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Laptop for studies and random gaming
Hi there
During my studies i will be using statistical software and i want a laptop that can run the software without problems i guess and play low- mid range games .
This is my current choice
Cosmos Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4710MQ (2.50GHz) 6MB
4GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 4GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 850M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
500GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7260 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Cosmos Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (48.84WH)
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
The hard drive will be replaced with 256GB sandisk ssd and the ram with 2 x4 ram
price is £625
Thanks for any help
Comments
It sounds like a pretty good deal honestly. My only recommendations would have been a SSD and 8gb of ram which you say it will have both.
Should be a solid workhorse and run most games on med/high honestly as long as you aren't the kind of person who needs a constant 60FPS on max settings type gamer.
Good choice imo.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
i always run win7 64bit because 32bit takes 2.5 out of the 4 ram . I dont really care about the fps
Yea Win7 64bit is the best OS on the market right now. Win8 is a debacle but PC gamers knows MS goes in cycles of good operating systems. It should do everything you need, I'd grab it up myself if I had the money at the moment, I'm in the market for a new laptop myself
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
You can still mod windows 8 like windows 7 though. What are you looking to buy ?
It goes without saying any gaming laptop is fine for studying. As a engineering student this CPU is above and beyond what I would need for school. I think you just need to go with the gaming specs of the game you wanna play and be done with it.
Something maybe slightly under the specs you have there. Maybe an I5 processor, but I'd still want the SSD, 8gb of ram, and a decent graphics card in it. I don't have enough time to play games anymore to devote as much money as I used to in all honesty, but the specs you have there is close to what I would get for personal use/light gaming.
And yea Win8 can be modded to be like 7, I just find it highly annoying that you have to mod an OS to make it usable again.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I take more concern on the cpu and gpu because you cant change them , ram and hard drive you can easily
Yea i know what you mean , if i dont play a game from time to time i will go mental
Win8 is functional, and slightly better under the hood. It's the interface that is garbage. Games will actually run slightly better under Win8 than Win7. Depending on where you get it, Win7 can be gotten cheaper though.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yea I have heard that and that's a valid point Lizardbones. Eventually will we will be forced to move on from Win7 the same way they just did for XP, but as long as it works and I get the performance I desire, I'll hold off on Win8 personally. They have done a fair bit of tweaking from what Win8 was originally and to be perfectly honest I haven't messed with it enough to know if I would like it enough to switch now or not.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
still have a bit of time
extended support for Win 7 is currently 1/14/2020
EQ2 fan sites
It'll do OK for the price, but the 850M with DDR3 memory has me a little worried. Especially with a 6-cell battery. When do you actually need the laptop, because AMD is about to release its GCN based APUs that should perform in the ballpark of this laptop while consuming less power and probably be cheaper.
It seems pretty priceworthy.
I would consider a nice 24" screen, a keyboard and a gaming mouse to dock it when you are using it at home though, it will still be mobile but you don't have to play on that small screen and use the less than ergonomical keyboard.
Rather than buying two 4 GB memory modules and replacing the memory already in the laptop, you can buy one 4 GB module and add it to the memory there without removing the module already in the laptop.
A GeForce GTX 850M is Maxwell, so it should be pretty energy-efficient as laptop GPUs go. Don't expect performance miracles out of a card with DDR3 memory, but if you need a powerful CPU for your statistical software, that laptop may make sense.
Of course, if you really need a powerful CPU, a desktop is the way to go.
Yes i should have made it more clear ,about that
the other option is this , same setting but different screen and gpu
15.6" Matte HD LED 16:9 Widescreen (1366x768) with NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 840M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11 for £544
is this a better option ?
What is difference with current apus ? i am using AMD A6-3400M at the moment i can say the gpu is ok but not great and its overheating like crazy , it can handle it , but after a while you cant stand the noise it makes . Sometimes its like its going to explode or take off . i will say max temp is between 75-80 that i got from speedfan and idle is really high 50-60 but i have to it can overheat only by running a single window firefox , i not really sure you can get this under 50 idle
Being in uni i have to move around and i want a laptop to have that ability,
Well i guess the apu being gpu and cpu together is always overheating because of that , if i get a laptop with intel and gpu there will be less noise and less overheating i guess, well i hope so , i will game from time to time so i want the laptop to be able to run some mid games .
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
well i run visual studio and as a 6gb program , i think you need to have a goodish operating system to be able to run it
Do you already have a desktop? The screenshots on your account of system specs show desktop parts.
You didn't answer the question of why you want a laptop. When I was a student, I used a desktop. The main questions are where are you going to use the laptop and what are you going to do with it there? If you use a laptop in class, in most classes, your professor will assume--correctly--that you're not paying attention.
Gaming laptops are fundamentally a matter of cramming too much heat into too little space. That means that they get hot and they get noisy under gaming loads. If a 35 W APU is too much heat for a laptop to handle, then replacing it with both a 47 W CPU and a 40 W GPU will make the situation worse, not better. It might be that your current laptop is needlessly bad at dissipating the heat quietly, but a new laptop isn't automatically going to be better at it.
How often would you really use your laptop as a mobile system?
For gaming, most people like to have one specific place to relax and play. I wouldn't want to play games in a library or other public place where I might disturb someone with my game sounds or cursing at the screen.
For school purposes, do you really need a mobile PC? I'm guessing your classes don't actually require you to move around and run computations that only a laptop can do. It has been almost ten years since I attended college, so I could be wrong. A tablet might work well if you absolutely must have a digital device in class.
Consider how often you might move your gaming PC if you had a desktop system. Would you move it every week? Every month? Every year?
If you have to move it every week, a laptop might be more convenient. If you have to move it every month, maybe you can tolerate moving a SFF gaming rig. If you only have to move it every year, a full desktop system would be best.
Yeh I'm just looking for something as cheap as I can go. I just use Visual Studio for some C# development for one of my classes. This semester is mainly windows apps and next semester will be more web based development. Pretty much same deal with WampServer but it seems that would be a pretty lightweight app that shouldn't need to much for me to hammer out/run/debug some MySQL and PHP code.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
it is mostly for labs , well i am still thinking about it if i should buy a desktop or not , i have a desktop in my country but not here and i am also thinking if i should build a small desktop here thats why i didnt buy anything yet
How much memory you need for a database depends very, very strongly on how much data is in there. For a very small database, a few GB is fine. A sufficiently large database will choke for lack of memory even if you give it 1 TB--and yes, I mean terabyte, not gigabyte.
A laptop is really a last resort if you're using Visual Studio, especially if you want to do serious work, not just messing around a bit. Get a desktop; get a full-sized, wired keyboard; get a real wired, laser mouse; and get multiple, decent-sided monitors for that. Also get ample desk space and a nice chair to sit in. If it's your full-time job, your additional productivity from having a decent work environment as opposed to being hunched over a laptop will pay for the hardware many times over.
The GPU probably doesn't matter for your needs so long as you get something modern. How much CPU you need depends very strongly on what you're doing. Some programming is fine on a budget dual-core, but some benefits considerably from having a stronger CPU to compile and test stuff faster.
Well for the database work I don't forsee them getting to big since it's just for assignment projects in class. The Visual Studio aspect isn't so much as a necessity since I do have it already on my desktop. I just wanted to have it loaded up on a laptop for a little more convenience having some thing portable. The Visual Studio use is also just for schoolwork and not anything for "real world" or serious development.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor