Using a Gaming Laptop for CAD Work? MSI GS66 Stealth Review

[@Odenst]

Thank you for showing that a gaming laptop is a good option for using CAD software, I personally have been looking at Scan's 3XS Vengeance 3070 with the i7-10870 for when it's released. I feel it's one of the best system setups for my budget, just need to wait for it's release and for the money I am waiting for to come in. Thanks again

[@SkyZi9]

How is it that your review style and the quality of your videos is sooo good!?? Surprised you don't have atleast 500k subs...

[@Poxenium]

My GF (who previously had a Macbook Air clone Intel Atom windows laptop) switched to a ~800EURO Lenovo Legion Y7000 with Core i5 and GTX 1650 graphics, because she had enough of thin and light crap, which can't do anything. These new kind of thin gaming laptops are just ~50% heavier, but like 5x faster than the ultraportable crap. 👍

[@Neil3D]

Yea well said, it's just a case of nailing down one which ticks all the boxes and doesn't cheap out in an area which is gonna let you down when you really need it! I loved my Dell XPS13 it was insanely well made and lovely to use, but it couldn't do sh*t all for work, it was a glorified netbook really. These things though, its just mental how good they are at this weight.

[@dinosor7793]

I can agree as well. I have a Legion 5 by Lenovo now. It isnt small but its also not too thick. The performance is extremely good with a Ryzen 8 core and even the battery life is over 4 hours while working in CAD.

[@DeliriumXM]

Right. Its still really not heavy though. Maybe 4-5lbs i’d guess

[@tupaicindjeke275]

I have an HP Z book 17 for 8 years now. Still runs great.

[@flypic1098]

Thanks Neil. Always good to hear your views. Recently bought a laptop with AMD 3900 CPU. Very happy with it and FAR cheaper than the Intel option. Jim

[@scentilatingone2148]

Man you give alot of value add in these videos! Informative and direct!!

[@mr.gardengreen7124]

I am also a Autodesk user, inventor, cad, 3d max, your input is absolutely helpful man.

[@Oxy_Cotton]

I Know where your coming from I've still got my GT83VR 6RF Titan SLI that I can't get rid of, but recently I got the new MSI GS66 Stealth 15.6" QHD 165Hz Gaming Laptop i9-11900H 32GB 2TB RTX3080Q W10P and I fucken love it ! Very portable and so light now I just need to get a smaller backpack than the Everki XXL Laptop Backpack I currently have.

[@hannes1415]

Tihs spring I had opportunity to upgrade my work gear. I got rid of "workstation" laptop, and now have proper desktop at office and really mobile laptop (X1 carbon). Carrying laptop with me has changed from pain to joy. Lightweight, thin device with long battery life is what I really want when I'm on the go.

[@DeliriumXM]

I just bought this laptop today with a 3050 after watching this review and plenty of others after i saw that its 200$ off (1300) right now at best buy. I like the simple not overly gamey looking design. Its light for its size has a roughly 7 hour battery while using FL Studio (music production software) and has handled incredibly well from my limited testing. Great all aluminum build quality and I love that I can upgrade the ram in the future if need be. I do some gaming on a desktop, so being able to play games on here to if im on trip is also just a plus. The screen is buttery smooth. Only real gripe i have is that the fans can get incredibly loud if you don’t tweak some settings

[@Neil3D]

Yea I can't remember if I said that in this video or the Raider I covered, but their fans can be particularly obnoxiously loud, I think the Raider was worse than the Stealth.

[@DeliriumXM]

@@Neil3D yeah it can get pretty loud while gaming. Its definitely not that bad. Its practically silent now since i undervolted the cpu slightly though.

[@DeliriumXM]

@@Neil3D also awesome review. It was a factor in my purchase.

[@ScottValentine]

The Fans get destroyed in GS66. it's a known issue that is across multiple generations of this laptop. It means you need to have a backup plan when the fans die and you have to send it back to the support team for a week. The support team in Sydney are however very very good and get it sorted promptly. But ideally, they would look into figuring out how to stop the fans dying in the first few months. Other than that I've been using this on masssssive revit files and it's ok. I'd love way more power but it's been going ok, feels like it's gotten better over time for some reason. Maybe I've just got used to it. I don't like the keyboard but I use it with a Microsoft keyboard and dell screen. Warranties are local as well, not international like Asus.

[@24MiHind]

Thank you, Neil. Always nice and helpful to hear your analysis.

[@srinivasiyengar8066]

I use my y545 with a 1660ti and 9750h for CAD. I use Fusion, Inventor and Solidworks and it works perfectly except for renders. When I export, it does it at around 9 seconds per frame with low quality

[@brunoperez6368]

Thank you very much!!!! Neil, it would be great a video with a low cost 3D CAD workstation (

[@vedranb87]

I see the kitty appreciates all the thermal power the strange box provides. :D

[@outdoorvideos]

What do you think about the rise in ARM powered laptops? Apple’s M1 chip looks promising. High performance, super efficient. It feels like there is no stopping ARM from overtaking X86 in the future.

[@bits2646]

You are really flexing on that Autodesk Expert Elite clothing :DD

[@leo_warren]

The Early crew has arrived

[@nandogiordano7894]

sorry, I have the new model with the 3070 graphics card (i7 processor), I wanted to ask you a question. is it normal that the cpu fan (the left one) is always active? because to me it makes a lot of noise (it runs on fixed 2700 even when the pc is just plain on). does all this noise to you or does the fan turn less? Thanks for your time I spent a fortune on it and I'm very anxious about this problem 😅

[@fernandamm7887]

I got you, it is driving me insane. The fan is fixed 2700 and we can’t reduce it ... I believe I will return it soon

[@nandogiordano7894]

@@fernandamm7887 in the end as I was still on time I did the DOA and got my money back. in the end I got a fixed pc and now I'm looking much better also as performance obviously

[@Wlp25]

@@nandogiordano7894 Do you mean that your model had an issue or is it normal for the gs66?

[@nandogiordano7894]

@@Wlp25 bro it was an error on my pc. in fact they gave me all my money back.

[@nandogiordano7894]

@@Wlp25 however I do not recommend it because it tends to heat up a lot and the noise of the fans is still annoying

[@smellysam]

I just got 829€ gaming laptop. Because of my work (at sea 2/2months), the only on time/budget/specs option was a Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 5. The specs are good, the only issue for me is that the USB-C cannot run a graphic tablet... Fixing that would have taken me to 1150€ (bags sometimes fall overboard, so too much). Anyhow, it is a 4600H/1650Ti and if I run into any issues I'll inform you. I do mostly Freecad and Krita (Autocad, Illustrator and Photoshop if the client supplies it): Graphic design, furniture and Industrial replacement parts design (PS, it replaces a 2006 Dell I5 laptop that I could not change because of weird offshore rules of a previous client).

[@davisdiercks]

Honestly, I thought this would be me when I saved up for my MSI GS63VR Stealth Pro in 2016, and it was for a while. It was great on the move, I still use it for CAD, VR, editing, and more, but I'm running into limits and actually had to replace the battery which I ruined by keeping it plugged in 24/7. I think I'd like to eventually transition to a stationary desktop setup, and get a MacBook for mobile things since I do a lot with music (which Windows is notoriously lacking in).

[@feanorcurufinwe702]

What do you mean by "ruined by keeping it plugged 24/7" ? Is that a bad thing to do?

[@davisdiercks]

@@feanorcurufinwe702 Yes - it's a bad idea to keep ANY rechargeable battery at max charge all the time. At best, it will decrease the lifespan faster so it won't hold a charge. At worst, it will swell up and eventually explode if you don't replace it. Mine was swelling up, I even had to bend the laptop housing back into place when I installed the replacement 😅 To be fair, a lot of newer devices have "smart" options to try to minimize those effects, but it's still good practice to run batteries through a full cycle now and then, and not keep them maxed out for months at a time, which is what I was doing.

[@cullis63]

Hi, as this is now over 1 year old I would like to ask, which middle of the range laptop ( £ 1400) would you recommend? looking at a Acer ConceptD 3 Pro Intel Core i7 16GB RAM 1TB SSD Nvidia Quadro T1000 or a Lenovo Legion 5 Intel Core i7 16GB RAM 512GB SSD Nvidia RTX 3070 The question is newer Laptop intel 11 Vs 10 or T1000 Vs RTX 3070 (I will use it for 3ds Max and Adobe Substance. Thanks

[@Kammey]

I’m interested, too. What did you settle on?

[@michaelbelt8946]

small engineering company using Leica scanning 20GB in field to point cloud to Revit and CAD files. We use a NAS thunderbolt 3 for storage so AMD is out of the question, for now. We have offices in three locations and are very mobile with drone video files for roof inspections. Would you recommend high spec gaming or Workstation.

[@mohammedrahman8346]

So I'm currently still learning and not in the workforce but I did have a question about the alternative side to this solution. How come a thin and light laptop such as an xps 15 along with an e-gpu a better idea? Most of the graphicly-intensive work would usually be done at home and if you did bring your laptop around anywhere else it would be to do minor work or showcases right? With thunderbolt 4 becoming a standard with intel's 11th gen cpu's and Gpu prices dropping after they do becoming available wouldn't an egpu home workstation be the most ideal scenario?

[@Neil3D]

Thats a very very good question and tbh you're absolutely right, it is a good solution. I owned the Alienware eGPU for a few years and it was amazing, although that wasn't Thunderbolt based it was still a great feature. The downsides to this though is that eGPU enclosures and the extra desktop GPU is very expensive, you'd need to spend at least $250-300 on the actual GPU then whatever on the GPU... what? $600-900 these days if you can even find one in stock? So that's at least $1k extra on top of the price of the XPS15. If you're playing the long game you can keep the eGPU and GPU and cycle your thin and light, but it is an expensive option, a good one though. If I had a contact at a place which could offer up a review unit I'd 100% pitch and demo this proposal, its not for everyone but it does have its uses.

[@mohammedrahman8346]

@@Neil3D I would definitely love to see a video on that. See the ups and downs, especially if the machine during home use would be bottlenecked by the more limited CPUs offered on thin and lights. As I'm not currently looking for a laptop but will be in another year or so definitely want to get the best understanding of my options. Thank you so much for information!!

[@kanaalvanNI]

The tongfang with ryzen 4800h has a nice screen, good audio, nice keyboard, descent battery life, up to 64 gig 3200 ram,... i run it full 8 cores op to 4 ghz, and i have to see it go below 3.9 Ghz, it tops of with the rtx 2060 refresh but at 110 watt its probably not that far from the low powered 2080ti, and you can buy 2 for the price of your MSI,...

[@nikolaklisovic5852]

Would be great if you could get your hands on one of the new MacBook Pro M1 when Parallels or VMware will be ready for it, so you can run windows on it and test Inventor, because cpu and gpu are now together on a chip sharing memory and virtualization programs would probably have access to it. In the meantime, MacBook Pro 16 with Intel Inside, windows through Bootcamp, all connected to eGpu with Quadro in it. I think it would be really interesting to see the results. By the way, great topic and review today, love watching your videos!

[@Neil3D]

Thanks that means a lot at the moment! This one took a long time to put together and its a new direction so I very much appreciate that, genuinely, thank you

[@aitorcristianraposeiras4882]

Can this analysis be applied for CFD and FEM applications? MSI sells GS66 and WS66, which are pretty much the same with the only difference of the graphic card (GeForce vs Quadro). Would be necessary to choose the WS just because of the graphic card for FEM/CFD applications?

[@thehistoricalidiots7442]

Im thinking of getting this laptop, (this year's version) have you checked that out?

[@TheBlades2012]

Hi. I'm looking for a laptop that I can photoshop for fast rending time and some web design and play games on. I've been looking at the alienware m17 would this be cut out for a workstation for photoshop web design etc? Many thanks

[@polakpatriota4014]

HI. This is the video I was looking for! What specs do I need in my laptop to work smoothly with an Inventor, Creo, Revit with over 100k parts? + Autocad Pls. help+ Autocad + Autocad

[@dubbleA100]

Hi I've been looking at the i7 GS66 and recently just saw the Asus ProArt, the Asus has a Quadro RTX3000 and a 10key board on the mouse pad. And spec wise it looks like I should go for the Asus but I have an Asus laptop now and I have had a lot of problems with it. Software, battery life and just random Asus issues. Have you had any experience with the Asus ProArt 17" i7 Quadro rtx3000?

[@Neil3D]

No but I am talking to Asus at the moment about a potential collaboration, I have tons of Asus stuff already but I haven't used one of their laptops yet. The ProArt looks really nice tbh but I haven't personally seen or used it. Personally I am a huge Asus fan and really hoping I can work with them to check out some of their ProArt and ZenBook stuff.

[@facejoker1349]

I had problems with GS66. 2 units returned and because I bought extra warranty, I got full refund. The laptop build is not that strong as people said. I use on my lap also. It got bend a little bit. Fans problem with first unit. RGB key light with the second unit. Also RGB issues with both. At black Friday, GS66 sales a price is 1999 from 2900. I got Lenovo 7i after that. Problem with RGB out of the box. Discovered no optimus, no usb-c charging possibility. I have Asus zephyrus s15. Is beter than GS66. No issues so far.

[@dubbleA100]

@@facejoker1349 thanks, for the input 🙏🏿

[@sh4rpshooter782]

@@dubbleA100 i own the 2060 and i7 version. NO PROBLEMS AT ALL

[@sh4rpshooter782]

@@facejoker1349 s15 is nt very good. bad battery, and performance isnt good

[@barracudaboi790]

Can I use katana GF66/Sword 15 for AutoCAD

[@beniaminbalint3711]

Cool videos. Was wondering if you could give me some advice. I am structural engineer and work in revit and tekla structures on 100mb size projects. I do structural sequencing videos for buildings. Now i already have a area51m r2 as a mobile workstation although we are playing fast and loose with the term "mobile". I am now after the lightest, smallest, longest lasting battery laptop that might just be good enough to cope with that sort of work. Looking at the likes of asus expertbook b9450 or lg gram type of thing. Budget almost irrelevant as this would be used only when i travel via train long distances so 5 hours plus and where i would need to empty a whole compartment to make room for my area51 ;)

[@paygornismyfav]

I like how it spells out wap

[@sbacon92]

this is a perfect laptop but for the speakers and the thunderbolt 3 port/displayport. it turns off my monitor (Odyssey G9) and it won't wake up. I have to restart my computer. the left speaker was blown out and sounded awful. I RMA'd and MSI opened my box, put a sticker on it, and mailed it back to me and said "make a video of what's wrong". So after that experience, this is my last MSI lapto. ASUS Strix SCAR is my future.

[@guglielmolisi6947]

Hi, did you note some curves on the monitor frame? My gs66 monitor is a little bent at the center and I can notice it looking from the front when closed (the upper center part of the monitor frame doesn’t touch the laptop body when closed) or even between the hinges when opened (the air space between monitor and laptop body is not uniform). Thanks for help, I hope this is normal

[@92JinKazama]

It's supposed to be this way. You still have yours?

[@ritishgupta5201]

in 2021, as a student should I buy this or razer?

[@taurohnyt617]

I have a msi gs 75 with an I 7950 and RTX max q 2070 and just started and i wanted to ask how long will it take to not working or is this enough ?

[@Neil3D]

I dont know what you mean by take to not working, but that will be good for a long time

[@binstar8269]

i don't understand why would someone be judged over owning a gaming laptop. I mean, it just looks like a gaming laptop, it doesn't function very differently than a normal laptop.

[@darrenbradz]

Great review thanks for the info.

[@carpisun1]

Thanks Neil, WAP!

[@HamdanAlshehri]

MSI laptops have issues with real battery life information. They claim upto 8 hrs when it is actually less than 3hrs with battery safe mode! Also, the heat while working is very high, you can't keep it in your lap if you don't have appropriate stand... Otherwise, price and quality are acceptable, somehow!

[@fernandamm7887]

Isn’t the fan noise driving you insane? I believe that I will have to return it

[@minascholevas]

Why didn't you buy a Ryzen one?

[@Neil3D]

...I didn't buy this? I said in the video its a review unit and its gotta be sent back. And they don't do a Ryzen version of this. And I'm not ready to recommend and endorse Ryzen based laptops yet.

[@MrDaniell1234]

You changed your top a few times

[@Neil3D]

It took 2 weeks to make this so I shot the end part on a totally different day!

[@dannywantsabiscut2897]

ah yeas "WAP"

[@He-Is-One-and-Only]

Had to unsubscribe, too much talking. No useful content.