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Need a decent cheap laptop
InfusedEMP
Member UncommonPosts: 43
I've moved into an apartment on a university campus where I'm afraid to take my expensive pc, so I need a laptop. I'm hoping to find something with a minimum of 8gb ram, a quad core processor, an SSD, Win10 capable, and a decent graphics card for between $200 - $400. Looking on ebay I see there are a few things that have those specs and price range (such as this) but I think I'm better off asking for suggestions here. I've got a family friend offering me a free Toshiba C50-B which is better than nothing but is basically a doorstop. Considering that's the best I can find for free I think I should invest a few hundred in something. Any suggestions?
Comments
If you can get your hands on a used one I strongly recommend this one. Decent CPU and GPU and very fast SSD for the price. Also very light and super decent speakers.
Again for the price. I would not pay more than 400$ for it.
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
Also, why are you scared to take your PC? Are you afraid that it will be stolen? Don't have room for it? What would you do with the PC if you don't take it with you?
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Tested over a 115+ games since 1997.
Currently Playing:
Played(Retired): AOL NWN(91-95), UO, EQ1/2, DAoC, CoX, Lineage1/2, SWG(Pre CU/NGE), Planetside, Anarchy Online, FFXI, AC, Vanguard, D&D, AoC, DCUO, Rift, Eve, others
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Second, desktops are hard to steal, precisely because they're so hard to move around. If a thief did get into your room and see your desktop, he'd probably look at the tangle of cables and pass. He'd surely swipe a laptop if he saw it, though, as those are much easier to steal.
Third, if you have multiple terabytes of irreplaceable data that you care about, you'd better have a good backup plan. Whatever hard drive or SSD you have it on could fail. Copy the data onto an external hard drive and both copies of the data failing simultaneously is far less likely.
Fourth, if you want a laptop that can handle some gaming for under $400, you're pretty much going to have to get something used. And whatever you get, someone probably wanted to be rid of it for a reason. Sometimes people are just quick to upgrade and replace perfectly good hardware, but it's also much more likely to be defective somehow.
That laptop that a family friend offered you is going to be really slow. It has a dual core Atom CPU with a max turbo of 2.41 GHz. The cores are Silvermont Atom, which was the first generation of Atom CPUs to not be complete garbage in a desktop or laptop, but still, they're slow. If you could get a modern dual-core CPU (say, Sky Lake or third gen Ryzen) with a max turbo of 1 GHz, that would probably be a significantly faster CPU than the laptop you're being offered for free. Tack on a 5400 RPM hard drive and only 4 GB of memory, and it would probably handle word processing and e-mail all right. I'd be less confident about web browsing, but the sort of games you want to play would not run well. You're likely aware of that, or maybe you've just tried using the laptop, but either way, that's why you called it a doorstop.
I'm not saying that you should definitely take your PC with you. I am saying that you should definitely get a good data backup plan if you don't have one already.
This one is a good, not great entry level gaming machine that will play everything out there, although some settings will have to be turned down, some a lot. an upgrade to 16GB of RAM would do wonders. Listed at $699.00
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
For example:
https://www.amazon.com/Wsdcam-Wireless-Anti-Theft-Control-Security/dp/B00PYG7LH0
Something like that isn't a perfect protection, but it's cheap and it would sound 105 db alarm until the burglar removes its batteries. Most burglars aren't going to start detaching computer cables and carrying something the size of computer case out through the corridors after triggering that kind of alarm.
If you still want a laptop to use outside the apartment, feel free (you can still use Steam
In Home Streaming or nVidia Remote Play), but either drop gaming entirely off the requirements for it, or just break down and get a iPad.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
https://www.amazon.com/HP-15-15-6-inch-Touchscreen-Quad-Core/dp/B082FYKCSQ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Ryzen+7+3700U&qid=1579532975&sr=8-1
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Vega-HDMI-720p-Front-RAM-FHD-8GB-display-AMD-Tuned-Radeon-14-Ryzen-THX-Graphics-IR-SSD-Silver-Laptop-MOTILE-5-Spatial-256GB-8-Performance-Audio-HD-Ca/979627450?selected=true