Hi, today i've got two great laptops and one big question.
Which one is better?
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 3 and MSI GE65 Raider seem to be pretty equal gaming laptops,
so the choice is not easy for everyone.
In this video i'll be covering every detail from build quality, features, variety of configurations
and price, to cooling system, performance and more.
Since my units have the same specs the comparinon will give you better view on the differences
between both laptops, so if you can't decide stay to the end and make a wise choice.
If you don't know my channel yet and you like this kind of comparisons consider subscribing
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As always in the video description i left Amazon links for the USA and also for other
countries to check the currect prices.
I moved the timestamps to the first comment for mobile users so everyone can use them
to skip to any part of this video.
I'm Chris from techfindsreview.com and now let's jump into the comparison.
If it comes to design the Scar 3 is a very eye catching laptop.
You have metal lid with brushed aluminium texture and the ROG logo that you can light
up with RGB colors.
On the back it has extended exhaust section, but when you open the laptop it doesn't stick
out too much thanks to well-designed hinge mechanism.
On the front and on the sides there is one large light bar that makes the laptop look
like it's hovering above the ground.
The deck is made of solid plastic with few extruded lines and a keystone slot on the left hand side.
Thanks to carbon fiber pattern the fingerprints are not so visible on it.
The MSI has also metal top pannel, but it's matt black with 2 red lines and a white backlit
logo in the middle.
The deck is made of metal as well and i really appreciate that the interior is all black.
It looks nice and clean.
However the laptop is a fingerprint magnet, so keep your wiper close.
Worth mentioning is that the USB ports in Raider light up red which makes them easier
to spot at night.
On the back you can find pretty thick exhausts with Raider branding in the center.
This time i have to show you the bottom of the laptop, because it looks great.
It's made of plastic with large metal grille that increases the air flow, but more on that later.
Overall the MSI feels more solid and premium thanks to metal parts and i think that it looks better,
but it's totally up to your preference.
Both laptops come with thin bezel display, but only MSI managed to fit 720p webcam properly
on the top bezel.
On the other hand Asus decided to not include any webcam even though there is a lot of space
under the display.
If it comes to dimensions the extended exhaust section in Scar 3 makes it slightly deeper than MSI.
On the other hand MSI is a little bit thicker on the back, but overall it's more portable
and slightly lighter.
The keyboard in Asus Scar 3 is very good.
It has long 2mm key travel, good spacing and 5 additional useful keys.
It's not full size, but don't worry - you have the number pad displayed on the touchpad
after touching right top corner.
The useful feature that it has is the "overstroke" technology which registers the key press before
you actually press the key all the way down.
However the keyboard in MSI is even better.
It's made by Steel Series and it feels very nice to the touch thanks to rubber-like surface
on each key.
It has 1.9mm key travel, good spacing and it's quieter when typing compared to other
laptops that i've tested.
Pressing the FN key turns off the actual lighting profile and highlights only the function keys
which i think is a very convinient feature.
Above the keyboard you have one button for boosting the fans, a power button and one
Steel Series key to change the lighting profiles.
Thanks to clear sides you can see tons of strong and vivid light comming through the keys.
The MSI's keyboard has per-key RGB which means that you can set any color for each key individually.
To control the lighting you have Steel Series Engine 3 where you can find many effect presets
or create your own lighting effects.
Only your creativity is the limit here.
In Asus Scar 3 you have also very vivid per-key RGB.
You can customize every single key the way you want or use one of many built in effects.
You can find the effects in Armoury Crate app, but to customize the lighting you have
to download a free Aura Creator app which allows you to customize the keyboard,
light bar and the logo on the lid.
The touchpads in both laptops are using Windows Precision drivers, so the tracking is good,
and you can take advantage of the gesture controls.
Both have dedicated buttons for left and right click, but MSI has bigger touchpad surface.
The click sound is audibly louder in MSI and the buttons require more force to click.
One thing to note is that if the numpad in Scar 3 is on, you can't use the touchpad until
you turn it off.
In terms of ports selection i think that MSI is the winner.
Basically it has the same ports as Scar, but in addition it has MiniDisplay port, SD card
slot and security lock which the Asus is missing.
MSI has also newer generation USB C and USB A ports, but unfortunately there is no Thunderbolt 3
in none of these laptops.
If you don't like the red light from USB A ports in Raider you can turn them off or set
to half brightness in Dragon Center app.
In Scar 3 you can find a new feature called Keystone which is a magnetic NFC chip that
you can plug in to the slot on the right hand side.
It can save your gaming and lighting profiles and also unlock the secret Shadow Drive where
you can store your files.
One of the most hyped features of Scar 3 is 240Hz display and i believe it's buttery smooth
but i've got the unit with 1080p 144Hz 3ms response IPS pannel which is not worse at all.
Despite it doesn't support G-Sync it's the smoothest 144Hz display that i've tested,
which in combination with powerful hardware allows you to take advantage of the fast refresh rate.
The color accuracy is good as well, the colors are vivid and sharp with cold tone.
I find them very accurate, the games look great, but i can recommend this laptop for
content creation as well.
You have 97% of sRGB color gamut, 73% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 320 nits.
My MSI Raider came with 240Hz 1080p IPS-level display, so of course it was much smoother than Scar.
However the MSI is also available with 144Hz display and the Scar 3 has optional 240Hz pannel as well.
In MSI True Color app you can change the color filters using built-in presets or manually
adjust the color levels, contrast and brightness.
The display can reproduce 98% of sRGB color gamut, 76% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 340 nits.
It was one of the best looking pannels that i've seen if it comes to colors and despite
being IPS-level the viewing angles were as good as in normal IPS pannel.
As expected from MSI the quality of display was absolutely top-end.
Even the camera barely spotted backlight bleeding in the corners.
The Scar's display was good guality as well and in both cases backlight bleeding was not
visible during normal use at all.
Alright, now if it comes to prices both laptops have similare price tags, but the MSI seems to be cheaper.
I prepared a list with available configurations and approximated prices as for today, but
please note that the prices may vary with time.
So in the video description I left Amazon links for the USA and other countries to find
the configuration that suits you best and check the current price.
Let's talk about the MSI first.
It's only available with full size RTX 2060 and RTX 2070.
For the processor you can choose between i7-9750H and i9-9880H and as i mentioned before you
have 2 display options.
That's all for Raider, but along with it MSI also launched cheaper alternatives that has
the same design.
You have mid-range MSI GP65 Leopard and budget option MSI GL65 both of which give you wider
range of configurations including GTX 16-series GPUs and i5 processors, but of course cheaper
configs will be missing certain features that the Raider has.
What was strange is that RTX 2060 Leopard that i found on Amazon was $100 cheaper than
GTX 1660Ti model, but it may change with time, so check the current prices in the description.
As same as Raider, the Scar 3 is only available with full size RTX 2060 and RTX 2070.
For the processor you can choose between i7-9750H and i9-9880H, but if you want wider range
of configurations there is also a budget option, the Asus Strix G which you can buy with
GTX 1650, GTX 1660Ti and i5-9300H processor as well.
There is also the Asus Hero 3 which except for few visual changes looks the same as Scar,
but you can mostly find it with 17" screen.
If you prefere bigger screen both laptops have also 17" models and here are the examples.
Worth mentioning is that you can configure the MSI GE75 up to full size RTX 2080 + i9.
Alright, comming back to the review let's talk about speakers.
As always a definite winner in this category is the Asus Scar 3 which has the best sounding
speakers on the gaming laptop market right now.
I was surprised by the amount of bass that they can produce.
Every shot and every explosion in game was full and punchy so there was no really need
to use the headphones.
Mids are just on point but the highs may seem to be a little bit overwhelmed by lows.
You can always equalize the sound the way you want using a Sonic Studio III software.
The MSI despite having 2 "giant speakers" with 2 subwoofers didn't have as good bass as Scar.
However i place it in the second place right under Scar if it comes to sound.
The speakers still provide above average ammount of bass, clear sound and they are slightly
louder than Scar's speakers.
To equalize the sound you can download Nahimic app, but keep in mind it may not work if your
audio drivers are not up to date, so update them as first.
If it comes to performance I pushed both laptops to the limits, so for testing purposes i manually
overclocked the GPU in Scar and set the turbo mode for more CPU power and better cooling.
In MSI i also set the max fan speed and turbo mode which overclocks the GPU.
In general i had better results with MSI as it has more efficient cooling system which
allows to maintain the maximum 4GHz multi-core clock speed for i7-9750H.
Here is a quick preview of the game performance, but if you want to see more games tested,
check out my gaming benchmark videos where i tested 20 games on each laptop.
Please note that in the benchmark video of Scar 3 i showed the results of the overheating
unit that i had previously, but in the comments section and in the description you can also
find the results of a proper unit that i'm talking about now.
Links to the videos will be in the description.
Speaking of temperatures i had to test 2 units of Scar 3, because the first one that i got
was overheating due to bad thermal paste application in the factory.
It happens sometimes, so i decided to test another unit with exactly the same specs,
and this time i was able to see it's full potential.
The average temperature of the CPU was 84 degrees Celcius and the GPU average was only
74 degrees.
The MSI GE65 Raider had the best cooling system that i've seen this year.
It beats even the 2019 Acer Predator Helios 300.
Depending on game, right out of the box it ran on high 70's and low 80's but with turbo
mode and max fan speed the average CPU temperature in my usual test was only 81 degrees Celcius
and the GPU average was 70 degrees.
However after undervolting by -0.150V the temperatures dropped even lower
down to 74 for the CPU and 68 for the GPU.
It doesn't usually happen to see such low temperatures in a gaming laptop with 6-core
processor working on highest possible clock speed under combined CPU and GPU load,
so if you pay much attention to the temperatures i think that the Raider is the way to go.
If it comes to the SSD speeds the Asus Scar 3 is a winner.
My unit had 2x faster read and almost 3x faster write speed.
The MSI that i had came with additional 1TB Hard Drive and since there was a warranty
sticker on one of the screws i couldn't open it to make an upgrade guide.
If you wanna upgrade this laptop on your own i recommend you to read your warranty terms
or contact MSI before you do it.
Worth mentioning is that MSI GE65 supports up to 64GB of RAM and it has 2 slots for M.2
drives with one 2.5" drive bay while Scar's limit is 32GB of RAM, one M.2 SSD and 2.5"
Hard Drive.
If you wanna upgrade the Scar 3 i made a step by step detailed guide where i am showing
you how to disassemble and upgrade this laptop, so if you're planning to add more RAM, swap
out your hard drive or SSD, you can check it out.
As for the battery life i managed to use the Scar for up to 5,5 hours when browsing the
web and doing light productivity work.
When gaming battery died after 1,5 hour.
The MSI was very far behind.
It ran only for up to 3 hours when light work, and 45 minutes when gaming.
Alright, it seems to be everything that you need to know to wisely choose one of these laptops,
but before we finish let me share my closing thoughts.
So if it comes to the Scar 3 i think that it's a good laptop, but a little bit pricy.
It was performing well giving high frame rates in the most demanding games and the temperatures
were on a decent level.
A fast display with great color reproduction along with the best sounding speakers on the
market allow to enjoy the gameplay and the RGB creating a nice ambient takes your gaming
experience to the next level.
The Scar 3 has better battery life, faster SSD and no warranty stickers on the bottom lid.
Overall it was a good laptop, but since this is a comparison i must say that the MSI won
this battle with no doubt.
It was performing even better while keeping much lower temperatures thanks to the best
cooling system out there.
It has more premium build, better keyboard, newer USB ports and the features that Scar 3
is missing like SD card slot, MiniDisplay port and webcam.
It's also smaller and slightly lighter what makes it more portable.
You can configure the 17" model with up to full size RTX 2080 and overall it has wider
range of configurations.
No matter if you are looking for budget model or high-end, the MSI Raider is usually cheaper
than Scar 3.
With that said i leave the decision for you.
I hope that this video helped you decide, so if you know which laptop you're gonna buy now,
let us know in the comments.
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On my channel you can find detailed laptops reviews, laptop comparisons gaming benchmarks
and more.
Now thanks for your time and see you in the next video!