Really love the GE40, but a couple of questions.

I'm interested in the GE40 for its switchable graphics so I can get battery life or performance, which is nice.

I'm concerned about the heat. Is it really that bad? I don't want this thing dying on me in three years.

How much does repasting help the temps?
How easy is it to repaste?
How easy is undervolting?
How does undervolting affect performance, battery life, and temps?

 

1. Repasting helps the temps usually because of two reasons: Factory pasters do a bad job, and custom thermal paste usually has better thermal capacities than the cheap ones used at the factory

2. Head here to download the manual and check for yourself: MSI Global GE40 2OC Dragon Eyes, generally you need to access the CPU in order to repaste, though repasting the northbridge/GPU will also help. I don't own a GE40, can't help ya there.

3. Very. You can use Intel's Extreme Tuning utility, and then play with the settings. If anything goes wrong, you will get a BSOD, but Intel's Watchdog feature will boot up with the stock configuration. Thus, you can experiment with the settings that work for you. Each CPU is like a cookie, not all are baked equally, and not all can undervolt as well (no pun intended) as others.

4. Undervolting generally does not affect battery life, unless you are pushing your CPU to 100% constantly when on battery, and thus generating heat, which then negatively affects battery. However, you can get a nice 5-10°C heat reduction on your CPU from undervolting alone (i get 8°C on mine). Undervolting does not affect performance, it only affects stability, hence why stress-testing is required.

If you need some battery life, i suggest disabling cores through your BIOS (if it supports it). Running as a dual-core will generally give you 1-2 hours of extra battery life, due to the 2 extra cores of the quad being near useless when doing low-end tasks on the battery, like web surfing, video watching and word processing.

**I am not a GE40 owner.

 

The GE line does tend to run rather warm. Repasting is not difficult, just make sure you don't use an abundance of thermal compound (too little is often better than applying too much). Which thermal compound you use also matters to some degree (pun intended).

Undervolting isn't difficult in practice nor in theory. Then again, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Changing CPU voltage is quite liable to cause instability, but you can always revert back to stock voltage if you encounter problems. It's generally advised that you leave it where it's at.

As Jobine said: undervolting will affect temps more than anything else.

 

MSI typically will frown upon end users redoing their own thermal compound to the point of voiding your warranty if you do. They dont mind if you upgrade the RAM or HDD, but anything beyond that may void your warranty.