BlackestPain Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 Hey guys, I think I'm ready to finally make the jump from consoles to the "Master Race" and I was wondering if you guys could point me in the direction of a good (but cheaper) gaming laptop? (I wanna be able to run Skyrim smoothly) I don't care if you recommend a pre-built or a list to make a custom one. Any help would be awesome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oubliette Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 You want cheap + good, best learn to build a desktop. You can build a reasonable gaming desktop for 500. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimboUK Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 There's cheap or there's good, rarely both, as suggested build a desktop, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vagrant0 Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 Unless you absolutely need the portability or need to chain it to your desk (for dorm use), you're usually best off with a desktop PC. This isn't an elitism thing, it's based on the fact that even "gaming" laptops tend to perform below their rated specs just by nature of being a smaller form factor (heat being a bigger issue) and dependent on a battery. Meanwhile you still would need to have a separate mouse for most gaming (in addition to a controller if coming from console). However, in both cases you will probably end up spending about $1,500-2,000 for something reasonably good. Even with a desktop, while you are getting better performance for your buck, you'll also probably need a decent keyboard, mouse, monitor, desk, chair, ect. which can make them more expensive depending on what your specific situation is. Meanwhile, with a gaming laptop, it can be this extra 14-25 pounds and 23"x18"x4" bulk of stuff that you have to lug around every time you change places (practically the size of a baby), making it somewhat impractical as a portable device. The other question is if you are reasonably mechanically inclined to where you can figure out what parts of a computer plug into eachother in order to build one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoofhearted4 Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 first, what do you consider cheap? what is your price range? second, as everyone else stated, do you need a laptop? if not then desktop is the way to go bar none. you wont be building your own laptop. you can customize one on different websites, but it gets expensive fast. you can also have (usually those same) websites build you a desktop computer. its more expensive then building it yourself, but its a good option if youre not up for it yourself. building it yourself is the best case scenario though. you get to hand pick your parts, so you can feel confident in what you are getting (vs some random chinese equivalent) you can get the models and brands that are performing the best, so your power per dollar is capitalized upon. honestly building a PC is extremely easy. theres tons and tons of videos out there, forums, build logs. i mean you name it. as far as a PC goes, to build something worthwhile id be looking in the ballpark of $800-$1000 for the Desktop itself. yes you can go cheaper, but id argue that its not worth it. you only want to play Skyrim reasonably, which isnt hard to do, but if a game comes along (say Elder Scrolls VI) that you want to play, even reasonably, a >$800 is going to have a real rough time of it.....continuing on, if this is your first PC, youll also have to factor in monitor, keyboard, and mouse at least. of the three, invest in a good monitor. expect at least $200. while a solid argument can be made for a good keyboard and mouse (and i dont disagree) if you need to keep a budget, you will make it going cheap here until you can upgrade. lastly as Vagrant said, theres also a Desk to consider. if you literally just need a piece of wood with legs to hold the monitor and such, $100-$150 will get you what you are looking for. if you plan on an office of any sorts, or any desk with features or hell, even a desk thats a case, the price will go up as expected. anyways, let us know some more details. what specifically you need. price range. interest in building vs buying pre built, etc. we can help you from there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackestPain Posted March 25, 2015 Author Share Posted March 25, 2015 Ok! Thanks for the input/quick replies! (other forums have sucked so far) 1) The fact that it is a laptop is priority. Mainly because I hate sitting at desks, secondly because I want easily be able to play anywhere with in reason (Bed, School dorm common, bathroom,.....work...we have REEEALLY long breaks, etc) 2) I mainly play RPG Fantasy, Action Adventure game (Skyrim and Assassin's Creed for example) so I want something that has awesome graphics but the online play doesn't have to be anything super special. 3) I don't really care which (building or pre-build). 4) As for money, I just don't wanna pay out the butt for something super expensive when something else $100+ cheaper would work just as well for me. So that's about it. Thanks again for the input :D! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vagrant0 Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 You may want to look at ibuypower.com. They have a few decent gaming laptops in the $1,500 to $2,000 range that will get you reasonably good performance for their price. It'll be better quality than what you can typically get in stores with less markup, it will also let you customize things adding or subtracting from the cost. At the very least, it will give you an idea of what is out there and how much it will probably cost. For gaming, I would suggest at a minimum 8gb dedicated system RAM and 4gb dedicated videocard RAM if you're looking to be able to play things that will be released within the next few years. SSDs aren't necessary, but I would suggest having the OS and any games you're playing on a 7200rpm HDD just so you have reasonably quick boot and load times. If you go with an additional data drive, these can be slower since they're used more for documents, pictures, or other media that isn't as dependent on loading time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bethjunkie Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 Cyberpowerpc has this nice looking Raven laptop for $999 and you can customize it further. I'm an Asus girl myself so if you want one of those, Amazon has this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoofhearted4 Posted March 26, 2015 Share Posted March 26, 2015 ive had an Asus Gaming Laptop in the past. it was $1000 new, several years ago and it was good. your minimum price for any laptop will be $1000. if you find something cheaper, you should probably ignore it....Asus and MSI are pretty big when it comes to gaming laptops. Lenovo has made a few good ones as well. actually I was looking recently and Lenovo had the cheapest, best system. I wish i still had it saved. it was a few years old, hard to find places that were selling them online. but yea. ofc there is always Alienware. but its over priced. I mention them, but dont suggest them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thisaccountisuseless Posted April 7, 2015 Share Posted April 7, 2015 I built a gaming computer for $40. No joke. Given it could only run games from the mid 2000's, but it could run Minecraft at default settings with render distance set to 12 chunks (that's pretty far). I suggest buying an older motherboard that has lost value but is still good. if you're lucky, like crapping out rainbows after eating lucky charms, then you will find a really good one for about $50. You can build your own case from a tupperware bin or something, I made mine a while back out of a speaker housing. RAM is quite expensive, I admit that. it's hard to find good, reliable, compatible RAM for cheap. You're going to have a tough time finding some. I recommend Amazon.com, they have the best deals. If you can't find anything there, go to Newegg or TigerDirect. Next, your processor needs to be compatible with your mobo. If you did manage to squeeze by with a $50 mobo, chances are it comes with a processor, like my $40 build did. If not, the compatible ones will likely be not cheap because the mobo was cheap. It's possible that it could be the other way, though. The processors could be very expensive. Find one that you like. Games like Skyrim and Oblivion don't agree well with more than 2 cores. Oblivion has trouble with quads. Screens shouldn't matter that much at the current stage of the build. Get a standard 1280x1020 for now until you can spend $100+ for a decent gaming monitor. They are cheap on Amazon. Most cases, if you don't want to use tupperware, come with a PSU. If the one you want doesn't, look up the compatible ones for your mobo. Like the processor, they shouldn't be expensive. If they are, they will be hard to find cheap. Very, very hard. Keyboards and mice don't matter much for budget builds, just make sure your keyboard is low latency and your mouse has a good DPI setting. For your HDD, if your mobo supports whatever you are using now, laptop HDDs work in desktops quite well, as long as the connection is the same. Like SATAII to SATAII. Don't try SATAII to IDE converter. That is big no-no. Make sure you have many USB ports, USB is life :D Good luck, it took me many minutes to write this. 8:19 to 8:48. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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