Advice on a gaming laptop

[Annederrickd]

Hi everyone! I'm fairly new with the whole computer gaming scene and am a college student who owns a Asus with Intel HD 4000 graphics so I'm unable to really enjoy gaming to its fullest potential. I want to keep that laptop for doing my research, reports, etc. My question is what would be an excellent gaming laptop with top specs and the price isn't too much of an issue. I've done some self research so far, but every comparison top 10 list is different. What I've gathered so far being worthwhile seems to be; MSI GT70, Alienware M17 or 18, Maingear Nomad 17. Any suggestions?

Regards,

Annederrickd

[edpatino]

Hi:

As owner of a MSI GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G, I can tell you that you might do better with other brands, probably with Dell Allienware or Acer Predator. This last one is my target for my upcoming gaming laptop replacement. My MSI laptop worked well only during the first year, when it all of a sudden suffered from a total failure of the SSD start-up drive, then I had to reinstall everything to my other drive which is a HDD 1 TB. One year later, several weeks ago, when I was closing its cover, the mechanism got locked and the screen was about to get dammaged and since then I cannot close my laptop. This is only a two-year old laptop!, which most of the time remains at home, more or less like a desktop.

After those bad experiences with MSI I undoubtely will not buy another MSI laptop for a while. It's evident to me that the materials used for its manufacturing are not of good quality.

I suggest expanding your search and take a look in the Acer Predator website to know their offerings. This is what I recently did and I'll replace my current MSI laptop by the end of this year. Hopefully it'll not fail again until then.

Good luck.

Cheers, Ed

 

 

 

[Dean33]

I'm very happy with my Gigabyte notebook computer which has been used exclusively for P3D V4 for the last 7 months.

Dean

[dbw1]

I have a MSI GT73 with I7-7700, Nvidia 1070, 2 M.2 drives and one SSD. When home I have a 34" dell ultra-sharp monitor plugged into it. Runs P3dV4 and DCS (and everything else) great. No reliability issues. Totally happy with it. This my 2nd MSI laptop. I've been using laptops since 2002 and on the whole have had little issue. Drives can and do fail however that happens in desktops too.

Dave

[Annederrickd]

Or you can refer to the article recommended laptop and give me good advice. https://pc4u.org/best-cheap-gaming-laptop-under-500-dollars/

[dbw1]

On 6/7/2018 at 10:12 PM, Annederrickd said:

Or you can refer to the article recommended laptop and give me good advice. https://pc4u.org/best-cheap-gaming-laptop-under-500-dollars/

Basically you get what you pay for. You've got to consider what you want to run on it. If a new lower end machine it works for you...go for it. You may want to consider something a couple years old, refurbished or pre-owned as for not much more you can get much more performance plus they depreciate rapidly* so you might come across a really good deal. Only thing is buy from somebody you trust.

* For example I have a six year old Alienware 14", I7-3840, nvidia 650 2gigs ddr5, 8 gigs ram etc that I paid at tthe time just under $2k cdn. Still runs great but the video card is the bottleneck. I kept it when I bought my MSI GT73 as if I tried to sell it I would get peanuts for it. I'll keep it as a 2nd computer indefinitely.

Have a look around as you might stumble across an older machine that's still very capable at a killer price.

Dave

[Andy Lam]

On 6/5/2018 at 3:34 PM, dbw1 said:

I have a MSI GT73 with I7-7700, Nvidia 1070, 2 M.2 drives and one SSD. When home I have a 34" dell ultra-sharp monitor plugged into it. Runs P3dV4 and DCS (and everything else) great. No reliability issues. Totally happy with it. This my 2nd MSI laptop. I've been using laptops since 2002 and on the whole have had little issue. Drives can and do fail however that happens in desktops too.

Dave

Hi Dave, thank for your info. I also want to buy a msi. How's about the fps?

[dbw1]

With my GT73 it varies from the low 20s (sometimes briefly under 20) to much higher - very bland answer I know - but seldom slow enough to be annoying. Biggest thing is that it is very smooth and the usually the fps number is just that - a number. I have high end scenery and high end aircraft and occasionally the combination will "chunk" it down but not often. My GT73 has been out for at least a year and a half so there are newer, higher performance machines out there now but I am totally happy with this configuration. That said...your mileage may vary.

Here in Winnipeg I deal with Memory Express who have a tech who specializes in MSI products. They've treated very good.

Dave

[TechguyMaxC]

On 6/7/2018 at 10:12 PM, Annederrickd said:

Or you can refer to the article recommended laptop and give me good advice. https://pc4u.org/best-cheap-gaming-laptop-under-500-dollars/

There's no such thing as a *new* "gaming" laptop under $500.  Either save up more or you'll have to buy something used.  

[Andy Lam]

On 7/22/2018 at 5:33 PM, dbw1 said:

With my GT73 it varies from the low 20s (sometimes briefly under 20) to much higher - very bland answer I know - but seldom slow enough to be annoying. Biggest thing is that it is very smooth and the usually the fps number is just that - a number. I have high end scenery and high end aircraft and occasionally the combination will "chunk" it down but not often. My GT73 has been out for at least a year and a half so there are newer, higher performance machines out there now but I am totally happy with this configuration. That said...your mileage may vary.

Here in Winnipeg I deal with Memory Express who have a tech who specializes in MSI products. They've treated very good.

Dave

Thank you and have safe flights!

[vortex681]

On 6/5/2018 at 2:34 PM, dbw1 said:

Drives can and do fail however that happens in desktops too.

But they're much more likely to fail in a laptop because the significantly more limited cooling solutions cause higher internal temperatures. Even the most high-end gaming laptops like the Asus ROG G703GI suffer in this way - in a recent review, under load, the case temperature reached 50°C in places!

[dbw1]

You want to investigate the claimed cooling in any laptop you are considering. MSI has a very good claimed cooling design which had some influence in my purchasing. Another observation is that since I went to SSD and then M.2 drives in the past few laptops I have not experienced a drive failure (yet). I have had a couple of drive failures with traditional 5400 & 7200 rpm drives. Once again this is my experience....your mileage may vary.

Dave

[Andy Lam]

On 8/7/2018 at 1:30 PM, vortex681 said:

But they're much more likely to fail in a laptop because the significantly more limited cooling solutions cause higher internal temperatures. Even the most high-end gaming laptops like the Asus ROG G703GI suffer in this way - in a recent review, under load, the case temperature reached 50°C in places!

As I know the rog doesn't good cooling system! Of coz desktop is the best choice but I hope the laptop is not so bad