GX640 Reviewed - Runs Loud and Hot

Notebookcheck has reviewed the GX640 here [ Google translated here].

For those thinking about buying this machine or the owners who are in denial that this machine runs loud and hot -- you now have a more objective review that shows you how loud and hot this machine really runs. I've returned two GX640 for these reasons.

 

After owning my GX640 for 3 days now, I do agree that the fan runs pretty loud (the cycling when the GPU isn't downclocked is the most annoying part) and we all know that the internal temperatures are relatively high. However, you almost make it sound as if it is all bad. In the conclusion of the review they state that this laptop is a bit of a compromise: it sacrifices heat and noise for better form factor and better gaming performance. So it really comes down to which matters to you most, for $1150, do you want a notebook that is better at gaming but is louder / warmer? Or a laptop that is quieter and less hot but won't run games as well.

And I also have to say that their comments about the temperature of the case is a little misleading. The right side of the hand rest does get warm but it is not bad at all, and when it gets even warmer during gaming your hand is most likely holding the mouse anyways and the left side never gets warm.

 

try the asus g51jx and then try telling me this laptop is hot..

i think ur greatly overreacting and thinking there's gaming laptops that run cold

 

Well said jhsnow,

Running one of the powerfullest cards out their off a single fan, all i can say is, way to go msi .

 

the envy now don't look even hot comparing to this laptop, and envy 15 first gen runs 10c cooler in the chassis than this one. Its continues to be just a case of fanboysm

 

First, "powerfullest" is not a word.

Second, it is because MSI went with a loud single fan that the machiner runs loud and hot. It is not a plus, but a minus.

I have to say, for someone who doesn't even own a GX640 your infatuation with the machine is perplexing. Why don't you buy the machine first then judge for yourself.

 

Right, because a poorly translated German review matters more to me than my own experience with the laptop. The palm rests are never uncomfortable under load, and as for internal temps I've seen MemIO temps during gaming into the 90s for laptops (and sometimes 100 in FurMark) with supposedly much better cooling like the ASUS G73. I won't deny that it's somewhat loud, but the fact is that quite a number of GX640 owners here find the noise to be perfectly acceptable.

I'm not so sure on that count. We've had at least one person here (bankergolfer) who has owned both the Envy 15 2nd gen and the GX640, and he has said the GX640's chassis is cooler to the touch.

 

I've had my share of hot laptops, i.e the asus g51. I'll just swap the thermal paste with AS5 to see what happens. The only thing I DO care about is the fact that the 5850 is max 2fps behind the 5870 which is great and its faster than the 285.

 

AS5 isn't a very good thermal paste, I hear. If you're going to go to the bother of changing it yourself you should probably find a better one.
Do you have a GX640 yet? If not, it might be early to be planning things like that.

 

I'm sure there are ways to reduce the internal components temperature by adding more heat sinks and changing out the thermal paste. However I don't know if that will really change the fan noise or the heat output from the exhaust. Luckily, my new g73's 5870 never goes above 78C while playing games at full settings and the CPU never goes above 68C. The fans aren't much louder at full load than at idle.

 

First of all, nobody cares, at the end of the day people recognise the word, real or not,

Second of all, the single fan is good, not because its loud, or lighter, but because its running and sustaining the hardware under the hood, regardless of it being "Loud"

Thirdly, i've used the 640 a couple of times thank you, don't need to own one to know how it sounds, and by the way (The fans in msi's often sound the same) so i'm quite familiar with the noise it produces.

Fourth, the fanboyism statement is a complete joke, before the 640 and 740 come out, there were 4 regular posters only, people jumped the gun on the model and alot of people liked it, end of discussion,

Fifth, anyone who wants the 640's temps to drop, rip the pads off and replace with mx-3 or icd7, non conductants so its safe,

At the end of the day, i've been using MSI products for the last 10 years, (Did i mention they're still all working?) and my latest laptop is pretty much inaudible when idling (Past whisper quiet) and extremely quiet (And cool) when gaming.

I've also dropped the machine twice, so hardwares very well placed and constructed too.

So hell yeah, im an MSI "Fanboy"
(Just to add my max temps are rarely over 75C for the GPU when gaming hard and 58C is often my CPU limit too, thats the 1722 model, thats why i have so much faith in the single fan design.)

Ok anger over i can carry on posting lol...

While i realise the placement of the vent, and fan noise can be darn annoying, i think the temps are fine as long as your just doing your plain tasks like gaming or browsing, where as stress testing, has always been a flaw in one laptop or another, i think we just need to wait till MSI gets out some decent updates, and people should give time to let the fan break in slightly (I did notice a noise drop on my machine after a while, mainly the high pitch whirr of the fan, the frequency nulls out over time and can sound much better.)

 

The German review is spot-on. I agree with pretty much all they say having owned a GX640 for almost a week now. At the end, no notebook is perfect and you'll always have to compromise somehow. I am actually debating sending this back but mostly for the dim screen. At the same time, I really can't find something better unless you are willing to pay a couple hundred dollars more. Hey cataclysm, I understood powerfullest...lol...that's an awesome word to describe the 5850. C'mon guys we're gamers, not novelists here.

 

Thats what i mean, you know i'd kill to have that kinda GPU under my fingers right now, got myself a nice 1080p tv and with the 4850 i'm just scraping the boundry at maxing games with no AA, but you guys, you get it all, and DX11 support, i mean come on .

I too agree with the german review, but with my past experiences, and performance output from that lovely little book, i'd say the pros outway the cons.

 

Agreed man, I'm keeping it! I feel like it's kinda like having a really hot girlfriend with smelly feet. The smell of her feet might bother you but once that booty starts bouncing it's all good.

 

So the heat and fan noise aren't really an issue for you? I know I'll be fine with the screen brightness since I've seen a comparison between the GX640 and the G1S (I was debating over the Inspiron 1520 and the G1S, so I'm familiar with the brightness levels on both). It all really comes down to the heat and noise for me as to whether or not to pull the trigger. I don't really care what the internal temp of my notebook is, as long as I don't experience anything so extreme that it causes throttling (I could live with ~100C if I had to ). Fan noise won't bother me so much, I don't think, because I feel like the only time the fans would get loud is during gaming, and I always have my notebook hooked up to external speakers, so I don't see that being an issue.

Also, what does the fan sound like if you're just using the internet and Word (or something equivalent to that amount of power being dissipated). If it's relatively quiet in a classroom setting, then I'm definitely buying it, especially since it doesn't appear that the notebook itself gets that hot.

 

The fan is weird on this. It stops and starts all the time (even when nothing is running). It starts, runs for like 5 seconds, stops, then repeats the procedure constantly. It definitely is noticeable when just browsing the web or doing anything where no sound is involved to mask the noise. In a classroom setting, I think you'll be ok; I mean it's audible if you're sitting right next to it, but I don't think people will get annoyed or distracted by it.

 

I've read about how to slightly underclock to make the fan quit changing speeds. If the fan didn't jump like you describe, would it make a significant difference?

 

As long as you dont throttle, it would be OK, a lot of people have seen 85C+ temps and no signs of throttling yet...

 

Yeah, it would be nicer, as long as I'm not compromising performance. I'm sure the schizo fan is something that MSI can address with a BIOS update.

 

I'm always wary of everything that comes from notebookcheck. Don't get me wrong, they are good website and they have a LOT of numbers and details that can't be found anywhere else (at least in one single place), but some of their past reviews, such as the msi GT628 and the Clevo W870CU have gotten me to raise my doubts about them a little. Both notebooks are known to be very stable and with great temps, especially the W870CU, yet notebookcheck labels it as "unstable under load".

Actually, I completely lost faith in all review sites altogether after reading about the Alienware m15x (first version).... one of the most unreliable laptops ever, yet every review site labeled it as the "best notebook ever" @_@

I personally think both of MSI's latest offerings suffer from poorly applied thermal compound (for some reason). Reapplying thermal paste might just be enough to solve that issue.

That is... kind of disgusting. Your "girlfriend" might be nice and knows how to hump and all that, but you wont be very happy later when fungi start growing off her feet.

 

Hes joking haha, but if you findd that in your laptop that'd be quite scarey.

I say its the pads, i can solely swear that memory is 10C hotter with pads then paste. (Under load)

 

Do you think that the heatsink will make good contact with the memory chips and other ICs that currently have pads on them? If the heatsink makes good contact, then compound is definitely better than pads. I am not sure that the heatsink will sit flush enough to make good contact though, and too much paste is never good. Can anyone confirm this for the GX640?

 

Well I can confirm that there is no real difference between my temperatures with IC Diamond thermal paste applied and temperatures with pads that others have on this forum. With Furmark I seem to max out around 93C.. a lot lower than Notebookcheck. Idle is around 56-58C, stock clocks.

This is great gaming machine for the money.. but I think, personally, I'm slowly realizing I don't need all of the power I have. I'm starting to figure out I like games on the Xbox 360 better... oops.

I think I'll try selling it over the summer after I see what reviews about the HP Envy 14 say... I think I want something smaller with better battery life, and a better keyboard... I don't really need the power.

Here's my own little mini-review if you need another opinion:

Screen: It's fine. It's glare-y, but it's not at the same time. It's plenty bright at full brightness for me... but outside that might be a different story. Then again, I don't ever see myself using this outside, so no problem. I have a weird static thing going on at lower viewing angles.. but this isn't a problem if I am at eye-level or above.

Performance: Speaks for itself... plays any game.

Keyboard: Annoying. Considering this is a gaming machine and not a workstation, I would rather not have a numpad and therefore a less cramped keyboard. The keys are just a tad small, the right shift (the one I use exclusively) is terrible small. Same with backspace... at this point I've gotten used to it, but I occasionally do hit the up arrow.

Size: This thing seems a bit heavier than 5.9 lbs... but for the package, it's light.

Portability: This is where I dislike the laptop. I don't feel comfortable using this thing on my lap AT ALL... it overheats much too quickly. The battery life can be stretched out from 2 to 3 hours with underclocking, but it's going to remain on my desk simply because it gets too hot. I should have known this when I bought it, but people said it remained relatively cool underneath. I just forgot about the vent part.. silly me

Overall: The build quality doesn't seem THAT good.. it's okay for the price, but not really. The keyboard and the heat are the two main indicators for me. The keyboard feels cheap, and this chassis wasn't really designed to handle such a powerful card. I find that the laptop looks nice though.. a tad obnoxious with the red stripe, but not as bad as the pictures. Also, if you hate finger smudges, do not get this laptop. They're everywhere.. I've learned to live with them tho.

 

cataclism you are a fanboy as you acknowledged it.

I do prefer a review from a site than a opinion of a guy here who didn't use any kind of instrument other than his feeling to tell me that the temps in the chassis were lower in the gx 640.

As I already said the envy is a great machine with a higher quality build than the gx 640. Has a better cooling (there is no argument here that can change the fact), is lighter, has more powerful cpus (that matters to me) and the screen is way better. The gx 640 has a more powerful card and is cheaper.

there is no gaming laptop that I know that can game in your lap without leaving the present of no children in your future

 

csinth, when you ran furmark did you use the full screen Xtreme burning mode? I ran that and I reached 101 and decided to stop. In regular benchmark mode though, I maxed at 91. Where did you apply the paste (cpu, gpu, ram?)

 

haha no.. I just did regular benchmark mode. I really don't want to harm my laptop

And it was XoticPC that applied the paste for me, so as to not void my warranty.

 

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I won't bother with new thermal paste.

 

i've had my GX640 for a few days and it hasn't been loud AT ALL. Not sure what the fuss is about. As far as heat goes, i've gamed for a couple hours straight and my GPU hasn't exceeded 90c. Just got the Zalman NC2000 cooler and it now idles at 41C for the GPU, and in the 30's C for the CPU. Maybe I just got lucky, but no issues to report yet!

 

Csinth, whats your memory temp at (And did you leave the memory pads on too sorry?) - Kosti i think you need to use a thick amount of paste on the memory chips, but to be fair i'd ask dead2theworld about it first.

93C is cooler then everyones temps, which might be the result of the ICD7 kicking in.

" do prefer a review from a site than a opinion of a guy here who didn't use any kind of instrument other than his feeling to tell me that the temps in the chassis were lower in the gx 640."
He doesnt need instruments to feel how hot it is in relation to skin temp.

I can game on my lap! muahaha.

While envy is nice, still take GPU performance over the CPU any day, and i can live with average build quality.

 

build quality doesn't bother me, and neither does the keyboard. I'm not going to throw my laptop around, so i don't think it's going to fall apart. i underclock with the AMD clock tool to keep the fan down and it works just fine. right palm never gets warm while typing, and while gaming my hand is always on the mouse anyways.

i've never seen a temp above 85C on mine, and it's never throttled.

i'm considering a lapdesk so i can use it on my lap and still have kids later in life.

 

So far, it's been quite usable on my lap for non-intensive tasks.

 

Has anyone tried it on their lap yet?

It should defo be fine for non intensive tasks.

 

I tried it a few times and with jeans on its not a good idea.. your pant leg ends up blocking that key GPU intake vent. It actually overheated from use for me, even though I kept trying to rearrange it so that I wasn't blocking vents. Now I put in something to separate.

 

What are you using to monitor your temps? My GPU idles around 58C and my CPU around 43C. Either you are really lucky somehow or the readings are not accurate. No way a notebook cooler would help to drop temps by that great a margin. I don't really think coolers can really lower temps more than a degree or two no matter how good it is. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

 

i just cut out a thin board exactly the size of the laptop, and put it on that.. works great.

 

It's leveled out more now, that must have been a one time thing. The GPU idles right at 50 C now and the cores are at 37 and 39 C. Still cooler than most people's temps here. I'm using HW monitor. I'll test it while gaming at some point, but I don't own anything very graphic intense (all I got is like Halo 2, Guild Wars.... I'll test Star Wars Force Unleashed tomorrow though).

 

fadex, dude just sit back and relax, its not a cell phone or remote control from tv, its a GAMING laptop, means that it will get a bit hotter than other mainstream ones... MSI made it very light and thin especially compared to other lappies like alienware, asus gx51 (which is hot like a toaster). i dont realy trust those reviews i'd better ask from the owners themselves, cuz what ive heard of people the temp of the GPU doesnt get above 90-95 C degrees, which is just normal for this high performance card, and by the way getting a better thermal paste will help a lot, i got the IC Diamond from xoticpc , and BTW if u put envy and gx640 side by side and turn on any demanding game, u r going to see a big difference.

 

Emirs nailed it, thats all i can say

Kudos to you sir.

 

Wow, those are some pretty hot temps you guys are repping. 85C while gaming! The Envy 15 doesn't get that hot under full load. That's pretty intense. MSI needs to take some tips from the 2nd Gen Envy 15. Every gaming laptop needs that type of cooling system. But I guess when you spend only a little over $1000 for a laptop with that much power, you get what you paid for.

 

I feel like the guy with more HP swag on his profile then an HP website is far from a "non biased" opinion...

 

He has had a couple of 10/10 recommendations on the "What should I buy board", but definitely biased...

LOL, funny how I was that biased with Dell when the m1530 was coming out and no one knew about the throttling issue...

Dont take it personal, Mr L3vi, but not everyone is fond of HP, as not everyone is fond of Dell, or Sager, or Asus, or MSI, etc...

 

The envys GPU performance is still nothing in comparison to the 640's, these 5 series gddr5 cards cook for sure .

 

Actually I do own a GX640, so I trust my own judgment in saying the laptop runs loud and hot, and the review from notebookcheck is spot on and a lot more accurate than some of the reviews of the MSI posted on this site (e.g. claiming the machine only runs "warm").

Second, just because it's a gaming laptop does not mean it should run as hot as it does. The G73jh is a gaming laptop, but it runs cool and quiet. The NP8690 is also a gaming laptop and runs cool. The GX51 runs hot, yes, that just means both Asus and MSI failed in that area. But at least Asus redeemed itself with the G73jh.

Third, don't kid yourself into thinking the MSI is "very light and thin." It is close to 7lbs with the included 9-cell.

All in all, the MSI is a cheap gaming laptop only good if you aren't concerned with noise or heat. The notebookcheck review should serve as a good warning to those who are concerned about heat and noise.

 

I really don't get what your complaining about, point out a system at this price point with similar specs that doesn't have a bit more heat then its +$500 more brothers. There's really nothing out there that compares.

Seems your expecting the heat performance out of a more expensive machine with the price of a cheaper one. And frankly expecting that is unfair.

The machine is designed to met a certain threshold and still be affordable. The more expensive rigs get the better cooling, but you pay for it.

 

The G73 is quiet, while the GX640 is loud, sure. However, you're deluding yourself if you want to label the GX640 as "hot" while the G73 is "cool". I've been reading up on people's temperatures with the G73, and temperatures for MemIO in the high 80s and even the low 90s are not uncommon while gaming.

Either both are "hot", both are "warm", or both are "cool". Take your pick.

If you want significantly cooler temps, you have to go with a Sager or an Alienware, and I'm pretty sure neither classes as quiet.

 

G73 temps are exactly the same, even better is that the g73 is 17 inch and your complaining to a 15 inch, with a gpu that is only a tiny fraction behind.

" Actually I do own a GX640, so I trust my own judgment in saying the laptop runs loud and hot, and the review from notebookcheck is spot on and a lot more accurate than some of the reviews of the MSI posted on this site (e.g. claiming the machine only runs "warm"). "

Ive seen so much innacurate junk on notebookcheck its unreal.

And asus hasn't redeemed anything, its been true to itself, asus and msi are completely different.

notebookcheck can do one, users can see about researching more into laptops before they buy..sheeesh...

Oh and they are lightweight, i didnt read anywhere on their adverts that it includes the 9 cell too, did you??...

 

+1, also,
isnt there a +95C owner's club in the Asus board?

 

Hotter then that, the memory controller hurts the asus just as bad as it does the MSI. (But what do you expect, bring me an app that runs as hot as furmark) and ill start to come away from MSI, but as it stands, i'm still steel heartedly stuck with them !

 

I have an apple logo combined with an HP logo. And a laptop in my sig that will likely be my next, it happens to an HP. That makes my statement "biased"

I've never owned an HP. I've owned more Apple devices than anything else. So I'm not sure where your getting this HP fanboyism crap from. I suggest the laptops that are right and meet the specs that most closely fit what is requested in the WNSIB forum. They aren't biased. They are suggestions.

To both Ben and Retto. Don't jump to conclusions. I stated a fact. HP Envy's cooling is better than that of the MSI. I compared the too because the Envy has a relatively powerful GPU in small chassis. The MSI has a similar situation, but HP handled it better. Nothing more nothing less, that's how it is. Implying I'm a fanboy doesn't change the fact the machine runs hot. Sheez.

Can't argue with that. The 5850 GDDR5 is pretty much my favorite GPU, both the mobile and desktop versions.

 

way to go putting your "wannabuy" notebooks in signature

As of heat issues: MSI and HP took quite different approach to this problem.
Envy uses alloy case as a heatsink combined with multiple fans. This keeps internal temperatures relatively lower but the notebook is hot to touch (envy 15 impressions).
MSI however sacrifices the temperature of internal components to keep the notebook cool to touch. Mobile performance components are designed to withstand more heat.

So, you can compare:
- Burning your legs being relieved that CPU/GPU is cool.
OR
- Enjoying a comfortable computing knowing that notebook can withstand higher temps.

Your pick!