|
A nice thing about macbooks too is that they retain their (trade-in) value to apple for quite a while. My 3 year old 2020 M1 Macbook Air with 8 gigs of ram and 256gb hdd (the cheapest model) could still be traded in for $465. That means if I needed I could trade up for a M2 air with 16 gigs of memory and 500gb hdd for a little over 1k. the price/performance is excellent compared to other modern laptops, even on a sale.
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 16:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 22:50 |
|
|
Thanks for all the recommendations, I've got a good starting place now. Apple/MacOS products are definitely a hard pass for her, even if they're technically the best fit for her use case. Definitely no gaming either, so no need for a dedicated GPU. That one with 64GB of RAM seems like wild overkill, I can't imagine her needing more than 16GB or 32 at max. Comments seemed to say the OLED screens on the Lenovos are nice but it seems like they come with a huge hit to battery life. Obviously any improvement is better than what she's dealing with now in terms of battery but I'd like to try to maximize that where I can. Her laptop before the Surface was a 15" screen and that seems like the sweet spot. One of the Slickdeals comment threads mentioned a Samsung that looked pretty decent spec-wise, but for maybe stupid reasons I'm boycotting Samsung. (They dropped the SteamLink app from their smart TV platform with very little notice, a feature I used a LOT).
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 20:42
|
|
|
A lot of laptops have moved from a 15.6" to 14" because people tend to prefer to use a 14" once they use it. 14" laptops tend to be a lot brighter now too. Since docks and monitors are so cheap, it's usually best to have a screen that works great on the move and that can be docked when it's at its "Home" place. That's why you tend to see 13-14" and then 16-17" but the middle 15, which used to be so common, is fallen off a bit. If she hasn't used 14" and tends to use a laptop on a couch/chair, I would strongly suggest taking a look at that size. And 64GB might be more than you need but it's not like it hurts.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 20:48
|
|
|
Also, RAM is stupid cheap right now. 64GB of CL40 5600Mhz is ~$179-199, and slower stuff is even cheaper. I snagged 64GB of Crucial 4800Mhz for $128 a few weeks back.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 21:07
|
|
|
How realistic is 4k laptop gaming at least something like ~60fps? The reason I'm asking is because I've recently left QHD and found the enjoyment of a 32" 4k monitor. It's freaking phenomenal for work but gaming is a stretch. I'm running a 3060 mobile right now and I am often finding myself reducing this to Full HD or just 1920 which works okay-sh for the games I really like Squad or Company of Heroes 3. Looking at the benchmarks on NotebookCheck... Is it worthwhile to pickup something like a 3080 Ti or 4080 mobile? There doesn't seem to be a significant difference between a the 3060/4060 vs. 3070/4070 excluding the Ti 3070 variant. Is this realistic? I'm impressed by the build quality of my current Lenovo Legion laptop with just a 3060 mobile. It just works, plays the majority of games and as long as I can hit medium details without crazy amounts of anti-aliasing I am quite satisfied but once frames go below < 30fps the experienced is kind of ruined. Looking at some of newer laptops like a 4080/i7 or older i7/3080ti go below $2k that sounds like a good deal or am asking for too much?
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 00:44
|
|
|
4060 ~= 3070ti 4070 ~= 3080 3080ti is kinda here, but its not really that much faster than the 3080, but it does have 16GB of VRAM over the 3080 8, that's the big difference. 4080 (12GB) is about 30% faster than the 3080 4090 is about 60% faster than the 3080 A 4080 mobile is about equivalent to a 4070 desktop, so you can use that as a measuring stick. 12GB of VRAM isn't ideal but I think you're going to be more limited by processing than you are by VRAM at that point. You're going to be turning down settings in 4K, so you should be able to lower texture size and keep it to 12GB. Something like this would be good: https://www.ebay.com/itm/125771017600 $2500 can get you a 4090 too: https://slickdeals.net/f/17112196-lenovo-legion-pro-7-gen-8-16-qhd-240hz-ryzen-9-7945hx-rtx-4090-16gb-ddr5-512gb-ssd-2514-49 But is there a reason you want a laptop for this? You're definitely outside the price range where mobile makes a lot of sense, since you're looking at something thats running on a monitor anyway. Any reason you wouldn't get a desktop and just keep your current laptop?
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 01:57
|
|
|
The biggest reason I want one is because I am at the point in my life where I don't care about building a PC. And if I did building something I'd want an SFF PC but making my last Dan A4 while doable was still painful. Something from Lenovo or whomever else means I know it'll work out the box and it doesn't take up that much space. If something goes wrong, I can just mail to whatever and get decent support as opposed to troubleshooting it myself. If I ever need to travel but still want to play games, there's no issue just putting it in my backpack. I'm not going to buy anything now but it doesn't seem like it's a wise decision to watch prices especially after the holiday season. What's a little annoying if anything is the lack of a decent filter specifically for a 3080TI or 4080 on the major sites. Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Dec 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:15
|
|
|
Gucci Loafers posted:The biggest reason I want one is because I am at the point in my life where I don't care about building a PC. And if I did building something I'd want an SFF PC but making my last Dan A4 while doable was still painful. Something from Lenovo or whomever else means I know it'll work out the box and it doesn't take up that much space. If something goes wrong, I can just mail to whatever and get decent support as opposed to troubleshooting it myself. If I ever need to travel but still want to play games, there's no issue just putting it in my backpack. What about a prebuilt? Just seems like your use case is not for a laptop. A powerspec like this will absolutely crush any of the laptops we're talking about for ~$500 less https://www.microcenter.com/product/663464/powerspec-g714-gaming-pc And to be clear, I do not think a 3080ti is a good GPU for 4k. I think it's a moderate step up from your 3060 but not nearly enough that it would feel worthwhile. A 4080 is a better target.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:26
|
|
|
If I could find a pre-built in something like a smaller SFF-PC Case, I'd do it but I'm just not a fan of full size or even mid size towers.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:29
|
|
|
Are laptop cooling stands worthwhile at all? I still haven't had much of a chance to really put it through its paces, but my new gaming laptop gets pretty loud just running the CP2077 benchmark. I mean, I know noise is going to be an issue regardless, but I figure it might be worth it if it does help manage heat if only for the health of the machine.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:41
|
|
|
CaptainSarcastic posted:Are laptop cooling stands worthwhile at all? I still haven't had much of a chance to really put it through its paces, but my new gaming laptop gets pretty loud just running the CP2077 benchmark. I mean, I know noise is going to be an issue regardless, but I figure it might be worth it if it does help manage heat if only for the health of the machine. No not really. Most people will say they don't do anything at all. You can try some cheap laptop riser feet to make sure there's plenty of room for airflow on the bottom if your laptop has intake vents there.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:47
|
|
|
CaptainSarcastic posted:Are laptop cooling stands worthwhile at all? I still haven't had much of a chance to really put it through its paces, but my new gaming laptop gets pretty loud just running the CP2077 benchmark. I mean, I know noise is going to be an issue regardless, but I figure it might be worth it if it does help manage heat if only for the health of the machine. Yeah they are, but it depends on the laptop (and most importantly the GPU) as well as what surface you're normally using it on. Soft particle board or even many hardwood desks will act as an insulator. If your playing a game that isn't pegging your system then it won't matter, but if you are it can definitely help and that frequently means more performance. My old MSI using a 1060 saw a pretty big performance jump on an aluminum pad, but that machine did not have very good cooling. My G14 definitely runs better on one, but again the G14 does run warm under load. Still, it makes a noticeable impact but that frequently means "Takes longer to get loud" though. I also in general wouldn't worry about health of the machine, thermals these days throttle down before they take any real wear. If you're going full tilt for 8 hours a day then you might need to be concerned, but if it's more occasional I wouldn't worry about it. A decent pad is like $20 so in general I'd say its worth it. Just don't expect magic.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 04:14
|
|
|
Thanks for the replies - I'm pretty diligent about maintaining airflow, but might consider a dedicated pad of some sort. I have a couple really hard particle board type things I use for the purpose sometimes, but a riser of some sort would actually be helpful. I only tend to use a laptop for gaming while traveling, which isn't super often, but if I could find something that would let me get the screen even a little closer to eye level it would be helpful, so maybe I'll expand my search to that. Like I said, the noise isn't a huge concern (I often game with earbuds or headphones, anyway), but now that I think about it something that would help with the ergonomics would be helpful.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 05:10
|
|
|
I use a roll of scotch tape and a marker pen as risers. If you play games that don't need keyboard you could use tablet/laptop stand to raise the display a lot.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 08:56
|
|
|
Saukkis posted:I use a roll of scotch tape and a marker pen as risers. If you play games that don't need keyboard you could use tablet/laptop stand to raise the display a lot. Thanks - I generally use a wireless keyboard and mouse, and the display on this laptop is nice enough that my old practice of using a portable monitor makes less sense.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 08:59
|
|
|
Based on my experience so far with my Legion 7 I would also say a cooling pad is unnecessary and a riser would be more than sufficient. The only issue I have now is that my laptop display is far superior to my monitor, and years of playing at 60/75fps is suddenly overnight nowhere near smooth enough.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 11:08
|
|
|
CaptainSarcastic posted:Thanks - I generally use a wireless keyboard and mouse, and the display on this laptop is nice enough that my old practice of using a portable monitor makes less sense. I use this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C7ZOO2A?th=1 Which does help cooling vs a wooden desk, though I got it when it was like $20-something, not sure it's worth $40. It's reasonably stable and it's reasonably easy to adjust it to any level.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 15:14
|
|
|
I just use a cheap folding aluminum laptop stand and prop it so the rear is raised while gaming and I'm using a monitor. It lets the bottom fans have all the airflow they can get. It sure makes the screen unusable. This stand has no special properties it's just like $5 worth of metal. First one was bent during shipping they reshipped free. I can use it in a more normal can actually use the laptop and have the bottom vent raised a bit too but if I'm letting my laptop run full throttle it seems to run a cooler in the rear end in air position. Make sure your laptop isn't designed to vent through the keyboard and can actually run closed if you do that, as there's bottom fans on the laptop itself, this is fine. If you have no bottom fans a stand will likely have absolutely no effect on your performance. Even just like a half finger width of clearance from being on the stand completely flat makes a huge difference in performance over being on a hardwood desk. Swapping to a stand with built in fans I could *maybe* save some life on the laptops fans? I dunno I sure doubt it'd actually drop temps.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 15:25
|
|
|
My experience is also that a riser to make sure there's airflow is very important, but above and beyond that a cooler doesn't make any difference. It's an extra layer of protection in case the fans in your laptop suddenly die I guess. But short of that, the laptop's own fans are sufficient to cool it as long as there's airflow.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 15:42
|
|
|
Eric the Mauve posted:But short of that, the laptop's own fans are sufficient to cool it as long as there's airflow. Well that's not true. It's very common to hit thermal throttling when going all out for an extended period of time with a gaming laptop. If you're not hitting that then yeah, its fine, but if you are then additional environmental factors can help.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 16:10
|
|
|
I'm not super experienced myself but I recall reading a bunch of test results that suggested your standard cooling stand didn't generally make much difference on when the thermal throttling kicked in. But as you say, $20-30 is a pretty cheap price to give it a try if you're having problems with that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 16:14
|
|
|
It's a lot easier and more effective to control thermal throttling by undervolting and turning off turbo boost than getting a bunch of accessories imo
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 16:18
|
|
|
Here's a video on it with actual tests https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvKiy65pwg Basically as its been said, the biggest gain is just elevating your laptop, but you get a small increase on a cooling pad (though the differences between the pads is negligible. On the higher powered GPUs there was 4-6 degree differences including getting it away from thermal throttling. Anecdotally, this doesn't test the biggest difference I've seen which is the temp ramp up. Having a pad seems like it gives more time in my experience before you hit throttling. How much time it buys you probably depends a lot on the machine and the airflow. So yeah, they make a difference and are cheap. Just elevating your laptop gives you about half the gain though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 16:37
|
|
|
I've tested my $20 cooling pad on 3 different laptops, all except 1 had CPU undervolts and the one that didn't I undervolted the dGPU They were cooler with the pad every single time. There's no need to overthink it for such a small amount of money imo. There's basically 0 downside to it in my experience I dont bother with it on my XPS13 because it's so low wattage + has a solid undervolt that it's not worth it for me, especially since I usually offload any substantial processing to my desktop and stream it. But anything with a dGPU is easily worth it imo.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 20:30
|
|
|
Thanks all - I think a folding stand is where I'm going to direct my attention. I'd seen one like that articulating one when I was shopping for laptop desks, but now I see the use-case for that style and it could definitely help when I travel. Thanks again!
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2023 07:33
|
|
|
I have a question - this is more idle curiosity than a problem that actually needs solving, it lives squarely in the "annoying but bearable" category: Whenever my laptop has gone through a graphics driver update, or a Windows update, or something like that, the next boot will invariably take loving FOREVER. Like, the splash screen and spinning circle before the Windows 11 login screen appears will last for multiple actual minutes. It didn't used to do this - it started about a month ago. No hardware changes or anything like that before vs. after it started. Specs: - Acer Nitro 5 - AMD 5600H - Nvidia RTX 3060 - 2x8 GB DDR4-3200 - 2 NVMe drives and one SATA SSD because I had the drives spare and the laptop had room so why not - Windows 11 23H2 Home Does anyone have any guesses as to what could be causing it?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2023 19:03
|
|
|
I have no speculation, but I'd poke through Event Viewer for hints the next time it happens.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2023 20:14
|
|
|
In the bios is the correct hard drive set to boot or is it doing some automatic check through all of them? Does this also happen if you do a reboot or a shut down and start up?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2023 23:05
|
|
|
I saw this posted earlier in the thread and am about to pull the trigger: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-t...p?skuId=6535503 Any deals going on for similar strength laptops that I should consider before doing this?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2023 21:44
|
|
|
ArmTheHomeless posted:I saw this posted earlier in the thread and am about to pull the trigger: A slightly better version of that laptop was just on sale yesterday for $1083, and this exact laptop was $980 at Best Buy last week. I think if you can wait you can get a better deal. The TUF line is fine, but it's a step below the Strix/Zeph line for Asus and below the Legion line for lenovo. You can get a Legion with a 4070 for at or below this price, and I think there will be another sale run over the next week or two. So the laptop is fine but there will be better value imminently,
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2023 23:05
|
|
|
Lockback posted:A slightly better version of that laptop was just on sale yesterday for $1083, and this exact laptop was $980 at Best Buy last week. I think if you can wait you can get a better deal. Glad I asked. Thanks a ton. I'll keep an eye out over the next couple weeks for a better deal on this one or the other two you mentioned. Should I be watching Slickdeals site that was posted earlier or is there a better site to track these sales?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2023 23:11
|
|
|
Has anyone used a 3xxx/4xxx in a traditional Lenovo Thinkpad? I'm curious if the thermals or fan noise levels are any better than the Lenovo Legions.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2023 23:34
|
|
|
ArmTheHomeless posted:Glad I asked. Thanks a ton. Slickdeals has like 90% of the good deals. You committed to a 4070? Just doing a search for that will mostly pick up laptops.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 06:41
|
|
|
Gucci Loafers posted:Has anyone used a 3xxx/4xxx in a traditional Lenovo Thinkpad? I'm curious if the thermals or fan noise levels are any better than the Lenovo Legions. The P line is pretty good, not silent though. I guess I'd say the P line has a little deeper sound which is a little less annoying? I think they tend to not as high of a wattage on the GPU, but I am not sure if that is still the case anymore. If gaming is the primary purpose your probably still best off value wise with a legion.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 06:44
|
|
|
Lockback posted:Slickdeals has like 90% of the good deals. You committed to a 4070? Just doing a search for that will mostly pick up laptops. Not 100 percent committed. I have a budget for less than 1.5k after taxes and want whatever will play games the best and do some simple streaming to my tv. It just seems like a 4070 is the best in that price range. I have no idea what the AMD equivalent card is but I'm open it it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 06:52
|
|
|
The ASUS TUF A16 I got from BestBuy is currently $20 cheaper than what I paid ($749.99). I haven't spent that much time with it yet, and am going to upgrade the storage and RAM in the next few days, but it still strikes me as a good enough deal to share. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-t...p?skuId=6535499
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 07:47
|
|
|
ArmTheHomeless posted:Glad I asked. Thanks a ton. As a side, do those Asus "gaming" laptops all have armoury crate baked into the BIOS that you can't get rid of?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 15:51
|
|
|
Thanks for everyone's help on choosing, I eventually went with the Lenovo P16s Gen 2 for my wife because I was able to get it for a bit over $1k, which was my budget. Bigger, nicer screen than some of the P14s I was looking at, and it will arrive before Xmas, which was another criterion. Deal is maybe still up?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 18:08
|
|
|
slidebite posted:We are so close now, I just wait unit we get to the after xmas/boxing week sales at this point. Ahh I can't wait that long because this is supposed to be a gift to me for Xmas. They want me to pick one today but maybe I can stall a few more days. Lots of pressure!
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 19:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 22:50 |
|
|
I would guess new sales will pop Sunday
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 19:18
|
|