MSI GE66 Raider 10SFS-048 Short Review

As I posted previously on here, I had ordered an MSI GE66 10SF-045 from Xotic PC. I recently cancelled my order, because I was paying for something I didn’t have and there was not a date that I was going to receive. It’s no fault of theirs that the date they were receiving the machines kept changing.

While cruising the internet recently, I came upon the MSI GE66 10SFS-048 that was in stock at Best Buy. So I bought one.

The specs for this machine are:

Intel Core i7 10750H
RTX 2070 Super
1tb SSD
32GB RAM
240hz display


This is pretty similar to what I had originally ordered, except the 10SF-045 comes with the regular RTX 2070, 16GB RAM, and the non-super RTX 2070. With the changes I had originally made at Xotic, the two machines are pretty similar, except for the RTX 2070 Super.

The machine this is replacing is a nearly five year old MSI GT-72 that has an Intel Core i7 4710HQ, GTX 980m, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD. Yes I know I am replacing a 17’ laptop with a smaller one. I travel a lot, and it was getting tiresome lugging around the GT72. I decided I wanted to go with something a little smaller and not nearly as heavy.

So far, I haven’t had much of a chance to try the new Raider gaming. I have spent most of the time doing Windows updates, removing programs that I don’t want/need/won’t use, and installing some of the programs that I do want.

Overall, I like the new laptop so far. The build quality seems pretty good so far. The light bar on the front is not as bright and overwhelming as what it appeared to me to be in some of the videos that I watched.

While the keyboard is smaller than what I was using on the GT72, and there’s no number pad, it feels firm with no flex, unless I press in the middle pretty firmly. The keys have a slight click when depressed. I haven’t played with the RGB setting yet, but the keys are brightly lit and easy to see.

The screen looks nice, and is also brightly lit. So far, I have not noticed any black light bleed anywhere on the screen. The only game I have tried so far is Lord of the Rings Online. With everything set to its’ highest setting in game, the lowest FPS I saw as 125. Generally, it was 180+ all the time. However, I haven’t spent a lot of time trying that or any other game so far, so we’ll see what happens as I get more things downloaded and updated.

I did download a couple free benchmarking tools to see what it would show. These results are done with the latest Nvidia drivers, 446.14.

Geek Bench 5:

Compute OpenCL Score: 82004
CPU Score: Single Core 1092 Multi Core 5402
CUDA Score: 97360
Vulkan Score: 61511

3D Mark Skydiver benchmark for laptops:

Overall Score: 40712
Graphic Test 1: 307 fps
Graphic Test 2: 350 fps
Overall Graphic test score: 71607 Physics score: 14583 Overall score: 26298

The highest GPU temp I saw during the benchmark was 70c for a brief moment. It ranged between 65-69c for most of the test. Dragon Center was set to extreme performance and gaming mode. The fans spun up and down, depending on the demand made of the GPU. While the fans did get loud, it was not too bad, and not nearly as loud as my GT72 with the fans set to max. I do miss having the fan button that was on my GT72. There are various profiles in Dragon Center, including an ability to set the fan speed to high. I haven’t experimented with all the different settings yet.

I’ve saved what I think is the worst part of this laptop to the end, and that’s the sound. To me, the sound is huge let down. The speakers on the GE66 don’t seem to be nearly as good as what was on the GT72. The sound seems distant, has very little bass, and seems somewhat washed out. I have been messing with Nahimic and other settings trying to find something I like. I haven’t tried headphones or a headset yet, but hopefully that will be an improvement. I’ve managed to find something that is mostly acceptable, but it’s not great. I will continue to try and find some better settings that make the sound better.

Overall, in about 24 hours of use, I like this laptop. Even though it is smaller, it is significantly lighter than my GT 72. It performs really well so far. In the few games I’ve tried, I get higher FPS with the same, or better, settings than what I got on the GT72. In the next few days, I do plan on adding a second 1TB SSD, and I may change out the stock thermal paste for something else. I haven’t decided about that yet though. I may wait and see what the temps do once I have the time to try some gaming.

 

Kildar,

I just received the same unit from Best Buy and commented in the main GE66 thread. Agree with what you have said so far and I also plan on adding another 1TB SSD and possibly repasting as well. If you beat me to it because I will be very busy the next week or so, when you take off the heatsinks can you let us (me) know what the size of the thermal pads are too? I figure if I am going to repaste i might as well repad with more higher quality ones. Thanks and enjoy man...i know I will!

 

If the temps are good why mess with a good thing? I havent seen anyone saying there unit is overheating. If it aint broke, dont fix it. Your bound to run into undesirable results. I would wait until it becomes a problem that needs remedying.

 

That's what I decided to do. I did add a second 1tb SSD, but I left the stock paste. The highest temps I've seen on the GPU have been 69-70c. The CPU did hit 90c on AIDA64, but it's been fine under normal use.