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Which Gaming laptop should I buy?

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putting things into perspective.. i just bought a refurb dell precision 6800 laptop.. its about as big as they get and as expensive as they get..

i was a bit lucky because its unused looks like new and in the original dell box... i paid £600 quid for it.. its around 2015 vintage and would have cost over 3 K when new..

i didnt buy it to play games on i bought it for its decent screen to watch videos on in my trailer/caravan when away from home.. i thought it was a cheap way of getting a decent ips wide angle screen..

it has a high end haswell cpu.. 47 watts tpd.. an nvidia quadro gpu rated at 75 watts.. its fitted with a 97 wh battery.. 12 volts 8 amp capacity or just over..

the cpu 47 watts will only be true when its running at its base 2.9 gig speed.. its probably more like 75 watts when its boosting to 3.5 gig on all cores..

so we have the cpu at 75 watts and gpu of 75 watts.. lets call it 150 watts.. it comes with a 240 watt a power brick again as big as they get..

will it play games.. kind of but it has to be plugged into the wall and here is why..

150 watts from a 12 volt battery comes to around 12.5 amps.. or about 40 minutes run time from the big as they get 8 amp hour battery..

i will charge it from a 300 watt inverter which will pull about 20 amps from the vans 12 battery..

i just ran the cpu-z stress test on battery power.. all 4 cores at 3.5 gig.. it showed me a 70 minutes run time and thats without the gpu doing anything..

the plus side to my tale.. it should play videos for 6 hours or so on battery power.. which is what i bought it for.. he he

trog
 
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You need just a small table and a chair, stop exaggerating. Same for a laptop used for gaming, plus a stand, otherwise will catch on fire...
With the same money you definitely get better hardware, plus you won't have the horrible overheating issues.
Especially in a hot climate as India, without AC in the house, that laptop will shut off in 30' or less while gaming.


You tell people to stop exaggerating, yet do it yourself.

Laptops can be cooled quite well. They absolutely do not shut off in 30 minutes of gaming - in any climate. And they're actually pretty comparably priced to desktop hardware. They used to cost a lot more than equivalent desktops - that was true, once. It isn't true in todays' market.

I spent $799.99 on a laptop with an i5-8300H, 8 GB DDR4, 256 GB NVME M.2 SSD, and a GTX 1060 Max-Q.

You'd be hard pressed to find a comparable desktop for much cheaper, even if building it yourself.

Actually I was pointing out when you said it had a 1050 it would do fine, that is ridiculous. :slap:

Nothing ridiculous about it. A super powerful cpu is just going to get bottlenecked by a 1050. My 1060 Max-Q is the bottleneck between it and my i5-8300H, My i5-8300H is like, 15% faster than his CPU, my GPU is like, 80% faster than a 1050.

Your argument is completely and utterly wrong.

So is Vayra's argument that you can't have a good budget gaming laptop.

Is my laptop absolutely amazing? No, but it's a damn fine machine for the price I bought it. It's never overheated. It holds 60 fps on nearly all modern titles on max settings @ 1080P, and due to it using a Max-Q chip it is both quiet, and thin, despite being adequately cooled.

Not ultra-book thin, but still, reasonably thin. It weighs less than 6 pounds, and is less than an inch thick.
 
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eidairaman1

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When it comes to gaming in a laptop, the cooling layout is paramount
 
Joined
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Messages
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System Name money pit..
Processor Intel 9900K 4.8 at 1.152 core voltage minus 0.120 offset
Motherboard Asus rog Strix Z370-F Gaming
Cooling Dark Rock TF air cooler.. Stock vga air coolers with case side fans to help cooling..
Memory 32 gb corsair vengeance 3200
Video Card(s) Palit Gaming Pro OC 2080TI
Storage 150 nvme boot drive partition.. 1T Sandisk sata.. 1T Transend sata.. 1T 970 evo nvme m 2..
Display(s) 27" Asus PG279Q ROG Swift 165Hrz Nvidia G-Sync, IPS.. 2560x1440..
Case Gigabyte mid-tower.. cheap and nothing special..
Audio Device(s) onboard sounds with stereo amp..
Power Supply EVGA 850 watt..
Mouse Logitech G700s
Keyboard Logitech K270
Software Win 10 pro..
Benchmark Scores Firestike 29500.. timepsy 14000..
When it comes to gaming in a laptop, the cooling layout is paramount


yep and no way can a laptop be cooled as well as a desktop.. heat is what limits laptops when plugged into the mains and battery power when they aint..

trog
 

eidairaman1

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yep and no way can a laptop be cooled as well as a desktop.. heat is what limits laptops when plugged into the mains and battery power when they aint..

trog

Inspiron 9100/XPS Gen 1, stout laptop chassis that kept a Gallatin or Prescott cool, should be able to keep the mobile cpus cool today.
 
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Cooling matters, but stating they can't be cooled as well as desktops is not only obvious, but means nothing. They don't need to be cooled as well as desktops. What they need, is to be cooled well enough.

Older laptops typically always relied on fans for cooling. Fans are useful, sure, but many modern laptops now also use vapor chambers and heat pipes. Cooling in laptops has come a long way.
 

eidairaman1

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Cooling matters, but stating they can't be cooled as well as desktops is not only obvious, but means nothing. They don't need to be cooled as well as desktops. What they need, is to be cooled well enough.

Older laptops typically always relied on fans for cooling. Fans are useful, sure, but many modern laptops now also use vapor chambers and heat pipes. Cooling in laptops has come a long way.

Erm my laptop utilized vapor chambers as well in 2004, so its been around, todays laptops lack cooling.

Wow I remember those. And yet, Dell did a great job keeping temps down on those systems.

I still have 1, awesome, if Dell released that chassis as is and a 17" it would be Ideal for Ryzen 3-7 and Intel counterparts.
 
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"Older laptops typically always relied on fans for cooling." doesn't state that vapor chambers didn't exist previously, just that they're more common now.

Point also still stands that laptops don't need to run at crazy low temps, they just need to run at reasonable temps. If you can get a desktop to run at 30C, that's cool, but it doesn't mean a laptop running at 60 C is running too hot.
 

eidairaman1

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"Older laptops typically always relied on fans for cooling." doesn't state that vapor chambers didn't exist previously, just that they're more common now.

Point also still stands that laptops don't need to run at crazy low temps, they just need to run at reasonable temps. If you can get a desktop to run at 30C, that's cool, but it doesn't mean a laptop running at 60 C is running too hot.

They all thermal throttle now, my 3.4 Gallatain never did
 
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System Name money pit..
Processor Intel 9900K 4.8 at 1.152 core voltage minus 0.120 offset
Motherboard Asus rog Strix Z370-F Gaming
Cooling Dark Rock TF air cooler.. Stock vga air coolers with case side fans to help cooling..
Memory 32 gb corsair vengeance 3200
Video Card(s) Palit Gaming Pro OC 2080TI
Storage 150 nvme boot drive partition.. 1T Sandisk sata.. 1T Transend sata.. 1T 970 evo nvme m 2..
Display(s) 27" Asus PG279Q ROG Swift 165Hrz Nvidia G-Sync, IPS.. 2560x1440..
Case Gigabyte mid-tower.. cheap and nothing special..
Audio Device(s) onboard sounds with stereo amp..
Power Supply EVGA 850 watt..
Mouse Logitech G700s
Keyboard Logitech K270
Software Win 10 pro..
Benchmark Scores Firestike 29500.. timepsy 14000..
They all thermal throttle now, my 3.4 Gallatain never did

sat in front of me i have a dell precision 17 inch mobile work station. it weighs 8 pounds and is a monster and it will thermal throttle because that is how its made..

heat limits it all and probably always will.. heat limits how fast all these modern chips run even the 8700K in my desktop machine.. quite obviously laptops cant go as fast as desktops..

my dell has two separate coolers.. one for the cpu and one for the gpu.. both can get quite toasty and it aint because dell have skimped on the machines build or price.. far from it.. he he

trog
 
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They all thermal throttle now, my 3.4 Gallatain never did
Not all of them. My Alienware never has. It never got above 75C even when I was stressing the hell out of it.

it will thermal throttle because that is how its made..
Then you need to apply new TIM, clean the vents or get some compressed air and blow that sucker out. Dell engineer's their laptops specifically to not thermal throttle if properly cared for.
 
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Eh, many Dell laptops definitely throttle. My current one does, but it still runs well. That said I have had both ASUS and MSI laptops which absolutely did not throttle. Heat is a problem in some laptops, it is not a problem in all laptops.

The thing is, my laptops cpu throttles, its GPU does not. As such it doesn't actually impact gaming much.

GPU-Z shows my CPU topping at 97 C, but my GPU topping at 76 C. My GPU would need to throttle for it to actually mean much performance-wise.
 
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