I got mine!
Below are some initial impressions and benchmarks. I'll update the review with more info as I spend more time with it.
Prototime's Review of the MSI GS43VR 6RE Phantom Pro-006 (in progress)
My Configuration
The configuration of my laptop is the same as the stock configuration (click
here to see those specs), except (1) I had the reseller apply IC Diamond Thermal Compound to the GPU and CPU, and (2) I had the reseller switch out the Killer wireless card for an Intel AC 8260. The reason for (1) is that I hope IC Diamond will help keep the GS43VR cooler than the stock thermal paste; the reason for (2) is that I hope the Intel wireless card will be less buggy than Killer (and it was recently suggested that the Intel wireless card might even help save on battery life compared to Killer).
I recommend going through a boutique reseller when buying an MSI computer. Places like Amazon and Newegg don't offer customization options like these, nor do they put your laptop through a separate quality assurance before shipping (MSI has its own quality assurance process, but it doesn't hurt to have a second set of eyes check over everything to make sure you're getting a good laptop!) If you're in the US, check out places like Prostar, GenTechPC, XoticPC, and HIDevolution. They'll customize your laptop and perform their own QA. I bought from Prostar, and so far the experience I've had with them has been great.
Unboxing
The laptop came with a fair amount of packaging to keep it safe during its cross-country journey. It looks like MSI double-boxes their laptops, and then the reseller placed them within a third box. Besides the laptop itself and the power brick, there's also a CD with the user manual, utilities, and drivers on it (which an external CD-ROM drive is needed to access, since the GS43VR doesn't have an internal optical drive), flyers about the MSI warranty and MSI rewards program, a quick start guide, and a pamphlet about storage drive recovery.
The laptop itself comes with three stickers near the trackpad. To the left of the trackpad, there's an Intel sticker a sticker with a pop-up arrow advertising the "GTX 10 series" GPU. To the right of the trackpad, there's a huge sticker highlighting many different things about the laptop (Thunderbolt, Nahimic, SSD, etc.) I haven't removed them yet, but I plan on taking off at least the pop-up arrow sticker on the left and the huge sticker on the right.
Drive Space
Some people have asked what the GS43VR's drive space is at stock, before anything is added to or deleted from the SSD or HDD. Below is a screenshot I took that shows the available drive space after I just turned on the laptop for the first time.
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/I9u7gqd.jpg)
Screen
The GS43VR has a 14" screen with a native resolution of 1080p. The screen is matte, and MSI describes it as an "IPS-level display." This suggests that the screen is actually
not IPS. Regardless, the screen is gorgeous. The colors pop and the viewing angles are fantastic. I haven't noticed too much backlight bleed or any dead pixels. (For extra reassurance, I did buy a 1-year dead pixel warranty from Prostar). It sure makes looking at the screen on my old Asus Vivobook S400C (768p and mediocre viewing angles) a chore. The screen is also easy to open with one hand and is sturdy.
Keyboard
I haven't used the built-in keyboard too much yet, so I'll post more impressions after I do. For now though, here are some initial impressions.
Disappointingly, the keyboard backlight is red-only, not multicolored like its bigger sibling the GS63VR. I would have preferred that if the backlight were only one color, that the color be white. Still, the red light is pretty subdued; it doesn't scream "gamer!" like I had worried. It comes with two brightness settings (high and low), and you can also turn it off altogether.
My biggest disappointment with the keyboard is the lack of dedicated keys for Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down. There certainly is enough space to add another row of keys on the right side of the keyboard. Instead, these four keys are secondary functions of the arrow keys.
I'm also not the biggest fan of the font on the keys. It's not terrible, but isn't especially normal-looking either, which I would have preferred.
Better news is that the keyboard isn't too loud to type on, though it's still louder than I prefer. The travel distance between the keys seems pretty nice so far.
Trackpad
Again, I haven't used this much, so I can post more impressions later, though I honestly I don't plan to use it much at all. It doesn't have dedicated buttons, and clicking on it makes a pretty audible sound.
Battery Life
I haven't had an opportunity to test this yet, but my computer tells me that when Battery Saver is enabled and the power plan is set to balanced, along with 60% screen brightness, the battery will last 5 hours and 22 minutes. Take that with a grain of salt. I plan on doing web browsing and word processing sometime this weekend for a few hours, and will see how long it lasts on battery and post the results here.
Speakers
The speakers are decent, though nothing spectacular. They get loud enough to fill a small room and do a good job drowning out the noise fans even while under heavy load, though if you want total sound immersion while gaming you'll need headphones. When watching YouTube videos, the sound is good, not tinny or distorted, though perhaps slightly muffled. One upside or downside, depending on how you look at it, is that the speakers do a great job of projecting behind the laptop and filling the whole room with sound. I would have preferred that the volume was directed more toward the front of the laptop, though. I decided not to uninstall Nahimic, but I haven't messed with it much yet.
Temperature and Fan Noise
The laptop definitely comes with Optimus and automatically switches between the iGPU and the dGPU. I have not yet gone through the BIOS to see if there's any way to disable it.
While the power plan is set to "High Performance," at idle, the dGPU (and its fan) is turned off, and the CPU temperature usually hovers around 40 C when totally idle, 40 - 50 C when web surfing (sometimes lower, and sometimes higher if many tabs are open), and 50 - 55 C when watching YouTube videos. At these temperatures the CPU fan is usually turned completely off, though it will occasionally (not very often) kick on-and-off briefly if CPU activity spikes for a few seconds. It appears that that CPU fan will kick on once the CPU temperature hits 60 C, and it will turn off once the temperature is brought back down to 50 C. If you use MSI's Dragon Center program to turn on "Cooler Blaster" while on idle (which manually sets the fans to their max speeds), the CPU temperature will drop to between 33 C - 35 C. (Again, while at idle the dGPU is turned off, so setting the fans to "Cooler Blaster" will not turn on the GPU fan.)
As far as noise goes, since both the CPU and GPU fans are off while idling, there isn't any noise to complain about while doing basic tasks like web surfing, word processing, etc. The occasional CPU fan noise that occurs on idle is usually short lived and isn't noticeable while present. If the fans turn on when watching a video, the noise is easily drowned out by the volume of the video itself. During gaming, the noise increases considerably, but you can still hear everything in-game clearly by turning the volume up to maximum. Still, as I mentioned earlier, headphones are necessary to completely drown out the fan noise.
My biggest complaint about the fan noise isn't how loud the fans are, but the rather high-pitched tone they emit. This is apparently common among MSI laptops, which use older fans that also annoyingly cannot spin any slower than 30% of the maximum fan speed - in other words, the fans are either completely off, or they're spinning at 30% or greater. Svet, a moderator at the official MSI forums, may offer a partial solution for this in the future, as he is famous for helping MSI owners unlock their BIOSes and create custom fan curve profiles for the CPU and GPU fans that enable users to have the fans spin lower than 30%. Regardless though, the pitch of the fan noise is annoying - not unbearable, but definitely something that detracts from the quality of the laptop, and it is one of my biggest complaints about the laptop generally.
Synthetic Benchmarks
So far I've run Unigine Valley multiple times, Fire Strike, and Time Spy. I took screenshots of the results you can see here:
http://imgur.com/a/oOE8i
Here's the summary. Unless otherwise noted, all of the below tests were run with the following settings:
Power plan = High Performance
MSI shift mode = Sport
MSI fan speed = Auto
Unigine Valley - I ran 4 rounds of this, two with AA on, two with it off - and within those categories, one test had the MSI fan speed set to Auto, and one test I had the MSI fan speed set to Cooler Blaster (max fan speed). Results are below. Note that the score read-out of Unigine Valley doesn't provide temperature information, but the on-screen display while Unigine Valley runs does show the temperature, and I included below (in parenthesis) the temperature that the GPU appear to stabilize at during the test.
| Unigine Valley Tests |
No AA |
x8 AA |
| Auto fans |
Score: 3092
Avg FPS: 73.9
Min FPS: 23.7
Max FPS: 112.0
(GPU temp: 70 C) |
Score: 2361
Avg FPS: 56.4
Min FPS: 25.2
Max FPS: 98.0
(GPU temp: 72 C) |
| Max fans |
Score: 3136
Avg FPS: 74.9
Min FPS: 25.8
Max FPS: 112.2
(GPU temp: 65 C) |
Score: 2386
Avg FPS: 57.0
Min FPS: 24.5
Max FPS: 99.5
(GPU temp: 67 C) |
Time Spy
- Overall score: 3702 (better than 32% of all results)
- Graphics score: 3670
- Graphics test 1: 24.39 FPS
- Graphics test 2: 20.70 FPS
- CPU score: 3900
Fire Strike
- Overall score: 9793 (better than 72% of results)
- Graphics score: 11,809
- Graphics test 1: 55.65 FPS
- Graphics test 2: 47.66 FPS
- Physics score: 9487
- Combined score: 4389
Gaming Performance
I played 3.5 hours of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided last night. This game is supposed to heavily tax GPUs. I used the GeForce Experience recommended settings that were upped one notch in favor of quality over performance. More specifically, these were the settings I used:
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/image600)
Note: I also had MSAA turned off, the resolution was set to 1080p, and V-sync was set to double buffering.
I used RivaTuner to monitor temps and FPS, but the FPS never exceeded exactly 60.00 in the game, so I suspect an FPS limit was set, though I had disabled Rivatuner's FSP limiter (edit:
@hmscott pointed out this is because V-sync was limiting the FPS to match the screen's 60hz refresh rate.) When I play next again, I'll use Fraps to measure the FPS. What I can tell you from Rivatuner is that the FPS usually hovered around 60 FPS, dipping into the lower 50s more than occasionally, and every once in a while into the 40s. The GPU temp was 73 C most of the time, with a max of 75 C. The CPU temp hovered around 67 C most of the time, with a max temperature of 76 C.
Also,
@D2 Ultima, I measured the PCH temperature using HWinfo64 immediately after I finished the 3.5 hours of gaming on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and the temperature was 60.4 C. The HDMI port was warm, but not particularly hot.
As I said, when I play again I'll use Fraps and make sure there's no FPS limit set. I'll also look for some other program to monitor temps.
Overall I had a blast playing the game. I might dial the settings down a bit if the FPS dips becomes too much of an issue, but I wasn't expecting magic given how GPU-intensive Mankind Divided is, and what I saw didn't bother me.
When I play some other games (Arkham Knight and Shadow of Mordor are on my list), I'll post their FPS and temps too.
Future Plans
My opinion of this is laptop still evolving. Overall, so far, I've enjoyed it. I appreciate how light the computer is, its great display, and the temps are pretty good. I don't like the higher-pitched sound of the fan noise or how the fans cannot go below 30% of their max speed, but I look forward to seeing how Svet can help out in this department.
I'll edit this review and post more impressions soon. In the future, I plan on undervolting the CPU with Throttlestop and will post back here on how that improves temps and performance. I'm also planning on investing in a good notebook cooler, and will let everyone know how that might help. I also plan to swap out the stock M.2 drive with a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo (thanks again to
@hmscott for saving me from having a reseller do it!), and probably taking the HDD out until it's needed. And as I said above, I'll post more FPS/temperature results after playing Mankind Divided some more and some other games, including Arkham Knight and, probably a little further down the line, Shadow of Mordor.
If anyone has any questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer!
Updates (September 8)
- All right, some updates that I'll add to
my review:
- Screen - The screen could be sturdier. It's thin and somewhat wobbly, and the left hinge creaks when opening/closing the lid. Not a deal breaker, but not ideal either. Also, I have now noticed a little backlight bleed around the edges, mostly in the corners, but it's not too noticeable or bothersome (not to me anyway).
- Ports - I really wish this laptop had a third USB type A 3.0 port. The one USB-C port is nice, but I'd rather not use it with an adapter for USB-A devices. Still, this is manageable enough with a USB hub.
- Touchpad - The touchpad experience is not great. It's not terrible either. It's just mediocre. Tapping is a much more pleasant experience that clicking on it - I often click just outside of the left-click range, usually above it so that even though is a solid click, it doesn't register as such. Dedicated buttons would have been nice. It's also a bit loud when clicking. Again, not a deal breaker (especially not for me, as I usually use a mouse), but something to keep in mind. Fortunately, the trackpad isn't too sensitive when tapping either - if you lightly brush against it when typing for example, it won't register that as a tap. I've had some laptops that seem to register even the lightest tap, so I'm glad about this.
- Keyboard - The typing experience is pretty great. It's comfortable to rest your palms on the chassis while typing, and you don't often brush against the trackpad while doing so. The travel distance between keys is great, and so is the responsiveness of the keys, though I do wish clicking the keys would be quieter (it's not obnoxiously loud either, though). Unsurprisingly for me, I've instinctively looked for a dedicated row of Home/Page Up/Page Down/End keys on the right side of the keyboard while typing, only to disappointingly remember that those are just secondary functions of the arrows now. The lack of dedicated keys for them is definitely my biggest gripe about the typing experience. I'll manage.
- Performance - I got tired of messing around with this Sport mode "is it auto-overclocking or not?" business. For whatever reason, Sport mode will add +100 MHz to the base core clock and +200 MHz to the base memory clock only when plugged in to an external display after a reboot, or possibly after unplugging it from an external display. So I decided to just use Afterburner to manually raise the base clocks +100 MHz for core and +200 MHz for memory. I then ran Fire Strike and got a score just over 10100, though unfortunately the score was invalid due to a time inconsistency (this happened once before too, not sure what triggers it). I'll run again soon. I also ran Unigine Valley again (no AA), but I accidentally didn't save my results it was somewhere in the 70-FPS range.
- Temperatures: As I just said, after raising the core clock and memory MHz, I ran Unigine Valley. One thing that stood out to me during this run was the temps. I have a metal mesh laptop stand that I've run Unigine Valley on in the past, but this time, I ran it on a solid wood table. During the test, I saw the temps (in the on-screen display) rise up to 80 C. At first I thought this might have had something to do with how I used Afterburner to raise GPU speeds, but then I simply raised the laptop off of the table and into the air--and bam, the temps dropped back to 75 C pretty quickly. Unsurprising moral of the story: even if you don't have a laptop cooler, elevate your laptop and make sure it can breathe. I do plan on getting a notebook cooler in the near future and seeing how that might even further help.
- Next steps: I'm going to play more Deus Ex: Mankind Divided tomorrow night and post the results here. Instead of using Afterburner, this time I plan to use Fraps for FPS and HWmonitor for temps. I just installed the latest nvidia driver, which supposedly makes Deus Ex run better, and within a few hours Deus Ex is supposed to get DX12 support, which should also hypothetically improve performance. So between the new nvidia driver, DX12, and my manual overclock to what Sport mode should have been doing, we'll see how performance and temps change! After that, I'm going to try to undervolt the CPU this weekend with Throttlestop and will share the results of that here. And if I have time, I may boot up Arkham Knight for a few hours so I can offer some data on how that runs.
Updates
(September 9)
- GPU Temperature:
I played Deus Ex: MD for 2 hours last night and recorded temp info (I used the same game settings that I had in my review). Note that compared to earlier data, this is after I downloaded the latest nvidia driver and another patch for Deus Ex (I did not enable DX12 for the game, because that feature still in Beta and is actually decreasing performance for nvidia GPUs). It's also after I used Afterburner to add +100 MHz to the base core clock and +200 MHz to the base memory clock (which is what Sport mode does when connected to an external display, but for whatever reason doesn't do when using the internal display). Also, the ambient temperature in the room was about 5-7 degrees C higher than the last time I shared temp info. Finally, there is no FPS limit this time around (V-sync is off).
So, with all that in mind, here's what I got for GPU temps:
- Min: 52 C
- Max: 83 C
- Avg: 79.6 C
Still pretty good considering the higher ambient temp. I also ran Fraps to record the FPS, but for whatever reason, it didn't record. This is the second time I've had this problem with Fraps and Deus Ex, and I don't know what the deal is, because it records fine when I run something like Unigine Valley. I will keep toying around with it.
- Port heat: @D2 Ultima was right to suspect the ports getting hot on the right-hand side of the laptop by the dGPU. I had a mouse plugged in to the USB-A port on the right side, and after I finished my 2 hour gaming session last night, I pulled the plug out, and it was noticeably hot. Not scalding, but definitely hotter than the ports on the left. So that's certainly something to keep in mind. I haven't tested the mini DisplayPort yet, but since that's on the back of the laptop, that might be the better port to use to plug in an external display than the HDMI port on the right side, at least while gaming. I'm not sure of this yet though. I would like to buy a new television at some point and plug the laptop into it through an active DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter (since the GS43VR's HDMI port annoyingly only supports HDMI 1.4), so I can test it then, but maybe some other folks here can try out the DisplayPort and see how hot it gets while gaming.
Update (September 10)
- Battery Life: Update on battery life - With Battery Saver on, the power plan set to Balanced, the screen set to 50% brightness, and the keyboard backlight set to "low", I got almost exactly 4.5 hours of battery life while web browsing with a few tabs open, downloading a few small files, and watching one 8-minute YouTube video. Pretty good.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/Datload.png)
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/CDM%20GS43VR.png)
