Buying a new laptop

**edyzmedieval** · 10-05-2016, 08:45

150 $ for a business-spec laptop?

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.

**Xiahou** · 10-06-2016, 02:58

Glad you found it useful.

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.

**Husar** · 10-09-2016, 23:47

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.

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

**Xiahou** · 10-10-2016, 18:47

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.

Of course it will play!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

You just might have to.... turn down... some settings...

In all honesty, I do play a lot of games on it- I just save the graphically demanding ones for my desktop.

**Husar** · 10-10-2016, 20:54

Originally Posted by Xiahou

Of course it will play!

You just might have to.... turn down... some settings...

In all honesty, I do play a lot of games on it- I just save the graphically demanding ones for my desktop.

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.

**edyzmedieval** · 10-11-2016, 19:46

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.

**Husar** · 10-14-2016, 14:12

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.

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.

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.