Advice on a new gaming laptop?

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MarkH67

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#288466 1-Jul-2021 15:16

I'm looking to replace my 7-year-old Asus laptop which has occasional issues like spontaneous rebooting. I want something with decent grunt that can handle anything I throw at it. I want at least 16GB RAM, but prefer 32GB. MUST have 1TB SSD or better - my current laptop came with 1TB traditional drive which I replaced with a 1TB SSD when it started to fail, I need to clean out data now and then when it gets nearly full. I want good CPU & GPU so it can handle games and video editing.

I'm currently looking at the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 15, Razer Blade 15 Advanced and Dell ALIENWARE M15 R4 GAMING LAPTOP. My Asus has lasted pretty well, so I'm happy with that brand. What are experiences & opinions like on the Razor & Dell laptops?

I do have a habit of going "Ooh, I want that feature/spec" and spending heaps, so I want something that will prove to be a reliable and good performing unit so I am happy with my expensive purchase.

SpartanVXL

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#2737422 1-Jul-2021 16:07

So about the only thing going for laptops in the current market is that you can get a recent gpu fairly easily. Otherwise it’s the usual obligatory FYI that any laptop parts are power+thermal limited and won’t perform as well as their desktop counterparts.

Example the rtx 3070 80-95W variant can be 60% of a regular desktop rtx 3070. A 115-130W variant fares better around 80% but you have to check what you’re getting because shops often omit that minor detail.

If you can manage to find a config with a ryzen 5800H and RTX 3070 it’ll perform better than most other laptops with an intel equivalent. There is an Asus TUF gaming A15 at Computer Lounge with the above plus 16GB and 1TB ssd but the 3070 is a 95W variant.

Most of these laptops in the $3000 range will have two m2 slots and bios support for 32GB ram if you decide you want to upgrade it down the line.

MarkH67

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#2737428 1-Jul-2021 16:25

SpartanVXL:
Most of these laptops in the $3000 range will have two m2 slots and bios support for 32GB ram if you decide you want to upgrade it down the line.

I'm currently eying up laptops that are over $3k (I'll probably spend over $4k) and have 32GB RAM & 1TB SSD, though Dell give the option of going with a 2TB SSD (not a cheap upgrade though) which is tempting.

I don't really expect a laptop to equal the performance of a desktop, but even 60% performance on a 3070 would still be pretty usable. The Asus I'm looking at comes with the AMD Ryzen9 5900HX while the Dell comes with the Intel® Core™ i7-10870H, I'd expect either one to be decently fast and I doubt I'd be unhappy either way.

I'm starting to lean towards the Dell because it is a better price, the graphics card is listed as 125W total, 140W max and I could go with the 2TB SSD and still pay less than the Asus. I just don't want to spend so much and then wish I'd gone with the other one.

SpartanVXL

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#2737493 1-Jul-2021 17:16

It really depends what you’re after in workload performance. The 5900hx is anywhere from min 3% average 15% to max 30% faster than a i9 10980hk. A 5800h is 4% less than a 5900hx but only because of lower bin and clocks while the latter can be overclocked if the laptops bios allows you to.

If you fancy the upgrade options on the store then thats up to you. Personally I can’t justify paying more than I have to to Dell for parts that are easily serviceable myself. Unless the semiconductor shortage really screws with pricing, RAM and SSD’s should get cheaper as time goes on and newer tech comes out.

If you can’t find a high watt gpu with a ryzen then do go for the model that has one. Most games are GPU reliant and you’d get more performance versus a better CPU. Unless you play civ or do more editing than gaming then the better CPU is more beneficial.

(I will mention that SFF desktop builds could be an option at that price point but thats still dependant on your needs)

kiwifidget

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#2737505 1-Jul-2021 17:21

Dont forget to check its got TPM2 or you wont be able to upgrade to Win11.

Delete cookies?! Are you insane?!

MarkH67

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#2738542 3-Jul-2021 21:15

SpartanVXL:
If you fancy the upgrade options on the store then thats up to you. Personally I can’t justify paying more than I have to to Dell for parts that are easily serviceable myself. Unless the semiconductor shortage really screws with pricing, RAM and SSD’s should get cheaper as time goes on and newer tech comes out.

I think you are right. I checked the price of a good 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD from PBTech and it is cheaper than what Dell would charge to swap the 1TB to a 2TB. It would literally be cheaper to swap the drive myself AND I would end up with a spare 1TB drive as well.

I'm now starting to lean back towards the Asus laptop and might even consider just adding a 2TB drive as a 2nd drive so I can have 1TB + 2TB storage on the laptop. I found the details of the wattage for the GPU and it seems that the Asus can run ~125W to the GPU, similar to the Dell. The AMD Ryzen9 5900HX on the Asus is likely to be faster than the Intel® Core™ i7-10870H on the Dell and the Asus should be a pretty good machine.

Anyone have any opinions on the Dell Alienware laptops vs Asus ROG Strix laptops?

MarkH67

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#2738543 3-Jul-2021 21:18

kiwifidget:

Dont forget to check its got TPM2 or you wont be able to upgrade to Win11.

Both Asus & Dell state that their laptops can update to Windows 11 when available.

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timmmay

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#2738545 3-Jul-2021 21:25

Check out the cooling. A laptop using that much power will produce a lot of heat, and standard tiny laptop fans will be screaming horribly loudly. I imagine gaming laptops have this covered, but check it out. My old Surface was relatively quiet, but the WiFi wasn't great. The new Elitebook has been WiFi but the fan noise really bugs me at times.

MarkH67

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#2738609 4-Jul-2021 09:10

Well, I've now bought a new ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 15 G533QR-HF009T from PBTech with click & collects (I'll pop over to Hamilton in a couple of hours to pick it up). I've saved $110 on their 'massive winter sale', but it was still over $4k. This should be a pretty grunty laptop with the 32GB RAM and AMD Ryzen9 5900HX CPU.

My old laptop is still working OK most of the time, but sometimes does a spontaneous reboot. If I try editing a video in 360 Studio then it seems to almost always reboot within a few minutes. I'm not sure that a 7-year-old laptop has any great value, especially one that doesn't run flawlessly, I might have to look into what it could be used for. Actually, my mother has a really slow laptop that gets really light usage, maybe I could give my old laptop to her. I have a 256GB SSD drive that I could put in the laptop which would let me pull out the 1TB SSD currently in there, giving me a really nice external drive.

arcon

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#2740948 8-Jul-2021 10:06

SpartanVXL:

Anyone have any opinions on the Dell Alienware laptops vs Asus ROG Strix laptops?

I have a previous gen Dell Alienware M15 (with an GTX 1060). Its hot garbage, literally lol. Powerful enough in its time but not well managed thermals and an atrocious 6 bpc screen, which I didn't really think about at the time. The audio quality is worse than my S9 phone lol... its unacceptable for a gaming laptop to have such bad sound. Its a real shame because Dell have by far the best support, it needed a RAM swap and they were onsite within 24 hours.

I bought Dell because I had an excellent experience with the earlier gen Precision workstation laptops. They had infinitely better build quality, perhaps they still do but I would never buy a regular / gaming laptop from them again. EDIT: The Alienware also bluescreens a lot, not to the point of being unusable but very annoying. The Precision was solid as a rock, never glitched once in 5 years.

Can't speak for Asus or any others, but if you can't test it in advance scour the web for reviews on screen fidelity & sound quality as it sounds like you're after something decent.

MarkH67

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#2741518 8-Jul-2021 21:07

I've opened up my new laptop, lots of heat-pipes in there!

I added this SSD:

I've been setting up and installing and copying, a good portion of what was on the old laptop is now on the new one. It seems to run very well, I played World of Tanks and was getting a frame rate of ~160fps at the full resolution of my monitor. I'll install Insta360 Studio and test out the performance for video editing, hopefully that will perform similarly well.

MarkH67

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#2742428 11-Jul-2021 15:04

So far my new Asus ROG Strix laptop is handling everything I've thrown at it, absolutely brilliantly.

It runs DaVinci Resolve and Insta360 Studio very well. With the 32GB RAM and the AMD Ryzen9 5900HX CPU there is plenty of ability to process the video data and with the files stored in the Samsung 980 Pro SSD (Read up to 7000MB/s, Write Up to 5100MB/s) - loading the video files & saving them is really fast! It didn't even spontaneously reboot after a few minutes of running Insta360 Studio, so I'll call that a win for the new laptop.

The temperature seems OK. The fan noise is fine. Everything I've run is able to run well. Fast processor, lots of RAM, super quick storage - what's not to love! I know I've spent a LOT of money (not far off $5k including adding the 2TB SSD) but I'm very happy with my new laptop.