Time for an Upgrade??!?!?

Hello everyone.....So I got the itch and finally have most of the money. I currently own a MSI Gs63VR-6RF...it has served me well for gaming duties for the past 3 years..mainly used on vacation and weekend getaways i have other machines for work and home use....it started life as a bestbuy special i got for 1400 new it has 16gb ram an 500gb evo ssd and 1tb 2.5" ssd..i also swapped the panel on it and the latest panel....and its 3rd and final is a 120hz one...calibrated with my colormunki it looks good and performs well...haven't had any real issues with it except how hot it gets...but this is know no matter how good a repaste job.....anyways im torn with either going with a helios 300 1660ti just cause of the value proposition it presents...or stayin gin the the same thin and light crowd and go for either a gs65 o razer blade 16 with rtx2060 id love ur input on this or if i shouldn't upgrade at all..i play mostly AAA titles and some indies once in a while....i like eye candy and like balanced eyecandy/fps gaming.

 

Anyone?

 

This would entirely be preference.

1660Ti would definitely be an upgrade to 1060, and a 2060 is slightly above the 1660Ti and on par give or take with a 1070 (laptop), theoretically. The biggest difference is the BIOS that are on those cards have less wattage = less performance. What I mean by that is my GT73VR w/ 1070 is still performing better than my GS65 w/ 2060 in tests because the GS65 GPU has a lower wattage BIOS, this can be pushed with flashing a different vendor BIOS.

With the helios 300 you'll have a bulky "sturdy?" laptop and might have slightly better thermals. With the GS65 and Blade 15 you're looking at tweaking, undervolting, replacing thermal paste/pads and whatnot to improve temps because out of the box they can get toasty. GS65 you get one pipe/one fan on the CPU portion so it gets hot real quick but has good GPU cooling having 2 fans for the GPU. Whereas the Blade 15 shares 2 fans between the CPU and GPU and share a heatpipe... so regardless of temps from one side or the other it will have similar temps.

Helios 300 = Bulky
GS65 = Good GPU but lacking in CPU cooling. Sleek design. May require flashing/tweaking if higher GPU performance is preferred.
Blade 15 = GPU and CPU share cooling. Sleek design. Razer Core X Chroma via TB3 (external GPU support).

When it comes down to it you have to look at portability, use, asthetics, thermal performance and base your choices on that. I could have gone for a GE65 which is a cross breed between a GT and a GS and has slightly better thermals than the GS but you're losing out on the larger battery. With regular use the GS65 gets me 5-6 hours on iGPU and tweaking about 7-8 hours (YMMV) due to the large battery. This would be ideal for a portable/work/hey look im at a starbucks cafe or library laptop. But this is again my "preference" since most of my gaming is on a desktop that is leagues better than my laptop lol so I'm looking more for a super light portable, on the go laptop with casual gaming support.

Overall with the small, thin, sleek laptop designs you're bound to face thermal issues. Most likely you'll have to undervolt, tweak, replace thermals. Out of the box sure they'll work but you're in heat and throttling territory and thats a given. You will need to modify stuff to fit it to your needs. If you're the one who only wants mobility portion and always plugs into the wall for gaming purposes then maybe a larger laptop will be for you. I changed my priorities so you wont be seeing me take out a large brick when i go through airport security lol.

If you're fine with what you have, stick with it. If you're looking to upgrade, know what you'll be going to face. Most of these new CPUs 6-8 cores are toasty so thermal cooling is important.

 

Yeah i hear ya...i splurged for the GS65 with 32gb ram and 2060..ill berepasting and put fujipolypads on it while im at it since i plan on adding storage to it will probably put 2 1tb sdds on it since i have them already..might as well do everything on one teardown no point in going through all that more than once. I plan on doing some kryonaut repasting and fujipoly pads as i said plus 2tb in storage should be as good as i can get it