Gaming Laptop for mom and dad

mlapgw

Gawd
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
547
My mom and dad want a new laptop for gaming. She likes to play Titan Quest and he wants to play the new Wolfenstein.


1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc

Gaming, web browsing, watching movies

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

$1700.00 before tax and ship

3) Where do you live?

Las Vegas, NV.

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.

Need the whole thing. They will not be building this themselves

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

No parts to be reused

6) Will you be overclocking?

No
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?

As large as the budget will allow (17"?)
They have old eyes so a good display is a must

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

Immediately

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.

not sure, they just want to game mostly. They don't plan on doing to much else with it. Dad did mention he'd like a blue-ray player. He may be willing to expand his budget by a hundered or two to add this feature

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?

No, will need to come loaded with OS

Parents are in their mid to late fifties and still game, how cool is that?
 
I agree, I think they would be better served with a desktop machine. They insist on wanting a laptop. I was doing some looking around at newegg, digital storm, and dell.
From what I can see the first thing they are going to need to compromise on is the size of screen. I think 17" is going to be out of their budget.
 
I'd suggest Maingear and threw together a quick AMD build.

Prelude 2 AMD

Power Supply: 750W Silencer S75QB PC Power & Cooling
Graphics Accelerator: ATI® Radeon™ HD 4850 512MB GDDR3
Motherboard: Asus M4A78 Plus AMD CrossFireX Chipset
Processor: AMD® Phenom™ II X3 720 BLACK EDITION (2.8GHz x 3)
Processor Cooling: AMD Retail Quiet Cooler (this is suitable since no oc'ing will be involved)
Memory: 4GB Kingston PC2-6400 DDR2-800 (2x2GB)
Hard Drive One: Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache - SATA II
Optical Drive One: 22X Dual Layer DVD�RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology (With Blu-Ray as second drive - $1,742.16) (Blue-Ray as first drive - $1,694.76)
Sound: Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
Network Card: Onboard Dual Marvell 88E8056 Gigabit Controller
Primary Display: SAMSUNG 941BW Black 19" 4 ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64-Bit) SP2 with FREE Windows 7 Upgrade Coupon!
Keyboard: Razer Arctosa™ Gaming Keyboard
Mouse: Razer DeathAdder™ Gaming Mouse

$1570

Hopefully this is more than enough for Titan Quest and Wolfenstein.

You're also given great quality customer service if you, your mom or dad have any questions or concerns.
 
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As others have said, desktop would be best $$ spent. For around $1k, could get killer system.
 
I'd suggest Maingear and threw together a quick AMD build.

Prelude 2 AMD

Power Supply: 750W Silencer S75QB PC Power & Cooling
Graphics Accelerator: ATI® Radeon™ HD 4850 512MB GDDR3
Motherboard: Asus M4A78 Plus AMD CrossFireX Chipset
Processor: AMD® Phenom™ II X3 720 BLACK EDITION (2.8GHz x 3)
Processor Cooling: AMD Retail Quiet Cooler (this is suitable since no oc'ing will be involved)
Memory: 4GB Kingston PC2-6400 DDR2-800 (2x2GB)
Hard Drive One: Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache - SATA II
Optical Drive One: 22X Dual Layer DVD�RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology (With Blu-Ray as second drive - $1,742.16) (Blue-Ray as first drive - $1,694.76)
Sound: Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
Network Card: Onboard Dual Marvell 88E8056 Gigabit Controller
Primary Display: SAMSUNG 941BW Black 19" 4 ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64-Bit) SP2 with FREE Windows 7 Upgrade Coupon!
Keyboard: Razer Arctosa™ Gaming Keyboard
Mouse: Razer DeathAdder™ Gaming Mouse

$1570

Hopefully this is more than enough for Titan Quest and Wolfenstein.

You're also given great quality customer service if you, your mom or dad have any questions or concerns.

that seriously overpriced.
 
Before we start tossing around configurations, I'm sure the OP wanted a laptop instead of a desktop for a reason--especially if his parents are like mine and can't sit for long periods of time in a chair, or prefer to move to different rooms of the house instead of being tied to a desktop.

Now, that said, these guys are trying to make the point that gaming laptops tend to be seriously more expensive than a gaming desktop, and you'll get better performance out of desktop as a general rule. The games that your parents are playing will require at least 1GB RAM and a minimum of a 256MB video card in order to run, and of course, the more, the better. However, because those games are not overly intensive, that makes it a heck of a lot easier to get what you want for less than $1700.

It's going to be difficult--but not impossible--to hit the sweet spot money-wise on a gaming laptop with many of the recommended manufacturers on these forums. The good news is that because Maingear and all the others are custom builders, you can call them directly and work out a configuration that may not be available on the website. If you want a gaming laptop from any of the boutique manufacturers, I would strongly encourage you call instead of email or buy straight off the website.

I don't usually make specific system suggestions, but I will make a singular exception here. If you do want to think about doing a desktop config, Everett's suggestion is great for a hardcore gamer, but I think your parents might be perfectly satisfied with something like our Pulse...it's compact, and more than powerful enough to run Wolfenstein and Titan Quest. You'll have enough money left over to buy them a HUGE monitor, too. :D
 
Thank you all for the assistance you are trying to provide me.

My parents have a gaming desktop already. We built that last year with the help of the fine folk on this forum. This will be their second computer and it must be a laptop. This means they will be giving up a bit in favor of having a portable system to compliment their current desktop system.

The games I listed are what they will play primarily. My mom plays a lot of TQ, and dad wants to be able to play with her. He is also a RTCW fan so he is going to run out and buy the new one. I called last night to see if there were any other games they are going to play that i need to be aware of and to let them know it may be difficult to get a large screen at their price point.
Their response is that they will definately but Diablo 3 when it is released. They would really like to keep their budget at 1700.00 but if their is a good reason for expanded that budget by a couple of hundred they will consider it.
I will take some time today and look at some of the recommended manufacturers on our forum.
 
That changes your playing field a little bit--the newer games. I'll do some research as well, and I'll look and see what options Maingear could provide if you were so inclined.
 
I heard the Asus G71 and G51 were good, but I did absolute zero research on them, so just wanted to throw them out there for you to look into. ;)

BTW, you might want to ask a mod to move this to the Computers and Gadgets subforum.
 
I would get them a desktop. If you play the cards right you could get them both one for their budget.
 
I would get them a desktop. If you play the cards right you could get them both one for their budget.

Learn to read.... :rolleyes:

My parents have a gaming desktop already. We built that last year with the help of the fine folk on this forum. This will be their second computer and it must be a laptop. This means they will be giving up a bit in favor of having a portable system to compliment their current desktop system.

Back on topic, GilmourD is going through a search similar to what your parents are undertaking, and there may be a couple of (more) ideas in his thread that you could consider.
 
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