A:AnswerThe trade-offs to achieve this price point were as follows:
1) Swapping the Killer 1550 wifi card for the Intel 9560 - In my opinion a negligible tradeoff as the Killer 1550 is at its core an Intel 9260. The 9560 is technically a newer chip and offers all the same hardware specs (1.73Gbps, BT 5.0, etc.) as the Killer 1550. The only advantage I can see in the Killer 1550 is the six-tier packet prioritization in the Killer utility, but for all practical purposes this won't be useful for most people, and may actually be more of a headache than it's worth. If you absolutely must have the Killer 1550 it can be found on Amazon for $30.
2) Swapping the NVMe SSD for a SATA SSD. The 512GB SSD in the Best Buy model is "OK" by gaming laptop standards. It still performs faster than a hard disk, but is slower than the performance NVMe drives on the market today. I have been using this model for the past week and have not been disappointed with the drive performance. I am adding an NVMe drive soon, but strictly for additional storage, not because I am unsatisfied with the drive that is already in it.
After looking high and low, these are the only two compromises that I see in the Best Buy model. Other than these all hardware within it is identical to the higher priced, similarly spec'd non-Best Buy version. So it's still impressive that they were able to offer this unit at this price.
To add to some of the other answers, MSI offers several variants of the GS65, some with 16GB RAM and some with 32GB RAM. If you are using this laptop primarily for gaming, 16GB is more than adequate to last the useful life of the laptop and beyond. The 32GB model is targeted for people who will be doing RAM-intensive editing and rendering work. 32GB of RAM is not necessary for gaming, and you won't see additional performance over the 16GB model.
A:AnswerFirst of all, opening it to upgrade RAM or SSD will not void MSI warranty. Also in the US, there is "right to repair" law that make voiding warranty upon opening illegal.
With that said, the Best Buy model (037) already comes with two 8GB SODIMM memory sticks and therefore already dual channel memory. If you want to upgrade to 32GB, you'll need to replace both.
There is a great video on YouTube titled "MSI GS65 Teardown" that shows you step by step. it removes all guessing game for a straightforward DIY project.
A:AnswerChicoStateStudent and Dagstar...I was quite aware of the speed of RAM but was hoping for more responses to my question. The demo unit at my BB, sticker, right palm rest, stated 2400MHz and even today the specifications list 2400MHz. YT reviews (most) state 2400MHz. So I was assuming that maybe if we bought an early build it came with the 2400 MHz and then the newer build dates, in my case June, 2018, at the 2666MHz. Also most state the 9250 Intel Wi-Fi card, mine the 9650 card. Confirmed using HWiNFO64 and CPUID CPU-Z.
Thanks!
A:AnswerIt automatically overclocks to 4.2 Ghz on a single core, and up to 3.9 Ghz when all cores are under load. It does this automatically based on CPU temperature and work load.
A:AnswerThis laptop has the firmware and hardware to support a fingerprint sensor but as of now it does not utilize it. From what I understand MSI has stated that they will enable the fingerprint sensor in a future update but other then that I do not know when the update will be available.
A:AnswerAre you pressing the finger sensor or the barely visible "power" symbol?
You should not have any issues turning it on if you use the finger sensor as the power button, if you are then you need to use the warranty
Thanks!
A:AnswerI use this heavily in my studies to render point clouds and dynamical system models in MATLAB and python. I have also pushed it to the limit with a custom spectrum analyzer that processed thousands of fast fourier transforms in parallel on the multi-core GTX 1070 GPU and played back the visualizations with the song.
There is a lot of power on the go with this laptop.
A:AnswerI personally have not noticed any throttling. The most demanding game I have is Star Wars Battlefront 2 and I have had no problems running it on high.
A:AnswerLooks like dual channel memory with 2 8GB memory cards. At least according to MSI website: https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GS65-Stealth-Thin-Intel-8th-Gen/Specification
This is the -037 configuration.
A:AnswerI think its a Max-Q.. review sites call it out and did bench marks on it. Can you tell the performance difference between regular 1070 and Max-Q ?
A:AnswerI uninstalled the copy of Norton that was installed on it. Other than that there isn't anything too offensive installed. At some point I will wipe the drive and start over with Win 10 but overall there is wayyy less crapware on it out of the box than my previous Lenovo
