Upgrading to a more powerful Gaming Laptop
I'm looking for some suggestions from people in the community on a what would be a great choice for a moderately powerful gaming laptop that is future proof for high-end games.

I don't own a desktop PC because I currently don't have room for it and I know most people are going to tell me it would be a better investment to make your own, but I really want to get myself a laptop with a Nvidia 40 series GPU that has a good build quality and can overall stand the test of time with good care. I will eventually build my own custom gaming PC but until then I want something I could take anywhere in my house.

I've read that the quality of certain brands varies greatly with Razer laptops known to having a battery that could bloat over time, or the hinges on certain laptops being prone to eventually breaking, or even certain gaming laptop brands being known for having a high failure rate.

Regardless, I want to hear if any of you have good suggestions or what's your experience with gaming laptops?
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Sager or Framework.

A powerful laptop is a luxury, but if you have the money to burn, at least get one that you can replace the battery on without difficulty in 5-7 years.

Ones that are advertised as "gaming laptops" are more trouble than they're worth, usually.
Zuletzt bearbeitet von Electric Cupcake; 20. Aug. 2024 um 17:43
Ursprünglich geschrieben von Electric Cupcake:
Sager or Framework.

A powerful laptop is a luxury, but if you have the money to burn, at least get one that you can replace the battery on without difficulty in 5-7 years.

Ones that are advertised as "gaming laptops" are more trouble than they're worth, usually.
What? So you're saying they haven't changed much in terms of quality over the years?
Tonepoet 20. Aug. 2024 um 20:19 
If it's really just about space rather than even just 'round the house portability then maybe a mini itx build would be better and that's what the 8000g series A.P.Us. are for.

The Inwin B1 is 108 x 302 x 238mm 4.3" x 11.9" x 9.4", and has enough room to fit a flex ATX supply in it. The desktop 8600g A.P.U. is currently good value for the processor and the desktop class 780m. 760m isn't quite as strong as GTX 1060 3gb, but it should be rather close.


Ends up costing $600 and later down the line when the system gets old, you pluck out the A.P.U., put in whatever replacement A.P.U. A.M.D. dreams up and you'll be up to date again.

48 gigs of R.A.M. because your system R.A.M would double as V.R.A.M. and you probably don't want to be upgrading R.A.M. on a mini itx motherboard anyway because you only have two slots. Fast R.A.M. because your system is using the R.A.M. as V.R.A.M. and V.R.A.M. is usually faster than system R.A.M.

I didn't check the clearances, so you'll want to look into that yourself. I think the Inwin case should be tall enough. They have a prettier white version with a wooden top for an additional $8, but for practicalities sake the mesh case is probably better for airflow.

The New K29 case is even smaller[www.amazon.com] if the inwin is too big, but you'd have to buy your own flex atx P.S.U.
Zuletzt bearbeitet von Tonepoet; 20. Aug. 2024 um 20:20
D. Flame 20. Aug. 2024 um 20:24 
Build your own desktop and hook it up to a TV:
https://youtu.be/6IsbifQs0Ms?si=gW_lTap677gMQMY7

There is not such thing as a future proof "gaming" laptop.
I'm quite happy with the Framework 16+ Plasma Kubuntu.

Plus, Framework stuff is quite popular with 3D printed parts and shells.
Ursprünglich geschrieben von D. Flame:
Build your own desktop and hook it up to a TV:
https://youtu.be/6IsbifQs0Ms?si=gW_lTap677gMQMY7

There is not such thing as a future proof "gaming" laptop.
You speaking from experience, or is it just a common negative stigma surrounding gaming laptops in the PC gaming community?
D. Flame 20. Aug. 2024 um 21:55 
Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mystical Spork:
Ursprünglich geschrieben von D. Flame:
Build your own desktop and hook it up to a TV:
https://youtu.be/6IsbifQs0Ms?si=gW_lTap677gMQMY7

There is not such thing as a future proof "gaming" laptop.
You speaking from experience, or is it just a common negative stigma surrounding gaming laptops in the PC gaming community?
Both.

1. Mobile GPUs tend to be weaker versions of their desktop namesake in the first place.

2. When a desktop starts to get long in the tooth, you can often just pop out the GPU and put a new one in and get another 5 to 10 years out of it, whereas with a laptop, you have to replace the entire laptop.

3. Laptops are far more expensive for less functionality. A barely decent gaming laptop will cost at least $2000, give it take. And you have to pay that every time you need to upgrade.

So there is no future proofing, and your costs will be much higher, and they will sky rocket over time.
There's zero reason a laptop can't have a replacable C.P.U. or G.P.U. They can put a desktop C.P.U. socket (clevo/sager did that) and an MXM graphics slot in there. They just don't want to most of the time, in the name of slimming it down and forcing you to upgrade the whole machine at a premium rather than just the parts that need replacing, and most people are too lazy/afraid to bother upgrading anyway so why bother? I also think MXM was discontinued recently, but it does prove that it is theoretically possible to make a laptop as upgradable as a desktop nevertheless.

Buy a tier up from the performance threshold you want to hit and the fact that it's a weaker G.P.U. than its namesake won't matter as much. You're saying to build a Mini Itx P.C. with a 4060 low profile, which is as strong as low profile cards get, so we'd be looking for a computer with an RTX 4070 G.P.U.

This Dell G16 16" gaming laptop with an i9 13900hx, an RTX 4070, 32 gigabytes of R.A.M and a 1 tb S.S.D.[www.ebay.com] looks fine. It's a refurbished unit sold from the Dell outlet ebay store for $1100.




Ursprünglich geschrieben von Electric Cupcake:
I'm quite happy with the Framework 16+ Plasma Kubuntu.

Plus, Framework stuff is quite popular with 3D printed parts and shells.

I think going to put up with linux and any level of D.I.Y. I'd rather save money by buying this Eluktronics RP-15[www.eluktronics.com] at the moment.

$900 sale price including RTX 4070. $57 1tb S.S.D.[www.newegg.com] $80 R.A.M. kit.[www.amazon.com]. Install my preferred version of myself (I say Kubuntu largely just because it comes with K.D.E. Plasma preinstalled).

Final cost $1037 instead of $1400. Granted, perhaps on the framework you'd spend less replacing the internals over time, but it's hard to say for sure, especially if the company folds or completely reworks the internals in a future model.

Granted, it's only $64 cheaper than the Dell, and anybody who wants to buy windows is better off having it preinstalled by the O.E.M. rather than buying it directly from Microsoft.

Something I like about that laptop is that it has two M.2 slots, so in the event that your G.P.U. starts feeling a little sluggish you can hack in an m.2 to occulink adapter to gain exposure[www.amazon.com] to P.C.I.E. lanes. to an E.G.P.U. adapter[www.amazon.com] (which will need a P.S.U., but a flex A.T.X. one can be quite small, and you don't need an especially strong one for just a graphics card without a processor).

Granted, occulink isn't all sunshine and roses. It's not hot swap compatible, so you need to shut down the laptop before plugging it in or unplugging it from occulink, and since the m.2 port is meant to be strictly internal, you'd need to put a hole in the laptop case to get access to the occulink connector.

I'd give some consideration to a laptop that had occulink built into it, but they haven't had anything like that for a while. The closest thing were the alienware laptops that were compatible with the graphics amplifier, but that was a proprietary connection rather than occulink proper. It was however direct P.C.I. E. access though, rather than going through thunderbolt (which has overhead).
Zuletzt bearbeitet von Tonepoet; 21. Aug. 2024 um 0:39
Lixire 21. Aug. 2024 um 2:54 
Ursprünglich geschrieben von andreasaspenberg575:
the cpu can usually be upgraded. most of my laptops have that possibility. all of them have the ability to switch out the ram, though my toshiba laptop is maxed. 2 of my laptops have the ability to switch gpu. the size of the screen that you want is bigger than my toshiba. what you need to look for is chassis size. it should not be too thin, because then the cooler gets thin as well and your cpu and gpu will burn up. you should at least have 32 gigabytes of ram if you shall hope to run the heaviest games, like final fantasy 15. final fantasy 15 uses 17 gigabytes under load.

CPU upgrades on laptops have pretty much stopped with Skylake/6th gen Intel. the CPUs on laptops nowadays are all soldered even if you go for the highest SKUs available and same goes for GPUs too. Saying it as a laptop owner myself (i9 12900HK+3080 Ti)
So really the upgradable parts nowadays are the RAM and the drives (be it through SATA or M.2 slots)
Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tonepoet:
It's a refurbished unit sold from the Dell outlet ebay store for $1100.
That's the problem, "REFURBISHED". That means it was used, has broken once, was half-ass repaired, and is being resold.

I would never purchase anything that cost over $1000 that was "refurbished."
Ursprünglich geschrieben von D. Flame:
Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tonepoet:
It's a refurbished unit sold from the Dell outlet ebay store for $1100.
That's the problem, "REFURBISHED". That means it was used, has broken once, was half-ass repaired, and is being resold.

I would never purchase anything that cost over $1000 that was "refurbished."

Yeah, it means it was broken but refurbished doesn't mean it was broken and left broken. Refurbished means it was broken and reconditioned in some way, ideally repairing it.

The details of what that means depends on who's doing the refurbishing. If it's the like of some random ebayer or gamestop it's meaningless garbage. However, coming directly from the likes of Apple or Dell, which to my recollection have been considered two of the best mainstream laptp brands, I expect that it should be factory reconditioned to be more or less as good as new, and I expect there to be some kind of warranty.

I'm not seeing much of a problem here other than somebody else's cooties possibly being on the computer but considering that a A similar brand new configuration direct from Dell's seems to cost $1500[www.dell.com], and a similar configuration cost $1800 last year[www.pcworld.com]. I'd take the $400 discount personally. I'll just take a five cent alcohol wipe to it (not touching the screen), let it dry and problem solved. Maybe I'd be a bit more weary of buying from E-bay since sketchy stuff happens there sometimes.


I mean if Mystical Spork absolutely insists on something new and doesn't mind sacrificing some spec. there's this H.P. Victus Laptop[www.amazon.com] or This Asus Tuf[www.bestbuy.com], but they don't have as much R.A.M. stock and at least on the Victus the processor isn't as strong, which is important if we want something future proof, since it's not as if we can just pluck the processor out and replace it with a new one.

I'm also not sure if those are max-q (energy efficient) or max-p (performanced focused) versions of the 4070, which is of importance.
Zuletzt bearbeitet von Tonepoet; 21. Aug. 2024 um 4:24
Refurbished laptops are often ex-corporate machines that have been replaced when the corporate lease runs out - say every 3 years. If they have been used for media creation they might be useful for gaming as well. Not necessarily bad.
Ursprünglich geschrieben von D. Flame:
Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mystical Spork:
You speaking from experience, or is it just a common negative stigma surrounding gaming laptops in the PC gaming community?
Both.

1. Mobile GPUs tend to be weaker versions of their desktop namesake in the first place.

2. When a desktop starts to get long in the tooth, you can often just pop out the GPU and put a new one in and get another 5 to 10 years out of it, whereas with a laptop, you have to replace the entire laptop.

3. Laptops are far more expensive for less functionality. A barely decent gaming laptop will cost at least $2000, give it take. And you have to pay that every time you need to upgrade.

So there is no future proofing, and your costs will be much higher, and they will sky rocket over time.
That's a fair point. But honestly, I also feel hesitant to make myself a powerful desktop gaming PC because I imagine it would use up more power than what I would normally pay for on my electric bill. I know that sounds like a silly reason, but I really take power usage into consideration, and I'm not entirely sure how much a decently good gaming desktop is going to use up since I tend to be on the computer for a while in a day not always gaming but sometimes doing work.
Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tonepoet:
Ursprünglich geschrieben von D. Flame:
That's the problem, "REFURBISHED". That means it was used, has broken once, was half-ass repaired, and is being resold.

I would never purchase anything that cost over $1000 that was "refurbished."

Yeah, it means it was broken but refurbished doesn't mean it was broken and left broken. Refurbished means it was broken and reconditioned in some way, ideally repairing it.

The details of what that means depends on who's doing the refurbishing. If it's the like of some random ebayer or gamestop it's meaningless garbage. However, coming directly from the likes of Apple or Dell, which to my recollection have been considered two of the best mainstream laptp brands, I expect that it should be factory reconditioned to be more or less as good as new, and I expect there to be some kind of warranty.

I'm not seeing much of a problem here other than somebody else's cooties possibly being on the computer but considering that a A similar brand new configuration direct from Dell's seems to cost $1500[www.dell.com], and a similar configuration cost $1800 last year[www.pcworld.com]. I'd take the $400 discount personally. I'll just take a five cent alcohol wipe to it (not touching the screen), let it dry and problem solved. Maybe I'd be a bit more weary of buying from E-bay since sketchy stuff happens there sometimes.


I mean if Mystical Spork absolutely insists on something new and doesn't mind sacrificing some spec. there's this H.P. Victus Laptop[www.amazon.com] or This Asus Tuf[www.bestbuy.com], but they don't have as much R.A.M. stock and at least on the Victus the processor isn't as strong, which is important if we want something future proof, since it's not as if we can just pluck the processor out and replace it with a new one.

I'm also not sure if those are max-q (energy efficient) or max-p (performanced focused) versions of the 4070, which is of importance.
Aren't HP laptops kind of crappy? I've just heard they have a not so great reputation.
And I already own one Tuf Gaming Laptop, however, I'm looking for something that's 18 inches.
Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mystical Spork:
Ursprünglich geschrieben von D. Flame:
Both.

1. Mobile GPUs tend to be weaker versions of their desktop namesake in the first place.

2. When a desktop starts to get long in the tooth, you can often just pop out the GPU and put a new one in and get another 5 to 10 years out of it, whereas with a laptop, you have to replace the entire laptop.

3. Laptops are far more expensive for less functionality. A barely decent gaming laptop will cost at least $2000, give it take. And you have to pay that every time you need to upgrade.

So there is no future proofing, and your costs will be much higher, and they will sky rocket over time.
That's a fair point. But honestly, I also feel hesitant to make myself a powerful desktop gaming PC because I imagine it would use up more power than what I would normally pay for on my electric bill. I know that sounds like a silly reason, but I really take power usage into consideration, and I'm not entirely sure how much a decently good gaming desktop is going to use up since I tend to be on the computer for a while in a day not always gaming but sometimes doing work.
Then get a mini PC. They use very little power, even less than a laptop.

Also get one with an oculink port and an oculink dock. You can use the dock with and GPU you want, and just leave the GPU disconnected any time you are not currently gaming.

The gaming laptops are money sinks. If you have endless money, then go for it. Otherwise, you are missing out. If you are deadset on a laptop, just look for something with at least a 4070 in it.
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