Looking For A Top End Gaming Laptop

mark_htfc · 6 Sep 2018 at 14:43

Hi,

I was wondering if you would be able to help, as I am a bit out of touch with laptops.

I am ideally looking for something that is at the top end of the gaming laptop range, and something that should hopefully last for a good few years and still be able to cope with new games that come out. If it has 4K then great, but not an important requirement so as long as it is has at least full HD.

I have a budget of around £3k, but if something was cheaper than that but just as good as something at £3k than that would be better (on the bank at least).

Cheers
Mark

Electroshadow · 6 Sep 2018 at 14:50

take a look at the Acer Predator Helios 500 can normally be found with a nice i9 cpu for near to 2k

powerful machines in any spec really i think they have somewhere in the region of 400w power bricks as well so i would not expect them to be too portable.

Meritor · 6 Sep 2018 at 14:55

You've got a fair few options at the 3k end of the spectrum.

I guess knowing a bit more might help narrow things down somewhat, do you have a screen size in mind (17 / 15)? would you rather have 4k or 144Mhz? Is portability a concern? Do you need any specific ports (TB3 / Ethernet)? How important is battery life? How much storage are you going to need?

mark_htfc · 6 Sep 2018 at 15:31

Electroshadow said:
take a look at the Acer Predator Helios 500 can normally be found with a nice i9 cpu for near to 2k

powerful machines in any spec really i think they have somewhere in the region of 400w power bricks as well so i would not expect them to be too portable.

Thanks, I will have a look at that one. 2k will probably be at a better price range over 3k.

I assume the ones at the 3k range then will be more of a brick than a thinner one? Maybe closer to the 2k range might be a better option depending.

Meritor said:
You've got a fair few options at the 3k end of the spectrum.

I guess knowing a bit more might help narrow things down somewhat, do you have a screen size in mind (17 / 15)? would you rather have 4k or 144Mhz? Is portability a concern? Do you need any specific ports (TB3 / Ethernet)? How important is battery life? How much storage are you going to need?

I wasn't 100% sure what I was exactly wanting, so I didn't think to list specifics. Screen size I don't think matters too much between 15 or 17, but 17 would probably be better. As for 4k or 144mhz, what is the difference? Is 144mhz better than UHD? Portability isn't that much of a concern, as I will be primarily using it at home (it is so I have an option to sit in the living room or sit in bed and play rather than always having to sit at the PC). Battery life is also not a major concern as it would probably be mostly plugged in when I play, if it held charge for about 3/4 hours though that would be alright. Storage wise probably not a lot, as it will mainly be used for just installing games, I have seen some that come with a 1tb and a additional 256gb so probably something along those lines.

I also assume that i9 is the best one that you can get in a laptop at the minute (i9 is what I would definitely look at over an i7/i5)? Although it seems like a lot of laptops I have seen come with the i7, so that might be the way to go. & a GTX 1080 is the best GPU? Is 1080 really needed? As I have seen that a lot of laptops comes with the 1070.

By the sounds of it then I assume the 3k range is towards the top end of the price spectrum? Would 2k also potentially get me a top end machine as well that isn't necessarily the best out there?

Loki · 7 Sep 2018 at 00:34

Hi @mark_htfc

At that kind of budget, a lot will come down to personal preference. Me personally I would go for 144Hz over 4K every day of the week regardless of whether it is 15.6" or 17.3". Bare in mind a gaming laptop with 144hz display and a decent graphics card will output in 4K (assuming you have a 4k screen) so you can get the best of both worlds in that respect.

£2k, £3k it's going to buy you a lot of laptop regardless of whether it is from us at Asus or any other vendor for that matter. I guess it does come down to what you want to use it for. By spending say £3k just to get an i9 is it worth it when you could spend say £2k to £2.5k, get yourself a really decent monitor with the change but the laptop is an i7.

Is a 1080 Needed ? Well if you are playing games like League of Legends, Counter Strike, Overwatch etc, then it's overkill. If you want to future proof and play the latest AAA games that are resource hungry on really high settings then a 1060 / 1070 / 1080 is an area to look at.

I can offer you a few to consider and research

Option 1 G703GI-E5005R @ £2,799.95

This is more of a full desktop replacement. It's bigger, bulkier and has a lot of power under the hood., If you want the performance in line with desktop but something you can take to LAN's etc or use with an external monitor, this is an all round power house

17.3" screen with 144Mhz and 3ms Display
GTX 1080, play almost anything upto the max
512GB PCI-E SSD (Fast Read / Write Speeds), Plenty of space if you want to put some games on there
1TB Seagate Firecuda drive. (A lot faster than your standard S-ATA HDD). Will load large games quickly. Plenty of space for big game install like BFV, Call of Duty 4 etc
i7 8750H (Unless you are doing work that require a LOT of cpu power, the latest i7 should be more than ample for what you need it for)
Comes with around £150.00 free accessories (Rugged Gaming Rucksack, Gaming Mouse, Gaming Headset)

Option 2 GM501GS EI004T @ £1,899.95

15.6" Screen with 144Hz 3ms display
Full fat GTX 1070 which should play the majority of games on the higest settings
512GB PCI-E SSD (Fast Read / Write Speeds), Plenty of space if you want to put some games on there
1TB Seagate Firecuda drive. (A lot faster than your standard S-ATA HDD). Will load large games quickly. Plenty of space for big game install like BFV, Call of Duty 4 etc
i7 8750H (Unless you are doing work that require a LOT of cpu power, the latest i7 should be more than ample for what you need it for)
Thin, Stylish and lightweight (Max 19.9mm and 2.45KG)

mark_htfc · 8 Sep 2018 at 12:24

Thanks for that Loki. The first option looks like a right beast. I just need to weigh up my options and decide whether to splash out on a gaming laptop, or upgrade my current PC rig and then save up for the other.

MiSJAH · 8 Sep 2018 at 14:04

Code:

Chassis & Display : 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) + G-Sync

Processor (CPU)Intel® Core™ i5 Six Core Processor i5-8600K (3.6 GHz) 9 MB Cache
FREE PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Battlefield 1 & More! w/ select Intel CPUs!

Memory (RAM)16GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)Graphics Card2 x NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 - 8.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DX 12.11st

M.2 SSD Drive 250GB WD Black™ M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3000MB/s R | 1600MB/s W)

Memory Card ReaderIntegrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)

AC Adaptor2 x 330W AC Adaptor (For GTX 1080)

Battery 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,800 mAh/89.21WH)

Power Cable1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Sound Card Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Bluetooth & WirelessGIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9260 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0

USB Options5 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 3.1 PORT AS STANDARD

Keyboard BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER

£2,516.67ex VAT£3,020.00inc VAT and Delivery

2 x GTX 1080's and desktop CPU for only £200 more than the asus Loki mentioned.

Loki · 8 Sep 2018 at 14:51

mark_htfc said:
Thanks for that Loki. The first option looks like a right beast. I just need to weigh up my options and decide whether to splash out on a gaming laptop, or upgrade my current PC rig and then save up for the other.

No Probs @mark_htfc

If you are down in near Stoke next Saturday (15th), there will be some laptops on display at the Motors Meet event.