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chevkoch: Congrats on the new machine, sounds like a stellar deal.

Can I ask why those of you who buy gaming laptops do so instead of going with a desktop? Do you use them on the go often and/or is it the power efficiency? Since I'm always hearing that you get more bang for your money when opting for a desktop. Also asking because I want to get a new computer myself too.
What games do you plan on playing? I have both a gaming laptop and a desktop, but I mainly use my gaming laptop to play on the couch, connected to my TV. It takes up much less space than having my desktop in the living room. Also, use for traveling to family or work trips.

My laptop, which has a 4070 graphics card, has been able to handle every game I've thrown at it quite well, even the graphically intense ones..
Post edited Yesterday by Syphon72
Those sure are some letters and numbers.
Good for you.

Last december, I got a almost maxed out custom System76 Mira to replace my aging Thinkpad and christen my return to desktops now that I work remotely.

It cost me a lot more than what you paid, but I figure that rig will last me well over a decade (replacing defective parts as needed of course) and I can now provision a virtualized kubernetes cluster with kubespray in 12 minutes (used to take about 45 minutes on the thinkpad), a postgres patroni cluster in about a minute (used to take longer) and I can run all that plus a virtualized minio cluster and still do my other stuff (browsers, shell prompts, vs code, slack, etc) and it doesn't even register that all that is running in the background.

Also, my personal Rust project that used to take like at least 10-20 seconds to compile now does so in about 1-2 second.

I love it. Anybody else feel like sharing their materialistic acquisitions or are we done?
Post edited Yesterday by Magnitus
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Magnitus: I love it. Anybody else feel like sharing their materialistic acquisitions or are we done?
A while ago I bought the Blade Runner RPG Starter Set. Does that count?
Got it used, but in perfect condition. Fantastic game. I'm really impressed with how well they adapted the setting and themes into a functional, easy to learn and fun RPG. Highly recommended to anyone who is into Blade Runner and/or tabletop RPGs.
Post edited Yesterday by Breja
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chevkoch: Congrats on the new machine, sounds like a stellar deal.

Can I ask why those of you who buy gaming laptops do so instead of going with a desktop? Do you use them on the go often and/or is it the power efficiency? Since I'm always hearing that you get more bang for your money when opting for a desktop. Also asking because I want to get a new computer myself too.
I work shifts in another town, and rent a small one room apartment for the weeks when I am there. I don't want to take a tower, screen and peripherals back and forth every time, so the small footprint of a laptop is very handy for portability and space. If you are mainly gaming at home, I would go for a desktop. It's always cheaper for the same specs.
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BenKii: Well for me it's mostly because of my current living situation is very cramped. There is no room for a desktop even though I'd prefer one. So the laptop serves as a way to flip open and work on something then move to a different spot if other people need that spot for stuff.

They also don't pull as many Watts as a desktop so they're made a bit more efficiently. You also get a screen built into it so it saves on having to buy a separate monitor for your desktop. I guess you could say your trading some extra power with a desktop for mobility with a laptop.
That all makes totally sense. I'm planning a move and don't know what the living situation will be, so a laptop might still be the better option for me too.
Non-serious opinion:
* Display: Too big; try getting one 17 inches smaller. Also, the dimensions should not be multiples of 10, and the aspect ratio should be in lowest terms (it isn't).
* CPU: CPUs with odd numbers (3, 5, 7) should be avoided. A Core Ultra 6 processor would be a better choice. Also, better to get one with speed measured in GB instead of GHz; 1.40GB to 4.80GB should be fast enough.
* GPU: Any GPU with a number of digits equal to its first digit should be avoided. Also, the amount of memory (8) and the number after the GDDR (6) should be relatively prime; they aren't.
* RAM: Avoid power of 2 amounts of RAM
* SSD: The SSD capacity is messured in terabytes; that is a bad units. You need to get one whose capacity is measured in terahertz, instead. A 1THz SSD should be enough capacity.

In all seriousness, I'm looking for a new laptop myself, though my criteria are different. (In particular, it needs to be small and lightweight.)

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Magnitus: Also, my personal Rust project that used to take like at least 10-20 seconds to compile now does so in about 1-2 second.
I'm also working on a personal Rust project. Though, in my case, it's a game, and part of it is written in Lua. (mlua crate)
Post edited Yesterday by dtgreene
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Syphon72: What games do you plan on playing? I have both a gaming laptop and a desktop, but I mainly use my gaming laptop to play on the couch, connected to my TV. It takes up much less space than having my desktop in the living room. Also, use for traveling to family or work trips.

My laptop, which has a 4070 graphics card, has been able to handle every game I've thrown at it quite well, even the graphically intense ones..
As a first step towards a new computer I of course bought some games, haha. Looking forward to play Prey, Metro 2033, Disco Elysium, but also Alien Isolation. These might not be the most demanding games, but I'm on an ancient business laptop right now that can't handle newer stuff. FullHD will be a real upgrade for me and I'll be happy with that. That 4070 of yours is likely way beyond that already.

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Random_Coffee: I work shifts in another town, and rent a small one room apartment for the weeks when I am there. I don't want to take a tower, screen and peripherals back and forth every time, so the small footprint of a laptop is very handy for portability and space. If you are mainly gaming at home, I would go for a desktop. It's always cheaper for the same specs.
I think I'll keep mostly playing games at home, I've got my old laptop connected to a slightly bigger monitor right now. I kind of like the smaller form factor of laptops, and the power efficiency. But that will stop being so cool, once a game I want to play won't run well :)
Post edited Yesterday by chevkoch
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Syphon72: What games do you plan on playing? I have both a gaming laptop and a desktop, but I mainly use my gaming laptop to play on the couch, connected to my TV. It takes up much less space than having my desktop in the living room. Also, use for traveling to family or work trips.

My laptop, which has a 4070 graphics card, has been able to handle every game I've thrown at it quite well, even the graphically intense ones..
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chevkoch: )
My older laptop with a 3050 Ti can run all the games you listed at maximum settings, 1080p, and 60fps. It could probably handle them at higher resolution as well. At one point, I tested Vanquish at 4K, and it ran smoothly at 60fps.
Looks like a great find, hopefully it exceeds in all your performance criteria once you get to testing it! Best Buy does often have good open box deals, I bought this laptop open box for roughly $700 on Black Friday of 2023, and it has performed to my liking so far. Of course, I’m not running the newest of new games on ultra settings or anything to really benchmark it, but so far it has handled everything I threw at it without any hiccups.
Bruh that's a steal, congrats as most of other brands with same config costs 1000-1100$+. I'm also looking for a lap myself but living in 3rd world country smh :(
Post edited Yesterday by Lords3
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BenKii: Would love to know everyone's thoughts on it.

I was going to post what people's opinions were on sub $1000 computers today but then this deal showed up and felt too good to pass up. So, yeah, I'm kinda trying to validate my purchase too. See if people think I made a poor decision.
It's pretty good for the price. As for sub $1000 PC's, it depends on what you play. On the one extreme no amount of brute-forcing in the world will overcome incompetent game developers who could bring an RTX 5090 to its knees if they wanted just by making the worst optimised RT mandatory. On the other hand, a quick glance at the +2000 games I own, 99% will work just fine even on an 780M APU / 5 year old low-end GPU like a GTX 1660. 32GB RAM is a definitely recommended upgrade, not just for games but things like web browser bloat, 'everything wants to be an Electron app', streaming (on top of gaming) uses more, etc. 4TB SSD's have also come down in price and its definitely not worth paying the "Samsung Premium" unlike 5 years ago. Example.
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dtgreene: * CPU: CPUs with odd numbers (3, 5, 7) should be avoided. A Core Ultra 6 processor would be a better choice. Also, better to get one with speed measured in GB instead of GHz; 1.40GB to 4.80GB should be fast enough.
Don't you also have those quirks ?

You know what me won me over ultimately with my new build ?

48 GB's
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BenKii: It's an Alienware m16 R2 laptop that I recently got for $840 (before tax).

My current rig is a 7 year old OMEN laptop with an AMD RX580 GPU. It has served me well and no part on it has ever broke. I'd still be using it except 2 games I want to play refuse to even start. They are FF7: Rebirth and FF16. Apparently my old card is missing a component required required to run these games. I can still get quite a few new games to run 30 fps at 1080p at low settings so I would still be using it except for the fact I'd like to be able to play my most anticipated FF games.

I've been searching for a few months now on a new laptop and was trying to go for something under $1000 that'll run most games 60fps at high settings and last me at least 5 years. So does anyone have any thoughts on this Alienware computer I bought? Is it any good? Any experience with it? Or perhaps there's another sub $1000 computer that I should've looked at? Would love to know everyone's thoughts on it.

Here are the full specs of the computer I bought:
16.0" QHD+ (2560 x 1600, WQXGA+) 16:10, 240Hz 3ms, 300-nits, 100% sRGB, NVIDIA G-SYNC + Advanced Optimus, Anti-glare, IPS Display
Intel Core Ultra 7 processor 155H (24MB cache, 16 cores, 1.40 to 4.80 GHz P-Core)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, 8 GB GDDR6
16GB, 2x8GB, DDR5, 5600 MT/s
1TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD
I hate being in the UK, we don't get our prices converted to match the value of the pound, that same laptop is £1.4k here ($1700)...Even after tax you got a sweet deal.
Post edited 13 hours ago by botan9386
Congrats my friend! Don't forget to stress test your new computer, try with games like DOOM I & II, Quake, Deus Ex, Hitman Codename 47, Age of Empire 2 (for processing power) and Call of Duty 4.