Anyone got recommendations for good gaming laptops?

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No. At $700-800, any "gaming" laptop will be poorly built with missing features and lackluster performance. At that price range, It's a much better idea to pick up a laptop that has a powerful iGPU, such as a laptop using a ryzen 4000 mobile processor. $800 will buy you a pretty decent business class machine with a ryzen APU and far better battery life, and likely better build quality, then a $800 gaming laptop.
 
No. At $700-800, any "gaming" laptop will be poorly built with missing features and lackluster performance. At that price range, It's a much better idea to pick up a laptop that has a powerful iGPU, such as a laptop using a ryzen 4000 mobile processor. $800 will buy you a pretty decent business class machine with a ryzen APU and far better battery life, and likely better build quality, then a $800 gaming laptop.

It will also burn out within 2 years as the CPU fucks off and dies. The biggest problem any laptop has is heat and dealing with programs optimized for desktops. Video Games can put a major load on any system of hardware and in a laptop everything is crowded together. Picture a gym. A desktop is a big warehouse of a place with 20 foot ceilings. Lots of space. A laptop is the gym in an apartment building basement. Sure everyone can exercise in both, but you know which one you would prefer doing it in.

When it comes to gaming laptops you are paying more for an inferior experience. Always. There are no exceptions. If you see a laptop for $1,499 buy it knowing full well the desktop being sold $749 is just as good and possibly slightly better. Also do it knowing the desktop for half the price will last twice as long. Three times as long if you upgrade individual components. There really needs to be a compelling reason for getting one. Maybe you travel alot and need to carry your rig with you. Military guys are a big market for gaming laptops for this reason. But if you are just getting it for home, buy a desktop.
 
Not to hijack the thread but I figure we don't need multiple laptop posts.

What's a decent laptop in the 500-700 range? Just wanting it for school so a webcam for proctor exams, flash, etc. Basic bitch stuff.

Liking those 2 in 1 laptop/tablet dudes but I don't know nothin

I always liked Microsofts surface tablet/laptop hybrid. It does all of that and if you are looking for something for school it's perfect. And since it uses Windows OS it plays nice with others unlike Apple products. A basic bitch surface starts at 400 bucks
 
I always liked Microsofts surface tablet/laptop hybrid. It does all of that and if you are looking for something for school it's perfect. And since it uses Windows OS it plays nice with others unlike Apple products. A basic bitch surface starts at 400 bucks
I'm torn between a Lenovo ThinkPad, which I found on sale for 600 and has great reviews. Or the 2 in 1 version, which is 800 but has that tablet aspect I like.

Or the basic bitch Microsoft surface, which is about 500 but you have to buy the keyboard separately and those are about 150.
 
It really depends on what games you want to play to be honest.
Laptop is good if you're looking to play low power indie games, in which case just get something reliable, i have a $400 laptop from 7 years ago which works for me cuz all i play on it is emulators and movies.
3rd option. consider a tablet, if you r just looking to be entertained while away from the main PC they r pretty versatile and way less bulky.
 
I'm torn between a Lenovo ThinkPad, which I found on sale for 600 and has great reviews. Or the 2 in 1 version, which is 800 but has that tablet aspect I like.

Or the basic bitch Microsoft surface, which is about 500 but you have to buy the keyboard separately and those are about 150.

If you are looking for something solid to use at school the surface is the better of the two simply by nature of design and OS. It was designed for the "professional" setting so it's got all the USB , LAN line and operating accoutrements already. And it's small. Which means it's easy to carry around.
 
If you are looking for something solid to use at school the surface is the better of the two simply by nature of design and OS. It was designed for the "professional" setting so it's got all the USB , LAN line and operating accoutrements already. And it's small. Which means it's easy to carry around.
Huh. Everyone else has said the opposite and that Lenovo is more designed for school and work.

Well, I'm conflicted again.

Thank you! I suck at these decisions
 
I bought my gaming laptop at discount for $800, its a Lenovo Y700, the non-touch version. Came with a GTX 960M 4GB and was definitly a upgrade over my previous laptop, which was a GT 820M. I was a noob and actually fried the previous laptop because I didn't know you supposed to take temperature into account. Anyways have upgraded the harddrive and ram over the years and still works good for playing games at Medium settings and GeForce Now is a life extender for this computer.
 
Okay, you all convinced me to just save up and upgrade the desktop for any major game playing. However I still want a cheaper laptop that will still be able to play less graphically intensive, non-AAA games as well as 3D modelling for use on a 3D Printer. Would this be good enough to play indie games, emulators, and so on? If what I found from a quick google search is accurate it can be upgraded to have 12 GB of RAM.
 
Okay, you all convinced me to just save up and upgrade the desktop for any major game playing. However I still want a cheaper laptop that will still be able to play less graphically intensive, non-AAA games as well as 3D modelling for use on a 3D Printer. Would this be good enough to play indie games, emulators, and so on? If what I found from a quick google search is accurate it can be upgraded to have 12 GB of RAM.

Sure, it's good, looks like it can play the newest Doom at 30+ fps on 720p/low so modern games work. The overall TDP of CPU/GPU is low so it shouldn't run that hot, the base clock is what you expect from an ultra portable CPU(2ghz) but it boosts to 3.6ghz.

@MetalParakeet buy the laptop above and use the leftover money to buy weed.
 
Okay, you all convinced me to just save up and upgrade the desktop for any major game playing. However I still want a cheaper laptop that will still be able to play less graphically intensive, non-AAA games as well as 3D modelling for use on a 3D Printer. Would this be good enough to play indie games, emulators, and so on? If what I found from a quick google search is accurate it can be upgraded to have 12 GB of RAM.
yeah
 
Not to hijack the thread but I figure we don't need multiple laptop posts.

What's a decent laptop in the 500-700 range? Just wanting it for school so a webcam for proctor exams, flash, etc. Basic bitch stuff.

Liking those 2 in 1 laptop/tablet dudes but I don't know nothin
If its basic stuff like that honestly just look at ebay or similar sites for slightly older used business grade machines. You will get much better value price/performance wise and the build quality and upgrade ability will almost certainly be superior to any consumer laptop you can buy.
 
Ok, maybe I should have Explained why I wanted a laptop in more detail.

I have a desktop, which is upgraded to be able to play games somewhat okay. Problem is that the motherboard an CPU is originally from an old pre-built HP desktop. While it was the top of the line the store sold when it was new, that had to have been 10 years ago. The fucking CPU is a dual core, and AMD A10-5700 to be specific. The GPU is a GTX 960 I got a few years ago.

I intend to upgrade it as soon as possible but it will require replacing everything but the GPU, HDD, SSD, and case. The new Ryzen I want would of course require a new cooling system and motherboard. The new motherboard being new means the old 24 GB of RAM I have is useless because it's DDR3, while the new MB would require DDR4. While it has an upgraded power supply in it already, it's only a 400W. I've priced some stuff on PCPartPicker.com and most builds are at or over $800 to get what I want.

On top of all that I share the computer with me little brother and I would like to be able to play games when he is on the desktop.

Really I what wanted was to get a laptop that is better than the current desktop but cheaper than upgrading as a stopgap until I get the money and time to do the upgrading I want to the desktop.

tl;dr I know a laptop is a shit option for gaming, but it's intended to be secondary to an eventual desktop improvement.

Spending your $800 on a laptop that is marginally adequate for gaming is worse than spending that same $800 on parts that will make your desktop fly.

Alternatively just build a whole new PC for $800 instead of replacing literally everything on the old one. $800 isn't quite top end or even mid range but you can find shit for cheap on Newegg, pick up some other less critical stuff used or just don't buy it until you can afford it. For example buy 8 GB ram and just the system SSD now, then another stick of 8 GB and a few secondary HDDs later when your paycheck comes in.

For cooling a simple 212 EVO and a well plotted case fan setup is fine unless you're overclocking which you usually don't need to do nowadays.
 
I've kinda wanted to get a Surface tablet to satisfy my wanting an Ultrabook someday. If it's really proper Windows and runs whatever you'd expect on a low-end x64 machine, but has the usability of a tablet, that sounds perfect for me.
 
I've kinda wanted to get a Surface tablet to satisfy my wanting an Ultrabook someday. If it's really proper Windows and runs whatever you'd expect on a low-end x64 machine, but has the usability of a tablet, that sounds perfect for me.

They use the normal Core iX line of mobile processors, just the ultra low voltage variant so the base clock is low, like under 2ghz. It it can boost to frequencies found in normal laptops and even desktops but how high it goes and for how long depends on current cpu temperature and current cpu temperature will be affected by ambient temperature.

If you're wanting the best quality new gaming laptop the come from ODM (original Design Manfacturer) like Clevo and resold under different name you're not going to pay under 1000 USD for that, unless you want an intel integrated GPU.

Never buy a high-end gaming laptop, low end is where it's at. If the desktop version of the laptop GPU only needs power from the pcie slot then that's good. If a GPU needs more than that it exceeds 75W which is around twice the amount of power needed by a laptop CPU and all of that is going to come out as heat. Partially through the keyboard.
 
i bought a dell g3 i5 for 800 from microcenter on clearence. the keyboard would hit the screen when you closed it, so it scratched and dented it. Id be stuck with a broken laptop if i didnt have the warranty. and i only had the warranty because my old old dell 2in1 laptop had ghosting burn-in issues like crazy that dell refused to fix unless you had a warranty. it was a problem with the display used, everyone had the same problem.

the g3 was being refreshed with new parts, so they gave me an older g5 i7 replacement which retailed for $1400 ( so the warranty paid for itself) it runs hot and loud or Hotter and quiet. i rarely use it because its fucking loud and hot.

so dont buy dell.
 
It will also burn out within 2 years as the CPU fucks off and dies. The biggest problem any laptop has is heat and dealing with programs optimized for desktops. Video Games can put a major load on any system of hardware and in a laptop everything is crowded together. Picture a gym. A desktop is a big warehouse of a place with 20 foot ceilings. Lots of space. A laptop is the gym in an apartment building basement. Sure everyone can exercise in both, but you know which one you would prefer doing it in.

When it comes to gaming laptops you are paying more for an inferior experience. Always. There are no exceptions. If you see a laptop for $1,499 buy it knowing full well the desktop being sold $749 is just as good and possibly slightly better. Also do it knowing the desktop for half the price will last twice as long. Three times as long if you upgrade individual components. There really needs to be a compelling reason for getting one. Maybe you travel alot and need to carry your rig with you. Military guys are a big market for gaming laptops for this reason. But if you are just getting it for home, buy a desktop.
The fuck are you taking about? The ONLY time I've ever seen that happen was on the infamous Nvidia mobile GPUs from 2006 that used inferior lead-free solder, and those could often be fixed with the oven trick. The silicon doesnt "burn out". Modern laptops dont do that, unless you are like a customer of mine that chainsmoked next to her computers for 6 years and literally never cleaned the PC, and even then the silicon itself was fine, it was the heatsink brace that warped.

A system with a 15 watt CPU+iGPU isnt going to cook itself alive in 2 years unless you are a total fucking moron who uses it in a convection oven.
Okay, you all convinced me to just save up and upgrade the desktop for any major game playing. However I still want a cheaper laptop that will still be able to play less graphically intensive, non-AAA games as well as 3D modelling for use on a 3D Printer. Would this be good enough to play indie games, emulators, and so on? If what I found from a quick google search is accurate it can be upgraded to have 12 GB of RAM.
I mean, you DO know that RAM doesnt mean performance, right?

That would work, but its a lower end consumer model using a 2 generation old ryzen chip. Those chips had terrible driver support and worse battery life.

For that price, you could easily pick up a used workstation laptop off Ebay that will obliterate the ideapad, such as this dell precision for $349:

Or you could go with a used business notebook, such as a dell latitude, HP probook, or lenovo T series, usually 2-3 years old, for under $400 and build quality that, again, will obliterate that ideapad. As a bonus, those business laptops are easy to repair and parts are cheap, so if something goes wrong you can fix them.
so dont buy dell.
Let me help you with that: Dont buy consumer models. Period. Doesnt matter if its dell, HP, lenovo, acer, asus, MSI, clevo, or some chinese ripoff. The consumers models ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS suck. They can barely be repaired, they are a PITA to upgrade, if its even possible,a nd parts are impossible to find. Their build quality is ALWAYS dumpster fire level.

If you need a laptop for personal use, buy a used business notebook, they are built FAR better, even the cheap ones, and can easily be repaired if they break. A 2-3 year old business notebook is usually cheaper then a brand new consumer laptop. If you need GPU performance, get a workstation laptop used, not a gaming laptop. Yes the workstation is heavier and the drivers are not tuned for gaming, but the cooling system in these beasts can take heavy use and are usually quieter then the "ZOMG THIN" gaming laptops. And again, are built to be repaired and upgraded, not thrown away.
 
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