MSI Prestige 15 A10SC Laptop Review: One of the Best Dell XPS 15 Alternatives

[For Science!]

I've managed to fix the misclicking with a few hardware modifications.

[jk]

I've managed to fix the misclicking with a few hardware modifications.

How did you fix it?

[BOB]

HI, it seems that the 14 inches model has two USB 2.0 instead of the 2 USB 3.1 gen1 A of the 15 inches version. Not the same.

[Michael Ravier]

How can i install dragon center? Uninstalling creator center dosnt work, in DC there is a massage "Please download CC from Microsoft store" , What i have done wrong?

Uninstalled in from Control Panel, i downloaded GS65's Dragon Center from MSI support website for that laptop and installed in from one of three setups inside the Extras folder, not the setup in the main folder.

I did this. But after install I am unable to launch Dragon Center. From Programs x86 there is a bunch of executables but none seem to do anything on their own.

I must be missing a thing.
Which file / programme to you have to launch in order to reduce fan speeds ?

Would be great if MSI could fix this one and only issue otherwise I'll have to return the device. I hate fan noise.

[Michael Ravier]

I installed dragon center and made a custom fan profile which seemed to fix this fan noise issue and until the cpu reaches 60C, that stupid gpu fan doesn't spin at all and the laptop is very silent, that cpu fan isn't noticeable at all and you'll hear it only if you concentrate on it.

Tried your Redit trick but could not reproduce it even after uninstalling creative center, reboooting, reinstaller dragon center 2 etc.

Once I install from the setup_G.exe, I cannot find the program in the folder under Programs x86. There's a bunch of files and folders but no dragoncenter.exe.

Could you help me out and detail the steps ?

[For Science!]

I've managed to fix the misclicking with a few hardware modifications.

How did you fix it?

Hi! So Sorry for the neglected response. In short I did two things: the first did not solve the issue, but may (or may not) have been required for the 2nd step, which actually did solve the issue.



I established that the root cause of the issue is a flex of the upper part of the chassis with respect to the bottom rubber feet, as the problem was much easier to reproduce when the laptop was on a flat surface (i.e. a table) as opposed to when the base was off the surface.



The first thing I did (note: this alone did not fix the problem) was to try to pad out the upper part of the chassis against the battery. I opened the laptop, and removed the battery, and in the sides of the trackpad, added 1.0 or 1.5 mm (sorry can't remember) thermal pads. I marked the vague area that I put the thermal pads on, please note that it would be under the battery as pictured below.

The above did nothing towards the misclick, but then I realised the flex of the upper chassis was actually caused by the battery not laying flat with respect to the top. In the picture above you can see a bit of plastic from the battery resting on top of a metal piece. This actually causes the battery to be slightly raised in the middle, giving rise to flex either side of it. This curious plastic circle I believe was used for a screw in a previous model?

Anyway, the step which fixed it for me (and may or may not require the thermal pads above) was to cut into the plastic so that the metal does not intefere with the battery resting. Obviously this is a destructive mod and so do at your own risk, but this has completly solved my issues with misclicking due to the weight of my arms on the side of the laptop.

[Daf]

I'm confused - why does the review text mention Colour deltaE of 1.57 while all the tables/data show ~ 3.36

[HankLee]

Currently considering buying prestige 15. As mentioned in article, is this "slow black-white response times; noticeable ghosting" situation really noticeable for a common user? And how about the battery life of light use? Thanks so much.

[fishmi]

With normal use of an common user ghosting is not visible on this device and I am very critical of it, so no problems at all.
About battery life: as always the answer: it depends very much on the usage. I work a lot with photo editing programs and the battery life is about 6 hours at 75 brightness and battery power plan.

[Argonaut86]

The throttling issue exists, however it is easily removed through ThrottleStop. I did an undervolting of - 125 for CPU and CPU clock and the temperature fell from permanent 92-94 to 80-83. With the frequency staying the same. And then no throttling. Using of MSI Afterburner does also help with the GPU.
So, it has problems out of the box, but they are tweaked in a simple way. After these tweaking exercise the performance is awesome (especially on CPU side).
Moreover in 95% of your normal activities you will not face any throttling issues even with the out of box version.

[william blake]

Anyway, the step which fixed it for me (and may or may not require the thermal pads above) was to cut into the plastic so that the metal does not intefere with the battery resting. Obviously this is a destructive mod and so do at your own risk, but this has completly solved my issues with misclicking due to the weight of my arms on the side of the laptop.

pics! well deserved rare upvote :)

[hildy]

Is the slot m2 pcie 3x4 or 3x2?

[mikelino666]

The throttling issue exists, however it is easily removed through ThrottleStop. I did an undervolting of - 125 for CPU and CPU clock and the temperature fell from permanent 92-94 to 80-83. With the frequency staying the same. And then no throttling. Using of MSI Afterburner does also help with the GPU.
So, it has problems out of the box, but they are tweaked in a simple way. After these tweaking exercise the performance is awesome (especially on CPU side).
Moreover in 95% of your normal activities you will not face any throttling issues even with the out of box version.

Thank you for your info! Just a question..is it true that when unplugged the tdp is set to just 15 w instead of 45 w? I would like to use it for 3d stuff and rendering but i'm used to travel a lot so i'm not always plugged in! Thanks

[fishmi]

@Argonaut86
Maybe you or someone else could adjust the exact settings in ThrottleStop (with screenshots). That would be great, because my MSI crashes at -125 after a while or immediately (reboot). Do you have DRAGON Center running in parallel? Could that be the cause?
It would be great if somebody would provide his settings here, because profit in the temperature settings is obvious.

[Lum Dërmaku]

The throttling issue exists, however it is easily removed through ThrottleStop. I did an undervolting of - 125 for CPU and CPU clock and the temperature fell from permanent 92-94 to 80-83. With the frequency staying the same. And then no throttling. Using of MSI Afterburner does also help with the GPU.
So, it has problems out of the box, but they are tweaked in a simple way. After these tweaking exercise the performance is awesome (especially on CPU side).
Moreover in 95% of your normal activities you will not face any throttling issues even with the out of box version.

Thank you for your info! Just a question..is it true that when unplugged the tdp is set to just 15 w instead of 45 w? I would like to use it for 3d stuff and rendering but i'm used to travel a lot so i'm not always plugged in! Thanks

Yes, the cpu's PL2 and PL1 are both set to 15W when the laptop is on battery power. MSI intentionally limited the performance to extend batterylife (makes a bit no sense but that's what they told me). Unfortunately there's no way around this but -125Mv undervolt helps on  around 20% performance improvement (most noticeably when all 6 cores are 100% used), the clockspeeds jump from 2Ghz to 2.4Ghz (when all 6 cores are 100% utilized, didn't test single core performance). As far as i know, gpu performance is not throttled when on battery power compared to when the laptop is plugged in.