MSI Raider A18 HX A9W (Ryzen 9 9955HX3D + RTX 5090) Gaming Laptop Review

TweakTown Rating: 95%

Our Verdict

The MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is the best gaming laptop money can buy. Between the 9955HX3D and RTX 5090, it offers desktop-class performance that screams through 4K 120FPS gaming wherever you are.

Pros

• AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 9955X3D CPU with 16C/32T + X3D cache
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU + 24GB GDDR7
• Great design, and the 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED display is gorgeous
• Perfect for those who want ALL the power on the go
• Super-fast Gen5 SSD at 14GB/sec+

Cons

• Very expensive
• Battery life

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

MSI sent over something really special with its flagship new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. It rocks AMD's latest flagship Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor, which boasts a huge 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power enhanced with 3D V-Cache technology that supercharges gaming performance.

The new MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is something really special. It has a 16C/32T CPU, 64GB of DDR5 memory, and NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 memory. All of this CPU and GPU power goes into a huge 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED display, which is gorgeous to look at, and makes your 120FPS gaming ultra-smooth.

For content creators and AI workloads, you've got the 16C/32T processor with second-generation 3D V-Cache, which has been uber-popular on the desktop CPU market with the best gaming CPU on the market being AMD's powerful Ryzen 9 9800X3D processor (but with 8C/16T + 3D V-Cache). In comparison, the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D has 16C/32T + 3D V-Cache (the same as the 9955HX3D inside the Raider A18 AI A9W laptop).

I transitioned from my desktop gaming PC, which features the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (8C/16T of first-gen 3D V-Cache), 32GB of RAM, and a desktop GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, to the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop for approximately three weeks as part of this review. Working, gaming, editing photos, watching 4K content, I did it all on the laptop and with a huge smile on my face in the meantime.

The powerful 9955HX3D and RTX 5090 Laptop GPU combo on the 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED is nothing short of perfection when it comes to CPU + GPU + Mini-LED display inside of a gaming laptop. I'm a huge fan of Overwatch 2 and play it almost every day, and on the Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, it was a joy at 4K 120FPS+ with DLSS enabled on the Balanced setting. Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with Ray Tracing + Frame Generation + Ray Reconstruction + DLSS on Balanced mode was an uber-impressive 90FPS+ on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop.

If you need all of the CPU power you can get with 16 cores and 32 threads with second-gen X3D cache mixed with the most powerful GPU in the RTX 5090 with 24GB of GDDR7 memory, and a huge 18-inch display, then the recommendation goes to MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W, the new gaming laptop champion. Let's dive in!

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Specs Reviewed:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D (16C/32T)
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU + 24GB GDDR7 3.5)
• RAM: 64GB
• Storage: 2TB Gen4
• Display: 18-inch 4K (3840 x 2600) @ 120Hz Mini-LED

Overview

MSI's flagship Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop features a huge 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED display, a massive display, and a high-end Mini-LED panel. We actually have a higher-than-4K resolution with the 18-inch Mini-LED rocking a 16:10 aspect ratio, giving a native resolution of 3840 x 2400 (2400p) versus 3840 x 2160 (2160p or 4K).

There's a 6-speaker surround sound system inside the gaming laptop powered by Dynaudio, with powerful bass and clear sound with support for Nahimic and Hi-Res Audio. It's an impressive audio system if you want to watch something without headphones on, but for the best directional audio, you'll want to use a pair of high-end headphones with a high-end gaming laptop like the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W.

Features + I/O

On the I/O side of things, MSI includes everything you could think of for a high-end gaming laptop with USB4 ports that support Power Delivery 3.1, and they're Thunderbolt 4 compatible.

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There's also a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port for up to 8K 60Hz and 4K 120Hz out to a high-end TV or display, a full-sized card reader, an RJ45 Ethernet port, and multiple USB Type-A ports.

Detailed Look

MSI has a striking design for its flagship Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, which looks great in the flesh when it's out of the box and all lit up with its Mystic Light RGB technology.

MSI keeps everything underneath and inside of the Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop as cool as it can with its MSI Overboost Ultra Technology, with a total of 260W of combined power output from the CPU + GPU, looked after by Cooler Boost 5 technology.

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Cooler Boost 5 is an innovative cooling design inside the Raider A18 HX's 3D cooling stands, alongside dual fans and seven copper pipes, with MSI claiming that "it completely transforms thermal efficiency". This ensures that the gaming laptop maintains its peak performance with boosted CPU + GPU clocks at their highest, even during demanding workloads like content creation and gaming.

There's also an extra pipe that keeps the ultra-fast Gen5 SSD cooler when pumping out 15GB/sec (15,000MB/sec) through your system.

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MSI uses a huge 18-inch display on the Raider A18 HX A9W, with our review unit packing the flagship 2400p (3840 x 2400) resolution and 120Hz refresh rate on a gorgeous Mini-LED panel.

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The full-sized keyboard and inclusion of a number pad are something we love to see on a larger 18-inch laptop, with MSI's in-house Mystic Light RGB technology lighting up the keyboard and laptop. I had no issues typing on this keyboard, while the WASD keys are tweaked here for gamers, and the function keys for the up/down/left/right buttons have multiple functions.

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The design of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W looks fantastic in the flesh, bringing me back to graphics cards from many generations ago with similar red/black accents. They're aligned with the openings for the fan, so that the 260W of cooling can do its job, while looking cool, too... pun intended.

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On the rear of the laptop, we've got the power plug, full-sized HDMI 2.1 output for 8K 60Hz and 4K 120Hz out, and a full-sized RJ45 Ethernet jack.

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On the left, we've got dual USB-A ports and a full-sized SD card reader, perfect for content creators.

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On the right, we've got dual USB-C ports, another USB-A port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Benchmarks (Synthetic + CPU + SSD)

Cinebench R24

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Inside the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor, rocking the full 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power with second-generation 3D V-Cache technology. This means it absolutely RULES the Cinebench R24 charts in our benchmarking.

2084 points in multi-core testing is a new record for our charts, beating out the Strix Halo APU (12C/24T) inside of the HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14 workstation laptop, and it thrashes the desktop Ryzen 7 7800X3D and its 8C/16T.

CrystalDiskMark

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MSI ships a Gen5 SSD inside of its Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, and it's bloody powerful, spitting out a frankly insane 14.4GB/sec (14,491MB/sec) reads in CrystalDiskMark testing, while write speeds sit at 5.2GB/sec (5245MB/sec). If you're a content creator or working with AI workloads, the super-fast Gen5 SSD is going to put a huge smile on your face.

3DMark Speed Way + Steel Nomad

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3DMark Speed Way sees the new flagship MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop excel, with 6001 points in total thanks to the 9955HX3D + RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, beating out the 7800X3D + RTX 4070 SUPER inside of Aftershock's Nimbus desktop PC. Impressive stuff.

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3DMark Steel Nomad has the same impressive results, but they're even better than the Speed Way run with the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, pushing 6035 points in total, beating out the Aftershock Nimbus PC with its 4604 points, and utterly destroying everything else on the chart.

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme + TimeSpy

The same goes for 3DMark's TimeSpy Extreme and TimeSpy benchmarks, with the new MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop sitting at the top of the charts with a huge 12001 points in the GPU score of TimeSpy Extreme, versus the 9865 points from the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER inside of the Aftershock Nimbus desktop gaming PC.

Benchmarks (Gaming)

If you want the very best in gaming performance, then the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is what you want. It was able to scream through every game that I ran through it, every benchmark performed, and everything in between. I'm a huge fan of Overwatch 2, so I pumped some considerable hours into it at 2400p with DLSS enabled and set to "Balanced," where I was getting 200FPS+ average most of the time... and it was a beautiful thing to play on.

Note: Moving onto the gaming benchmarks, I re-ran the benchmarks on the systems that I had on hand at the time, running Cyberpunk 2077 twice. First, without RT and DLSS enabled to see the raw performance of the gaming laptop, and then once more with RT + DLSS + GF + RR enabled.

• RT = Ray Tracing
• DLSS = Deep Learning Super Sampling (AI upscaling)
• FG = Frame Generation
• RR = Ray Reconstruction

I also used the Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) to create a custom 3840 x 2160 (2160p or 4K) resolution, as the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop features a 16:10 aspect ratio panel with a 3840 x 2400 (2400p) resolution. This makes the comparison against the other GPUs much fairer.

Cyberpunk 2077

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Starting with the 4K results of Cyberpunk 2077 running on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, we have 70FPS average at the native 4K resolution, which is impressive, especially when compared to the RDNA 3.5-based integrated Radeon 8050S GPU inside the Strix Point APU. 70FPS average with the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU compared to 52FPS average on the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER isn't bad at all.

You could enjoy some higher-performance 134FPS average at 1440p on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, with 111FPS minimum, another impressive result. The RTX 4070 SUPER isn't far behind at 1440p either, with 111FPS average, while the Radeon 8050S integrated GPU on the Strix Point APU scores just 44FPS at 1440p.

Cyberpunk 2077 + RT + DLSS

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Alright, with DLSS enabled and set to Balanced, RT enabled, FG enabled, and RR enabled, the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop scores an impressive 91FPS average. This is 21FPS more performance with all of the graphical bells and whistles enabled; it looks better, runs better than 4K without RT, etc. enabled.

If the 91FPS wasn't enough and you wanted to squeeze out 120FPS+ out of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop at 4K in Cyberpunk 2077, you could dial down some of the settings, or you could run it at 1440p, where performance jumps up to 161FPS average.

Forza Horizon 5

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Forza Horizon 5 absolutely screams along on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, pushing 221FPS+ at native 4K without any DLSS enabled. 190FPS minimum is another excellent thing to see, but it's not that much more performance than the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER, which is just 3FPS behind.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

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The same goes for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop running at 4K on the High preset, pushing 147FPS average, just 1FPS above the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER inside of the custom Aftershock Nimbus desktop gaming PC. I wouldn't bother running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at a lower resolution, because the 2400p Mini-LED display on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop spitting out 147FPS average is all you need. Anything above 120FPS and you're good to go!

Performance + Thermals + Battery Life

For those of you who have a Wi-Fi 7 router at home, the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop has Wi-Fi 7 ready to go out of the box, as well as Bluetooth 5.4 (which I used to connect my Apple AirPods Max headphones), and a 2.5GbE LAN port on the rear.

MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop has a 99.9Whr battery capacity inside, which, when running on battery mode without being plugged in, will reduce gaming performance. I don't think many people are going to do that at all, but you'll get less than two hours of battery life (and less gaming performance) if you do.

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MSI takes care of the thermals inside the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop with an impressive array of heatsinks and fans on the underside (and sides) of the laptop. It doesn't get too hot at all, with my hands never getting to the point of being sweaty when gaming on it, unlike gaming laptops of the past.

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The thermal system also looks great, with an almost old-school feel to it, of MSI's graphics cards of the past.

Performance Thoughts

Just like any other laptop review, I used the flagship MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop as my daily driver for around 2 weeks for this review. The 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED panel was not just a delight to look at all day and night long, but the Mini-LED panel makes everything look better... Windows, gaming, movies, the mouse cursor... all of it looks gorgeous.

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Overwatch 2 running at 2400p and 200FPS+ with DLSS enabled was definitely a sight to behold, especially on the higher-end Mini-LED panel on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. Cyberpunk 2077 looked exceptionally clean on the 2400p Mini-LED display, as did everything else that I ran through and on the laptop. You won't look at this display and be disappointed. In fact, once you go to Mini-LED or OLED, you won't go back to a regular IPS or TN panel.

Battery Life + Charging + Software

MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop can handle up to 260W of power flowing through it between the 9955HX3D + RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, with the power plug on the back sitting next to a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port and 2.5GbE LAN port.

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MSI has its MSI Center with the AI Engine that allows automatic adjustment to performance, with three settings to choose from when it comes to performance: Extreme Performance (that sets CPU and GPU clocks to maximum, as well as the fans to 100%), Balanced, and ECO Silent. I used the Extreme Performance profile the entire time, ensuring maximum performance for all my tasks, but when I was using it for work or media consumption, the Balanced mode was used.

It's nice and easy to use, which is what you want from software on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop.

Final Thoughts

MSI hits a home run with its new MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, a tour de force of hardware components where AMD's latest flagship Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor with its 16 cores and 32 threads + X3D cache mixed with NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 memory are married together in an amazingly awesome gaming laptop.

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The 18-inch 2400p @ 120Hz Mini-LED display is nothing short of gorgeous to look at, and it's the type of premium display you want on a laptop this expensive. You've got some of the bleeding-edge silicon inside the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop.

For content creators who are thirsty for all of the cores and threads they can get, the 16C/32T inside of the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is an absolute treat. You've got a 32-thread CPU with second-gen 3D V-Cache that just screams along, joined by 64GB of RAM (in the review unit) with a maximum of 96GB through upgrading.

The ultra-fast Gen5 SSD also helps if you need wicked-fast SSD storage, with 14GB/sec+ of reads being a huge upgrade over the 7GB/sec reads from a Gen4 SSD. Gamers won't notice it, but content creators and people working with AI workloads that want screaming-fast storage will love it. Seriously, 14GB/sec inside of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop almost feels criminal.

If you do a job where you're away from home all the time, like a fly-in, fly-out job like we have here in Australia, and you're away from your desktop gaming PC for long periods, and you're looking for a new gaming laptop to fill the void, look no further. The MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop has your back, and some, where it has desktop power that you can slide into your backpack and take with you to enjoy 4K 120FPS+ gaming wherever you are.

MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is an absolute beast, acting as one of the very best gaming laptops money can buy. The Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is a champion of a laptop CPU for AMD, offering more performance than Intel has to offer with its 16C/32T + X3D, while on the GPU side, NVIDIA crushes it with the GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU and 24GB of GDDR7 memory.

If the pricing of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop isn't a worry for you and you just want the very best gaming performance inside of a laptop, you will have a smile on your face for months with the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop.

To MSI: you crushed it!