During the past 2 years, laptops positioning as Gaming products became almost major brands on a battleground.
Along with PC gaming having global prevalence, gaming products also possesses a very important position on the notebook market.
Dell considered an early-entry gaming brand, however MSI has already been dedicating itself to gaming notebooks market for years.

In pursuit of high performance, MSI featured product line includes GT series and more affordable GE series,
also slim and lightweight of GS series, and the recent new GP series which is more affordable than GE as a mainstream gaming.
Each price range offered at a different product segment, which lets user consider and choose from a wider selection.


The product we are testing today is GE62 6QF Apache Pro
In cooperation with a famous game from Blizzard,
MSI launched limited Heroes of The Storm Edition, which is presented in a special edition carton sleeve.
To the right of GE62 is a special backpack,
it packed in a vacuum for a size reduction purpose and looks ever more attractive than the previous review of GT72 backpack.


GE62 6QF Apache Pro Heroes Edition included accessories
CD drivers, quick start guide, product features guide. two years warranty card, MSI gaming mouse.
slim type DELTA 150W adapter and a power cable.


At first, you can see the HEROES OF THE STORM game characters design on the A-side of the notebook.
The standard edition has a metal aluminum cover with racing shapes,
and comparing to the previous GE60 generation with a piano paint, this shell is more attractive.
Because the Heroes of the storm edition has full-color IMR painting design,
so both A and C sides had to be replaced with plastic material.


The dimensions are 383(W) x 260(D) x 27~29(H) mm with a 2.4 kg in weight.
Since the 15.6-inch is equipped with high-specification hardware, it feels light when lifting the notebook up.
Although notebooks with embedded CD-ROM usually created additional thickness, the thickness of the GE62 design is fairly moderate.


B side is 15.6-inch glare 4K screen of 3840x2160 resolution, as Samsung currently offers only glare version for this type of a screen.
The general GE62 version includes 1920 X 1080 matte display, but this GE62 version has a different panel.
The black border around the screen is matte and is covered with glitter embellishment to enhance the visual quality.
The WebCam above the screen is 720P and is capable of 30FPS. Built-in microphones are on both sides with stereo mic support.


Though C-side is also made of metal on the standard edition, in the Heroes Edition, due to IMR printed design, it had to be modified became ABS plastic material.
SteelSeries keyboard consists of 3 lighting zones providing a rich choice of full color selection switch through SteelSeries Engine.
The trackpad with the left and right buttons, has sensitivity level better than GT72S


There are 3 matte-textured buttons on the top right.
On the right is the power button, the indicating LED will turn blue when the notebook power on.
In the middle is the SteelSeries keyboard button which lets you switch between different lighting modes with different Macro keys.
On the left is the cooler boost button, which represents Cooler Boost 3 cooling technology and provides higher fan speed with excellent thermal environment.


Underneath is a non-removable battery, 6-Cell Lithium Ion with the power of 51wHr.
2.1 Sound System is based around the surface while an woofer is located at the bottom left black netted area.
In the center of the bottom there are 3 blue LED status lights indicating of hard drive, power and WIFI.
The speakers are on the left and right sides of the bottom, which bring a more direct sound to the user thanks to the special design.
[IMG]http://www.extreme01.com/wwm/2016/MGE62/MGE6209.jpg[/img]

IO area on the right side.
From left to right: DC power jack \ SD(XC/HC) \ USB 2.0 \ HD-DT-ST DVDRAM

On the left side.
From left to right: Headphone-out \ Mic in \ USB 3.1(USB Type-C) \ USB 3.0
Mini-DisplayPort \ HDMI \ USB3.0 \ RJ45 ethernet jack \ Kensington lock slot


A contrasting point about the GE62’s external appearance is that the display can be opened as wide as up to 130 degrees.
If the user enjoys playing Heroes of the storm or wants a 4K screen, they will definitely love with this limited Heroes Edition notebook.
Personally, I prefer the standard version because of the appearance of a good texture with where A & C sides have black metal groove design.
Of course, the appearance preference differs among people and everyone has his or her own taste.


GE62’s dimensions are 383(W) x 260(D) x 27~29(H) mm, with 2.4 kg in weight.
Among the 15.6-inch high-performance models with optical drives, GE62 is indeed one of the easiest to carry.
The casing area is also thinner.
Lightweight and shell thickness is often difficult to choose as most of the users would be more concerned about the weight performance.


GE62 offers many versions, with a price range from the entry to mid-level on the gaming notebooks market.
Below is the hardware information on the most high-end GE62 6QF Apache Pro.
Latest 6th Gen. Intel Core i7 6700HQ processor with 2.6GHz, Quad-core support HT technology 14nm processor,
TurboBoost with automatic overclocking reaching up to 3.5GHz, and Intel HM170 chipset.
L3 Cache is 6MB, even though it’s lower than the special i7-6820HK overclocking edition’s specifications,
still the i7-6700HQ is also present among a few most recent laptop architectures with high-end i7 position.


A new version sound software of Nahimic is also used by MSI in its GT72S configuration.
It offers four different sound effects, which includes 5 sound settings with detailed adjustments.


Below is the description of the listening experience.
This part is quite subjective, other notebooks built-in speakers are taken as a benchmark.
Adjusting the volume to the maximum is considered fairly loud, so there is no need to worry that the speakers will be too quiet.
High frequency: The sound isn’t too sharp. Good in deep details, the performance is above average.
Middle frequency: The sound has excellent detailed clarity; vocal fullness is also above average.
Low frequency: The performance is also good, the bass is clean, not like others, however an increased mid or high frequency will easily put pressure on the low frequency.
MSI GE62’s left and right speakers positioned in the front as Alienware, which delivers direct sound to the user.
Listening to music or songs is also at a very good level,
watching movies and playing games with 3D sound is outstanding at this price range of the sound.
Simply speaking: excellent sound clarity, good sound absorption, only sound stage still could be better.

HD Audio Recorder
Nahimic provides an anti-noise function for both microphone and HD Audio Recorder.


Heroes of the Storm version of MSI wallpaper
Below is the TRUE COLOR PROFILE mode selection software interface, Press Fn+A to turn on TRUE COLOR PROFILE selection mode.
High-end GT72S also has this function. You can select 1 out of 6 color effect modes to apply them to different usage environments.


Exclusive software SteelSeries Engine 3 lets the user configure his/her own Steelseries keyboard and mouse.
GE62 of SteelSeries keyboard is mounted with lighting effects and includes a feature of rich color adjustment.


The exclusive software MSI DRAGON GAMING CENTER
Main features include detailed hardware status, Quick App, Instant Play and Device Setting.
Device Setting includes 3 Shift Mode with different functions which allow the user to adjust the desired performance mode.
The following is the Sport mode testing which puts GE62’s performance on the highest level.


Because the factory configuration only included a single DDR4 8GB RAM, I make it become 8GBX2 memory as dual channel mode.
When you get a new laptop, if there is a single RAM module, it’s recommended to upgrade it to dual channel RAM combination.
A little more spending will be worth a significant improvement over the overall performance.
When turning Cooler Boost 3 on, the fan operating at full performance greatly decreases the operating temperature.

System benchmark test
CINEBENCH R15
CPU => 678 cb
CPU(Single Core) => 138 cb


Make the i7-6700HQ 2.6~3.5GHz in comparison with the previous generation i7-4720HQ 2.6~3.6GHz
Single-core CPU performance increases by about 4.5%, multitasking performance increases by about 9.7%
6700HQ has a 100MHz lower clock setup, however the single and multi-core performance is even higher than the previous generation Core i7.

Nuclearus Multi Core => 27380
Fritz Chess Benchmark => 25.30/12142


Fritz Chess Benchmark: increase by about 20.7%
It’s a feeling that the original test of ASUS N551JB with 4720HQ on this software is not good,
so the apparent performance gap is big between the two models. The GE62 is much higher.

FRYRENDER
Running Time => 5m 20s
x264 FHD Benchmark => 22.5


x264 FHD Benchmark: increase by about 17.8%
6700HQ in overall looks faster than the previous 4720HQ generation.
The main advantages of the Skylake architecture are 14nm processor, better UMA 3D performance boost and higher PCI-E Gen 3.0 bandwidth.

PCMARK8 - 3266


DRAM performance test
DDR4 2132.2 CL15 15-15-36 2T
ADIA64 Memory Read - 29325 MB/s
Sandra Memory Bandwidth - 23489 MB/s
MaXXMEM Memory-Copy - 25130 MB/s


Skylake architecture designed with DDR4, in addition to higher clocking speed, also enjoys a significant bandwidth improvement.
Fortunately, DDR4’s market price, expect for the first year after entering the market, now is much closer to the DDR3 modules.
For the users who need to switch to a new platform, DDR4 won’t cause extra cost.

This GE62’s storage includes:
Drive C: TOSHIBA THNSNJ128G8NU 128GB M.2 SSD
Drive D: HGST HGST HTS721010A9E630, 7200 rpm with a total storage capacity of up to 1TB.

Below is the local disk C 128GB M.2 SSD benchmark test
AS SSD Benchmark - 878
Seq Read - 516.64 MB/s Write - 498.89 MB/s
4K - 64Thrd Read - 1181.42 MB/s Write - 430.96 MB/s


GE62 comes with M.2 SSD and 2.5-inch SATA3 SSD, the performance level is same as SATA3 SSDs.
Although this model isn’t equipped with high-end NVMe M.2 SSD technology as in case of GT72S, GT72S demonstrates an ultra-high storage performance.
However, the prices range of the two notebooks are different; nonetheless, the price of GE62 with its SSD and the IO transmission capacities is more than enough.

Two types of GPU are included. The first one is Intel Core i7-6700HQ with HD Graphics 530
The second one is nVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M with 3GB GDDR5 capacity, below benchmarks is all based on the GTX 970M graphics.
3DMark11 => P9606


With Cooler Boost 3 off, the heat sink running on a low speed and a silent mode scores about P9200 points
For the radiating purpose, MSI has produced a hardware switch button which lets the users choose a cooling mode they prefer.

3DMARK => 5878 / 13841 / 12909 / 26262
More than ten times of performance tested by this software aren’t very different:
A average FHD resolution with Fire Strike score of about 6500, which is lower a bit.
It looks like some of 3D items can automatically run up to 4K resolution and carry on the test.


Heaven Benchmark 4.0
DX11 1920 X 1080 => FPS 97.3


FAR CRY 4
Far Cry 4 is currently one of the most demanding 3D games with a resolution of 1920 X 1080,
set the 3D to run at an Ultra mode with 111 FPS at start, when at the beginning of the game it’s around 48 FPS.


Assassin's Creed Syndicate
1920 x 1080，GRAPHIC PRESET: VERY HIGH
The frame rate right after entering the game - 37FPS

Hi man! Thanks for posting!

Nice pics as always and very detailed review. We will share it soon as well.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
1920 x 1080, GRAPHICS: Ultra
The frame rate right after entering the game - 76FPS


When choosing 4K resolution, the frame rate is about 23 FPS.
970M also demonstrates a good performance with 4K resolution, though 3D effects should be reduced to the medium level beforehand.

The new GPU generations of GTX 970M or 980M, brings a big improvement in 3D gaming performance.
They make the 3D performance gap between Notebook and DeskTop PC is much closer.
Even nVIDIA’s newly released Desktop GPU GTX 980 (from the same product line) can be perfectly used by GT72S.
According to the performance test data, GTX 970M is more powerful than GTX 780M from the previous generation.
First, the price of GT 970N is much lower than 980M; second, its performance is strong enough to support a vast majority of high-end 3D games.
This is also the main reason why 970M has been so popular on PC or notebook market since its release in the market.

With room temperature about 18 degrees, proceeding to CPU cooling capacity test.
The CPU being at a preset value of 2.6~3.5GHz, GPU running with nVIDIA GTX 970M, with power supply on the balance mode,
Cooler Boost 3 off, the system’s temperature on standby mode is about 42~44 degrees.


Set Cooler Boost 3 on, the system’s idle temperature is about - 31~33.


The temperature difference on the standby mode with Cooler Boost 3 off or on is about 11 degrees.
Set the Cooler Boost 3 off, LinX 0.6.5 discovers CPU temperature to be 66~71 degrees.


With the Cooler Boost 3 on, LinX 0.6.5 discovers CPU temperature to be 58~62 degrees.


With the system running at a full speed and the Cooler Boost 3 off or on, the temperature difference is about 8~9 C.
It provides a crucial help to lower the system’s heating. When the Cooler Boost 3 is off, the radiator runs quietly.
After turning Cooler Boost 3 on, since the radiator fan by itself is small, it will produce a high-frequency noise.
When you use GE62 in a noisy environment, turning Cooler Boost 3 on is a good choice for cooling your machine.

windwithme opened GE62 6QF Apache Pro’s bottom case to share the internal hardware and the layout design.
The central area is occupied with 2x DDR4-2133 slots; to the left is M.2 SSD, to the right is 2.5-inch SATA3 HDD.
On the left side are ODD and a subwoofer; below both sides each have 2 stereo speakers for the volume enhancement.


Cooler Boost 3 dual fan design occupies both left and right side. It provides efficient cooling for CPU and GPU separately
You can see copper pipes made using thick bold materials; they also carry great cooling capacity for GE62.
At the same time you can see 2 cooling fans which leave less space for the battery, also reduces the battery power.
As a 15.6-inch notebook with a limited space like this, GE62 with high performance and efficient heat dissipation system is a must for first consideration.


Battery life endurance, Windows 10 at a balanced power.
With GTX 970M you can play DVD movie up to 1 hour 40 minutes.
Talking about such high-end hardware, it would be even better if the battery would handle more than 2 hours.
However, there are 2 types of hardware limitations which reduce the battery performance.
First of all, the 4K resolution will consume more power than the FHD.
Second, the battery capacity is smaller due to the notebook’s space design.
If there would be a GPU switching function, then the endurance could be further increased.

The summary of GE62 6QF Apache Pro limited edition
Pros of features and advantages
1. GE62 6QF Apache Pro Heroes version exterior design is attractive for the Blizzard games fans.
2. The hardware design with limited space still fits nVIDIA GTX 970M which significantly gives great 3D performance.
3. Wireless and wired internet usage Killer Gaming feature supports Killer Shield technology.
4. 4K UHD bright PLS panel with high viewing angle provides True Color 100%sRGB color correction.
5. The Steelseries Engine 3, lighting management, rich macro keys set and 4 sets of virtual keyboard functionalities.
6. Cooler Boost 3 with double fan and powerful cooling design deliver an extraordinary heat dissipation for this gaming notebook level.
7. Dynaudio technology featuring Audio Boost 2 with gold-plated connectors and 3 independent amplifiers gives an excellent sound experience.
8. Matrix Display technology, HDMI with a highest resolution of 4Kx2K, ability to have 3+1 screens used at the same time.
9. Built-in DVD –Multi drive with high-end hardware specifications, the15.6-inch with only 2.4kg - relatively lighter than comparable notebooks.

Cons for future improvements
1. Suggestion to add GT72S-like switchable GPU function which may enhance the battery life comparing to its current relatively short endurance.
2. SteelSeries keyboard feels a bit soft, making feedback stronger would be better for hand feeling.
3. The 4K resolution glossy screen would be better if as a touch screen.
4. 8GBX2 dual RAM could be a factory specification, a more complete DDR4 performance could be achieved.



Performance ★★★★★★★★★☆ 90/100
Material ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 88/100
Specification ★★★★★★★★★☆ 90/100
ID design ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 82/100
C/P value ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 82/100

Personal preference would be standard GE62 black color metallic, if the standard edition would earn about 88 points in the ID design score.
Of course, the limited edition collaborating with a well-known game also has its own market where it’s attractive,
especially for the Heroes of the storm gamers or fans.
GE62 already has many improvements comparing to GE60, such as the entire case and the hardware design.
Also panel, keyboard, sound, cooling system and software are all significantly outstanding from GE60.
It’s more in line for modern games’ requirements.
Even that some of GT72S’s power is 70% higher, high-end characteristics let GE62 got more value with better performance on a high level.


GE62 currently has a few models on the Taiwan market, all use the same CPU i7-6700HQ
GPU includes GTX 960M, 965M and 970M，with the price range from 40 to more than 50 thousand NT$ dollars.
If there would be a Core i5 version, the price could drop to 30+ thousand, which would also give consumers a more affordable choice.
GE62, from the entry up to the high-end gaming market, has a very good advantage, I believe that the real gaming notebook should cost at least more than 30 thousand NT$ dollors.
Like the models ranging between 20 and 30 thousand, if update the machine to GTX 960M or higher, can you immediately call it a “Gaming notebook”?! I don’t think so.
For gaming, the components such as sound system, internet connection, keyboard, display, cooling, casing area,
more than just 3D performance, and others require special design for better gaming experience.
The GE62 has been having very good gamer’s value on the gaming market.
If the drawbacks described above could be improved, then the notebook will be perfect and even more competitive.

Finally, on MSI website I found other models also cooperating with Heroes of the storm, the GT72S and GT80, both of which are more high-end notebooks.
The design is printed up using laser engraving technology, which makes the casing area very special and outstanding, though the prices are much higher than GE62.
For Heroes of the storm fans who want high-end gaming machines so bad, this both limited editions will look like a more attractive choice
This article is also published in the younger brother’s blog: WIND3C, 3D enthusiasts are welcome to visit.