As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Gaming lappy or build pc
Nezer
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello friends. I write a lot, and use a bunch of productivity software for a living. But I also game, a lot. I need a new gaming lappy, or perhaps build a PC. My old laptop ran it's course -well, my wife busted the hdd and some other parts, long story.
I was thinking of getting another laptop that can handle most gaming (it needs to be strong, but it doesn't have to play big budget multiplatform action games or benchmark games). I mostly play pc style games and older rpgs and strategy/sim style stuff. Yadda yadda.
Has anyone seen a sub-1000 buck laptop that can do most of the dirtywork, but isn't bloated with all kinds of nonsense-ware or overpriced like alien. Best Buy seems like their stuff is a little high priced and bloated to the gills, same with Alien.
I bought a custom laptop from Sager once, was a beast, but I returned it because it was too expensive and I felt guilty.
I could also build a PC and keep it in the other room. With all these streaming abilities coming out, it might work out. Probably be cheaper?
I dunno. Thanks in advance for muddling through this unclear line of advice solicitation.
I was thinking of getting another laptop that can handle most gaming (it needs to be strong, but it doesn't have to play big budget multiplatform action games or benchmark games). I mostly play pc style games and older rpgs and strategy/sim style stuff. Yadda yadda.
Has anyone seen a sub-1000 buck laptop that can do most of the dirtywork, but isn't bloated with all kinds of nonsense-ware or overpriced like alien. Best Buy seems like their stuff is a little high priced and bloated to the gills, same with Alien.
I bought a custom laptop from Sager once, was a beast, but I returned it because it was too expensive and I felt guilty.
I could also build a PC and keep it in the other room. With all these streaming abilities coming out, it might work out. Probably be cheaper?
I dunno. Thanks in advance for muddling through this unclear line of advice solicitation.
+1
Posts
If you have a few minutes, check out the Tech Forum, there's a thread there for building PCs.
If you need mobility, laptop is the answer.
If you don't need mobility, laptops are silly overpriced thing.
You might be better off slapping $500-600 at a pretty decent PC and taking another $500 and getting a slightly lower end laptop. If all you need is office and some other office like tools, the $400 laptop is pretty decent for that since it doesn't need to be BITCHING AWESOME GRAPHICS CHIPSETS to do it.
You're paying a premium for the video card in laptops, usually.
Unless of course these productivity tools are things like... photoshop.
Civ 5 on low settings should still run on them.
Why you ask? Because our gaming setup is no longer mobile. Not with dual monitors, a nice keyboard, a nice mouse, a hard mousepad, and a nice set of over ear headphones (or speakers), all of which are big upgrades for gaming purposes, but way too much stuff to be portable.
As for tablet over laptop for our mobile needs, we just deal, as form factor wins out like 90% of the time. Heck, I traveled to China for 2.5 weeks, with an 8" Windows 8.1 tablet, as my only computer, and never thought I needed a keyboard or something bigger.
Steam Me
Intel Core i7-4710HQ 2.5GHz (Turbo to 3.5 GHz).
1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive. 16GB RAM.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 2GB GDDR5 with Optimus Technology.
I tried searching on amazon for it's name, but for some reason it just appears as "Asus Rog 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop, Black"
Asus Rog 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop, Black
But yeah, if you buy a gaming laptop, you must keep in mind that you won't get the best performance (specially for 1000 USD), but you get mobility, in this case, it's the 15 inch version, which is still not as heavy as a 17 inch laptop.
I bought a gaming laptop because I traveled a lot for around 3 years while I studied my master degree; and I was planning on continuing my studies, so I bought another laptop.
But if you aren't really going to travel a lot or leave your city for large periods of time, desktop + tablet/laptop is a better option.
When people talk about mobility, they usually mean the higher-level stuff, going on trips, taking it to school and gaming between classes, taking it to work and playing at lunch, whatever. But over the last five years, the biggest mobility-based perk by far for me has been not being tied to one room in my main living space. Want to game in the living room? Bring the laptop in and HDMI that sucker up to the TV. Someone wants to watch TV? Take it in the office and game there. Hell, take it outside and game in the shade. (YMMV due to the glare from the Sun. And bees. Studies show that bees are jealous of people with mobile gaming capabilities.) Incapacitated for a week or two due to injury or illness? Plonk the thing on the nightstand and game in bed. (That last one saved my sanity a few times while recovering from surgeries.) Having your main gaming machine can change the way you think about where you game in ways you didn't imagine.
Unfortunately, the 5-year-old laptop effectively hit hit its end of life, as the graphics card isn't DX compatible. We've since moved to a house, and I have my own office with a nice hefty desk, but I'm still considering going for another laptop, even with the added premium, the lack of ugradability, etc. I'm not a complete convert or anything, but after five years of taking it wherever to do whatever, the idea of being tied down to a desktop isn't something I'm looking forward to revisiting. Kinda weird, probably, but there you go.
I'm kind of interested in what Alienware is doing with that not-base station thing that plugs into your laptop and allows you to throw a desktop graphics card into it, but their solution is all proprietary, so that's dumb. I think someone else is working on a maybe less proprietary version. I'm sure they'll both be expensive, and neither solution will be portable, but I do like the idea of being able to potentially beef up the hardware down the line.
And with all that beefy hardware comes beefier cases. And beefier batteries. Etc. The battery life is pretty trash, so resign yourself to be near an outlet at all times. And they're heavy. Don't think you're going to be taking a sleek little number casually slung over your shoulder everywhere you go.
I would recommend spending the money on a desktop computer and relying on your tablet for whatever you would need a laptop for. Grab a keyboard for it and you're set. I think owning a laptop + tablet is overkill. In practice, you're using them both for the exact same thing.
And if you acquaint yourself with building/upgrading PCs, you save a ton of money over the years. The PC I use now is 10 years old and is only starting to show sluggishness with the newest games. Mind you, I've upgraded here and there over the years, but much better to spend $200/year on average to keep a PC on its toes than a brand new laptop all the time.
A gaming laptop is an incredibly niche product. The only reason to spend that kind of money on a laptop (especially one that is actually not all that mobile) is if you have some sort of situation where you travel quite often and don't get to go home to the same place every day to spend your free time. In that case, your laptop is basically your home computer.
Otherwise, unless you have the money to burn, it's always cheaper and better to get something that is good enough your work while spending the rest of the money on your desktop.
A gaming lappy no matter the cost and weight will lag behind a desktop meaning over time it will not e able to play the latest and greatest faster and there is no upgrade path. What you buy is what you get.
They are generally heavier, hotter, and have no battery to speak of. a pc is the better way.
the bottom line is that you can get a good-to-excellent, very forward compatible gaming PC for the same money that you'd pay for a decent-ish gaming laptop that'll be at the end of its useful life in 3-4 years. There's hardly any life situation that makes that a good deal
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I'm my circumstances, I have a nice PC that I do most of my gaming at, but a lot of times I want to be in another room and play some games. A lot of time I like having the option of using my gaming laptop while I wait for my carpool to gather, or during lunch breaks. When I go on holidays once or twice a year its nice to have to take with me if I want to pop on a game or into a community. That said, for most of my uses listed above my PC does them better and my laptop choices are not made with gaming exclusively in mind. Especially if you are in a work or school situation where you have downtime but not the ability to get home to your PC a gaming-capable laptop makes a lot of sense.
I'm now running a Surface Pro 3 for the ability to draw, do work projects, and run a few game applications like Minecraft, Roll20 and Hearthstone. Its not a gaming machine, but it can run some games. Would I pay bonkers dollars for a super-gaming laptop? If I were a full time student and also had the cash, definitely. Now-a-days? Nah. Surface is probably more expensive than most are looking for, but it does the photoshop/drawing tasks i need for work so it was a good pick.
I'd recommend finding a mobility machine that does what you need and also can run some games, rather than putting the games first.
Agreed. I feel the OP's needs are very modest:
"I was thinking of getting another laptop that can handle most gaming (it needs to be strong, but it doesn't have to play big budget multiplatform action games or benchmark games). I mostly play pc style games and older rpgs and strategy/sim style stuff."
That seems like a low bar, and for that level of gaming most of the $600-800 laptops that show up on Slickdeals or Fatwallet should suffice as long as they have an AMD or Nvidia graphics chipset. I got something in that range 4 years ago and it played the Dead Space and Mass Effect games fine. If he never plays shooters then that could probably go down to the $400-600 range and might not even need a fancy non-Intel GPU.
Regarding bulk issues I guess my laptop is inconvenient to take it with me to the grocery store, but it's mobile enough to take with me if I'm gone for a weekend or longer -- generally once or twice a month. And there are tons of games on Steam for budget-minded gamers without top of the line PCs.
I think a problem here is that the OP isn't thinking about $1200, he's looking at sub-$1000. At $900 base, if he goes with a 2-piece solution I feel he might be significantly compromising at least one of the machines, probably both. Mileage varies, but personally I would not skimp on the working computer; being unhappy working on a slow computer is a lot like being unhappy with work, which is a bad thing.
They make special LAN party cases in various sizes (including full sized ones) with handles built right in, works really good for this kind of stuff. If you go with a cheaper case, mounting a handle isn't too hard if the top panel is sturdy and doesn't have a bunch of stuff on/through it, as long as you make extra double sure to get all the metal shavings and dust out before you start installing components.
This makes complete sense. But what about the following situation: 9+ month deployment to Afghanistan, no TV situation, mediocre internet (unreliable at best), rather high isolation factor and diminishing resources due to the overall drawdown in progress? I'm thinking a capable gaming laptop might make sense as a self-contained solution that is at least notionally portable, but folks in this thread seem to be pretty knowledgeable and may be aware of something I'm overlooking.
That depends on your destination. I did a lot of business trips last year, and in my experience, the ports on hotel TVs are starting to get locked down.