level from the CoolerBoost 5 as a con. Well, Coolerboost is probably just as important of a feature as any of the hardware this machine packs. Gaming laptops get a bad rep, mostly because they literally burn up a lot faster than a desktop and are difficult and expensive to fix when they do. The reason being is inadequate cooling. This is a tiny box to fit all of those extreme heat producing components in. Getting desktop-like cpu temps and gpu temps in a laptop should be a pipedream. Seeing temps in the 85-90 degree Celsius range or higher is just part of the territory. With CoolerBoost on, this thing hangs in the 60-75 degree range with BG3 running max settings. That’s as good or better than my desktop. Have you heard of temp-throttling? Yeah, that’s only a thing if you let it be a thing with this machine. That said, without CoolerBoost active while running BG3 at max settings, I watch those temps move to the Upper 80s and low 90s, like one would expect with this kind of hardware in such a small box. It is well worth the noise to have a machine packing an i7 13th gen chip and RTX 4070 gpu that can sport desktop temps while actually using the hardware at its potential.
Final Thoughts
This machine is fantastic if you’re looking to replace a desktop with a laptop that will likely last. All of the right corners have been cut. Due to the temps sitting at desktop level, I anticipate the hardware components to potentially last indefinitely. This will still be a very serviceable and more portable machine when I do get my desktop built. The potential issues I see are needing to replace fans at some point due to the CoolerBoost. They could also last too, its just a possible logical consequence of running the fans at high RPMS. I imagine the most important fix that I’ll run across is replacing the battery. Those things will always go bad eventually, but more quickly if there are periods of high humidity in your gaming area. Think about spring or fall days where the AC isn’t running. Years of that will kill a battery.
Rajaravisankar Shanmugam –
It’s an amazing laptop. It is actually worth the price because there is nowhere else you could get a rtx 4070 laptop for this cheap. It is also running well, giving a lot of fps on games, and it is good for all work. Even if it is a good laptop, it also has its cons like the fans sound is a bit loud(not loud as other fans), its heavy, it have a really low battery life(cannot complain because it is a gaming laptop), and in my opinion, I thought the design had a rgb logo on the back, so that disappointed me. Other wise, great laptop to buy.
Alejandro Beltrán –
Really good value laptop with RTX 4070 GPU !!
Mauricio Luna –
جهاز قوي لكن لا ادري ليه تحسه بطيء بعض الشيء مع ان التخزين m.2 غريب عندي pc ب SSD عادي سرعة 540Mb بحجم 240gb اسرع منه في التشغيل
Hussain Saad –
Es una laptop que cumplió con mis expectativas 10/10