What's the best 'Gaming Laptop'

Schnozz · March 2017

Hi All,

I'm trying to find out the best 'Gaming Laptop' for a family member, but after trawling through PC Advisor and Youtube Reviews etc, I'm starting to find that it's not easy. I have an old Laptop myself and you were just looking for the best 'All-Rounder' back then, but there's so many specialisms now.

These are some of the Models that are coming up:

Razer Blade
MSI GS36VR
Alienware 17
Asus RoG G752VM

Lots of variations of each etc and it's surprising to see that it's easy to go North of £2k!!

I have a couple of friends that build PCs, but I have difficulty translating them at times and I'm uncertain about trying to use their advice for my cousin.

Is there an obvious Desktop option, or shall I keep on with the Laptops?

RedRabbit · March 2017

Unless a laptop is a must then a desktop will always get you more gaming performance per £ and has the benefit of being upgradable.

Without knowing your budget or what type of games are being played it's hard to make any real recommendations. However, regardless of form factor I'd be looking at either an i5 or i7 processor, at least 16gb of ram and plenty of storage with an ssd for the operating system and a HDD for data and games. The graphics card is the harder part to recommend without more details but, without getting into overclocking or multucard setups, the nvidea gtx 1080 is pretty much king at the moment. If this stretches the budget you can go for a 1070 or 1060 (there's also a 1050 but I'm not sure the performance is great) or go for an older high performance card. There's also AMD to consider but most laptops at least come with nvidea.

In terms of the brands mentioned, I've got an MSI laptop that I'm happy with. Great build quality, pretty fast and okay for less demanding games (skyrim remaster mainly). Only downside is that it's not got a great battery life - about 2 hours - but i suspect this will be similar for most gaming laptops.

No experience of the other brands though i know the Razer Blade is well regarded though you'll have to be careful which model you're looking at as they've reused the name a lot.

Axe_meister · March 2017

As above but what kind of monitor will they be using? If it's only a 1080p running at 60mhz refresh there is no point spending on a 1080 or 1070.
Save your money and get an Amd RX480 or RX470, even the GTX 1050Ti will be good enough for most games at 1080p
As for gaming laptops, they will always be a compromise, too big to lug around and not quite powerful enough

fretmeister · March 2017

https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-messiah-1080-15-6-gtx-1080-gaming-laptop.html?category_id=508

up the spec from there.

Axe_meister · March 2017

That laptop has a GTX 1080 but only a 1080p screen. Seems a better a bit of a waste unless you are driving and external 1440p screen then you might as well get a desktop

StanleyAccrington · March 2017

For what it's worth. All I know is you probs need an all singing and all dancing desktop for flight sims or car racing games....but only a half decent laptop (and Windows 10) for World of Tanks.

boogieman · March 2017

I know nothing about computers but can pass this on: my son is massively into gaming (he's borderline autistic and it's pretty much all he does). He bought an Alienware laptop that cost a huge amount of money. Six weeks later he sold it to his sister's boyfriend and bought a desktop, which was apparently better spec'd and cost about half the money. He's had it for two years now and has only upgraded the graphics card. I think that should tell you all you need to know.

fretmeister · March 2017

My Chillblast desktop was about £1600 and so far, can play everything I want without breaking sweat - including ED.

I'd have to upgrade the graphics if I wanted a VR headset, but I don't.

Anyway - for PC games for me, it's all about ED and..... Theme Hospital!

Axe_meister · March 2017

You can play ED with a 750Ti not exactly a taxing game

Bidley · March 2017

As above, desktop will give you much better performance p/£.

Chillblast is a decent option, although you will pay a little premium for pre-built systems. Is a self-build an option?

Also you don't really need to splash out on the 10-series Nvidia cards just yet. A used GTX970 will get you great performance. Same with CPU - an overclocked i5 will give you good performance, the extra outlay on an i7 isn't essential.

Myranda · March 2017

The cheapest gaming laptops are still expensive... so maybe consider a desktop and a cheapy lightweight laptop...

Otherwise... what are the family member's requirements? Is it going to be the primary gaming device, will it be carried around all the time, do they only play minecraft? etc.

ThePrettyDamned · March 2017

I'd agree with pretty much everything above. Don't overgun your card for your screen - I used a GTX960 in an Alienware X51 R3, which is a sort of small tower computer, looks about the size of an xbox. This is hooked up to a 2K monitor, but I play games at 1080p - Doom runs really great on this set up, which is considered pretty modest by today's standards for graphics cards. I think a GTX 1050ti is a better card for 1080p than the older GTX 960 so if you're going HD you won't need the 1070 or 1080 at all. That's more for 2K and 4K stuff.

I picked up my computer for a stonking good price, second hand (technically - it was a prize in a competition that wasn't wanted so it had only been used for a week), and you wouldn't get a laptop anywhere near this performance for less than £1,300.

If you did go laptop, make sure you get a solid state hard drive with at least 256gb storage for a couple of main apps and the OS. You could fit a game on it as well if you wanted, although I run mine from the platter drive. Having an SSD makes everything SO MUCH BETTER. Everything is a bit snappier and less frustrating.

My tower was under £700 with a John Lewis 3 year warranty. I paid about £400 for the monitor, but that's because it's a wide gamut photo editing 2k screen. A brilliant 1080p gaming monitor could be half that. So that's a very good rig at under 1k with solid warranty.

Being a small format computer, upgrades are much more limited than a full size tower but apparently the power supply gives enough juice for a gtx 1060 if it's a smaller card (so it physically fits) and the Pci-e ssd inside is in an m.2 slot which means it's upgradeable I think. I have a feeling it can take 32gb of ram too, but 16gb is enough for me mostly (so long as I remember to clear Lightroom's cache once in a while).

It doesn't get hot either. It gets mildly warm when playing doom on a long session, but the power supply is external which means one source of heat is kept away from other components. I'll probably take it into a shop in the summer to be cleaned out to help it's chances of a long life but other than that it seems really solid.

Bidley · March 2017

The GTX1080 won't even run 4k at 60fps... and if you're spending that sort of money you'll want to be above 60fps. Depends what you're looking for I suppose.

fretmeister · March 2017

I have 2 screens.

A halfway good Samsung, and a terrible and fuzzy old LG Monitor / TV thing.

When I'm working the LG pretty much just does Netflix! The quality is terrible for excel use. I really must replace it.

Bidley · March 2017

I recently got myself a Benq 144hz monitor as my main monitor. Once you play at 100+fps, nothing seems the same.

Axe_meister · March 2017

But if you only have a 60hz monitor there is no point in having a graphics card that pushes 100fps.
As long as you get a constant 60fps you are good.
Pretty much any card over £160 will do that

Bidley · March 2017

Axe_meister said:

But if you only have a 60hz monitor there is no point in having a graphics card that pushes 100fps.
As long as you get a constant 60fps you are good.
Pretty much any card over £160 will do that

Yup, it's like what I was saying earlier, if you're looking for a pretty 'standard' gaming setup, you don't need the latest and greatest components.

Schnozz · March 2017

This is great - I don't fully understand the 2K/4K thing, but I'm guessing this is related to VR?

It's my cousins main thing, so I would say £2K or under (no other hobbies) and she wants to play 'The Witcher' and something called 'Bannerlord', which I can't find.

I know a couple of guys that can Self-Build, but I just need to know where to start with that one, but this Chillblast stuff is interesting too.

Bidley · March 2017

2K/4K are screen resolutions, higher than 1080p and 1440p.

A budget of £2k is pretty good. You can afford some nice components with that. Have a look at the mobo/cpu/ram bundles on Overclockers UK, they're usually decent value. They do full systems there too.

Myranda · March 2017

Bidley said:

2K/4K are screen resolutions, higher than 1080p and 1440p.

A budget of £2k is pretty good. You can afford some nice components with that. Have a look at the mobo/cpu/ram bundles on Overclockers UK, they're usually decent value. They do full systems there too.

What resolution do you call 2K? I thought it was the lazy way of saying 2560 x 1440 (which as far as I'm concerned should just be called 1440p to keep with resolutions people know, and by the same logic 4K should be 2160p... but hey)

Bidley · March 2017

Myranda said:

Bidley said:

2K/4K are screen resolutions, higher than 1080p and 1440p.

A budget of £2k is pretty good. You can afford some nice components with that. Have a look at the mobo/cpu/ram bundles on Overclockers UK, they're usually decent value. They do full systems there too.

What resolution do you call 2K? I thought it was the lazy way of saying 2560 x 1440 (which as far as I'm concerned should just be called 1440p to keep with resolutions people know, and by the same logic 4K should be 2160p... but hey)

Sorry, you're right on all fronts. My brain isn't working terribly well today.

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What's the best 'Gaming Laptop'

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