[UPDATED]Quite happy with the GS43VR (fans, build quality, etc)

Hi,

*** This post has been heavily updated after I discovered you can change minimum fan speed from 0% to a custom value using the included "MSI Dragon Center". You can also decrease the number of fan speed steps from 5 to 3, making for a much more pleasant environment. Currently it's nearly as silent as my MacBook Pro 15 with fans humming along at 30%, 1800 RPM, in idle mode. ***

If you get an MSI GS43VR, please do change the minimum fan RPM and decrease the number of fan steps in Dragon Centre, it will change your view on the machine completely. This is currently my settings:



Except the fans, my main two issues with the machine were:

1. The cooling paste used for the M.2 SSD was placed offset, so the SSD would not be cooled entirely. Easy thing to move but I really should not have to.

2. The "<>" key was moved between Alt Gr and Spacebar. I can see why, but it messes a bit with me while coding, in the Nordic Countries we use Alt Gr all the time to type [] and {}.

The screen had slight backlight bleeding in the bottom right corner, but my Dell 7710 and Asus 752 are worse (FHD IPS on them too).

With the fan "fixed" I am actually now not disappointed anymore, but I cannot seem to update the title of this post to "Quite happy with the GS43VR", if a moderator has the time please do so.

 

Yeah, that's the thing I hate the most about my GS70. Not sure I would like another laptop today which had that "feature".

 

This outlines the problem with most of the Notebook Manufacturer forums. Nobody knows what "X" laptop compares to another. You clearly knew what to expect out of a new laptop in 2016 with enough knowledge that other makes do things CLEARLY better.

A fan is either OFF.. Then almost too loud immediately, this isn't right obviously.

A ridiculously loud laptop isn't and shouldn't accepted or dealt with, which is why I returned my GS63 (although I probably had a fault bearing CPU fan on it as it made a very annoying high pitched whine). I noticed that it would actually turn the fans off during idle which was great but the slightest loading of an application would make the fans way too loud for no good reason.

Anyways, thanks for this honest review while not being a fanboy about it and overlooking the obvious issues it has. If you're going to spend north of 1k (or whatever this converts to) you shouldn't have to learn to live with a laptop manufactured by a company that cut's corners.

 

Thanks for the review. I agree with you completely on the keyboard arrangement (how can something be called premium and have weird layouts?).
As far as the fans go, they act weird mostly due to a poorly programmed EC. Sadly fan management is usually the last thing on the list for bios engineers (except maybe at Razer) so if its bad now it probably won't get much better.

 

Thank you for the review!

Fortunately, there may be at least a partial fix for the fans coming up. For a donation, Svet (a moderator on the official MSI forums) creates tools that allow users to set their own custom fan profiles for the CPU and GPU fans that should let the fans spin slower than 30%. I haven't used Svet's handiwork before, but I've heard others have had great success with it. Last I checked on the MSI forums, he hasn't come out with anything for the new VR laptop lineup yet though.

 

How is the trackpad? Can you do multi gestures like swipe up in Windows 10 to reveal open apps?

 

Thanks for the tip on Svet's fan control software, I will definitely look into that.

If the fans could just keep steady at 3 or so different speeds it would be pretty OK I think. The noise in itself is not so bad, the pitch changing is worse.

Regarding the trackpad, it's pretty bad overall. It's miles from Surfacebooks or MacBook's. You can configure some things in the "Elan Smart-Pad" app, but it's quite limiting.

 

Svet's fan control is a modification on the EC firmware to make it work better than stock settings.

The touchpad can be lacking to some but it still is pretty good for most of usage scenarios.

 

I just wanted to update my review. I was wrong about the fan control.

It turns out that using the MSI Dragon Control Center it is possible to adjust the fans very precisely.
The default setting was CPU to "Sport" = Highest performance, with the fan either at 0% (off) or variable between 40% - 100% in 5 steps.

Using the Dragon Control Center I changed default to balanced, and also changed the minimum speed to 30% (1800 RPM). At this speed the fans are almost as silent as my MacBook Pro 15. Huge difference compared to the 0% RPM peaking to 40-50 % every 30-60 second or so.

I could also change it so it only uses 3 steps when increasing the RPM, which at least for me makes for a much more pleasant work environment.



With this fan setting I'm now actually quite pleased with the machine. Quad Core i7, 32 GB RAM, 1.5 TB SSD and GTX 1060 all in a 14" package, that's nearly silent most of the time (with fans humming along at 1800 RPM).

I will update by heading and original post accordingly.

Sorry for posting such a negative review initially. I sure hope notebookcheck and the other sites take their time too to modify the fan settings.

 

Glad to hear things are working out better for you now! I'm pretty happy with my GS43VR as well, despite some of its shortcomings in the fan department (my own review is linked in my sig).

Btw, if you want to update this thread's title, you'll have to ask a moderator to do it for you.