*** The Official 2019 MSI GS65 Stealth with RTX GPUs Owners and Discussions Lounge ***

Hi rockelino, sorry for the issues you are having with your GS65. Our office is closed at the moment.
I see that you had already done troubleshooting with MSI tech support but the system turned out to be defective.
Can you press and hold power button down for 5 seconds and make sure it's powered off completely? Please PM me directly and we will figure out what else we can try, thank you.

 

Yeah, I just replied to you with my order #.

I held it for 5 seconds, it's powered off, no LED lights anywhere.

 

Hi All,

Let me start by saying it's an amazing thread with lots of valuable information and the wealth of info accumulated here was one of the reasons for me to pick up GS65! Excited to get my GS65 8Sx with RTX 2060 (from CyberPower UK) later next week which is going to replace my ancient Fangbook 780M from CyberpowerPC back from 2014 (long overdue, I know...)!

However, I do want to ask a few questions regarding the system:

1. I have the 256 GB NVME version and I want to add some additional space to my machine:
   • Would this be compatible? Seems like a good option for only 120 GBP
   • Do I actually have to remove the current NVME drive from it's slot, replace it with the aforementioned SSD and put the NVME drive in the currently empty slot? (as written on page 1 of this thread)
2. I've researched quite thoroughly on 2060 s 2070 max-Q topic and it seems like 2060 is a clear winner so far in terms of value and sometimes even performance - do you think 2070 max-q performance would significantly outpace 2060 with the intro of more up-to-date drivers later on or is that irrelevant?
3. In the UK none of the vendors offer repasting / other fancy useful service you guys have access to in the US, hence:
   • How much of an issue would it be if I do not repaste the CPU? I am not an experienced user in terms of tinkering with the insides of a laptop, but might consider repasting if it improves the performance dramatically or if overheating causes actual stuttering and ruins gaming experience
   • Undervolting is something I intend to do anyway based on the guide on the 1st page of this thread - btw does it improve battery life in any significant way?
4. Regarding battery life:
   1. Would a 2060 variant have better life battery than 2070-2080, considering that 2060 is not max-Q? Does anyone have any benchmarks for productivity work?

Thanks in advance for all helpful answers! Happy to run some benchmarks for the community if we do not have enough already!

Cheers,
Svyatoi

 

Is there some uk vendors that ships also in Europe(italy)?
I know only ccl...others?

 

Just got the laptop. Did a few quick and dirty 3DMark Firestrike runs and other tests. First run I got was 16473, then the next 2 runs were both around 16250. I didn't update or do anything else, I just literally plugged the ethernet cable in, installed Steam then 3DMark and let everything run stock. It might have auto-updated some stuff like Geforce Experience, I wasn't paying too much attention.

The laptop version I got was the 2080 Max-Q. It has 32MB RAM @ 2666, 2x 500GB SSDs; the OS is on the first SSD which is a Samsung (I'm told it's a 981 which is the OEM equivalent of a 970 but I haven't been able to confirm yet). The second SSD was a WDC something.

Further observations:

• I ran with HWINFO on the 3rd run, max temps for the CPU was 91 (deg C) on 2 cores, the other 4 cores ranged 86-90(!). HWINFO showing that all but 1 core was thermal throttling. Max clocks were 4Ghz. GPU max temps on that 3rd run was 69 deg C.
• Ambient temps were 24 deg C. It's clear that the CPU is causing the temperature issues here, not the GPU!
• I ran FurMark and HWINFO confirmed that there was no thermal throttling but indicated that Power limits were hit and GPU Power didn't exceed 80W. GPU temps did not exceed 71 deg C.
• When I ran Prime95 and Furmark together temps on the GPU didn't exceed 76 but the CPU was thermal throttling straight away.
• Noise was OKish, it's not great when under full load (Prime + Furmark) but honestly it was no worse than my XPS15 or my wife's HP Spectre x360 when under load.
• The keyboard top part of the laptop is lukewarm under load, very acceptable temp. But if you put this thing on your lap, you would probably set your trousers on fire. I'm not exaggerating when I say you can fry an egg on the underside of this laptop. I'm surprised no one in the States have tried suing laptop makers for suggesting you can put these things on your lap...
• The construction of this machine is superb. The aluminium body feels super premium and very rigid. The keyboard is brilliant, best keyboard I've used on an ultrabook - there is no compromise on button placement; full sized arrow keys and just where you expect them to be, with the function key on the right hand side of the keyboard (yes, looking at every single other laptop maker out there, WHY WOULD YOU PUT THE FUNCTION KEY WHERE THE LEFT CTRL BUTTON/WINDOWS KEY WOULD BE YOU MORONIC KEYBOARD DESIGNERS) ahem... carrying on
• I don't know what the issue is with flex; there is none. There is if you really pressed down hard (I'm talking about the whole hand, not just a 2-3 fingers), who would do that? There's some flex in the screen/lid but that's to be expected, no worse than any other ultrabook on the market.
• Screen is f’ing brilliant, 144Hz, that thing is butter on a baby's bottom. It's super bright and it puts my desktop (60Hz) monitor to shame. I've not used a 144hz monitor before so forgive my naivety here but it's proper blown my mind.
• Massive touchpad is a win. Feels lush.
• When I use a normal laptop (my XPS15, my Lenovo work laptop for e.g.) there's lag, I can feel it from using the mouse, the touchpad, there's just a delay when doing everything and it really puts me off using a laptop vs my desktop. I don't know if it's the faster screen or the speedier CPU/GPU but I don't feel the lag on this MSI laptop. It feels as snappy as my desktop, and my desktop is an 8-core, X299 build. This really is a huge quality of life factor for me.
• It weighs 1990g and not 1.8-1.9g as advertised, I suspect it's because mine has an extra stick of RAM and SSD in it. In comparison my XPS15 weighs 1910g (similar) but the key difference is: I can just pack a small USB-C 65W power adaptor the size of a tube of toothpaste (and no heavier) with my XPS15 and that's all the charging accessories I'll ever need for a business trip (incl. for my phone) whereas the MSI and other gaming laptops in this category do not support the USB-C Power Delivery standard which means I will need to carry..
• The power brick, is a monstrous 885g, although I read that 2070max-Q and below versions are supposed to come with a smaller power adaptor. (I'm using my missus' electronic kitchen scales -I'm sure it's accurate!).
• No Windows Hello.
• Built-in ethernet port is great QOL thing.
• I used to carry a Dragonfly USB DAC with me whenever I wanted to play music through the laptop as most laptops’ audio ports sound like arse. This one comes with an ESS Sabre DAC; no need for my Dragonfly.

Ok this has turned into a full-on review... Anyway, it's looking like this laptop is going to stick with me for a while, this level of 1080p performance on a portable enough machine is the endgame for a lot of peeps I suspect. I won't be upgrading until the industry bang their heads together and make USB-C power delivery standard on all laptops (incl. gaming laptops) --god knows when that's going to take.

From a technical performance perspective, there's 2 things limiting the performance from my tests: i) CPU thermal throttling and ii) GPU power limit throttling @ 80W. Both of these are addressable through a LM re-paste, bunch of under-volt tweaks and as JRey has shown (Thanks mate!), a BIOS flash to up the GPU power limit as the GPU thermals look fine. Wish me luck as I now take this machine apart


Side note -- I also need to completely reinstall the OS as it comes with a single language Win10 Home Chinese version which doesn’t allow you to change the system language. Microsoft…..

 

Glad that this thread has helped you with valuable information! I will give you my opinion regarding your questions:

1) Yes, it should be compatible in one of the ports. You might need to check the manual but at least one port is a combo NVME/SATA port and that's where you could install it. Likewise the other port is NVME only. The manual should tell you which one is which.

2)Not sure if the current drive is in the combo port. If it is, then yeah you will need to change its location.

3) If you don't repaste it will be at first like a wheel of fortune to see what kind of paste job you got stuck with. But by undervolting alone it could reduce temperatures enough for you to be okay with. I heavily recommend repasting, and while I know its daunting, maybe with time you will perform it yourself There are disassembly guides available as well as full videos that can show you what to do. All for the sake of the best thermals possible.
Undervolting might increase battery significantly if you use a lot of your CPU while on battery, otherwise it should be a slight positive change. Using the integrated graphics has a bigger impact than undervolting.

4) I don't think there will be much of a difference since the main point of battery life is to not use the dedicated graphics, and in theory all GPU options are 80w variants that might consume similar amount of power when in use.

We will be happy to check your impressions on your machine once you get it

Thanks for your review, glad to have you on board with the GS65 I agree that performance at 1080 is really good from all that I have seen, and I will be trying the 90w flash to see how I feel about temps myself even though it was a small gain.

 

Right, so I got the 2060 model with 32GB 2666MHz, 1 PM961 512GB (Stock) and 1 970 EVO (500GB).

I was trying to update the nvidia drivers, but have been unsuccessful. I tried to DDU the drivers from safe mode, but they just keep coming right back after system boots up in normal mode. I also tried to install both the standard and DCH drivers from NVIDIA, but have not been able to get that to work either.

I was also planning on undervolting my CPU and GPU, but due to some reason, throttlestop keeps saying I don't have mfc120u.dll (I have it. :/) and the GPU frequency to voltage curve in MSI Afterburner is blank for me.

Any clue on what to do?

 

You’re getting a GS75 right?
Temps may be slight better for you since you have the extra heat pipe.
Also, I still have some thermal headroom. If we can find someone to mod up to 95w, 100w, 105w, I think the GS65 can handle it.
I personally think 95w will be ideal. Since I saw a 5c rise in temps by going up 10 watts, I think an additional 5w will barely raise temps and keep it within a good thermal envelope.
Also, I’m a bit nervous about flashing a 150w bios on mine. I get the feeling I’ll starve the power supply.


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Thanks for the detailed review. "The power brick, is a monstrous 885g" that's almost half of the laptop. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a lightweight laptop since you have to carry the adapter around . Does anyone knows the weight AC adapter of the 2060 version ? It's 180watts so might be much better. Thanks !

 

Ok, so I just finished doing the LM re-paste. Crapped my pants a little when I went to turn it on and it wouldn't. I plugged the power adaptor in and for whatever reason that worked..and I also realised it never really shut down properly, it was in some kind of hibernation mode....*cold sweat*

So yea if anyone wants to try it, it's pretty straight forward, this Youtube video pretty much covers everything:



In terms of results. I'm running the same tests again (Firestrike and Prime95Blend+Furmark).

i) Firestrike -- just 1 core is thermal throttling @ max 88 deg C. The others' max temps range 83-87.
ii) Prime+Furmark -- no core is thermal throttling, CPU temps in the 70s. GPU @ 71 deg C max.

So it looks like I've managed to drop my max CPU temps 3 deg C and GPU by 5 deg C by re-pasting. Although it doesn't look amazing if you just look at the straight CPU temp difference--you gotta remember it's now preventing the CPU cores from throttling, which suggests a much bigger improvement, and that in itself is keeping my Firestrike score consistent @ 16350-16450 after re-runs. Compared with JRey's results as well it looks in line if you consider my room is 3 deg C warmer.

 

A lot of us are having issues. Debating returning it

 

Try this.
Make sure you run Windows update first to get all the latest updates.

1- download c cleaner. It’s free. Install it.
2- Download your driver. Don’t install it.
3- Download and install DDU
4- turn on airplane mode
5- Run DDU in safe mode.
6- uninstall the driver in safe mode DDU
7- reboot into normal mode.
8- run ccleaner and do the normal clean and registry clean multiple times until there’s nothing left to clean.
9- reboot
10- install nvidia driver.
11- turn off airplane mode.

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Thanks mate. I’ll give it a go. I’ve done all of this without c cleaner but worth another shot. I do like the laptop but this driver issue is upsetting. I’ve also completely reinstalled windows . Proving to be a bit of a pain heh

 

I don’t blame you man.
We never had this issue with last years model. I think it’s because of this new DCH bull crap lol
Also, when you download the driver, go to Nvidias site and make sure it’s the 64 but version, DCH.
I know, I know, easy stuff. Just had to bring it up.


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It seems like this is an issue just with the 2060 version. I’m not seeing reports of the issue with the 2070 or 2080. Hm.

And yeah 64 bit notebook drivers. It’s even odd that GeForce experience does not see the hardware .

 

For my 2060 I'd tried the latest DCH and regular drivers, one version older for each, and also tried on Windows 10 1803 and 1809, all failed > does seem to be a 2060 issue

 

I've already tried these exact same steps expect for the c cleaner. I'll try your suggestion now.

Also, I noticed that I have managed to break my optimus :|

 

Hi Guys!

Just got the 2060 version after returning the 1060 after 2 days when i noticed the 2060 is already here and not much more expensive.
The performance is staggering compared to the 1060 version. In Overwatch on epic i`m now getting between 150-250fps depending on what is going on the screen.

But has anyone else noticed the ATROCIOUS sound from the speakers? It seems that everything and especially the upper mids are overamplified and as a result - extremely harsh and headache inducing. Even when setting up windows during cortana introduction i immediately noticed the harshness and over-saturation. I have not noticed this on the 8RF model i had for 2 days - but maybe i was not paying attention to it?

Just to be sure i went to the local shop where they had the 8RE version on display - and there was no harshness to the sound there.
It can be easily observed in some vocal heavy music or while listening to certain podcasts etc.
Example (especially around 0:57-1:05).
The Lauder the speakers the worse it gets. I know this is not supposed to be a hi-fi powerhouse (for this i have other gear) but i`m frankly shocked if MSI started to send out laptops sounding like this out of the box.

I tried various things:
- different driver versions
- windows reset
- bios reset
- adjusting nihimic and uninstalling/reinstalling

The only thing that made the laptop sound bareable is using voicemeeter or other equilizer software and taking a big dip of over 12dBA between ~1khz and 10khz.

I don't know if my unit is defective? or is this something new in the 2019 model ? Anyone else had similar observations?
I recorder the 8RE model in store and will record my unit later.

 

Blah. So I did this verbatim on a fresh install, fully updated windows.

No luck with DCH/non DCH drivers from Nvidia’s site. It just refuses to install. Think it’s time to take er back.

 

I'm guessing it's just an issue with nvidia not including the proper hardware device IDs in their drivers / INF file and it's something that will be fixed soon, I'm having the same issue and I'm not too worried about it atm > maybe can open a support ticket with MSI and see what they say

 

Ok wait.
Have you updated the intel drivers to the latest? They’re DCH as well.


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My old laptop which costed less than half the price of this one had amazing speakers compared to this one. Ah well. Try going to the nahimic settings and then set voices to -12dB, bass to +4dB and treble to -4dB. This improves it a bit.

 

Tried it on a factory reset again. Didn't work. I'm going to stop meddling with the GPU driver now. It'll fix itself in a month once the Device ID pops up in the nvidia drivers.

Do you know what that LED light next to the power button indicates? Its sometimes white and sometimes orange. I thought it indicates optimus active with orange, but that doesn't seem to be the case since I'm running on the iGPU and its still showing white.

 

White is iGPU active, Orange is dGPU active


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got mine yesterday in the UK, 2080 max q, 16gb dual channel and 2x512 raid 0

copied the custom dragoncentre fan profile shown a few times here

quick run of cinebench and got 1139, few cores at 91c and thermal throttling

undervolted 125mv and got 1230, close to jray's 1250, still hitting 91c

Is it worth pushing past 125mv?

As someone else has mentioned we can't buy these in the uk through repasting sellers So not in the mood yet to void my warranty taking it apart

Also note there's new bios and FW out yesterday, any risk upgrading these machines, I'm used to thinkpads where it's a simple one click and done etc.

 

Also, have you tried the stock drivers form the MSI website?


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If you made any bios tweaks, you’ll have to redo them.

I’ll check out the new firmware and bios tonight. I’m on my phone, do they share release notes?

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Usually one-liners

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What I meant was, if there are release notes, what does it say? Lol


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just checked in readme

bios
Improving System Stability .

fw
Reset battery mode GPU default value for NVIDIA request

 

The extra heat pipe on the GS75 goes to the cpu only though, probably for the i9 sku.

I made a side by side comparison pic of it a while ago.



Gpu side the cooling is the same. Maybe i could try connecting the gpu heatpipes to the extra cpu heatpipe with one or two super thin ultrabook heatpipes that I salvaged.

Edit: As for the power supply, maybe you could try bringing your gs65 to a store and plugging it in to a GE75's 280w power brick and see how it goes. I would be perfectly happy to have a 280w power brick at home when I have to game and bring along the smaller 230w power brick on the go.

 

Thanks for this. I think the GS75 May be a more stable retailer purchase than the GS65 due to that extra heatpipe.
I’m curious what temps will be like, I look forward to our user reviews!


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Thanks!
It’s too bad I didn’t download the first revision of the BIOS and firmware. I’ll flash my stuff tonight.
Anyone know if we can do a bios settings dump? I haven’t done it before, and frankly don’t know how to do it.


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I edited my post as you posted you reply so take a look.

BTW, have you tried overclocking the ram? Usually a ram overclock from 2666 to 3200mhz gives a 5-10% performance increase in games so it may be worth a shot.

 

Oh, there’s a 280w power brick?!? I’ll order one online lol. I hope it’s the sane barrel connector lol.
And I haven’t tried overclocking ram. I’m honestly not very good at it so I don’t bother lol.


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let me know what order you do it in, seems to be lots of warnings re: msi firmwares being dodgy

 

Here's a pic the heatpipe construct I took when I opened her up last night.
2019 MSI GS65

 

I did the BIOS unlock tweaks:
- I set IA loadline for AC/DC down to 1 (therefore I did not do any further undervolting with ThrottleStop)
- Set VR Current Limit to 800
- Raised the thermal throttle point (PROCHOT) from 90 to 95


i) Now for Firestrike runs, the CPU does not get over 82 deg C (!!). There's now zero thermal throttling going on. And I can finally see the CPU boosting to 4.1GHz instead of 4Ghz. My last run scored 16569(!)
ii) With Prime95+Furmark, now that I have unlocked the current limit, I've realised that under Prime the CPU was previously being held back because of that current limit. Now with it removed, Prime is now stressing the CPU a lot harder and the limiting factor now (according to HWINFO) is the 45W CPU power limit. CPU temps are going to 86 deg C max and no thermal throttling.

This is a great result; lower thermals and better performance! Best of all the fans aren't quite so loud, and they wind down quicker than before. With the above in mind, my recommendation for anyone with this laptop is that they do some form of under-volting (either through BIOS or ThrottleStop), I reckon that's more of a priority than a LM repaste.

Now I'm not sure whether I should take it a step further and remove the power limits -- I really don't want to blow that power adaptor!



Note- with the above I did a complete OS reinstall since my last post; so no Dragon Centre or custom fan curves.
BTW- If anyone has problems replacing Windows10 Chinese system language then this thing did the trick --> https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/...ws_10_chinese_version_without_possibility_to/ You would still need to do a fresh OS install but you can use the OEM product Key that came with the laptop.

 

I did bios first, then firmware.
Ran some tests, no performance degradation. I consider upgrading safe.


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Another small tweak I've read people mentioning is removing the spectre/meltdown mitigation patch. Performance wise you likely won't see a noticeable difference but ssd speeds get a decent boost.

Not sure how to do it though

 

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/download-inspectre.html
@seanwee

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Hey I got the RTX 2060 version and installed my own SSD, so...

1. Yes it should be compatible. I got something similar - Crucial MX500 1TB, m.2 2280 form factor, SATA interface. I did as JRey suggested on page one, remove the stock NVMe SSD from Slot 1 and install it into Slot 2, and install my SATA SSD into Slot 1. I can confirm this works.

I don't know if it will work if I install the SATA SSD into Slot 2 and leave the stock NVME SSD in slot 1, I haven't tried and it's too much of a pain to open it up LOL.

4. I can't say for the other models, but if you're not gaming or doing other graphics intensive things, the laptop should be using the Intel GPU instead (LED next to power button is white) and so it shouldn't make too much a difference. I think I do get up to the advertised 8 hours of battery life provided that Intel GPU is being used, brightness is 3/10 or less, power plan is on 'power saver', 'battery saver' is on, and no keyboard backlighting - and provided that all I'm doing is reading and loading the occasional webpage, lol. By the way the Max-Q versions are supposed to be more power efficient than non-Max-Q ... that being said the RTX 2060 probably uses slightly less battery than the 2070 Max-Q because it is a 'lower end' card, rather than being non-Max-Q.

Can confirm the 2060 version is lighter at almost exactly 600g (including all cables).

Ah yeah ... each time after you un-plug and re-plug the battery (basically whenever you need to open it up to install RAM/SSD etc) it will not power on unless the charger is plugged in.

 

You can do the IMON slope trick to bypass the 45w power limit. You're basically tricking the system into thinkin git's using less wattage on the CPU side.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-and-discussions-lounge.815216/#post-10705417

 

Yea, everything is working after the factory reset.

I undervolted my cpu by 160mV and was doing some testing when I came across something weird. My 2060 core clock is going all the way to 1885MHz. No clue how. The temps are within 67-75C in most cases. Attached a few screen shots. Anyone got a clue whats happening? Nvidia website suggests Boost clocks up to 1200MHz.

Am I looking at a wrong value?

PS: I ran TimeSpy and even that gives Boost clocks at around 1400-1500.

 

Yea I was thinking of doing that. Just hesitating on whether I should put whatever thermal and total power capacity I have left in to the cpu or gpu.

 

So 1 Question - I think I got a bit confused by the GS75 reviews - do you actually need to take the motherboard off to install the additional SSD drive?

If that's the case - since I will be disassembling it anyway - I will probably just repaste it as well since I do not think taking the cooling pipes of adds up to a lot of work...

 

Yes you do. It's just 4-5 more screws to get the heat pipe off so you might as well do a LM repaste.

 

Your info is incredible, thanks for sharing all of this. You say you went back to 80w due to heat/fan increase. So the fans are noticeably louder when switching to the 90w version?

 

Thanks.
With my fan curve, yes. I’d rather not increase fan speed for more FPS


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Well they ended up just exchanging it for the 2070 version. Cost more and less drive space but I think it may be worth it. Not like it’s difficult to add more space.