Official MSI GE60 2013 Owners Lounge

MSI GE60 2OE​

So I just bought the new MSI GE60-2OE from Newegg and my order is in the packaging stage. I got 2 day shipping so I should have it by Thursday and I will keep everyone posted on how it is. I started this thread now so people can start asking questions they want answered when I do a review of it - What should I cover?

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Specs:

OS: Windows 8
CPU: Core i7 4700MQ @ 2.4 GHZ
Screen: 15.6 diagonal 1920*1080 non reflection
Memory: 8 GB DDR3, 1600 MHZ. Memory is 1 8GB DIMM, one unfilled slot
Optical: DVD Super Multi
HDD: 750 GB at 7200 RPM
VRAM: 2 GB DDR5
Dimensions: 15.09"x9.83"x1.27"~1.46"
Weight: 5.86 lbs, claimed to be 5.28 lbs This is not true and is blatant false advertising.

Benchmarks (to be done when I get it):

3DMark 11: 4005
3DMark 2013: Wouldn't run, keeps on crashing. Driver problems?
Temperature of CPU: Idle - High 50s, Load high 90s
Temperature of GPU: Idle - 40s, Load, High 70s, low 80s
Battery life (web browsing, medium brightness): 2-3 hours, not very good
Battery life (load, max brightness): Let's not even talk about it
Various games


Frequently Asked Questions

What are the changes between this and the 2012 version?

• Backlit Keyboard
• New trackpad/clickpad from Elan
• 7200 RPM hard drive (whoo!)
• Aluminium wrist wrest and top of computer as opposed to the old models plastic
• Of course, Haswell and Nvidia 700M series GPUs

Can I use an MSATA SSD bought off the shelf?
You can, this laptop has two MSATA ports. Source.

What is the difference between the GE60-2OE-002 and the GE60-2OE-003?
The first is the Canadian version, the second the US version. Source.

The RAM is DDR3-L. Can I use regular DDR3 RAM to upgrade it?
I don't know though the Crucial Memory Finder guarantees that their DDR3 RAM will work with the GE60-2OE so I don't see why other DDR3 RAM wouldn't.

How's the clickpad?
I don't know, I'll find out!

Where to buy
Newegg.com - MSI GE Series GE60 2OE-003US Notebook Intel Core i7 4700MQ(2.40GHz) 15.6" Full HD 8GB Memory DDR3 1600 750GB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M
Amazon.com: MSI G Series GE60 2OE-003US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black/Red): Computers & Accessories
MSI GE60 2OE-003US - XOTIC PC - MSI Gaming Laptop
MSI GE60 2OE-003US Notebook PC - 4th generation Intel Core i7-4700MQ 3.4GHz, 8GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M, DVD, 15.6 Display, Windows 8 (GE60 2OE-003US) at TigerDirect.com
MSI 15.6" Laptop 8GB Memory 750GB Hard Drive GE60 2OE-003US - Best Buy
...and I'm sure many more places. Just post in this thread so I can add them in.

 

Reserving this spot for pictures.

 

Cant wait to grab mine, as soon as Canada Computers has it in stock I'm running over to grab it along with a 256 gig crucial m4 msata. I'm most curious about battery life while doing light tasks (web browsing/word processing), video playback time and how high we can overclock the 765M.

 

Cool! Congratz to OP!! Please post back when you get the notebook. The new GE60 hasnt seen many reviews yet, so I all for it! Pictures would be awesome too.

 

Great, I'm looking forward to seeing the review . ^^

 

Sweet, can't wait for your review! Do include:
how much the gpu and cpu throttles on battery mode
battery life when wifi is turned on and watching FHD youtube videos
the 4 speakers test
the 3.5mm gold plated audio jack quality, using your headphones or iem
test the creative home cinema's "bass boost" feature and share how much improvements in bass and overall sound quality

Thanks in advance!

 

It would be interesting to know about:

Screen: image quality, colours, viewing angles.

Keyboard: key accuracy, responsiveness, ghosting issues.

Touchpad: accuracy, responsiveness, ease of use.

Would also be interesting to see these benchmarks:

FFXIV ARR Benchmark - link

Maybe one of these if you have them: Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Hitman: Absolution with this tool: Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool

 

I also have mine ordered from Prostar. It should arrive on Friday or next Monday.

The first thing I will do once I get it is open it up and install my msata SSD and reinstall OS.

Edit: I also ordered a custom skin to cover the ugly lid.

 

if you could, do a video of the unboxing and review as well this laptop has not a single video review in youtube

 

Looking forward to that review as well!

1) If possible, stress the CPU by itself and see if it throttles.
I don't need to see the stress test with CPU+GPU, just want to see if the CPU alone will throttle when tasked at 100%.

2) Also review the battery life, what is it like to browse the internet on the iGPU?

3) Can you take some pictures of the internals? All the ports and interfaces on the inside as well, if possible?

4) Build quality, is the aluminium wrist rests sturdy or flexible? Sturdy lid or floppy? Keyboard flex or not?

Thanks in advance!

 

Looking forward to a review & see overclocking capabilities ! How this card compares to 670mx and the screen quality. Notebookcheck listed gt765m just above 670mx, but then 670mx has higher bus widhth 192 vs 128. 765m only has higher clock rates so very interested in overclocking this card & the heat related too !

 

Just got mine today from Prostar.

 

Impressive! Please do a review of it base on our suggestions in the previous posts!!! A video will be good as well :thumbsup: Great pictures by the way! I see you have not one, but a couple of laptops

 

Just some initial observation and quickie review.

The build quality is above average. I won't call it the best but it is certainly well above average. The top part is aluminum and bottom is plastic. Top lid is as expected ugly and finger print magnet. I've chosen to opt out an optical drive and asked Prostar to add in HDD bay in there, so the potential for impressive array of storage is there. 2 2.5inch HDDs plus you can have up to 2 msata SSDs.

The rig is fairly thin. Considering the spec, it is very thin. Compared to my P151HM1, it's thin by 1/3.

I am no expect in sound and LCD area, but I won't comment on those.

Also, the box does not come with Windows 8 DVD.

 

Is it possible to purchase the hdd bay separately? Did your ge 60 came with the msi bag and mouse?
I wouldn't mind a slightly thicker base for a 8 or 9 cell battery though

 

The battery is small. It's only rated at 4400mAh. But it does have optimus.

It does not come with neither a bag nor a mouse. ( I could care less about those to be honest.)

I just had some tinkering around windows 8 and decided it was a trash. I am reinstalling Windows 7 now.

 

ROFL gotta agree windows 8 is sh!t ! Btw do share the battery life of that 6 cell battery once you've spent sufficient time with the machine I'm curious to know how long it'll last while wifi is active & doing some youtube-ing at 1080p

 

Interesting. I feared this might be the case. It's not letting boot Windows 7 setup.

 

Got it working. You have to disable secure boot (Yeah, right) in BIOS to let any other OS to load. lolz.

 

Thanks for the heads up, I'll do just that when i get mine (if the reviews are good) next month Keep the usage input coming!

 

Gotta say, I'm most curious in the quality of the display.

 

I don't like the trackpad, but I've never really liked trackpad of all laptops I've owned, so no surprise for me. I am probably too used to trackballs.

 

Hi!!

How long the battery last?
How many ssd slots doest it have?

Thanks!!

 

Hi,

I have a couple questions.

How many SSD slots does it have?
What's the quality of the display?

 

My hat is off to Pro Star ( https://www.pro-star.com/ ) for a job well done. The laptop is flawless. No dead pixels, no system instability. Ran few games, no problems. While I would need to use the unit for longer for final conclusion, the early signs are perfect.

Here is a table of what happened with Pro Star.

1. June 17th: Ordered on evening of 17th. Opted paypal payment. Received an e-mail asking me to confirm my home address.
2. June 18th: Early morning, paypal invoice is sent and I paid. The order went into production.
3. June 19th: Shipped by end of business hour. It was overnight shipping ( 1 day to Canada ).
4. June 20th: Received the unit in 11:10am.

Now, that is as fast as it can get. When I ordered my Lotus P151HM1 from Malibal, they were also as good as Pro Star, so I can definitely recommend both Malibal and Pro-Star for your laptop needs.

Prior ordering the laptop from Pro-Star, I originally ordered from Xoticpc where they took 4+ business days just to process my payment due to human errors. In the end I ended up cancelling and went with Pro-Star.

I've been looking for my perfect laptop for many years. Lotus P151HM1 came in close as I stated so in my signature but it lacked backlit keyboard and housed only 2 storage components.

Now, Haswell GE60 comes pretty close. I have to use it longer to determine, but this thing is pretty damn close to the perfect laptop I've been longing for.

Reasons I chose this laptop.

1. Probably one of the best storage options out there. 2 msata, 2 laptop HDD compartments (if you exclude the optical drive.) I haven't used my desktop's optical drive for ..., what, 6 or more years now.
2. 765m is more than good enough for me. No need to OC the thing even. Games I play consist of Crusader Kings 2, Football manager series, and Age of Conan. (MMO) No games I play require demanding GPU. Hell, probably even 750m would have been enough.
3. Simple design. I suppose this is subjective, but I could never go with Alienware products.
4. Some portability. With 15inch, it's portable. It's not that heavy, either. It is certainly lighter than my Lotus P151HM1. The laptop is fairly thin for a gaming laptop, mind you. I've purchased only one 17 inch laptop and it almost broke my shoulder.
5. And finally backlit keyboard. Of all years, this is the first backlit keyboard laptop I bought.

The ugly lid was a con, but it turned out to be a blessing. That fingerprint magnet lid actually provides a good surface for a custom skin. lolz

 

Can anyone answer how long this computer lasts while just surfing the internet/watching youtube videos?

 

Very informative! Please keep it coming!

 

Thanks for the review!
Almost all of the points you made are what I am looking for in a laptop as well.

 

I've gotten mine as well and there are a few things I'm disappointed by. The CD/DVD drive is loose and the keyboard has some flex, which is really disappointing. I like typing on it though, so that's fine. The trackpad is very nice, I have no issues with it and it's generously sized.

The biggest issue I have right now is the absolutely atrocious and embarrassing battery life. I charged it up to full and left it sitting for about 45 minutes. I think it ran down to ~80-90 in this time period. I've been sitting here browsing the web at medium brightness for 25 minutes. I am at 65% battery remaining, 1 hour left estimated by windows. This is not acceptable. I intended this to be a notetaking laptop and if it can't even hold charge for an hour and a half, that is a serious, serious problem, and I hope Newegg would take a return of a "working" product in that case. Before anyone asks, I'm 95% sure I'm running on the Intel GPU (Optimus), at least according to dxdiag. I don't really know what to make of this. Can the other guy who got one of these check his battery life and see if maybe I got a bad battery or something?

Edit: lowered brightness to minimum and turned off the keyboard backlight, battery at 50%. I've been browsing for 50 minutes now, it says 57 minutes remaining. I'm honestly really disappointed, battery life was really one of the reasons I chose this over the Clevo P151SM1.

 

Oh gosh, this is not good to hear. But i thought Clevo's come with an 8 cell battery? They should normally be able to surpass msi in terms of battery life. The only reason that's holding me back from clevo is the lack of audio features it has, the onkyo speakers produces some of the most terrible audio i've ever heard of.. Hell even my old sony ericsson W995 phone had better sounding speakers than this sh!t.. And clevo's tend to put some of the worse 3.5mm audio jacks out there. I went down to a shop selling laptops based on clevo, and was basically blown away by the terrible distorted sound quality coming out of my premium T-Jays Three iems. The models i tested on were, Clevo W350st and Clevo W370st and was basically claim by the shop owner that they come with VIA audio solution. He also said that "Creative Sound Blaster Cinema" seems to screw up the audio quality, and true enough after i had disabled the creative app, it produced quite a standard audio quality (only through headphones though, the onkyo speakers still sound like a PSP).

 

Yeah the Clevo's do come with an 8 cell battery but I was told a few times by Xotic that they had a max 2 hour battery life, so who knows. I'm hoping my battery was just badly calibrated or something and a few cycles will get it broken in. Can anyone think of what would make the battery life in this years GE60 so much worse than last years model, which was benchmarked at ~4 hours idle and ~3 hours web browsing by notebookcheck? I was hoping for slighly better life with this years version because of Haswell. At the very least, it would be nice for it to have broken even.

Alright so here's the summary of my cycle: 40 mins idle/asleep, 25 mins at medium high brightness web surfing, 1 hour 15 minutes at absolute lowest brightness doing intense web browsing and some messing around with settings. At some point in here, I activated the dGPU for a few minutes. Overall, I think the battery life could be 2 hours 25 minutes if you ran it at all power settings maximized and directly from the wall, which is quite disappointing. The thing I'm especially flummoxed by is that the ge40 with VERY similar internal components - nearly identical except for the 765M - has been getting massive battery life (8 hours!). The only difference here is the keyboard backlight and size of the screen.


To answer a few other questions asked:

I have no problems with display quality though I'm really not a qualified proffesional. It certainly doesn't pass any gamut tests but I neither does my $300 Samsung.

I like Windows 8, actually. The multitouch pad works surprisingly well with it.

Sound quality is impressive, especially from the speakers onboard. The audio from the jack is fine and clear.

Throttling: I ran Prime 95 for about 5 minutes on AC. With it running on the max heat, the turbo went straight up to 3.4 GHZ for Core 1 and stayed there then began dropping to 3.2 once the temps reached the mid 80s; once it hit the 90s it dropped to to 3.0 and stabilized there. Interestingly enough, with Furmark running at the same time, the results did not change. I did notice, however, that my cooling profile was set to "passive" a few minutes ago so I'll have to redo this test with it set to active (the claimed difference is that passive more aggresively throttles and aggressive raises the fan speed.

Trackpad, like I said before is fine, takes a little bit of getting used to if you've never used a clickpad before. Palm rejection is...OK, I'm getting some palm presses but I also just noticed that one of my entire wrists is resting on it and it's doing quite fine.

The aluminium top looks and feels great as does the trackpad.

I have no problems typing on the keyboard and I think it strikes a good hybrid between pushy and mushy though errs a bit on the side of mushy as a result of the flex. I dislike the movement of the windows key to the right and the shrinking of the right shift.

I'll post a full review with benchmarks once I've used it for a few days.

 

This is the clevo i tested: Review Schenker XMG A523 (Clevo W350ST) Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
It's specs is similar to the ge 60, having a gtx 765m and a haswell i7 4700MQ. According to the benchmarks it has a battery run time of:

Idle (without WLAN, min brightness)
5h 15min

Surfing with WLAN
4h 00min

DVD
3h 02min

Load (maximum brightness)
2h 04min

Also, during my test, it is able to run Crysis 3 on battery mode as well, i noticed only a 5-10% drop in fps

So xotic is probably referring to the maximum battery runtime on load. Or they were being lazy to change the description as i'm seeing both msi ge 60 and this clevo notebook claimed to have 2hrs battery life on xoticpc's web

 

The thing I just don't understand is that Clevo is a ~5500 miliamp hours battery and this has a ~4400 miliamp hour battery, yet this is getting drastically worse battery life. I mean, that's only a ~20% difference, and these have approximately the same hardware.

 

Could it be due to the msi ge 60's chassis which seem to be quite slim therefore having to stress the cooling system for extra ventilation? Or perhaps the backlit keyboard? Anyway how much does the ge 60 throttle on battery mode? Mind testing it out in crysis 3?

 

So, I don't know too much about laptops - been mostly a desktop user all of my life - but I got the GE60 today from Newegg.

It is a beautiful system. It feels very sturdy as far as I can tell and the "ugly" cover looks really nice in person.

So far my biggest question to anyone else who has this laptop... is it really loud for you guys? Even just web browsing, nothing else but this page open, its pretty loud.
Don't even get me started on when the "cooling" button is on. Its super effective - you can feel the cool air coming out of the left side grill - but its pretty loud.

I have no problem with the laptop making noise - I am actually waiting for my SSD to come in so I can upgrade(hopefully making it a bit quieter), but I just wonder if this is normal when doing simple tasks.

 

Hey guys, I'm a new owner here as well. I'm not as tech/laptop savvy as many here are, so please take what I say with a grain of salt!

It actually took me a long time to finally decide on this laptop (after considering the m14x which was too heavy/thick for my tastes and the razor blade which was unfortunately outside my budget). Here are a couple of initial thoughts and things to consider before buying this laptop;

• Battery life is atrocious. This is probably the one thing that really turned me off about the laptop. I got 2.5 hours at best with youtube surfing at ~50% brightness. Luckily for me, I usually have access to a power outlet but I can see where this is a deal breaker for most.
• Keyboard has a little flex and the optical drive does seem a little flimsy. The flex doesn't bother me at all, and I actually didn't notice it until someone before mentioned it and I pressed down hard on the keyboard.
• The laptop can be pretty loud and it can get slightly warm on the left side, where the vent is. I assume this is standard for a thin laptop packing a GTX765M though.
• It's impossible to keep the lid fingerprint proof! But from browsing around here, it seems that is standard for MSI...

Now, if you can get past all of the above, then the rest of the laptop is great:

• The sound quality is alright. I'm not a big fan of the sound blaster cinema but I haven't had much time to play around with it. I usually use iems (Westone 4's) and it sounded better when I had all effects turned off.
• The laptop is quiet when I'm just browsing the web or just watching youtube videos. Playing games is a different story obviously
• For the games I play, the laptop more than meets my needs. I was playing FFXIV beta and on "Very High" settings I was getting ~30-40 fps. When I went max settings, I was getting around 20-30 fps, which was a little too laggy for my tastes. I also have BioShock Infinite. "Ultra" was pretty laggy, "Very High" was playable, but I felt like playing on "High" gave me the most enjoyable experience. Everything still looked great. And I play LoL too, but that game isn't really graphic intensive.
• Love the keyboard backlight as well as the ability to turn off the mouse track pad easily (there's an FN button bound to it).

Hmm, I think that's all that really comes to mind at the moment. Hope this helps those of you who are on the fence about the laptop.

 

Sad to hear about the battery life

 

LLSamSam,

I'm having the same issue with the fan noise when idle (even in the BIOS on a cold boot). It is not terrible but I'm used to modern laptops being nearly silent when browsing the web. In a noisy room it probably wouldn't be noticed but in a quiet room like the one I'm in now I find it quite annoying. The funny thing is that when under load playing a game it doesn't get that loud. Other than the noise and the warranty sticker I really like the GE60. I hope they fix the fan with a BIOS update.

I added 2 Crucial M4 mSata drives in RAID 0 for 512GB. Can anyone recommend a good program to benchmark SSDs.

I find the screen quality to be very good. It isn't as nice as the 95% gamut screen in the Sager 9150 I'm getting ready to eBay but it is very good. Vertical viewing angles are fine and horizontal viewing angles are great. I'm also very happy with the keyboard and the trackpad is about as good as I've found on a PC (if only we could get Apple quality trackpads on the PC).

 

Our unboxing video of GE60 and GE70 20E is up:



Enjoy.

 

Yes, finally. There is one other video on youtube but that isn't really a good one.

Thanks!

 

Impressive! Great to hear the audio solutions in the msi ge 60 is in your favor Also thanks for sharing the battery life with youtube usage! 2hr 30mins is almost half of the clevo w350st's runtime on similar usage. Guess i'll have to decide between better audio solution (MSI GE 60 2OE) or longer 4hr batter life (W350st) Do you think it's still worth picking the MSI GE 60 2OE over the clevo w350st?

Finally a more in-depth unboxing! Thanks GenTechPC, subscribed~ Now all that's left is a professional review Mind doing one?

 

Don't forget the MSI is more than half a pound lighter.

 

Battery life was never a concern for me, so I didn't take it into my consideration.

And, yes, the laptop gets loud when gaming. All gaming laptop do. And it get really smoking hot on the vent side and a small spot right above the trackpad where CPU is directly under. That small spot on top of trackpad gets so hot that you can't put a finger on it for more than few seconds.

Edit : And to add, Lenovo Y500 experiences similar symptoms. I currently have it. I have to drop it off UPS today to return it though. It also gets smoking how where vent is and where CPU and GPU are located directly under. But I did not experience this with Lotus P151HM1. It could be that Lotus P151HM1 has vent on back and has 2 fans. Finally, its surface is full plastic which has less heat transfer rate.

 

Well that's another advantage to consider

And this is quite a serious disadvantage to consider

making the pros and cons equal again

 

All laptops I've bought so far have had its share of issues.
Even my P151HM1 had issues. Due to its matte plastic surface case, it worn off, leaving shiny and bold spots on palm rest area. And its GPU fan died twice in 2 years of usage, not to mention being even louder than GE60.

Having said that, it's pretty amazing that this thing is holding onto one single fan. We are talking about a single fan taking the heat loads off high-end CPU & GPU together.

 

Just watched the video, well done!

I found it interesting that the GE70 faired so much better with respect to CPU temps than the GE60. High 70s versus 90. Could that be impacting the battery life of the 60? Having to seemingly work harder cooling the system?

 

Good point! If this is the case, than i'll definitely go for the ge 70 can GenTechPC confirm this? Please share the battery life of the GE 70!

 

Also, and this is perhaps more of an open question, is there any ability to upgrade these laptops in the future? I have heard about people swapping out SSDs and such. Frankly I've learned more about SSDs and write times following this thread than anywhere else, but is there any chance the 765m graphics car would be able to be upgraded in the future?

 

Thank you for the first impressions and quick reviews. I have already ordered this laptop and I would be getting it on Monday. One question with regard to the poor battery life. Can you make sure if Optimus is turned on? Also is it possible manually disable the nvidia card and make the system use only the Intel graphics card? I wonder if the battery life would improve then.

 

The GE70 has the exact same battery as the GE60 (6 cell) and a bigger screen to power so I would not expect anything better, in fact, I'd expect it to be worse.


To be honest, what the battery life we're getting feels like is that we have Optimus turned off (it's around the life of a y500), but I am 100% sure it is on. I wonder if maybe when 700m series drivers come out from Nvidia if our battery life may improve.