Laptop Computers

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,029
5,915
So looking for a gaming laptop that isn't super small 14 inch? is the 17 inch alienware pretty decent?
Overpriced and you won't get SLI/CFX in the 17 inch any more, I don't think. They only do SLI/CFX in their 18s now. Heat issues.
 

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,478
22,329
Even the 18s have heat issues with SLI. Some rich asshole that was in my guild forever always had problems with both his m18xs frying out the cards or the motherboard.
 

Flipmode

EQOA Refugee
2,091
312
Not sure I love this razer blade after a month with it. The 14" screen is just too small. Everything else about it is amazing and it's small overall size is great if it wasn't for gaming.

Probably going to try to sell it for 90% of what I paid! doubt that will happen.
How's the fan noise while gaming?
 

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,029
5,915
Even the 18s have heat issues with SLI. Some rich asshole that was in my guild forever always had problems with both his m18xs frying out the cards or the motherboard.
It's funny, because the 7970s I just put in my M17x R2 don't have heat issues at this point. They run at 70 or so under load. I think production quality has just gone for a shit or something, because I was having heat issues with the 5870s that I replaced. It's likely that the heat sink was just installed poorly on them, because the 7970s use more power and run hotter.

I think it's safe to sum up that Dell made Alienware worse.

I was hoping to get another free laptop upgrade out of this latest video card failure, but honestly, now that I look at their newer models, I think the M17x R2 was their last great product (and that was 5 years ago).
 

Sumdain x

Trakanon Raider
1,549
483
sumdain, you get your laptop yet, or have you gone postal (luls, a pun) on some poor bastard?
negative, still MIA currently. i have a few more days till i hit 45 and can file a claim with USPS, whether they pay or not we'll see.

in the meantime im looking at replacing it with a MSI Ghost that i can buy locally.
 

Sumdain x

Trakanon Raider
1,549
483
so i said fuck it and bought a razer 14 last night (saw it in stock here) 256 version. my other razer (the 17) is still MIA somewhere if it shows up ill pass the 14 to the wife and take the larger one.

pretty happy with it so far, just getting everything set up at the moment. beautiful machine.

also attempting to learn windows 8.1.....
 

Hekotat

FoH nuclear response team
12,068
11,562
I bought a Macbook Air today and feel like a traitor. The build quality is very nice though.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
If you always wait for the better model you'll end up buying nothing.
Truth

Best thing you can do when buying any electronics (TVs, computers, phones, etc) is to buy what you want right now, and then don't even look at what is for sale for the next 6 months at least, because it's just going to piss you off.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
can anyone suggest the best laptop at 500$
You're basically going to have to catch something nice on sale/clearance. Watch slickdeals.net and the Lenovo outlet for a week or two, and you should see some nice stuff pop up. If you are patient, you can probably get something in the neighborhood of an i5 processor, 15-17" screen, 8GB of RAM and maybe even dedicated graphics in the $500-$600 range.

Something like this isn't bad:
Lenovo G710 | 59400022 | Lenovo Outlet (US)

And search for "laptop" on slickdeals a couple times per day to see what new stuff pops up. A lot of times the sales/clearance stuff on there is gone within hours of it being posted, so the more often you can check, the better
Slickdeals: Searching for "laptop"

If something catches your eye at either one of those spots, post the link here and I'm sure we can give you the quick pros and cons so you can make a good decision.

Like on the Lenovo I listed, its has a good amount of RAM(8GB), and a pretty nice screen (1600x900, it's hard to find a full 1920x1080 screen in the ~$500 price range), but a slow HD(might want to upgrade to an SSD down the road). The integrated Intel 4600 graphics are actually not bad for some light gaming. If you're playing stuff like WoW or LOL, games that are a little older it should run them like a champ. If you're playing Battlefield 4, you're probably going to have to run on low/medium graphics.
 

Raign

Golden Squire
627
86
Damn nice!! For Christmas I bought my wife a gaming laptop and looked around at a lot of places. Friend always used ibuypower but they just couldn't beat the builds I was getting, and price that Xotic PC was offering, so I too went with them. Others I did check was cyberpower and the Lenovo Y series, which at the time had a smoking deal on a dual 650m nVidia SLI'd laptop. Ended up going with a Sager (Clevo) laptop from Xotic PC.

Mine ran just under $1500, with an i7, 8gb RAM, and 8970M radeon graphics card. At the time they were having a special to upgrade the graphics card, and the performance jump going with AMD versus nVidia was too good to pass up!

Their communication, and customer service were bad ass, and I'd recommend them to anyone looking for a gaming laptop.
For those of you who were interested in the Aorus rig I picked up a few weeks back, I have been running it through its paces lately to see how it works. First off, let me reiterate that XoticPC the distributor I used for the machine as well as for a lot of other high end gaming companies/ rigs (e.g., Razor, Alienware etc) were absolutely top notch. I would use them again in a heartbeat.

With that out of the way the Aorus X7 v2:

The good

- Screaming fast (SLI 860M netted deep 7000 scores in 3d Mark 11 for me - Their claims for 9000+ are not far fetched under ideal conditions as I was running a bit hot at the time - more on that later
- Beautiful form factor - I love the look of the machine, the shape, layout of the full keyboard and design plus the aluminum chassis make the whole package sexy as hell. Overall it is less than inch thick at its widest and about 6 lbs
- Excellent storage - 3 SSD 256 gig machines defaulted to Raid 0 plus a 1TB 7200 are impressive of a machine this size
- The keyboard - the Steel Series keyboard has an amazing tactile feel with just the right amount of 'click' to them. It comes with 5 macro keys down the left hand side and customizable back-lighting
- Peripheral ports - It has 5 USB ports as well as a full size HDMI out port

The Indifferent
- The screen is night and bright, which is good, with a resolution of 1920X1080 which isn't bad, but not 'top end' either
- The on board speakers are solid and can fill a good size room with no issue, but are not stand out in sound quality

The Bad
- Bringin the heat - Under low load, the machine is warm to the touch, under heavy load the little bastard will make my balls sweat from a half a foot away. A cooling pad is pretty much required tender to play visually intense games (e.g., Star Citizen alpha with its combination of intense visuals and unoptimized code will bring the whole laptop to the point where you will think they have used to the aluminum case as part of the heat sinking mechanism... and maybe they have
- Bringin the noise - Likewise, under heavy load (again SC alpha as my example) when both the graphics cards fans are ramped up as is the laptop fan, it is loud as hell. Under normal load though it is completely silent.
- Price - It was not a cheap machine ($2700 for the model I bought)
- Battery - Awful battery life. Not shocking, but basically you need to keep the adapter with you unless you are only doing something for 2 hours

Overall
- Overall I am extremely impressed with the machine. It looks good, sounds good, runs and feels amazing. I was expecting it to be hot under load (it is micro thin and running in SLI -- not sure how you could not see that coming) and the fan noise, while annoying under load is non-existent in all but the highest end current games so does not bother me too much. I have a good cooling pad though and would definitely recommend the same for anyone thinking about one of these machines as a primary computer. My only wish is that the battery were a bit longer life. I get why it sucks, I am just not happy about it!
 

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,029
5,915
Oh yeah, battery life on SLI models may as well be a 10 minute UPS substitute for power bumps. I don't go anywhere without the power brick when I'm lugging my Alienware around. There's just no point, especially if I'm gaming.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
If someone is interested in buying the Razer Blade 14" 256GB just let me know. I love it but I don't love laptops and don't need portability as much as I thought I would.

Retails for $2400 + tax + shipping, I want to dump it for $2k. Not bad for two months of light use on it.