Is the MSI GS63VR even worth a purchase? Please help.

So i have been searching all summer, high and low comparing all sorts of reviews for the perfect laptop to see me through a degree in computing starting on the 19th of September.

After weighing up all options and visiting a few stores i had decided that i loved the look, feel and power of the Dell XPS 15

that is current up for £1,499 with:

Intel core I7-6700HQ (Quad core)
16gb DDR4 (2133mhz)
512gb SSD
NVIDIA GTX 960m (2gb VRAM)
15.3" 3840x2160 (UHD Infinity glossy display touchscreen)
Thunderbolt 3
1.9kg
1.7cm thick
84Whr battery

The laptop is a reasonable price and enticing with people saying they are hitting 5-7 hours on the battery.. Realistically this laptop would be perfect for me for university.. But last week a spanner was thrown in the works with NVIDIA and their announcement in London of the GTX 10 series desktop GPU's coming as standard in laptops.

Looking through all of the new range of MSI and gigabyte laptops one has stuck out to me and it's the
MSI GS63VR

that is currently up for £1,799 with:

Intel core I7-6700HQ (Quad core)
16gb DDR4 (2133mhz)
256gb SSD + 2tb HDD
NVIDIA GTX 1060 (6gb VRAM Desktop grade)
1920x1080 (FHD Non touch matte display)
Thunderbolt 3
1.9kg
1.7cm thick
57 Whr battery (9-cell)

So as you can see from the MSI it is the same height and weight as the Dell with a MUCH faster GPU and a lower resolution screen with a few other mod-cons on each i.e. RGB keyboard and a few software elements, the build quality of the XPS is guaranteed to be better as its considered to be one of the best ultrabooks with the windows platform.

But the stinker is the 9-cell 57 whr battery on the MSI... Am i likely to get more than 2 hours out of this thing?

Whilst i don't plan on gaming on the go i could potentially use this as a desktop replacement as it out powers my sandybridge i7 and r9 290 gaming rig in almost every way.. I could recoup the extra cost and then some by selling the rig and buying it..

But from a practical stand point, is it even worth getting if it wont get me through a day of university? the primary reason i'm in the market anyway..

Thank you for any replies and apologies for the essay.. I noticed this forum has a lot of activity and i imagine you guys are experts on notebooks.

Cheers

 

I can assure you that the msi gs63vr will not get you through the university without having it charged constantly. I've had employees at local retails who already own this laptop say that it only lasts up to 2.5 hours of web browsing and light tasks (with wifi). If your day at the university consists of lectures etc. one after the other for a long time then you need to have the device connected to a wall constantly. I have used the msi gs60 and experienced this issue many times. There will possibility be a refresh on the dell xps lineup with gtx 10 series if you are able to wait. Otherwise the only decent laptop with a 1060 that lasts up to 6 hours of web surfing and studying is the razer blade releasing soon.

 

I'd take a XPS 15 with a 1060 over the MSI.

Better build plus i'm not a fan of the flashy gamery look but just personal preference. Maybe wait it out and see if other brands have something to offer. I miss my XPS 15.

 

So would you say its worth getting the XPS 15 for university and just upgrading my desktop in january?

 

Owners of the GS43VR here on the forums have reported 3.5 - 4+ hours of battery life with the screen brightness turned down and such, but the GS63VR's battery is even smaller than the GS43VR (3 cell in 63 vs 4 cell in 43), so I wouldn't count on the GS63VR offering much in the way of battery life.

 

I dont think itll be possible to put a 1060 in the xps 15... Id say the eventual 1050 is more likely...

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Does anyone have any pictures of the cooling system in gs63vr?

 

Salty mac uploaded a new final impressions of the GS63VR, he got 3 and a half hours with battery saver on with 20% brightness web browsing and using spotify etc

 

I'm really liking the report on fan noise. Second one stating that it's relatively quiet for a thin and light.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

Wish it had G-sync and a GTX 1070, but overall looks really nice.

 

Also really happy on the thermals he reported in that video. It seems with the new design, its working like a charm last gen GS60 was also really good with thermals but only after they revised it with the 6GB version of 970M. The initial was just running too hot. Glad they figured out a way to keep it cool before pascal came out, or else this 1060 would be baking.

@hfm, G-SYNC yes they could i believe if they wanted. 1070? I dont know... Hard to believe they can shove that inside a chassis like this...

@kothletino, check out the MSi Promo video, itll show the new design. Also someone posted a pic of it over at the GS43 thread.

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Hi Bailey,

To my knowledge there are four GS63vr models,

GS63VR Stealth Pro-001 @ $1,550 USD
GS63VR Stealth Pro-068 @ $1,699 USD
GS63VR Stealth Pro-034 @ $1,799 USD
GS63VR Stealth Pro-021 4k @ $1,999 USD

I recently purchased the GS63VR Stealth Pro-001 (2 days ago). This sits on a desk and only gets moved to a few meeting rooms and back, so battery life was not a concern for my situation. I also wanted a 9/10 key on the side so that swayed me to this machine.

Concerning battery life, something to consider on the GS63 is how you setup their "shift" setting in MSI Dragon Center, you can choose from Sport, Comfort, ECO and custom and also what your keyboard back-light is set to.

The following numbers are when I have one Chrome window open, with 5 tabs, and Google Drive working on syncing 27,521 files to the local HDD. Task Manager shows my CPU is pegged at 100%, RAM is at 31%, Disk 0 at ~0% Disk 1 at 100%, WiFi is at about 80 Mbps receive. The laptop is cool, and surprisingly quite.

Regarding battery

On Sport, display brightness 100%, keyboard back-light maxed my battery indicator says 1 hour 30 minutes +/- 5 minutes.

On ECO mode it goes to 3 hours +/- 5 minutes and display brightness at 60%. If I leave it in ECO mode and set display brightness to 100% I get 2 hours 50 minutes.

On ECO mode, set display brightness to 60%, and turn my keyboard back-light completely off I get 3 hours 15 minutes.

I do not know what kind of computing degree you are working towards but if I open Visual Studio 2015, open a 600k line project, start local IIS and local SQL, and run the debugger my battery status indicator reports slightly over an hour of time. This is on the ECO settings noted just above.

I know someone with the Dell 15 XPS 9550 and I know someone with a MSI GS60 Ghost Pro.

The MSI GS60 cooling solution is terrible

The Dell XPS 15 is whisper quite at pretty much all times.

MSI really did a good job on re-designing the cooling solution in the GS63VR, it is significantly quieter than the GS60 and the fan profiles are what I would call a smooth ramp up in proportion as it heats up. The GS60 had some weird fan profiles where it would not really be running the fans, then run full blast, then go back to being quite, and even though it wasn't my laptop, it was still irritating listening too.

I have exactly one complaint about the GS63VR model I got and that has to do with the display, HWinfo reports its a LG LP156WF6-SPK1. There are a few pros and cons on the laptop I got. The good thing is that there is zero edge bleed/backlight bleed issues and no dead/stuck pixels. The bad thing is this panel is dim, 250 cd/m2, I greatly prefer screens at 300 cd/m2. The dell screen is slightly brighter in my opinion. take a look at www.panelook.com if you want to compare screens.

So going back to the battery life when not on the charger, I don't consider a back-light value of 60% to be practical as it's too dim for my taste.


Regarding the 10 series GTX cards, the 1060 definitely delivers the goods on a 1080p screen. Concerning the Dell, I do wonder whether or not they really can get a 1060 into it. While the 960m and the 1060 are supposed to have ~75 TDP the power brick on the Dell is 130 watts, the GS63VR is 180 watts.

Having come from a computer with a GTX 960m I would not buy a 9 series equipped computer unless I was getting it at a significant discount and could live with the reduced performance. I don't feel the 960m is future proof, I think the 1060 is actually pretty future proof as long as it's on a 1080p screen.

Anyways, hopefully this helps you make an informed decision.

 

@RagingOcelot thank you so much for giving us so valuable info on this laptop. I for one am really happy to hear the positive experience you've had with the GS63VR, as im looking to get one mid sept. If i may, may i ask how the GS63VR handles temps? If you have any games, could you try some for some time and get some readings? You could use GPU-Z or HWinfo. Alternatively, you can run Unigine heaven in a loop for like 30 mins, that'll replicate a good gaming load for the components in my opinion. Would really appreciate it. We havnt seen much regarding temps with the GS63 as of yet. Thanks.

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@aban714 I am currently working on getting Witcher 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider and a couple other games onto the machine, but my drive sync is killing my bandwidth right now lol. When they are installed I will load the computer down and can give you some info on the frame-rates, temps, etc.

I can use GPU-Z, HWinfo, and I think I will try MSI afterburner to see if I can OC the 1060 a bit, and if so, what I can take it too. I have been on the desktop side of things for a while now, but never joined/posted.

Also I forgot to mention, the MSI Dragon Center has some stuff that was not on my co-workers GS60 such as displaying GPU and CPU temps, utilization % etc, and you can set a fan profile curve for the CPU and for the GPU independently, it's not as advanced as say something from the ROG Maximus series fan controller software on a desktop, but it does let you mess with it in a fashion.

I can run Unigine heaven, but I also have 3DMark (purchased) as well.

 

Witcher 3 would be perfect to test out the temps.
Wonder how much you can get the 1060 to OC. given that the chassis is so thin, itll be really impressive if it could go a little way
Yah i noticed that too in some screenshots ive seen of the, dragon centre is it called? The ability to set fan profiles is a huge advantage. Awesome.

Patiently waiting for your results. Thanks alot.

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Ran 3Dmark, unfortunately I will not be able to post scores, I ran the Time Spy (DX 12) and at the end it says my results cannot be confirmed as my driver is invalid. I am going to assume this is a 3D Mark issue, the GeForce driver version is 368.79.

Ambient temp 78 F.

Plugged in, all power settings set to performance etc.

Witcher 3

Stock GTX 1060

Ultra + hairworks on everything ~ 38-42FPS

Ultra hairworks off ~ 47-51 FPS

Temps on GPU were 80-83 C, no thermal throttling observed ~1568-1580 MHZ (Boost) on core, 8008ish on RAM, the GPU stayed at the Boost clock speed the whole time. 99% GPU utilization, about 1481-1515 MB of GPU RAM used (That number seems low to me, maybe I am missing something here). 26% CPU utilization, 5.5 GB of RAM in use.

Temps on CPU were 78 C, no thermal throttling observed

I was able to overclock the core +75 and the RAM +100 and keep it stable for at least 10 minutes (it didn't crash or show artifacts. and I got bored), temps ran 83-85C, I did not notice obvious thermal throttling, but I did notice the temp never went over 85 C and mostly bounced between 83-85. To be honest though, the FPS gain was so minimal (+1-3 FPS) I do not think OCing is worth it and as such I will pass on OCing. It appears the cooling solution is sized for the stock/boost GPU speeds and that's it.

Fan noise

It is definitely there when running loaded.

If you set the volume to 14-16 of 100 I would say that the music is about as loud as the fans. Go past 18-20 of 100 and the speakers start to drown out the fans. I tried a pair of Bose in-ear earbuds (not noise canceling) and could not hear the fans with the volume set to 12 of 100.

YMMV

 

Im thrilled!
Thank you so much for sharing this. Those temps are really good. More so when you take the slim chassis into consideration. im happy now that my doubts have been put to rest with your results.

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So apparently this laptop has an issue! I found this in a newegg review:

"I plugged those in (headphones), and it sounded great. However, when I plug in headphones (or anything else) into the stereo port, all 3 USB 3 ports on the left side of the laptop just die. Unplugging from the headphones causes the left USB ports on the laptop to come back to life. The USB 2.0 port on the right of the laptop works throughout all of this. I went into the BIOS, which has a USB options screen that shows you what is plugged in, and the problem occurs there too, so it isn't a Windows problem. After some more testing I realized the USB 3.0 port closes to the stereo port only works about half the time even without headphones plugged in. So out of 4 USB ports only 1 is fully functional. Great.

Called support, they recommended flashing the firmware, bios, and resetting Windows 10. I received this laptop the first week it was available, so only the original bios and firmware are available for download, but I tried it anyway. No improvement".

Can anyone confirm if they also have this issue? or maybe this was just a lemon... hopefully. @RagingOcelot can you test this? Thanks!

 

Thats a deal breaker if all GS63s are affected... @RagingOcelot can you please check yours?

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@alejo099, @aban714,

I just tried all my ports with headphones plugged in, and without them plugged in. My thumb drive mounts and dismounts in a normal fashion and I was able to copy/delete files from/to. I haven't had a problem with my USB ports and I have used all of them quite a bit the last couple of days.

My headphones are low Ohms for use on everything without need for an Amp.

Just speculation, I do not know what the Newegg guy was using but was it possible he was plugging in 300 or 600 Ohm headphones and the internal Amp can't handle them? It's also possible his motherboard is defective....

Don't know what to say other than I have not seen that issue.

 

@RagingOcelot thanks for clarifying. Glad it was just a case of one defective unit.

Seems like the guys over at the GS73 thread are really enjoying the new systems 120hz gaming ftw!

They also reported similar temps just like you with the GS63. 83-85c was the most during a four hour unigine heaven run.

Do you think undervolting the cpu will be possible? That may help shave a few degrees off the temps

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I'm liking the GS73VR but I really hate how sharp the bottom edges are. Can any GS63VR owners please comment on how the bottom edges feel on your units? A close up picture of the underside where the 3x USB and audio jacks would speak a thousand words. Mine has a .7mm gap there where I can fit a few pieces of paper in between... and that makes that metal edge feel a little too sharp for my taste. Especially for $1800.

 

Sorry see the photo now. Yes that looks like a slight defect in manufacturing. I would honestly swap it out if I were you. Why keep a slightly defect build? You paid dearly for that laptop and deserve better. Think about when you go to sell the laptop someday and have to tell a potential buyer about that "small" defect. And for $1800 that laptop should have included a non optimus option, IPS screen and g-sync.

 

@Derek712

See the photo's below, the unit I have is fitted on all sides, I do not notice a sharp edge.

@Talon

I definitely think the display panel should have been a top tier model, alibaba has the display panel available at 1,000+ units at a flat $20 per panel. It's pretty sad that they put a $20 display panel in a $1,550+ laptop. Profit margin anyone?

https://www.alibaba.com/product-det...60512165177.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.Zmdy3H

@aban714

I won't be able to try that out until next Tuesday at the earliest.

 

Well it's more than just me. A notebookcheck reviewer and two others also have the same issue. It's likely a widespread design flaw.

 

Just to add to my last post, I can't slide a sheet of paper between the stamped sheet metal and the plastic bottom.

 

Good, that makes me feel a little better. I might just switch then. Do the edges feel sharp at all when you pick it up? In other words, does it feel anything but normal to carry it around.

It sucks because the gs73 is fantastic and I'd hate to give it up. But I can't keep something that I cringe at every time I pick it up...

 

@RagingOcelot Can you comment on the surface/keyboard temps when playing Witcher 3? Does it become hot to touch?

 

I picked up the GS63VR from Best Buy tonight and the first thing I noticed is the high pitched sound coming from the CPU fan (right side when looking at the notebook).. That's pretty much a deal breaker for me. If they aren't supposed to be like this, I may exchange this one.. Because I do a lot of video encoding which will peg the cpu to 100% for hours at a time and I can't deal with this high pitched sound (I have sensitive ears).

I'm creating backup media using the MSI software to a 32gb USB drive.. After that I will be doing a fresh Win10 install to get rid of this bloat.

If anybody has any questions, i'll be on for the next 4ish hours.

Edit 1:
Machine feels heavier than 3.9 lbs.. finding this spec to be hard to believe.
It's thinner than a MacbookPro 15 and a little lighter.

Very strong overall device.. Loving the build quality, feels like a black MacbookPro. Almost no keyboard flex too!

Edit 2:
No PWM dimming! Good news, this is a DC fed display! Good and easy on the eyes when dimming.

Fan is still annoying under load (CPU, haven't used the GPU yet).

 

Hello all. I tried asking in another thread but nobody seems to respond so i thought i would try this one. I have decided to replace my gs63vr 1080p panel with a sharp lq156d1jw31 4k panel. I will buy the bezel with 2 sided tape from msi prior to the panel switch and i will also buy a 4 lane 40 pin eDP cable (the one that goes from motherboard to panel). The panel I have chosen is the lq156d1jw31.

Does anyone see any reason this panel would not work? I will take pics throughout the process and post to help with anything learned throughout this process. My gs63vr arrives this Friday or Monday

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Regards, Josh

 

In my opinion it's not worth buying since the warranty sticker is on a screw which blocks you from upgrading RAM or M.2...

 

Actually, at least in the US and Canada, you can remove the warranty sticker without voiding the warranty to clean or make upgrades. This has been confirmed by several users and also MSI itself, see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/3udzsu/msi_laptop_has_a_sticker_that_states_void_if/

 

Sorry to necroing (yeah it's not an actual word) this thread. I'm split between GS63VR and Clevo P950HP6 laptops. Has anyone experience comparing these two? what makes you chose one over another? I know its subjective, just want to know some opinion.