MSI Titan 18 HX AI Review: Monster Power For Gamers And Creators

MSI Titan 18 HX Thermal And Acoustic Performance

The fans in the system will spin up considerably when under load, however. So, to get a sense for acoustics and thermals under load, we fired up Shadow of the Tomb Raider and looped its benchmark after previously running multiple other benchmarks to warm up and saturate the system's cooling hardware. The heat and noise generated by the MSI Titan 18 HX with these tests should be indicative of what a typical, prolonged gaming scenario might produce.


When under load, the fans in the MSI Titan 18 HX spin up and get considerably louder. When we held the sound meter about 12" from the display, we measured approximately 59dBA - 62dBa on average—the peak to 66dBA wasn't generated by the system itself. That's pretty loud relative to some other gaming notebooks we've tested, but is within the same ballpark. Despite the relatively high volume though, the noise character has a low pitch and is not particularly irritating in our opinion. The fans emit a strong whir as hot air is exhausted from the chassis, which is somewhat louder than some other notebooks in this class, but not particularly off-putting.

The vast majority of the body of the MSI Titan 18 HX does not get too hot to the touch. The hottest we could find on the surface was near the back, above the GPU at the top right-corner of the keyboard. Here we measured about 110°F. Once we moved down to the keyboard though, the keys typically registered in the upper 80s or lower 90s, which is warm enough to feel toasty under your fingers, but not hot enough to burn you.


The hardware health data gathered during a PCMark10 run, which features content creation and gaming workloads, shows how this system behaves thermally with some everyday workloads. As you can see, the CPU in the MSI Titan 18 HX will often jump right up in the 90°C range, but it then throttles down into the mid-70s and 80s. Despite its relatively powerful cooling hardware, the Core Ultra 9 285HX in the machine is designed to use as much thermal headroom as it can to maximize performance, and that means temps are going to get toasty under heavy loads. It’s a different story with the GeForce RTX 5090, though.


With a gaming / graphics workload, that taxes both the CPU and GPU, CPU temps in the MSI Titan 18 HX are somewhat similar to PCMark, with peaks around 90°C. The GeForce RTX 5090 always remained under 75°C throughout.

MSI Titan 18 HX (2025) Battery Life Benchmarks

Gaming laptops aren't typically known for their battery life. Once upon a time, the untethered lifespan of most gaming portables was easily measured in minutes, not hours. These days things aren't quite so dire, but there's still a huge gulf between the battery life of something like the MSI Titan 18 HX AI and a lighter weight system with a lower-end GPU and CPU. Take a look:


In this HD video streaming test, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI lands near the bottom, and offers a bit less than 3 hours of battery life. Please keep in mind, however, this is a worst case scenario, using the highest performance discrete GPU mode. If you switch the machine into a low power state on a flight, for example, which powers down the RTX 5090 in favor of the Integrated Intel graphics, battery life will be considerably better.


In the PCMark gaming battery test, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI fares much better, relatively speaking. Here, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI offered just over an hour and a half of battery life for gaming, which was actually the second best result for a GeForce RTX 5090-powered notebook. And we should mention, the Razer Blade 16 didn't perform nearly as well as the MSI Titan 18 HX AI in our game tests.

MSI Titan 18 HX (2025) With Core Ultra & RTX 5090: Our Verdict

The MSI Titan 18 HX AI is one of our all-time favorite high-end gaming laptops. This machine is not perfect, but taken as a whole, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI has a lot to offer for a wide variety of users. Although it’s marketed as a gaming laptop, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI is well suited for an array of compute-heavy tasks. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX is generally the fastest mobile processor for multi-threaded workloads, and its single-threaded performance is top-notch as well. Thanks to its full support for Thunderbolt 5, along with USB 3.2, its built in UHS-II card reader, and all of the latest wireless tech, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI also has a great assortment of IO connectivity. Although the non-delineated touchpad took some getting used to, the input devices on the Titan 18 HX AI are generally excellent, and the spacious 18” 120Hz mini-LED display option is great.

We also think the Titan 18 HX AI’s chassis looks great. It’s not overly garish like many other gaming laptops but still has some cool aesthetic touches that make the machine stand-out when checking it out from certain angles. The magnesium-aluminum alloy and other materials used throughout the system also feel nice and premium – the lid, wrist rest, and keycaps, etc. all feel great.
In terms of performance, everyday computing tasks are obviously not a problem for a machine this powerful. Multi-threaded creator-type workloads are where the machine really shines, and it’s also a beast for gaming. AMD’s Ryzen 3D V-cache enabled mobile processors have the edge for gaming specifically, but when running at higher-resolutions or in more GPU bound scenarios, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI is right there in the mix with its Core Ultra 9 and GeForce RTX 5090. Of course, the horsepower at play here comes at the expense of battery life, but that’s par for the course with burly, powerful laptops like this.

Overall, we’d consider the user experience excellent with the MSI Titan 18 HX AI and performance is strong virtually across the board. All of that goodness comes at a price, however. MSRP on the configuration we tested is just shy of $5,700, though the machine is currently on-sale for $5,199. That’s clearly put the MSI Titan 18 HX AI in a price bracket attainable to a select few. If you are blessed enough to be in that category though, and are shopping for a top-tier gaming laptop with a large display, the MSI Titan 18 HX AI should definitely be on your short list.