Gaming laptop - recomendations?

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buddha shoes

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Hello,

I'm looking to buy a gaming laptop to replace my four-year-old MacBook Pro. I've used Apple for over 12 years, but looking to switch back to Windows, because some games I want to play not available on Mac OS, Apple stopped making 17" laptops, and their GPUs are generally older tech.

I use my computer for gaming, MS Office, and e-mail.

I would like a 17" monitor, nVidia GTX 970M, Core i7 4810MQ CPU, 512 SSD, 8 GB RAM, DVD drive (don't really care if it's internal or external). Battery life is not really a consideration. I'd like it to last about 4 years. I travel and move a lot, so I'm not considering a desktop. Budget is around $2,500.

I was considering an Origin PC laptop, but read lots of bad reviews about them in their own forums. Not sure how reliable they are.

Alienware is widely believed to be over-priced. Also, they offer an optical drive at point of purchase, nor do they offer an SSD-only storage option.

GenTech PC seems to have the right hardware, and a good reputation. I'm not familiar with them, though. All reviews I see on the internet point to someone named Ken. I wonder if this one guy is the whole company, and if their good rep goes away if he's no longer around.

I looked at CyberPowerPC's Fangbook line, but they seem to get a lot of bad reviews around the internet, and only offer a one-year extended warranty.

ASUS has a setup available on Amazon that's amazingly close to what I want and also cheap, but seems almost to good to be true. Also, not extended warranty coverage that I'm aware of.

Has anyone here had good/bad experiences with any of these companies? Any recommendations?

Thanks
 
I've seen Sager recommended a lot while looking around for a gaming laptop. Don't know much about any of the companies you've mentioned though.
 
I bought a GT70 MSI 17 inch a couple years ago, it still plays games with decent settings.

I've owned an Alienware before, I like my MSI Laptop more.

Good luck mate.
 
I'd suggest a Razer Blade Pro, but the most storage you can get for $2,500 is 256GB. The Blade line is often described as what Apple would make if it were into gaming laptops.

My general rule: stick to the vendors that clearly give their designs a lot of tender loving care, like Razer and many big OEMs. I'm not a fan of those hobbyist-oriented vendors that basically rehash Clevo reference designs.
 
I know it's not 17", but Gigabyte's P35x series is amazing. I've had mine for a month now and it has been fantastic.

If you want a 17" you can look at the Gigabyte P37x... The P35x is great for my travel and powerful enough to crush any game out there. I got the v3 with the 8gb gtx980m and the 1080p screen - felt like a perfect balance for me - ultra everything on Shadows of Mordor and my avg framerates never drop below 45 and rarely and I mean rarely do they ever drop below 60.

What an amazing little piece of technology.
 
For reference, Origin simply use Sager/Clevo chassis with a branded display backing and some nice, expensive design on their site.

As for a vendor, I'd definitely recommend Xotic, GenTech or Powernotebooks.

Regarding a model, you'd definitely be more comfortable with a Razer Blade or Blade Pro coming from Apple. Their builds and design is second to none. The issue is, the Blade Pro, which is the version with a 17" display, hasn't been updated for a while and has a rather lowly 860m -- a far cry from your 970m requirement. MSI and Sagers are nice, but you're definitely taken a step down from a Macbook in materials, design and build -- if you can get by this, they are excellent gaming laptops. An Asus G75 or AW 17 or Gigabyte P37x may be a good trade off (AW being my personal favorite from the build/design angle): they have better design than MSI or Sager, but are a bit more expensive.

If it was me (and everyone is different...), I'd throw all that money at getting the most performance for my dollar which would be Sager NP9772 with a 980m.
 
With a budget of $2500 you can get an Aorus X7 with sli 970m's. Otherwise I'd look for a laptop equipped with a 980m at that price range if you want to stick with single gpu. Big fan of the MSI laptops.
 
V10Ace said:
With a budget of $2500 you can get an Aorus X7 with sli 970m's. Otherwise I'd look for a laptop equipped with a 980m at that price range if you want to stick with single gpu. Big fan of the MSI laptops.
Click to expand...

Exactly. On second glance, a $2500 budget could just buy you a Sager NP9773 with dual 980ms. You don't need to spend that much for a laptop with a 970m.
 
Does the 980m overheat in a laptop? (It seems to run hotter than the 970m.)

Are some of the other vendors mentioned, like Xotic, GenTech or Powernotebooks, reliable in terms of post-purchase support? (I'm not as much concerned with the design as the performance.)

Will an MSI, Sager, or Razer Blade last 4 years? (Most of the reviews I've read about them come from people who've only had them a few months or less.
 
During regular gaming my P35x does not overheat using a cooler master U2 cooler. Have not experienced any throttling either. This is playing Civ 5, WoW, Crysis 3, SoM, or Beyond Earth. The fatter laptops should perform the same or better due to the extra cooling.
 
buddha shoes said:
Does the 980m overheat in a laptop? (It seems to run hotter than the 970m.)

Are some of the other vendors mentioned, like Xotic, GenTech or Powernotebooks, reliable in terms of post-purchase support? (I'm not as much concerned with the design as the performance.)

Will an MSI, Sager, or Razer Blade last 4 years? (Most of the reviews I've read about them come from people who've only had them a few months or less.
Click to expand...

I've only had my MSI for roughly three months. When you say last 4 years, are you talking about build quality? If you treat it like an expensive piece of equipment it'll absolutely last 4 years. My M18x went through three deployments to the middle east in multiple sand storms and it still looks as good as when I originally bought it. It's always in a Pelican case when not in use and I don't have any food or drinks near it.

You're going to want the fastest laptop your money can buy considering your first priority was gaming. I've never owned a Sager, only Alienware and MSI. Alienware has awesome build quality and MSI is on par as well in my opinion.
 
lenovo has a good line of gaming pcs. I got one with SLI and every other bell and whistle for less than 1200. I run linux so the whole spyware thing isnt really an issue
 
As a starting point, here's what you can pull from Newegg currently.


$2500 or less, 970, 17"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...NodeId=1&N=100025325 4086 600536650 600372105

Were I in the market for a gaming laptop right now, I'd be taking a SERIOUS look at the MSI GS70.

Seriously, a 1TB HD and 3x256GB SSD in RAID0?

Jayne said:
I'll be in my bunk.
Click to expand...

And here's a slight step up.

$2500 or less, 980, 17"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...NodeId=1&N=100025325 4086 600536648 600372105
 
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Chas said:
Were I in the market for a gaming laptop right now, I'd be taking a SERIOUS look at the MSI GS70.

Seriously, a 1TB HD and 3x256GB SSD in RAID0?
Click to expand...

I did take a hard look at the GS70. It seems lots of people over at notebookreview think it has an overheating/throttling problem because of its thinness. Even people who have owned them for a while are coming up with crazy ways to cool the thing down during heavy gaming. (One guy, for example, put four USB-powered mini fans on top of the keyboard. That basically makes it not portable for me.) But for this issue, I would very likely get a GS70.

I'm leaning toward a Sager NP8671 build from XoticPC at the moment, but I'm not really comfortable with that. It's reasonably thin (1.18"), I can get it with an all-SSD storage and GTX 970m, and the price isn't bad. Several people report it has better cooling than the GS70. I'm just not confident in Sager or XoticPC, largely because I don't have any experience with them and lots of people on the 'net seem to have problems with them.

Alienware won't give me an all-SSD storage solution if I buy directly from them, and if I have a custom-built one from XoticPC, I apparently don't get the Dell warranty support. (XoticPC has not confirmed this yet. They haven't responded to my e-mail inquiry on this, but at least one AW owner on notebookreview stated this.)

There is no way Apple puts a GTX 970m in their next laptop, nor will they re-release the 17".

Fortunately, I don't need to make a decision on this immediately, so I can mull it over and collect more data for a bit more time. I'm just getting a little frustrated and research-fatigued about the whole thing.
 
I think Xotic is a great choice, my sager laptop i bought from them is doing great, it just turned 3. i did have an issue with my 6990 crapping out a few months ago but it was still covered under their 3 yr extended warranty and both sager and xotic support handled it quickly and even issued an rma and return label the same day i reported the problem, i fully expect it to last at least another year

so my vote goes to a xoticpc sager
 
I've known several people with Sager laptops. They're fine. I don't have any personal experience with XoticPC though.

One thing. Xotic offers a cash discount.
I would recommend putting it on a card anyways (unless I'm misunderstanding, and it's just a fancy rebate).
Not saying that Xotic isn't trustworthy. But I've seen people try to go the "got cash" route before and get burned if the hardware has any problems.
At least, with it on plastic, you have an additional bit of consumer protection in case the relationship with Xotic and their wares goes bad.
 
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For that budget and list of requirements I would recommend the MSI GS60, it's a favourite around the office.

For under 2200 you could get 512gb of raid 0 ssd space and 2tb of mechanical storage space, 1080p IPS display (4k options available), 6GB GTX 970M, Intel Core I7 4710HQ and 16GB of ram.

It weighs 4.1 pounds with a dual fan cooling system and is only 0.78 inches thick.

I know it's 15.6" but it's tiny for such a massive performance hit. Otherwise a similar spec GS70 if 17.3" is a must is the best option.

Build quality on the GS series is excellent and you get that 2 year warranty as standard.

We also have the red GS70 which does look very nice.
 
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Have you checked into the external GPU ability for some laptops? There's an adapter you can get (expressCard, I believe) that enables you to basically hook up a full slot pciE card to it. If I were to want a gaming laptop, this for sure would be the route I'd take.

At the same time, it's not really practical if you're wanting to game on an airplane, or something. But really, how much gaming are we doing while out on the go?

Then again, it's seeming more and more difficult to find laptops with this sort of port these days.
 
Yes and the heavy bandwidth limits on such ports does hurt the performance a lot.
 
What about the ASUS G751JY? Seems to be the best of the bunch for the price, and seems highly recommended by a lot of people. I'm actually in the market for one and was deciding if I wanted form factor/looks (Razer Blade QHD+.. but the gaming would be horrendous, though more "professional" looking outside of the razer logo), or the ASUS G751JY. The MSI GT72 Dominator looks better though, IMO.
 
I do like some of the MSI models, the Steelseries backlit keyboards are a nice touch for a laptop.

Here's a good list of 980m/970m laptops, and a good start on options if you havent found "a list" elsewhere.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...y-where-to-find-your-next-laptop-asap.761799/

I have one of the older gaming laptops, the GT780DXR from 2011, which i've recently found can be upgraded to the 980m (with some dremel work if you keep the old heatsink, or you can use a clevo or the GT72 GTX 970m/980m upgrade kit). It's all a bit expensive, but, $600 - $800 (for the 980m) vs $1800 ... who's going to buy a 2011/12 laptop.

later this year, they're bringing out the Shuttle Steam box with the 980m, as well as a few other higher end Steam Boxen, which might bring the price of the 980m's down for all laptops and "desktops".

Though, every year, I do look at the new laptops and wonder what the hell was going through my mind to get the MSI (there were no available ASUS ROG's and they had a severe keyboard /frame defect in that year)

So, I only had to look through my youtube history for the old review,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgpe7fsDZm4 for the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro, which is similar to the Razer Blade 14 (obviously not as expensive...)

The GS60 Ghost Pro does a lot of nice things in the gaming laptop area, and does look a bit ordinary, which is kind of a relief when you see the size of the ASUS RoG series in person.

Though, the biggest issue is the fan noise in any gaming laptop when it's running vsync off or with forced fans on high, and the second issue is, every gaming laptop has an issue. sometimes, you find this before you spend the $2.5k, sometimes a year later.


Having the same gaming laptop for ~4 years, it's surprisingly fault tolerant, it is MSI, so it has the same defects as when i bought it.

The Clevo / Sager models are generally pretty decent, but, if it's your first purchase, check it out in person before you spend the cash.
 
After looking through the "show your mobile laptop" thread, I noticed someone with the Gigabyte P35xV3.

That looks like a FANTASTIC laptop with a GTX980m in a very slim profile! Does anybody know if there are reviews out there for this unit? It seems so good, but I want to read some reviews at least before making the plunge.

Razer Blade is an amazing piece of hardware though, and this (Gigabyte) seems to be similar in profile (not as thin) but packs a 980m inside.
 
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