MSI GF63

MSI’s GF63 is the cheapest gaming  laptop you can currently buy right   now for around $500 USD, but as with most  things in life, you get what you pay for,   so let’s find out what compromises  have been made in this review! The GF63 has an all black design with a brushed  aluminum lid and interior. I was surprised that   it’s not all plastic, but make no mistake,  with the way it feels it might as well be. There’s quite a bit of flex to the interior,   though the lid wasn’t as bad and  didn’t wobble too much when typing. There’s quite a bit of flex to  the hinge when opening the lid,   you can see the area underneath the hinge and  just in front of it moving. If you push the lid   a little too far back the panel actually  pops off, and I confirmed this happened   on both of my laptops, so it’s difficult  to say how well this will last long term. There’s a spot on the front to get  your finger in to open the lid,   but it’s more back heavy so can’t  easily be opened with one hand. The laptop alone weighs 1.8kg or 4lb,  increasing to 2.3kg or 5.1lb with the   small 120 watt charger included.  Despite being a cheaper laptop,   it’s not that chunky compared  to other modern 15 inch designs. I bought two versions of MSI’s GF63 for my  GTX 1650 and RTX 3050 comparison, so both   laptops have Intel’s Core i5-11400H 6 core CPU,  8 gigs of single channel RAM and a 15.6” 1080p   144Hz screen. The only difference is the GPUs,  and we’ll see how both compare in games soon. There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the  middle, but there’s no Windows Hello face unlock. Here’s how the camera and  microphones look and sound,   and this is what it sounds like  while typing on the keyboard. The keyboard has a single  zone of red backlighting,   and all keys and secondary functions get lit  up. Key brightness can be adjusted between 3   levels or turned off with the function and  page up and down keys on the far right. Typing on the keyboard doesn’t feel great.  The keys hardly press down and there’s just   not really much feedback. It works fine, but I  wouldn’t want to use it for long typing sessions. The plastic touchpad worked fine,  though felt a little small at times. The left side has the power input  and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port. Most of the ports are on the right, so cables  are more likely to get in the way of right   handed mouse users. From the front there  are separate 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks,   two more USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a USB 3.2  Gen 1 Type-C port, gigabit ethernet facing down   so you have to lift the laptop up to unplug  the cable, and Kensington lock up the back. The back just has a HDMI port towards the  center. It would have been nice if some of the   bulkier cables like Ethernet were here and out  of the way, but I guess that costs more money. Unfortunately you cannot charge the GF63 with USB  Type-C, and the Type-C port also cannot be used to   connect to an external monitor. Now the HDMI ports  on the back can be used to connect an external   screen, but they connect to the Intel integrated  graphics and cannot be used to bypass optimus. The HDMI port supports a 4K screen at 60Hz 8-bit,   if you want 10 or 12-bit  then you’re limited to 30Hz. Getting inside requires unscrewing 12  Phillips head screws, all the same length,   with one hidden under a factory seal sticker. The  bottom plastic panel was very difficult to open,   you’ll definitely want to make sure  you’ve got the right tools for the job,   I’ll leave a link to the  ones I use below the video. Oh and you better pray that this top plastic  bar towards the back doesn’t pop off,   because it’s next to impossible to get it back on. When you eventually get inside you’ve  got the battery down the front,   two memory slots just above near the  center, a single M.2 slot to the left,   a 2.5” drive underneath towards the front,  and the Wi-Fi 6 card towards the back. Both of my laptops came to me  with one stick of DDR4 memory,   which means slower single channel speeds  as this is cheaper. Don’t worry though,   we’ve also done some tests with an upgrade to  dual channel to see what the differences are. The Wi-Fi speed wasn’t bad, on the  lower side for Intel based Wi-Fi,   but there were other more expensive machines  like Razer’s Blade 14 that weren’t doing as well. The installed 512 gig SSD was doing quite well  for the reads, but half as high for the writes,   granted this still seems pretty  good from a cheaper gaming laptop. The upgradeability score wasn’t too bad, but I  took off half a point from ease of access due   to the difficulties I had in opening it. Otherwise  despite only having one M.2 SSD slot, we’ve still   got the option of putting in a cheaper 2.5” SSD.  Or I guess hard drive if you really like pain. The speakers are found on the left and right  sides towards the front. Compared to the rest   of the cheaper design, they actually sounded about  average for a gaming laptop. They’re not amazing,   but there’s minor bass and they get loud enough,  though there’s less clarity at higher volume. The latencymon results weren’t  looking too bad either. The GF63 is powered by a 3-Cell 52.4Wh battery,   on the smaller side owing to the  space dedicated to the 2.5” drive bay. Both laptops lasted for exactly the same  amount of time in my standard YouTube video   playback test. Not too surprising as the same  integrated graphics from the 11400H would be   running this. With a game running though,  the 3050 configuration lasted 14 minutes   longer. Neither are particularly impressive  compared to most other laptops tested,   but at least it’s ahead of another  MSI laptop with similar sized battery. Let’s check out thermals next. The  cooler looks a little pathetic with   just a few heatpipes and only a single  fan, but it doesn’t need to be anything   too crazy as we’ve got lower end hardware  here. A bigger cooler would increase cost. For some reason there aren’t air  vents directly above the fan. The   vents on the bottom panel are above the  CPU and GPU. Air only gets exhausted out   of the left side as there’s just one  fan, and out of one side on the back. The MSI Center software let’s us change  between different performance modes,   which from lowest to highest are silent,  balanced and extreme performance. Extreme   performance mode gives us the option of  setting a GPU overclock, however it doesn’t   apply one by default so we haven’t changed  it. We can also enable cooler boost here,   which sets the fan to max speed. We can  also go into user mode to get a bit more   customization over the fan, setting different  speeds based on CPU or GPU temperatures. The internal temperatures were cold when just  sitting there idle. The rest of the results   are from combined CPU and GPU stress tests which  aim to represent a worst case full load scenario.  The GPU was thermal throttling and hitting  Nvidia’s defined 87 degree Celsius limit with the   stress tests in silent mode, but I think that’s  fine. The point of silent mode is to be quiet,   and lower fans mean higher temps, it’s a  tradeoff. The other modes are running fine,   so yeah we don’t really need a bigger  cooler. The cooling pad I test with,   linked below the video, was able to lower  temperatures a bit, but setting the fans   to full speed lowered temperatures more,  though as you’ll hear soon it’s louder too. These are the clock speeds being reached  during the same stress tests. The 1650   was clocking higher, and the CPU in the 1650  system was also slightly better, but it’s a   small difference and is likely based on silicon  lottery, so that could probably go either way. Both GPUs are power limited to 40 watts,  even when the CPUs aren’t used at the   same time. Balanced and extreme modes limit  the CPU to 25 watts when the GPU is active,   so power limits are definitely on the  lower side. This allows us to get away   with the smaller 120 watt power brick and smaller  cooler, but less power means less performance. There wasn’t much of a performance difference  between the different modes with an actual game   running. I expected this with balanced and  extreme modes given they had the same CPU   and GPU power limits, but I was surprised  that silent mode wasn’t further behind. The   GPU was still around 40 watts in silent mode  as the CPU wasn’t used as much in this game. Although the CPU was maxing out at 25  watts with the GPU active at the same time,   it was able to get up to 45 watts  with the GPU idle, like in Cinebench. It’s not that impressive compared to  other laptops, though I haven’t had too   many with the i5-11400H. Acer’s Nitro  5 and Lenovo’s Legion 5i were scoring   20% higher in multicore despite having the  same CPU owing to higher CPU power limits,   however I think both of those are  better laptops that cost more. Performance lowers if we unplug the  charger and instead run purely off of   battery power. Those other 11400H  laptops aren’t as far ahead now,   but now a 6 core Ryzen laptop from the same  generation was able to do quite a bit better. Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees  Celsius range on the keyboard at idle,   and the GF63 was in line with this, so cool to  the touch when not doing anything. It gets warmer   with the stress tests going, but the fans are also  still relatively quiet. The higher balanced mode   was fairly similar despite the fan being louder  now, but it’s also performing better with higher   power limits which means more heat. Extreme mode  with the fan set to auto was a little cooler,   the power limits are the same as balanced mode  but the fan is faster and louder now. Maxing the   fans out with cooler boost enabled was cooler,  but it’s quite loud now, let’s have a listen. The fan was always audible, even when just  sitting there doing nothing in silent mode,   and it wasn’t much louder once the stress  tests were going. Not only did the cooling   pad lower temperatures, but it also results  in the fan running quieter as it doesn’t   need to go as fast to keep things cool.  It’s quite loud with the fans maxed out,   but considering the temps were already fine in  balanced mode or extreme with the fans on auto,   you don’t really need to run  them maxed out to stay cool. Just before we get into the game testing,  we’ve got to check out the screens,   as that’s what you’re going to  be staring at when playing games. This laptop does not have a  MUX switch or advanced optimus,   in fact it’s not possible to bypass optimus at  all because the HDMI port connects to the iGPU.   The Intel graphics still give us adaptive  sync though, which removes screen tearing. Color gamut was quite poor, but that shouldn’t be  a surprise considering this really is more of an   entry level gaming laptop option, and the screen  is one of the first places to get cheaped out on. Likewise the screen was also fairly dim  looking. Generally I like to see 300 nits   at maximum brightness as a minimum, but the  GF63 was barely getting above 250 nits bright. Average gray-to-gray screen  response time was also low too,   again to be expected from a cheaper  gaming laptop, you get what you pay for. It’s not doing that well compared to other  gaming laptops, on the slower side near a   number of other cheaper options that came out  last year. It’s actually using the same panel   as both last year’s and this year’s Nitro  5, so similar results are to be expected. The total system latency is the amount of time  between a mouse click and when a gunshot fire   appears on the screen in CS:GO. Again it’s on the  slower side, in part due to the slower screen,   but the single channel memory would also be  affecting this as well as the lower CPU and   GPU power limits. The nitro 5 was further ahead  here as it’s also got a mux switch this year. Backlight bleed wasn’t too bad, there’s  some glow from the corners in my unit,   but I never noticed this during normal use,  and it will vary between laptops anyway. My partner did most of the testing on both  of these laptops, and in her own words “the   screen is so bad, I can’t imagine having to  use it every day”. So yeah, just one of the   limits when you’re looking at a cheaper gaming  laptop. Good screens just cost more money. Alright now let’s see how both the GTX  1650 and RTX 3050 compare in games. Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on all  laptops, and I’ve got the GF63 shown by   the red highlights. We’ve only bothered  testing the RTX 3050 configuration with   a dual channel memory upgrade, and it  only gave us an extra 1 FPS increase,   though the increase to the dips in performance  as measured by the 1% lows was a bit higher. Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the  game’s benchmark, and the upgrade to dual   channel memory also didn’t change much here  either. The 3050 was 23% faster compared to the   1650 in this game, but you could of course  further boost FPS with FSR on either GPU,   while the 3050 also gives you the option of  using DLSS, something the 1650 does not support. Control was basically the  same with either 1650 or 3050,   and going to dual channel memory didn’t help  too much, granted this did make the 3050   now beat the higher tier 3050 Ti with 8 core  Ryzen CPU in the VivoBook Pro just below it. I’ve compared the GTX 1650 and RTX 3050 as  well as the performance boosts on offer with   DLSS that the 3050 gets you in this video  over here. So check that one out after this   one if you’re still deciding whether or not  it’s worth paying more money for the 3050. Here are the 3DMark results for those that find  them useful, now for some content creator tests. Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems  benchmark tool, and unfortunately I’ve got fewer   similarly specced laptops to compare with in  the content creation tests. We’ve also only   tested the 3050 here, and it’s just a little  behind a 3050 with a higher power limit. Adobe Photoshop generally does better  with more single threaded performance,   so I’m not too sure why it’s behind  the i7-9750H. As we saw earlier,   that was behind in Cinebench, so my guess is  this is a result of the single channel memory. GPU power usually matters more in DaVinci Resolve,   and the low 40 watt power limit for  the 3050 isn’t doing us any favors. We’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests  out various professional 3D workloads. Despite this being a cheaper gaming laptop,  MSI are still giving us full access to their   advanced BIOS after you enter this keyboard  shortcut. There’s an insane amount of stuff   you can change in here from temperatures,  power limits, undervolting and way more,   so make sure you know what you’re  doing and don’t brick the machine. Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu  22.04 live CD. By default the keyboard,   touchpad, speakers, Wi-Fi, ethernet and  camera all worked. Keyboard shortcuts for   adjusting keyboard brightness and volume  worked, but screen brightness didn’t,   though that could be because I had to  use safe graphics mode to get it to boot. Let’s discuss pricing and availability  next. This will change over time,   so refer to the link below the video  for current prices and sales. And   speaking of sales, make sure you check  out my new website gaminglaptop.deals,   we update it daily with the latest deals so  you can save money on your next gaming laptop! At the time of recording, in the US MSI’s GF63  with GTX 1650 graphics starts at above 50 USD,   though this version has half the SSD space that  mine has. Bestbuy actually has the older 10th   gen version with quad core CPU for $500 on sale,  which is the lowest price I think I’ve ever seen   for any brand new gaming laptop. The higher tier  RTX 3050 version is $750, so probably not really   worth paying the extra money for considering  that the difference in games wasn’t that big. In a bigger selection of games, the 3050  was 26% faster than the 1650 on average,   but you’ve got to pay 34% more money to  get the 3050, and honestly once you get   to $750 there are better laptops. Something  like HP’s Victus is probably a better deal,   you’re getting a better 12th gen CPU and RTX  3050 graphics with double the SSD space for $714. MSI also have this all new Intel version of the  GF63 for $750 with 12th gen CPU and Arc graphics,   granted I’ve got no idea how  the A370M stacks up just yet. I’d only really consider MSI’s GF63 if  you’re after the cheapest gaming laptop   that money can buy. Once you start going  to higher speced versions of the GF63,   other gaming laptops start to make more  sense. The GF63 is the cheapest brand new   gaming laptop that I’ve seen so far though,  but as I’ve mentioned throughout the video,   there are a number of compromises that have been  made in order to hit that lower price point. The main thing is the build quality,  it just feels cheap and low quality. The screen also doesn’t look great, and  some performance is lost due to only   having one stick of memory. You can of course  upgrade that later, it just costs more money. Now don’t get me wrong, you can absolutely run  games on both of these laptops and have a good   time. Just set your expectations accordingly  when you’re buying the cheapest gaming laptop   on the market. You really are getting what you  pay for, and honestly if this is a laptop that   you’re going to keep around for 3+ years,  if you can save an extra $200-300 honestly