The Stealth Pro GS63VR comes with t

The Stealth Pro GS63VR comes with the Skylake i7-6700HQ quad-core processor. Until the quad-core Kaby Lake processors come out, this is pretty much the best one you’ll see in a laptop this thin, and it allows for programs to open and run at fast speeds. I’ve never had a complaint with this processor and this laptop is no different.

Before I continue, I want to note right away that my testing is being completed on a clean install of Windows. The MSI build has a lot of bloatware that really seemed to bog down the system, if you ask me. There was some major trackpad stuttering that was going on and some programs were very slow to load, but all that went away with a fresh install and a quick load of the latest drivers.

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The GTX 1060 is a pretty hefty graphics card to fit into such a small package. I’ll admit I was a little concerned with thermals at first. But the graphics card really performs well and allows for some pretty excellent gaming performance. The GPU has 6GB of VRAM, which should be enough for almost everyone out there.

For battery life concerns, MSI opted for Optimus over G-Sync on this one. Probably a good choice with such a small battery. The power indicator light doubles as an indicator to what GPU is operating: red for integrated graphics and orange for the GTX 1060. Speaking of that light, it’s not on the power button for a change. Instead, it’s subtly located in the center of the intake vents, above the keyboard. This is a welcome change over the giant power button of the GS60, that switched from blue to orange.

The SSD is nothing special, in fact is actually SATA and not NVMe. The 128GB version is pretty slow and you’ll probably want to replace it. The 512GB is a little faster at least, but it still a SATA drive. Replacing the SSD can be quite challenging though, and I’ll get to that in a bit.

The included HDD is awfully slow as well. It’s only a 5200rpm drive and the speeds are pretty bad if you’re used to 7200rpm or even SSDs. Honestly, I don’t think I could survive with a 128GB SSD and this slow HDD, because I would immediately fill up the SSD and would avoid using the HDD at all costs. The HDD won’t slow down actual framerates in gameplay, but loading times are definitely affected.

So now that I brought up upgrading, let’s talk about what can be done. First off, to open the system, you have to break a warranty sticker. Fortunately for the US and Canada, that sticker means nothing. For everyone else though, opening that sticker means your warranty is void, so you’ve been warned, in case you decide to venture further.

Internals - HDD easily accessible, but the SSD and the RAM are behind the motherboard
Internals – HDD easily accessible, but the SSD and the RAM are behind the motherboard

Once inside, you’ll notice that the HDD is pretty easy to get to and swap out. The SSD and RAM are a different matter though, as they are actually on the opposite side of the motherboard, so in order to get to them you’ll have to disassemble the motherboard and flip it over. If patiently taking things apart and following directions aren’t your thing, I highly recommend not doing this. Otherwise, give yourself a lot of light, time and space before attempting it.

Once you get to the other side, you’ll find a single M.2 80 mm slot, which accepts SATA and NVMe drives. There are also two RAM slots, which can take up to 32GB of RAM. Because getting to these components is not a walk in the park, I think most people getting the 128GB model will just settle for upgrading the HDD, maybe to a 1 TB SSD or something.

I’ve put up together a step by step guide on how to access the internals on the MSI GS73 and MSI GS63, and you should check it out here if interested in upgrading any of the components.

I ran some benchmarks, which you can see below. Here’s what I got:

3Dmark 13: Time Spy – 3646 , Fire Strike – 9648 , Sky Diver – 22019; Max CPU temp 83C, Max GPU temp 75C;
PCMark 08: Home Conventional – 3263, Accelerated – 3999 with 74 C max temp;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 100.60 fps, CPU 667 pts, CPU Single Core 115 pts.
I also benchmarked a number of games to give you an idea of how the GTX 1060 performs. All of the benchmarks were taken with the FHD version. The 4k model performed similarly, so I didn’t repeat any of them.

Fallout 4– Around Lexington and Corvega Plant during a thunderstorm. Lots of fighting.
Ultra settings, Max AA and AP 1080p – 48-60fps
Default high settings at 1080p – 60 fps
Witcher 3– Played through the opening scene and the battle tutorial
Ultra, 1080p – 47-53fps
High, 1080p – 65-69fps
Peak CPU temp 85°C, peak GPU temp 75C
Dragon Age: Inquisition– Walked around one of the first camps and got into a battle. Played for about 10 minutes for each session.
Default ultra settings, MSAA x2 at 1080p – 50-53fps
Default high settings, no MSAA at 1080p – 80-88fps
Peak CPU temp 8