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Laptop Replacement/Suggestions Thread: Bring out yer dead laptops!
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I have a Lenovo Legion, which is pretty understated. I'm quite happy with its performance (although I use it almost exclusively plugged in so I can't speak to battery life.)
I confirmed before buying that the keyboard red under lighting could be turned off. But I didn't understand from online pictures that the keys have a thin red highlight on their sides. It looks nice, but it is a little racy if your flavor of "not a spaceship" included passing at a glance for a work/production laptop.
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The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Check MSI's offerings and maybe Lenovo. I know you looked at Thinkpads but other Lenovo options may work better. You'll have to research display quality.
Is there a chance he could get a laptop with an okay screen and you help him pick out a quality monitor to plug into it?
Does anybody know if the display supports HDR?
A few years back I told myself I wouldn't replace my now 8 year old gaming laptop until I could get one that can comfortably handle any RTX and VR games I'd throw at it. This one seems to be checking all the boxes, but HDR has been such a game changer on my desktop that I don't want to get a laptop that doesn't also support it.
I'm actually also considering a mini pc like the Asus PN50 as a possible alternative to an actual laptop. He said a laptop because he wants to be able to put it away, not because he's going to move it around.
Holy want, Batman.
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As much as it pains me to recommend HP, we use their Elitedesk/Prodesk mini PCs at work in a few application instances. Granted those are on a standalone network so they have much less overhead to care about.
They do use laptop memory and either M.2 drives or just SATA drives, but that could be an option. You could use some velcro tape to attach it to the back of a monitor to keep things compact. You'd be stuck with integrated graphics, so it may not be a true option.
As far as graphics are concerned, I'm fairly confident that the old man is not worried about getting dank frags with his new rig. Granted, people can surprise you even after all these years, but I feel like the Vega 7/8 on a Zen2 would be ample for Solitaire and TV decoding? Or is that something they're particularly inefficient at?
It's a decent HD LED TV so he can use it as a monitor well enough for the odd occasion he wants to actually use it as a PC eg: order stuff from amazon or whatever. A wireless keyboard that he can use from the armchair would be fine. I'll run it past him, but I think we've got a winner.
EDIT: I'm thinking a 256Gb NVME and 2x 8Gb DDR3200 would be enough that said miniPC will be able to easily cope with whatever is wanted of it until it or my dad is EOL.
https://www.costco.com/lenovo-flex-5-14"-2-in-1-touchscreen-laptop---amd-ryzen-7-4700u---1080p.product.100579313.html
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Yes. You basically shouldn’t have to worry about it. windows and the bios won’t let the CPU get to the point where it’ll be damaged. Laptops will run hot under load because of the limited thermal envelope but that’s by design.
I am looking for suggestions!
Now... I am considering getting some sort of laptop that can do Gaming Stuff, because once I'm fully vaccinated I plan on going on a road trip, and while I have a work laptop for one of my jobs, I would also like to have a portable computer that is a) mine and mine alone to do stuff on and b) on which I can Game.
Said laptop doesn't need to be like, huge, chonky, or impressive; my minimum requirements are basically "Can run Warframe at like medium settings without overheating too much or being slow." Because if I'm traveling, I'm not doing a *ton* of gaming, but I like to have at least a few things to keep me occupied, if that makes sense!
Budget: I'd like to go for less than $800. Basically blowing my stimulus check on this. I could probably do like $850 or $875 but not more than that. I would also like minimum fuss out of the box; I already built my own desktop PC and installed everything on it myself, if I want something I'm going traveling with I want it to be far less fuss.
What about this:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/asus-tuf-f15-tuf506lu-us74-gaming-laptop/8mp2nrr6rqgh
She really wants a new pro. We can swing it but they are $$
She doesn't play games at all so it would purely be for work. It needs to be a laptop because due to some degenerative health issues she can't sit at her desk for long and it's easier for her to sit in bed with it.
Any brands that are best known for reliability and durability?
Just trying to pare down the list of things to be looking through. Want some alternatives to show her.
She'd mainly be using Adobe Creative Cloud
Lenovo
Asus depending on model
HP Omen maybe
Hi five laptop sibling. I've got the same kind and it's a real banger. Check out that Dragon Center app which throttles your performance and fans depending on that you are doing. Also check out the battery manager to prolong life.
I'm usually like five years behind PC gaming and that rig runs everything I've bought in steam sales really well.
Asus Zephyrus laptops have electric and heat issues? That is new to me. My household has two Zephyrus 3070 machines and they are both fine.
Be wary about seeing people talk about unreliability on the internet. You're only going to hear stories from people who have had problems, while the scores of people buying laptops with no issues just go about their day not talking about how good their laptops are.
The advice here will generally be the same as it always is. Set a budget, set a target for the type of machine you want (be the primary thing screen size, weight, etc). Then buy the best one you can find under those parameters.
I'm going to shill for MSI here and suggest you take a look at their "Stealth" line. They're powerful and incredibly light. It gets warm while gaming...but so does every laptop with that capability?
It's got a real nice suite of controls that lets you throttle performance based on what you need to do. So like, silent for just web browsing or work or full speed ahead for gaming (you'll need headphones).
I got mine from xoticPC and I was very happy with their service.
[Insert obligatory Matrix-y screensaver here...]
On a related note, why even have SD slots now? Lenovo could easily have fitted two MicroSD slots in the same space, dambit! It's quite hard to even find an actual SD card now; they're almost all microSDs, which are small, plus an adapter, to make them big.
Anyway, there's no need to waste NVME space on audiobooks, music and films 500GB of NVME is fine for OS, apps and games on a thin and light.
Looking at new laptops is kind of a pain. She likes the 17.3 models since this is more of a mobile desktop than laptop (she has a small portable model for work). Trying to navigate models with features is really a PITA. Feels like things you need to look for have at least doubled in the last 7 years.
1) Display
2) Keyboard
3) Cooling/Power
4) GPU
5) MUX switch
6) Web cam switch
7) Cost
And I'm sure I'm forgetting some things. It seems you can't really find one with everything want. Just the display can be challenging.
Is she playing games where fps are a factor? Even a 3060M is quite a heck of a lot more GPU than that, but they also dissipate a lot more heat and heat means whooshing.
Right now I'm looking at either an Alienware X17 refurbed or the Lenovo Legion 7. The Legion would be perfect in a 17.3, so it might take some convincing of my SO that the taller screen is pretty close. The Legion 5 comes with a 17.3 but is more plastic and seems like it may be discontinued as it's not mentioned with the other Lenovo 2022 updates.
While I think a 3060 would be fine for her, I'm leaning towards a 3070 for a bit more power since ideally she'll be running in "quiet" or "balanced" mode 99% of the time. From what I saw in multiple reviews, that should still get her 60 FPS in most modern games with high settings and isn't 50db+ of fan whining. 3080 seems like too much overkill and some models like the X17 then need super large power bricks.
I might just wait here if I can a couple months. While she doesn't do any CPU intensive stuff, the new Intel "big small' design might have some improvements on battery life. But then I suppose you're paying a premium since all the models are new and a 3070 might be overkill.
EDIT: Also the Max-Q stuff makes things fun. A 3060 non-maxq can beat a 3070 maxq version.
You'd want to run these on balanced most of the time anyways, otherwise you're going to be bouncing off the thermal and/or power limit often and you'll get overall less performance.
The one thing I can recommend is to get one with a CPU that can be undervolted/underclocked (so not an i5). It's the one thing missing on my new laptop that I miss from my old i7.