What's the best 'Gaming Laptop'

Myranda

crunchman said:

Axe_meister said:

The great thing with a PC is that pretty much everything is compatible with everything.
But you do have think hard about what you need.
I built a PC 3 years go (i7 4770S) but cheapes out on the Motherboard which doesn't have enough USB slots so have to have extenders/Hubs.

As long as you get a decent motherboard you should be fine.  Just don't go skimping and get a £40 motherboard and make sure it supports SLI (or Crossfire for an AMD graphics card) if your graphics card needs it.

From what Ebay says right now, all motherboards cost too much. Source: someone who's motherboard just died... 

Schnozz

Looking through Chillblast's Desktop PCs, it will cost pretty much the same for the Laptop equivalent, once you include the Peripherals. I guess it's a choice of Performance vs Portability and not so much Cost.

xinkai

Schnozz said:

xinkai said:

User of the latest Razer Blade here. As a uni student, i can confidently say that burglary really isn't that big of a problem provided your cousin is responsible enough. (i.e. lock the room proper when going out, not leaving the laptop just anywhere on campus, sensible stuff really)

Performance wise it's great. I'm not a gamer but as an engineer and a side hobby of photography, i need the graphics power to run CAD software and Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop. Also need the computing power to do programming. Laptop never really gave me problems on those fronts, and can handle running CAD duplicated on a TV. Perhaps not the most intensive usage of the laptop's capabilities, but i'm confident it will run higher loads perfectly fine.

Aside from screen and performance etc, i think keyboard, trackpad, wifi module, and other small things are important considerations. Razer has great build quality and i feel that the small details are worth the premium.

Oh yea, i use the 1080 non-touchscreen version because it's cheaper and supposedly has better colour accuracy than the touchscreen version. I came from using a 3K screen (HP x360 Spectre) and haven't missed the higher resolution. To me, not much of a difference in resolution, but a big difference in colour representation.

Excellent - Do you experience any thermal/noise problems? And if so, have you tried some of the tricks to reduce fan usage etc?

Haven't experienced any problems with heat, but the fan does run pretty loud when i use Lightroom and Photoshop concurrently. I don't do anything about it - i take it that the fan is supposed to be working that loud to avoid overheating, so it doesn't make sense to me to cap its usage. 

The fan outlets are on the underside of the laptop though. For this reason, there are two long and thick rubber strips running the length of the laptop on the bottom to prop the laptop up. However, when i'm at home, i prop it up further with laptop cooling balls or whatever they're called. Not sure if it really helps much, but just gives me a peace of mind.

xinkai

Schnozz said:

xinkai said:

User of the latest Razer Blade here. As a uni student, i can confidently say that burglary really isn't that big of a problem provided your cousin is responsible enough. (i.e. lock the room proper when going out, not leaving the laptop just anywhere on campus, sensible stuff really)

Performance wise it's great. I'm not a gamer but as an engineer and a side hobby of photography, i need the graphics power to run CAD software and Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop. Also need the computing power to do programming. Laptop never really gave me problems on those fronts, and can handle running CAD duplicated on a TV. Perhaps not the most intensive usage of the laptop's capabilities, but i'm confident it will run higher loads perfectly fine.

Aside from screen and performance etc, i think keyboard, trackpad, wifi module, and other small things are important considerations. Razer has great build quality and i feel that the small details are worth the premium.

Oh yea, i use the 1080 non-touchscreen version because it's cheaper and supposedly has better colour accuracy than the touchscreen version. I came from using a 3K screen (HP x360 Spectre) and haven't missed the higher resolution. To me, not much of a difference in resolution, but a big difference in colour representation.

Excellent - Do you experience any thermal/noise problems? And if so, have you tried some of the tricks to reduce fan usage etc?

Haven't experienced any problems with heat, but the fan does run pretty loud when i use Lightroom and Photoshop concurrently. I don't do anything about it - i take it that the fan is supposed to be working that loud to avoid overheating, so it doesn't make sense to me to cap its usage. 

The fan outlets are on the underside of the laptop though. For this reason, there are two long and thick rubber strips running the length of the laptop on the bottom to prop the laptop up. However, when i'm at home, i prop it up further with laptop cooling balls or whatever they're called. Not sure if it really helps much, but just gives me a peace of mind.