*** The Official MSI GS65 Stealth Owners and Discussions Lounge ***

This was posted on 4th April

 

Yes, it was done prior to his Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 review.

 

The Aero is tempting but I'm sick of gigabyte supplying the same crappy keyboard. Yes you can get used to it but I'd rather not have to. Also weak speakers and the trackpad delay are some annoyances I'd rather not deal with. Dave is giving gigabyte too much credit saying the trackpad will be fixed soon with software. The Aorus line has had that issue for 6+ months and the only way to fix it is by loading Lenovo windows precision drivers.

I do agree that the GS65 will probably have poor build quality in comparison. The GS63vr was pretty darned thin and would definitely buckle if you accidentally over packed a bag to the point where it bends the laptop. This model will likely have the same super thin gauge chassis.

That comparison chart is pretty much spot on though. Other than the accessibility that is. I'm not really sure what WTF and ez mode means.

 

WTF = difficult to open and access all upgradeable components...however our technicians do it 10x a day, and if you know how, it isn't difficult at all.
ez mode = relatively easy to open and access all upgradeable components.

I wouldn't call the GS65 build quality poor, but do agree the Gigabyte is more rigid.

Bottom line for me is, which of course is subjective, I prefer the GS65.

 

Totally agree with everything you said. I've had great experience with MSI tech support.

Ah, now I get it with the accessibility. Yeah, it's not the easiest to replace the SSD on the GS63/73/60/70 but it's certainly doable. Just have to be careful.

 

I'd like to mod the chassis from the inner side to improve flexural strenght, with focus on fan zone and trackpad zone.

 

Well, maybe part of my personal opinion has to do with I personally have owned both the GS60 & GS63, and I have had Zero issue with flex.

 

Not to mention the cooling system which seems to be better on the GS65 (4 heatpipes, 3 fans, 4 vents ...) and the power brick which is smaller and weighs less.
In my opinion, the only advantage the Aero 15x has is a better battery life and a slightly better build quality. On every other aspect, I would say the GS65 wins.

That said, both seem to be great machines !

 

Ah yes...those too are great benefits of the GS65. And, now that the GS65 has the bigger 82Wh battery, together with more efficient cooling, the battery life isn't that much different.

 

The first Coffee Lake comparison tests showed that Aero 15X managed benchmarks throttling better than GS65 (and saying "better" I mean from 10 to 30%; the GE63 with same configuration performed better than GS65 but worse than Aero 15X), but I want to see if the final version will improve.

 

Wow, those Firestrike physics and graphics scores are terrible in comparison. I really doubt the final version will be much different. Like every other manufacturer out there, it's probably cheap thermal paste and the lock if the draw on how warped your heat sink is. LM will solve all the issues.

 

Me too. Historically Notebookcheck isn't 100%, and I have observed a certain bias against MSI in some of their reviews.

Note also the GS65 is a Presample, while the Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 is not.

Bottom line is, we need to get them into the hands of user's to really see who likes what better. They are both good laptops, so it will depend on whether the extra features of the GS65, and better pricing, offset the Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 pluses.

 

Donald, what's the deal with MSI and the way they keep pushing back the release date? I had my order on Amazon and after speaking to Ted, I canceled and went with hidevolution instead. The 068 was supposed to be in yesterday, today, then tomorrow. Release dates with other vendors are pushed to may. I'm glad I made the switch to hidevolution, I'm already looking l liking the customer service way more.

 

Thank you for your kind comments about the service you are receiving from HIDevolution.com.

I wish I could give you a good answer as to why all of the manufacturers seem to be pushing their original ETAs back...but they don't give us an explanation, they just keep sending email updates.

 

I picked up mine today with the GTX 1060 sku

The original release date from where I ordered it was April 11th (which surprised me as I wouldn't think it would release here in Europe before the U.S.) but got pushed back to April 26th. It later changed again to April 23rd. However, they suddenly got it in stock yesterday (April 19th) so I'm not sure what happened here.

Excited to check it out thoroughly soon though

 

Could you please tell us how much score you get from Cinebench R15? Or 3DMark Fire Strike Score?

 

The highest score in cinebench I've gotten running multiple tests with the battery at 40 - 60% (plugged in - charging), settings at default and programs closed, is a score of 919. It is somewhat lower than I expected but perhaps I did something wrong?

Fire Strike gave me a total score of 10 331 (11 888 Graphics - 56 FPS Test 1, 48 FPS Test 2 | 13 821 physics | 4 377 combined - 20 FPS)

3DMark also told me the following anomalies were a not recognizable processor and a non-approved graphics driver (I do have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed)

 

Could you tell us how loud the laptop got during the Fire Strike run? Also, was the noise high-pitched? Thanks in advance.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, It wasn't bad at all! It was definitely audible with little background noise, but what sets this apart from other gaming laptops I've used is the high-pitched noise- or rather the lack of it. With the fan profile in dragon center set to auto, the noise was quite comfortable with a smooth fan noise and just a tiny hint of a high pitched sound. It is also true that the underside gets quite hot during a gaming session, that is not a presamble issue. I have no issues with it and you can set the fan profile to "cooler boost" which does sound like it sets the fan speeds to maximum... but even then it isn't terrible compared to other laptops out there.

Overall impressive noise levels in my opinion. I don't have any good tools nor a quiet place to give a more accurate reading unfortunately, but holding my phone with a sound meter app above the keyboard yielded a 47dB response while using the cooler boost profile.

 

That is very encouraging. Thanks a lot for the info.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Mine is arriving today. Thanks to Hidevolution! They turned it back into the mail asap yesterday and shipped overnight. I feel better for having support from them instead of Amazon, if needed. I purchased the 32g ram, 1TB version with the 1070maxq.

 

Thanks for sharing the scores, and the set up details. Maybe try to let the laptop charge to as high as it will go - when it stops charging then run the benchmarks again so that the power supply is only feeding the current needs of the CPU / GPU, instead of siphoning off some power to charge the battery. Maybe that will bump up your scores a bit.

 

If you can raise the laptop off the surface of the desk or whatever it is reseting on, you can reduce the heat bounced back to the chassis - I even use pencil erasers or "Dixie cups" upside down at each corner - sounds funny by it lifts the laptop up a few inches off the surface and allows free air flow under it. That solves Macbook Pro overheating for company laptops - and stops the high speed fan noise.

If you can raise the rear higher by an inch or two higher than the front, erasers on top of the Dixie cup bottoms works in a pinch, you can encourage convective cooling - air is drawn from the front of the laptop and out the back along with the hot exhaust gases, which can help drop temps 2c-10c depending on the situation.

A laptop stand is nice, but pick one with a mesh or lots of open areas - or nice slow running fans to encourage airflow. The solid bottom ones are as bad as being on the desk surface and reflect heat back into the chassis.

Some simple set ups can really help cooling if you focus on air flow and free space clearance.

Also, point the hot exhaust gases out into the open air, up high if you can, instead of into a wall or worse a corner where the heat gets trapped and collects - sometimes flowing back into the laptop intakes.

Cooling management and undervolting + fan control to adjust the fan curve profile can go a long way to getting thermals down below thermal throttling. The auto fan curve defaults usually don't react fast enough to catch high load peaks and a quicker to start fan curve can really help take the edge off the top end temperatures and stop thermal throttling.

Have fun

 

Thanks for the tips!

 

I want to see these cinebench scores. Make sure you run it consecutively several times (without stopping). I want to see what happens to the scores and the power limit throttling. Thank you!

 

Can you run HWinfo64 with CB running, and see if you are getting Power Limit Exceeded?
You can also (not at the same time as HWinfo64 however), run throttlestop 8.50 with the limit reasons box open, while CB is running (just put the TS window in the front, right after starting the test). Post a screenshot if you have it, so we can see what's going on.

 

I don't believe I got a power limit exceeded error while using hwinfo64 but I did get a red flag on SST (Speed Shift Technology). I don't really know what this is but I figured I would mentioned it.

For the ThrottleStop test, I had the laptop propped up for better airflow and made sure to charge my laptop to 100%. It does have problem with thermals at the beginning of the CB test going up to 90C, but it gets better once the fans kick in. I have set up a custom fan curve.



The best score I've gotten so far is 1093 but what I don't understand is why the core speeds fluctuate a lot. When the CPU is not doing any work, it sits around 4GHz on all cores. However, during cinebench tests it can vary between 4GHz, 3.5 GHz, 3.1 GHz, and 2.8GHz regardless if the temperature is below throttling temps. It usually sits around 3.5 and 3.1 with a few occasions of the lowest of the listed clocks. I should also mention I am using the turbo preset in dragon center.

 

Do you see PL1?
That stands for power limit 1.
You bypassed the 45W power limit. That's why it says TDP Throttle.
Your TDP is 45W.

Ouch, that chip is getting hit very hard.

You're TDP throttling.
Extremely so.
The reason the core speeds fluctuate a lot is because it is trying to throttle down to 2.2 ghz or slightly above, depending on if all cores are throttling at once or not or if it can exceed 2.2 ghz and still stay under 45W. The base clock is 2.2 ghz, however only in prime95 do I think it would be firmly limited to the base clock only. They changed how the throttling works, compared to the 7700HQ, but it's still a huge cancer mess. So here it looks like you're exceeding 45W at 3.1 ghz here.

PL2 is the short term power limit, which is usually 1.5x PL1 (so, 62W), which can usually be used for 28 seconds, before it drops down to 45W.

@Papusan and @Mr. Fox are going to love this.

HWInfo64 would show "Power limit exceeded" on all cores.

 

Thanks for the screenshot, now for the undervolting ! It should help a bit with the throttling

 

I'm not going to be held accountable if you brick your laptops, but you can remove all of the power limit throttling (you're still overclock limited) if you unlock the advanced Bios menus. But that's just going to make you overheat sooner unless you can take control of the thermals. But at least then you can run at the 6 core multiplier speed setting that way.

Svet on the MSI official forums should be able to do it for a $20 Eur donation, or you can risk doing it yourself. You'll have to follow @Paloseco 's guide, but use my shortcut with just dumping the bios capsule with FPTW64. If you are worried about something going wrong then just have SVET do it for you instead.

Or you can undervolt but not sure how well that will work out at both idle and load.

 

Has anyone cracked open the back and seen where the SSD's and RAM are located?

 

I don't have the balls to do that. I got mine maxed out so that I don't need to upgrade it.

 

As soon as I get mine, I'll be doing that and will post pictures.

 

I'm almost sure that RAM are installed under the keyboard; instead, it could be possible that M.2 slots are serviceable withour disassembling the motherboard.

 

It's possible but if it's like the previous two generations, it's all inverted. The only thing serviceable in previous models was the WiFi and the 2.5" bay(absent from this model).

 

For the accessibility Dave2D already said that it is like the past model.

@TheGhastSlayer any info about the building quality ? expecially the flexing parts ? Is it flex so much ? where in particularly ?
Does it flex also while you type or play on keyboard?

 

Did he? I thought he said he couldn't even get it open.

 

Dave2D only said he was told by MSI techs it was difficult to open for service...so he didn't try.

Our techs open the GS63 10x a day, it is only difficult if you don't know how. We made a video for it -

We don't know yet where the M.2 and memory slots are on the GS65. We will know that shortly. We will probably also make a teardown video for the GS65 as well...stand by for future developments.

 

@Derek712

We have now confirmed the M.2 and memory slots are located under the motherboard, just like the GS63. We will be making a teardown video this week.

 

Basically a repost of my comment on reddit:

I wanted to know about the internals as well l before I bought it, but decided to go for it anyway.

So today I picked up the 1070 max-q version with 32GB ram and 512GB. For those interested I have the 8RF-038 version. First thing I did was opening this bad boy up. I made photo's for other people as they might want to know this before they buy it.

Basically they still have a sticker over a screw on the bottom side but this time it says "FACTORY SEAL" instead of the usual "Warranty Void". So to access the internals you need to remove the sticker and undo all screws.

If you had/have a GS60 or GS63VR the procedure is basically the same.

Dave2D mentioned that it is incredibly hard to open this up. I don't think it is hard, maybe annoying at most. I got a gut feeling that MSI just don't want users to open their laptops.

Moving on, the bad news is that the motherboard still is flipped upside down.

The good news is that there are 2 m.2 slots for ssd's and the RAM as well as the wifi card is upgradeable.

The other thing that I noted was that the Killer 1550 is basically a rebranded Intel 9560. This might be good news for connection reliability. I haven't had any issues (I did uninstall the killer suite).

Other than the upgrade-ability being annoying this is a very solid machine. I also think that the "flex" issues are exaggerated, but this might be my bias.

I am pleasantly surprised with this screen. Colors look really good and viewing angles are great as well. I expected some TN panel because MSI advertises this panel as "IPS-level" but I'm 95% sure this is IPS. The screen is from AUO and the model number b156han08.0.

Without further ado: https://imgur.com/a/MbxWz3f

 

Nice pictures, thanks for that. The screen is probably AHVA, which is practically the same as IPS. Asus started putting version 7 of than panel last year in their Strix model. Version 8 is probably the same panel but with a higher color gamut.

 

What reason do you think causing the relatively harder throttling compared to Aero 15x v8, despite of more fans and heat pipes?

 

Could be something as simple as poor thermal contact.

 

@Papusan
Because MSI uses lairdtech for their thermal "paste" jobs . Yes it's a thermal stamp. NOT a paste. a stamp.
This is what they use:

This was GT75VR heatsink directly from their china factory.

 

Just a little info about my machine:
- There is some screen flex but it feels sturdy to me at the same time.
- The keyboard has some flex to it if you apply pressure but it doesn't feel cheap.
- Top left area above the keyboard is sturdier than top right.
- Same story for the surface area below the keyboard, but it made a lot of creaking noises yesterday. Not so much today but that's not a sound i enjoyed hearing on a laptop at this price.
- I have big noticeable backlight bleeding on all four cornes when dark colours are displayed.

It feels great while using it normally but I'd love to hear from other gs65 owners if the creaking and screen issues are only on my machine or if it's repeated. I still love this laptop!

 

Stamps is just heated up thermal paste printed directly on the heatsink cold plate. It will be hard as stamps afterwards when temp go down for storage in their shelves for later use. The paste recipe is made exactly for the purpose. Easy application both in the fabric as well for afterwards tech support. And of course they print it thick enough for ****y Uneven heatsink fits.

 

As far as flex goes, there is quite a bit of it. Like enough for me to keep it in a hard shell while in my laptop. Anytime I move it while it's open and with one hand, I feel it flex a tiny bit. It doesn't flex if I move it with two hands. If closed, you really need to squeeze it to make it flex. The biggest reason I really don't care is because I treat it as fragile as every other laptop made. Toughbooks are another story, but I didn't get this to do field work.

 

Thank you so much! Can I add these photos in the 1st post of this thread?

So, the display is manufactured by AUO and not by BOE as told in a review, or probably there are at least 2 displays and it's a lottery.


This is a benchmark of the SSD installed in the MSI GS 65 ( Samsung MZVLB512HAJQ PM981 NVMe PCIe M.2 512GB) , that I've found just now googleing the model number of the display (it belongs to CN Msi Forum) :

 

Like Derek712 pointed out, it could be poor thermal contact. Maybe even a limit by manufacturer or slightly warped heatsink etc. There are many factors that could be causing throttling.

Sure, no problem!

 

Is there a picture of this cancer heatsink? Or am I blind and I missed it?
*Edit* I mean the underside of the heatsink. So I can see just how badly its machined? (closeup picture).