Buying a new laptop

Well, the time has come for a new one, I guess. I made a thread about 5 years ago buying a new laptop, went out and bought one. Time to replace the existing one. :yes:

Current specs:

ASUS N55SF
Intel Core 2 Duo i5 2.3 GHZ
8 GB RAM DDR3
750GB HDD
nVIDIA GeForce GT555m
Bang & Olufsen Sound System (sounds excellent)

I'm looking to stick with ASUS, throughout these almost 5 years it worked almost perfectly, I did get a couple of BSODs because of drivers mainly, nVidia being the main culprit. Plus I love the keyboard and I think I will keep it in the family.

That being said, time for a new one! What I'm looking for are similar specs for 2016 aka 16GB of RAM and a good video card. I do play videogames, but the games I'm interested in right now - Battlefield 4 and Attila TW. So nothing too daunting on the system to be fair.

Can anyone recommend a good ASUS? My main concern - how good are the Republic of Gamers laptops?

Open to other recommendations though, not necessarily ASUS.

:bow:

I've been using a RoG laptop (G55 model) since 2012, and since I play only old games for the most part (think 90s and early 00s) I intend to keep it around at least until 2020, when MS plans to remove support for Windows 7.

As with all laptops, the problem here is cooling. Even though they may be advertised as "gaming laptops", anything close to actually being demanding or utilizing their hardware to full capacity will get their temperatures somewhere around and over the 90 degrees mark even with a good cooling pad beneath (the RoGs in particular don't seem to mind the cooling pad too much anyway). This means that playing anything comparable with their hardware should either be avoided or attempted outside of very warm seasons (forget about playing pretty much anything during a romanian summer).

As for problems, I've ran into a single freak BSOD so far and some rogue headphone jack issue that came and went on its own.

Hah, loved the point of Romanian summers. You're quite right on those - either you freeze with an air conditioner or your laptop melts. One or the other.

So technically the ROG is sound. This is one of the main selling points of it that I'm really liking - good components put together and a solid build. :yes:

This probably isn't what you're looking for spec-wise, but less than a year ago, I bought a laptop on Ebay using this guide. I got a fully functional HP Elitebook 8460p for less than $150. I upgraded it to 8GB of RAM and an SSD and replaced the battery for just about another $100. So for right around $250, I got a very rugged business-class laptop that has some respectable stats (i7 SandyBridge, 8GB RAM, Intel HD3000 graphics). I installed Linux Mint on it instead of Windows, because I'm kind of over Windows, but it has a BIOS that will activate OEM Windows7 installs if you wanted to go that route too. I run a number of low to mid-spec games on it without issue aside from the general office/productivity software.

For me, the big thing (aside from price, obviously) is the build quality and components that go into high-end business laptops vs the cheap plastic construction of many consumer level ones.The keyboard, touchpad, the aluminum/magnesium case - all top notch.

So anyway, it sounds like this might not be what you're after- but I thought I'd share my experience just in case it's useful to you or any others that read this.... :creep:

150 $ for a business-spec laptop? ~:eek:

That is one serious bargain score right there. Quite impressive. I would never expect a business-spec laptop, second hand ok but still, to go for such a low price.

Thank you for the tip, Xiahou. :bow:

Glad you found it useful. :bow:

The prices on these types of laptops are really a phenomenal value, IMO. I'm guessing that most of them are laptops were leased to corporations, and then are being auctioned off cheaply once the leases are up and the businesses refresh their laptops. Sure, a Skylake i7 has better performance than a Sandybridge i7- but not as much as you might think. And certainly not enough to justify the price of a brand new laptop (for me at least).

Here's a fun video that shows what I mean by "build quality" with HP Elitebooks. :yes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCj7KKqyOSo

From what I heard (and seem to experience), at least in the mainboard department ASUS is not anymore what it once was.

I also wouldn't recommend running Attila or Battlefield on an HD3000, if the games can even start on that thing. :sweatdrop:

Not sure about recommendations, I almost made a long post with lots of tangential blabbering because there are so many notebooks, I wouldn't know where to begin. ~;)
Maybe try some internet search engine that lets you choose the specs you'd like, I only know German ones at the moment though.
Actually...something like this one, where you get a lot of filters to choose what you want. Then you can see what is roughly available and go from there, look for reviews and whether you can get it in your country.

https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb#gh_filterbox

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Originally Posted by Husar

I also wouldn't recommend running Attila or Battlefield on an HD3000, if the games can even start on that thing. :sweatdrop:

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Of course it will play! ~;p

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Honestly, I'm surprised it even runs as well as this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERXW8ajodW4

You just might have to.... turn down... some settings... :sweatdrop:
In all honesty, I do play a lot of games on it- I just save the graphically demanding ones for my desktop.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

Of course it will play! ~;p

You just might have to.... turn down... some settings... :sweatdrop:
In all honesty, I do play a lot of games on it- I just save the graphically demanding ones for my desktop.

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Haha, the video says HD 3000 2GB, seems weird as I can only assign up to 512MB to the HD 4000 in my notebook.
The reason I said if it runs is that IIRC a lot of games didn't work well with the HD 3000 drivers and even the HD 4000 drivers are not great.
I think I had some issues with not being able to stretch a lower resolution picture to fit the screen and so on.

For some gaming on the go or on holiday etc. they're fine, it was all I had in my semester abroad and it played World of Warships quite fine, too. It's just that if this is the only gaming machine, and that is how I understood edyz, I wouldn't ever recommend it. If it has to be integrated, AMD may be a better choice anyway, their integrated graphics are usually faster.

I was wondering if you have some articles on the ASUS Motherboard issues, Husar? ~:)

I'm really intent on sticking with them unless I have a much better option because so far I've been really pleased with them. And I have a friend who has a ROG and it looks very good, plus the keyboard is really nice as well.

I don't quite have an article, it's just that my board behaves erratical on cold boot.
This means it often stays relatively long on the BIOS load screen, then either reboots or not, shows various error messages for a relatively long time and sometimes says there was an error and I should reset my settings, which is resolved by going into the BIOS, changing nothing and just booting again. I initially had the shop where I bought it check it and they gave me a replacement, but I have the same issues with that one for some reason. Now I usually restart from the first time I get to the Windows logon screen now and from there on everything boots just fine and fast and the computer runs fine the whole day (except for the odd hangup once a month or so, but that could also be some other/driver/software issue).

The only thing the issues seem to do so far is make my bootup time at the beginning of the day rather long (3 minutes or so all in all, haven't really checked). I also looked up some of the error messages it throws and found that in forums everywhere, quite a few people seem to get them and there seems to be no real solution, in a few forums I read "that's just something you sometimes get with ASUS boards" or thereabouts. Maybe I just "collected them all", but I guess my next mainboard will be of a different brand, until then I will try to live with the longer boot this one requires apparently. :sweatdrop:

The other features of the board are fine, it has fan control, windows apps and all of it seems okay, the store also tested my other components and found them to be okay as well. Only thing they didn't check was the GPU and my case but since I already got a new one (yes, for both) and it changed nothing about the boot issues, I still believe the board is just acting weird. IIRC my RAM is on the compatibility list as well and so on. :shrug:

I'd also have discarded it as a one-time faulty unit (it happens....often) if the replacement board did not have the exact same issues.

Quote:

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I'd also have discarded it as a one-time faulty unit (it happens....often) if the replacement board did not have the exact same issues.

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Maybe they stockpile faulty boards from customers like you and rotate them through repair tickets? :P

Which ASUS do you have, Husar?

I have bought a new laptop on Mackbook air.

Looking for a new laptop ideally, depends on what kind of work you do and accordingly you have to take a decision as every profession has certain requirements, if you are a student or looking for a laptop for basic work like word processing, web browsing and small work such as data entry in excel below system requirements are enough for laptop.

Processor: Intel i3 or Rzyen 3.
Ram 8GB DDR4
Storage capacity: 256GB SSD.
Integrated graphics card.
The display must be full HD IPS and anti-glare technology.

Overall it's pretty much decent for you however it is not the recommended requirement now if you are someone who is into web development, programming, coding, or any other profession like accounting below system requirements are a must.

Intel i5 or Ryzen 5 and equivalents.
Ram 8GB DDR4 with upgradable slot up to 16GB.
Storage capacity 512GB NVMe SSD.
An integrated graphics card is fine still a target for a minimum 2GB graphics card if you do video editing.

The last type of users are designers, engineers, and gamers they need slightly more powerful laptop so in this case, you must have gaming features or a better processing system with the graphics card, system requirements you should consider for laptop as below.

CPU: Intel i5 or Ryzen 5 (H label CPU for heavy tasks like gaming, 3D modeling and game development)
Ram: 8GB is fine but 16GB DDR4 is best possible option.
Graphics card: Nvidia GTX 1650, RTX 3050 (If you do heavy modelling and play latest games released after 2018 then sugggestion is minimum RTX 3060)
Storage capacity: 512GB SSD or higher
Display: 15.6" to 17.3" with FHD resolution (If you are in to profession where color accuarcy matters then you should target to get mahcine that has 100% sRGB color gamut)
Refresh rate: 120hz or above (This is only applicable for gaming)

Well, in the end, I bought the laptop, but it's been so long (about 5 years now, plus), that I need to get a new one. This is specifically for gaming purposes, as the original one from 2018 is going mighty smooth still and I have no plans on replacing it. Working like a charm even now.

New planned specs, as always, ASUS. Should be enough for what I play, for the moment, I don't want ultra high on everything. ASUS TUF.

Intel Core i7-12700H - 4.7GHz, 15.6" WQHD
16GB
SSD 512GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB
Free Dos, Mecha Gray

Got a brand new one, fresh out of the box, ASUS as always because they've been very reliable. ASUS TUF Gaming, so not the ROG part, as those were more expensive.

Intel Core i7-13900H
16GB DDR5 RAM
SSD 512GB
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4050 6GB
Windows 10 Pro

Very good and smooth so far, it plays everything I want & need right now without any fuss. I mostly play older games, so it's even better, I can now do Ultra High on most of the games I play.

RTX5090 laptops are out, and frankly speaking, they're quite tempting. I always wanted to have a super top of the line gaming rig, that has been on my list ever since I was a kid, and I might be able to make it happen soon. ASUS ROG laptops seem great for the occasion now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOezxmC8JhU

Nowadays it might make more sense to buy slightly-outdated high-end laptop models used, though that market is probably slim in Eastern Europe. I see one can reliably get 4090 Zephyrus laptops for $2000 or a little more in the US (although a new HP 5090 laptop was recently on sale for as little as $2000 as well). Though, it's crazy to think, but a mobile-ized 5090 (apparently 5080 silicon) performs well below the level of a desktop 5070. I've finally upgraded from a Skyrim-worthy build to a 5070 Ti, which I was lucky enough to find for base price, and it's nice to have the peace of mind to immediately load up the latest games at high settings again. Or maybe the ITX people are right and the best of all is a desktop build in a briefcase-sized compartment...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

Nowadays it might make more sense to buy slightly-outdated high-end laptop models used, though that market is probably slim in Eastern Europe. I see one can reliably get 4090 Zephyrus laptops for $2000 or a little more in the US (although a new HP 5090 laptop was recently on sale for as little as $2000 as well). Though, it's crazy to think, but a mobile-ized 5090 (apparently 5080 silicon) performs well below the level of a desktop 5070. I've finally upgraded from a Skyrim-worthy build to a 5070 Ti, which I was lucky enough to find for base price, and it's nice to have the peace of mind to immediately load up the latest games at high settings again. Or maybe the ITX people are right and the best of all is a desktop build in a briefcase-sized compartment...

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You're not wrong, particularly with the economics of graphics cards nowadays and the sky-high prices of computers / laptops (well, sky-high of just about anything), it's actually a good deal to try and find a <1 year used laptop. Depreciation does not impact just cars and other expensive things, it also impacts high-end computers of all types, so a solid used high-end model is a strong way to go particularly if you're not willing to spend that much money on a brand new model.

Remember I posted that I want to get an ultra high end model, but I'm rethinking it, because it does not make much sense to me since most of the games I play are older generation.