MSI Vortex G65VR 6RE GTX 1070 SLI Gaming PC Review

Acoustic, Power & Thermal Performance

Acoustic Performance

During idle usage scenarios, the MSI Vortex G65VR 6RE is almost silent and provides the end-user with a pleasant desktop experience. Unfortunately, the noise levels increase exponentially under load and the peak moments are difficult to accept. It’s a crying shame because the load noise output is extremely loud and raises questions about the form factor’s ability to cool the hardware adequately at a respectable volume.

Power Consumption

Even though the system accommodates two high-end graphics cards and Intel’s flagship Skylake processor, the load power consumption is under 270 watts. Furthermore, the power draw seems quite stable and doesn’t fluctuate at a rapid pace.

Thermal Performance

MSI’s cooling solution was always going to come under scrutiny and it’s difficult to engineer something which effectively dissipates heat in an enclosed space. While running the AIDA64 stress test, the CPU quickly hit the thermal limit at 4.0GHz and began to throttle down between 3.7-4.0GHz. To be fair, this isn’t a terrible showing and I’m actually quite impressed with the thermal results given the unusual small frame. Also, the two MXM graphics cards tend to stay around the 87-89C degree mark and showed no signs of heating up any further.