Source
r/SuggestALaptop•
Mervith

17", UK, £1,000 - £3,000 Gaming Laptop.

I used to be able to do this sort of thing myself, but it seems those days have gone, multicore processors and such confuse me somewhat!

Wanting to get some ideas for a new laptop for my boyfriend. No specific requirements other than the latest games at 60fps and some measure of futureproofing for some games being released soon.

I've opted for 17" as squinting at a 15" would be distracting from gaming.

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

  • Country of purchase: UK.

  • Budget range: From £1k to £3k

  • Purpose (netbook, ultraportable, mainstream, gaming, desktop replacement, etc.): Gaming.

  • Screen size preference: 17"

  • OS preference (Windows/ Mac/ Linux): Windows

  • Gaming requirements (example games and desired fps/settings): Diablo 3, Skyrim, Torchlight 2. Ideally at at least 60fps. Other games to follow, but likely to include titles similar to Titanfall and such.

  • Performance requirements (video, CAD, etc.): None specifically.

  • Method of computer support (office supplier, college bookstore, self support): Not sure I understand the question, where would it be fixed by? Likely a repair tech, as I'm not always going to be around to fix it for them.

  • Brand preferences and reasons (already owned accessories, familiarity, business compatibility): No preference on this one!

  • Any particular style that you like (examples are great): None

  • Which of the following qualities would you prefer? (Choose one, the other, or balanced)

  • Long battery life -vs- Low weight: Balanced

  • Build quality -vs- Low price: Build Quality

  • Low noise/heat -vs- High performance: Balanced

Would you pay a premium for something that has:

  • High resolution screen: Yes

  • A great keyboard: Yes

  • A great touchpad/mouse buttons: No

  • Great audio: Yes, particularly through headphones.

Posted Mar 24, 2014, 3:38 PM UTC

32
ElGofre•

For £3000 you could go seriously nuts. This model from PCSpecialist can be configured with twin 880M graphics cards in SLI, which is pretty much the most powerful mobile graphics solution currently available on the market (they've only been available for a couple of weeks), for £2194. That's about as powerful and future-proof as you're likely to get graphics-wise. From there you can scale up as high as you want to go within your budget, depending on what features you want. As an example build, for £3016 you could get 16GB of RAM and two 1TB SSDs in RAID. Granted it's an absolute brick, but any laptop with this sort of graphical grunt is likely to be. If audio is a major consideration, most laptops are only going to be as good as each other. You could siphon off some of your budget into a better audio setup, if you have a budget split in mind I'd be happy to make headphone suggestions too :)

2
MervithOP•

Thank you! This is looking great based on the recommendations you've given. Is the processor upgrade that they offer worth it?

I last did hardware back when SATA wasn't really popular in the private sector, so I'm not hugely knowledgeable on RAID setups. Is striped or mirrored better for a gaming setup?

Have the longevity issues of SSD's died down? I know when they first started hitting the market, there was talk of them slowing considerably after a few months of usage.

1