Thinking about getting a good gaming computer

[Alex Nguyen | 15]

I was considering getting a good gaming laptop because I just got into emulation and I love it and Steam has a lot of good exclusives that I wasn't able to play. However, I'm stuck with both an Apple and a HP computer, which both are problematic for different reasons, Apple is notorious for not being not PC gaming friendly and HP computers are just flat out terrible. What are your recommendations for getting a good gaming laptop? I would like to know, thank you.

[RH | 4,895]

I'm not a PC gamer by any stretch, but I think the #1 question is what's your budget?  You also mentioned emulation.  Are you primarily interested in playing older, emulated games or do you actually want a PC for modern PC gaming?

[Jeevan | 8,909]

ya.  as @RH said, it really depends on what you specifically want to do and how,much you are willing to spend.  

I personally go with desktops over laptops, but I assume you need/want a laptop for on the go purposes.

[Gloves | 11,760]

Any specific reason it's gotta be a laptop? 

[Brickman | 3,980]

22 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

I personally go with desktops over laptops, but I assume you need/want a laptop for on the go purposes.

I was going to say the same thing. I’d strongly recommend a desktop.

Keep your Mac for day to day tasks and build a desktop.

I have my desktop in my study and have ran a HDMI cable through the wall/roof to my lounge room. Or just get a smaller form factor desktop and put it in the lounge room.

If your Mac isn’t super old you should have no problem running boot camp and emulating up to snes. Should be fine playing all steam indies too.

I’d avoid laptop gaming if possible. Too many issues and the cost is crazy expensive compared to desktop.

[Gloves | 11,760]

1 minute ago, Shmup said:

I was going to say the same thing. I’d strongly recommend a desktop.

Keep your Mac for day to day tasks and build a desktop.

I have my desktop in my study and have ran a HDMI cable through the wall/roof to my lounge room. Or just get a smaller form factor desktop and put it in the lounge room.

If your Mac isn’t super old you should have no problem running boot camp and emulating up to snes. Should be fine playing all steam indies too.

I’d avoid laptop gaming if possible. Too many issues and the cost is crazy expensive compared to desktop.

This. I used to game on laptops and it's been a huge regret of mine. Very wasteful. 

[Brickman | 3,980]

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

This. I used to game on laptops and it's been a huge regret of mine. Very wasteful. 

Yep. There have been huge improvements but they still have over heating issues even with external laptop fans and if you want to play modern games it’s going to cost a fortune and way harder to upgrade. I think we’ve all fallen into the laptop gaming trap at least once haha. 

[Jeevan | 8,909]

3 hours ago, Shmup said:

Yep. There have been huge improvements but they still have over heating issues even with external laptop fans and if you want to play modern games it’s going to cost a fortune and way harder to upgrade. I think we’ve all fallen into the laptop gaming trap at least once haha. 

Not this guy.  my fat hands don't work on laptops so I stayed away from them.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,600]

51 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

Not this guy.  my fat hands don't work on laptops so I stayed away from them.

Good thing I have tiny baby hands despite how chunky I am

[DefaultGen | 5,397]

I would go for build quality over components. Basically all laptop performance is going to suck for AAA games compared to a desktop, so get a good keyboard, case, display etc. instead of a fat no name box full of the highest spec stuff. Better to have a nicer computer that can play 95% of all games ever and skip the 5% most recent few games.

Edited October 27, 2020 by DefaultGen

[chromableedstudios | 24]

Why the HP hate? They seem pretty much as average as all the other OEMs to me.

+1 to the desktop and/or bootcamp recs though

[Tanooki | 4,929]

Well if HP is anything like it was some years ago and back from there, they saddle their install out of the box with some resource pig garbage they made or contracted to be loaded on there, some not so easy to remove and can be pushy.  People don't like bloatware, especially persistent.

My personal suggestion as I DID what you wanted 6 years ago, get a Clevo motherboard based gaming laptop out of Sager Computers.  It's the one on the market (was then, now maybe?) alone that is entirely piece by piece a build like a desktop computer, 100% modular and nothing stuck soldered in there.  Laptop gaming now also the chipset that Nvidia put out there first on mine the Nvidia GTX 980 only loses about 10% of the power of the desktop chip, so my 980 8GB is as potent as the 970 desktop with a bit more memory to use.  The Sager/Clevo come with 1 drive, but is made for a RAID of up to 4 more depending if you want to lose your optical drive as the 4th.  Mine has a mid-range i7 in there, in gaming runs at 3GHZ (2.5 on boot) and with 16 (of 32 possible) GB RAM as well.  PS4/PS4Pro level games I can run at 720 or 1080p at better than those consoles with a solid smooth FPS.  The new one I got Star Wars Squadrons I've not taxed it, but I can run smooth at med+ settings which exceeds the console versions.

[a3quit4s | 4,091]

Whatever you do, wait till Black Friday or cyber Monday.