In need of advice before buying a custom laptop

[Irish_PXzyan]

Well lads,

I just need some advice on what the final specs will be for my custom built laptop.

I'm buying a Schenker XMG A504.
http://mysn.co.uk/xmg-a504

I have a budget or 1000 Euro and don't want to spend anymore than that!

I can either buy an Intel I5 4310m 2.7Ghz dual core with HT + 500GB 7200RPM HDD + 120GB SSD Samsung EVO.

Or

Intel I7 4700MQ 2.4Ghz quad core with HT + 500GB SSHD Seagate 5400RPM.


I'll be using this laptop for gaming + Multimedia for the next 3 years so I need to make sure I choose wisely.

What do you guys think I should do??

I'll also get 4Gb RAM and allow myself to buy another 4gb ram later down the line.

Any suggestions are welcome!

 

[zsolt_93]

Depends... If you want it more as of an ultrebook or a secondary go for the i3+SSD. If you go with a decent GPU like the 860 for some everyday use then the i7. SSHD is not that bad, and you can always change it later, while CPU is harder to change, and you need to trust the seller not to send you a dud.

 

[Irish_PXzyan]

I want to use this laptop as a desktop replacement although I know that isn't gonna happen... but I want to try anyway and I'll be busy in college so I need a good powerful laptop to replace my PC while I'm not at home.

I don't like the I3 processors and would much prefer to go I5 or I7.

The laptop has the GTX 860m and doesn't offer anything else but I like this GPU and certainly look forward to testing that out

What benefits would I really notice by choosing the quad core over the dual core these days?
As for gaming, I would only play simulator and RTS games mostly on the laptop, such as the Total War series and Football Manager series.
I never play FPS games on laptops as I leave that up to my desktop

Would I really notice any improvements going with the Quad?

 

[zsolt_93]

Yes, certainly. In the games you play a quad is advised usually. They are cpu bound. And it will maybe last a little longer as a daily driver and ensure there is no limitation with the gpu. i5 makes no sense imho... it has just the turbo over the i3 and it depends on the cooling how useful that is.

 

[Irish_PXzyan]

I have asked many questions to XMG about it's cooling and if there's any throttling on the system and he ensures me that they have LAN systems running 10+ hour a day and never throttle down and says that they have very good cooling. Seems good to me, and watching and reading reviews certainly proves what he said. So I don't think cooling will be much of a problem.

Yeah I was thinking that, it would last longer I suppose when the test of time battles it since it's a quad core.. and also it'll ensure that the GPU will get enough support I suppose.
I can always buy an SSD later down the road anyway so that's a safe bet too ^^

Do you think 4gb RAM will be enough? I will get another 4gb later down the road, but in order to keep the cost within my budget I have to leave it to 4gb for now.
I'm sure 4gb is enough??

 

[zsolt_93]

Well if you can't afford 8GB now then its ok. I ran my PC and laptop on 4GB until a year ago. Now i have 8GB in both. In the lappy mainly to have dual channel for the igpu and some minor performance gains. Some bigger games will use it up mostly though.

 

[MustSeeMelons]

I strongly recommend you to stay away from 5400RPM drives and 4Gb of RAM - It will be so sluggish. The multitasking capabilities are almost non-existent! Go for the i5 & 7200RPM hard drive and add some more RAM down the line. There's no need for an i7 on a laptop unless, umm, you got a very wide budget

 

[Darkleoco]

You will be fine with 4gb of ram in the short term as long as you plan on upgrading to 8gb in the future. I also recommend going quad core because RTS are very cpu intensive and if my 660m is anything to go by then the 860m will let you play nearly anything maxed out at 1080p so why let a dual core be a bottleneck.

 

[Irish_PXzyan]

Yeah RTS games is important to me so I believe Quad core is more important to me than dual core with SSD.. thing is, I will buy more ram later and also an SSD or mSATA drive in the future also.. but I can't ever upgrade the CPU so I feel it was best to go Quad ^^
Plus, I will be doing multimedia in september and the Quad core will certainly come in handy by then.

I got the SSHD drive to get me some ssd like performance which will do the job for now

I can't wait to get my hands on it and test out the GTX 860! It sounds like it really will perform well on 1080p, very happy about that.

At least it can actually run the most important game for me which is total war rome 2 on ultra settings ^^ although I will run the game on high settings for best performance, even my desktop runs it on high settings for best performance due to the game engine sucking.

But that is the only intensive game I play at the moment so the system will be perfectly fine!