MSI GS66 Stealth 11Ux – Top 5 Pros and Cons
The GS66 Stealth series from MSI is a real gaming notebook that cares about its appearance and looks. It is wonderful to see how much you can slim down a laptop while keeping its performance intact and the portable gaming niche will go bigger and bigger, as hardware shrinks in size, but not in performance. The laptop that we will take a look at today comes with the latest Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs, along with several IPS displays with up to 4K UHD resolution and a 360Hz refresh rate.
Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s Top 5 picks about the MSI GS66 Stealth 11Ux.
MSI GS66 Stealth 11Ux: Full Specs / In-depth Review
3 reasons to BUY the MSI GS66 Stealth 11Ux
1. Design and build quality
With a metal lid and chassis, the laptop looks really good, especially with the boxy shape, which makes it appear much more grown-up. The laptop has absolutely zero branding on the outside, with only an MSI wordmark on the bottom bezel. You get some RGB, which when you either turn off or switch to a singular color, will make the laptop the ultimate sleeper device.
The lid opens easily with one hand, revealing thin bezels, except the bottom one. The keyboard and touchpad are of good quality, but the thin profile of the laptop keeps the key travel average, but nonetheless offers clicky feedback. In terms of dimensions, the GS66 Stealth measures 2.10 kg and 19.8 mm, for weight and height, respectively.
2. Upgradeability
The upgradeability here is on point, bringing two SODIMM RAM slots, for up to 64GB of DDR4-3200MHz RAM and two M.2 slots with RAID support. One of them also supports PCIe Gen 4 drives.
Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access both the RAM and SSD slots.
3. I/O and features
The I/O is densely populated bringing three USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, two USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, one of which also has Thunderbolt 4 support. You also have an HDMI 2.1 port, an Ethernet port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
2 reasons NOT to buy the MSI GS66 Stealth 11Ux
1. Battery life
With a 99.9Wh unit, we certainly expected the battery life to take a turn for the better. What we got, in reality, was 2 hours and 13 minutes of Web browsing and video playback. Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.
2. Cooling
The cooling looks great on paper, with a total of six heat pipes, four heat sinks, and three fans. Three heat pipes are dedicated to the CPU while the other three are for the GPU. The heat sinks are for connecting the pipes to the fans, while also being on top of the VRMs and memory chips.
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
Intel Core i7-11800H (45W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min | Max Fans |
---|---|---|---|---|
MSI GS66 Stealth 11UH | 3.50 GHz (B+52%) @ 95°C @ 84W | 3.09 GHz (B+34%) @ 95°C @ 68W | 2.59 GHz (B+13%) @ 91°C @ 50W | – |
Dell G15 5511 | 3.67 GHz (B+60%) @ 97°C @ 100W | 3.54 GHz (B+54%) @ 98°C @ 91W | 3.43 GHz (B+49%) @ 93°C @ 79W | – |
Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH317-55) | 3.67 GHz (B+60%) @ 90°C @ 103W | 3.66 GHz (B+59%) @ 99°C @ 103W | 3.40 GHz (B+48%) @ 99°C @ 84W | – |
ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 | 3.87 GHz (B+68%) @ 95°C @ 106W | 3.90 GHz (B+70%) @ 95°C @ 109W | 3.58 GHz (B+56%) @ 86°C @ 80W | – |
MSI Creator Z16 (A11Ux) | 3.12 GHz (B+36%) @ 96°C @ 68W | 3.03 GHz (B+32%) @ 95°C @ 62W | 2.76 GHz (B+20%) @ 95°C @ 53W | 2.90 GHz (B+26%) @ 95°C @ 59W |
MSI GE76 Raider (2021) | 3.22 GHz (B+40%) @ 95°C @ 67W | 3.11 GHz (B+35%) @ 94°C @ 62W | 3.14 GHz (B+37%) @ 94°C @ 61W | 3.26 GHz (B+42%) @ 94°C @ 64W |
ASUS TUF F15 (FX506, 2021) (Turbo Mode) | 3.98 GHz (B+73%) @ 86°C @ 102W | 3.88 GHz (B+69%) @ 95°C @ 100W | 3.44 GHz (B+50%) @ 87°C @ 77W | – |
MSI Pulse GL76 | 3.16 GHz (B+37%) @ 95°C @ 65W | 3.00 GHz (B+30%) @ 95°C @ 59W | 2.87 GHz (B+25%) @ 95°C @ 55W | – |
MSI Pulse GL66 | 2.94 GHz (B+28%) @ 94°C @ 58W | 2.76 GHz (B+20%) @ 94°C @ 52W | 2.77 GHz (B+20%) @ 94°C @ 52W | – |
The CPU inside doesn’t perform on par with other laptops with the same processor. It throttles heavily below 3.00GHz in the end, while keeping temperatures above 90°C.
Real-life gaming
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (Turbo mode) |
---|---|---|---|
MSI GS66 Stealth 11UH (RTX 3080 95W) | 1316 MHz @ 78°C @ 94W | 1336 MHz @ 82°C @ 94W | – |
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 GA503 (RTX 3080 100W) | 1474 MHz @ 75°C @ 100W | 1475 MHz @ 74°C @ 99W | – |
GIGABYTE AORUS 15G (RTX 3080 105W) | 1341 MHz @ 82°C @ 103W | 1336 MHz @ 85°C @ 103W | – |
ASUS ROG Srix SCAR 15 G533 (RTX 3080 130W) | 1616 MHz @ 80°C @ 130W | 1597 MHz @ 82°C @ 130W | |
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 (RTX 3080 130W) | 1523 MHz @ 81°C @ 129W | 1515 MHz @ 83°C @ 130W |
The RTX 3080 inside performed in similar nature to the Core i7-11800H, not going over 1400MHz, while also not overheating which is okay.
Gaming comfort
The laptop gets pretty hot on the outside when under full load, with the ventilation grill above the keyboard and the palm rest area heating up harshly.