Choosing A New Laptop Advice

[vurrsys]

Im looking to get a new laptop to better play video games on and I need some advice

I, admittedly, do not know a lot about technology or specs and such and a lot of y'all do so ai figured I'd ask for help on the ideal laptop to get for my specific use case. My current laptop is from 2017/2018 and the battery got shorted in a power outage and it's become very hard and slow to use. Budget is ideally in the $800 range or lower but if none exist with that price I'm willing to hear other options

My use case:

• 2tb or more of D: drive space
• Able to run modern games + emulators
• Can be used for streaming on Twitch
• I just need it to be able to run good under strain lol
• Laptop, not desktop
• Pre-built, no assembly required
• Comes with Windows
• Ideally as little AI intrusion as possible (but I get if that's hard)

Thank you very much!! Help is very appreciated

[Xinjinmeng]

Is the "2 Tb" non-negotiable? I found many candidates in your price range but they were all 1 Tb.

[plumpan]

So if you live in the US my advice for laptops is very very strongly "Buy a used business machine". They tend to be as well built or more well built than anything you can buy new, and substantially cheaper.

Even on ebay most will have Windows preinstalled. They're ideal for running Linux, at least for everything you've listed, but they will also run windows. Though honestly you may end up with a much better windows install if you specifically reinstall and fool it into thinking you're in Europe. If you *really* want to reduce the AI intrusion issue, Windows is always going to be the limiting factor.

As for which, Nocoffei likes the HP Elitebook 845 G9. Personally I like the Lenovo Thinkpad L series AMD options, say a Thinkpad L14 Gen 3 AMD. The former is roughly $400, the latter roughly $300. You can also get a Thinkpad L14 Gen 5 AMD for around 500-600ish, which has a newer CPU+GPU. The difference in CPU performance between all of those isn't going to be huge but the HP and newer Lenovo will have a decent step in graphics. I don't imagine that would matter if you're just playing emulators, perhaps with exception for things like RPCS3. Maybe. You will want to check the CPU model and make sure it's not a quad core option, you want a 6 core. Sometimes 8 core models pop up, but usually at a premium.

The caveat here is it's very rare you ever see any of these with 2TB drives installed. Of course, all of these are so cheap that you could buy a 2TB SSD and install it, they all have upgradable storage and RAM, but that would require opening the laptop. That's not a huge deal on these models as they're designed to be serviced, but it's not as easy as the the old one screw upgrade days. Of which I miss. Anyway if you have any computer literate friends in your area they'd be very happy to help I'm sure, if you weren't comfortable with doing that or suffering having an external SSD hanging off of the laptop at all times.

It's a little more work to go through the process of getting a used business laptop, but you spend a lot less for what I believe to be a better laptop than you could possibly get otherwise. I have a slightly older L14 which I bought at the time almost exclusively because of how cheap it was (Getting a 6 core laptop for $300 was amazing at the time!) and it's my primary stream machine. I mostly use it for capture streaming rather than local gameplay on the laptop, but it's got the grunt for CPU encoding.

[vurrsys]

Is the "2 Tb" non-negotiable? I found many candidates in your price range but they were all 1 Tb.

Yeah I'm willing to downsize, it's just my current laptop has a 2tb drive built into it with 1tb already being used so switching might be a bit of a headache but I can get a flash drive or USB SSD or something

So if you live in the US my advice for laptops is very very strongly "Buy a used business machine". They tend to be as well built or more well built than anything you can buy new, and substantially cheaper.

Even on ebay most will have Windows preinstalled. They're ideal for running Linux, at least for everything you've listed, but they will also run windows. Though honestly you may end up with a much better windows install if you specifically reinstall and fool it into thinking you're in Europe. If you *really* want to reduce the AI intrusion issue, Windows is always going to be the limiting factor.

As for which, Nocoffei likes the HP Elitebook 845 G9. Personally I like the Lenovo Thinkpad L series AMD options, say a Thinkpad L14 Gen 3 AMD. The former is roughly $400, the latter roughly $300. You can also get a Thinkpad L14 Gen 5 AMD for around 500-600ish, which has a newer CPU+GPU. The difference in CPU performance between all of those isn't going to be huge but the HP and newer Lenovo will have a decent step in graphics. I don't imagine that would matter if you're just playing emulators, perhaps with exception for things like RPCS3. Maybe. You will want to check the CPU model and make sure it's not a quad core option, you want a 6 core. Sometimes 8 core models pop up, but usually at a premium.

The caveat here is it's very rare you ever see any of these with 2TB drives installed. Of course, all of these are so cheap that you could buy a 2TB SSD and install it, they all have upgradable storage and RAM, but that would require opening the laptop. That's not a huge deal on these models as they're designed to be serviced, but it's not as easy as the the old one screw upgrade days. Of which I miss. Anyway if you have any computer literate friends in your area they'd be very happy to help I'm sure, if you weren't comfortable with doing that or suffering having an external SSD hanging off of the laptop at all times.

It's a little more work to go through the process of getting a used business laptop, but you spend a lot less for what I believe to be a better laptop than you could possibly get otherwise. I have a slightly older L14 which I bought at the time almost exclusively because of how cheap it was (Getting a 6 core laptop for $300 was amazing at the time!) and it's my primary stream machine. I mostly use it for capture streaming rather than local gameplay on the laptop, but it's got the grunt for CPU encoding.

Yeah I definitely want to play newer-era games too, not just emulators. VRChat is like, unplayable on my current machine and I'd really like to go to virtual cons and not get left out 3d graphic games are a real issue in general

Thanks for the advice!! I'll look around at those options

[plumpan]

Yeah I definitely want to play newer-era games too, not just emulators. VRChat is like, unplayable on my current machine and I'd really like to go to virtual cons and not get left out 3d graphic games are a real issue in general

Thanks for the advice!! I'll look around at those options

VRChat might be iffy on modern APUs, I'd have to look into that. I remember running desktop mode on my laptop before which is slightly older/slower than the ones I listed but that was some years ago, not sure if the game has become more resource intensive since then. I would be surprised if full VR worked. And streaming a modern game plus running it on the same machine is probably a no go.

I looked up if VRChat runs on steam deck and it appears to be playable. The newer machines I listed are *more or less* the same speed as a steam deck, so if it runs on the steam deck it will probably run on them performance wise. If you can find models with a "Ryzen 6850U" or "Ryzen 7735U", those have more GPU on them and it would help. However those are a lot less common and a bit more expensive, as well as steering you towards "similar but actually different" models with downsides like say, not having upgradable ram. I'm a lot less comfortable suggesting someone who isn't familiar with buying used computer hardware try to find and buy something on their own with those specific requirements.

But that being said, you're not really going to get a laptop with significantly more GPU power for $800 new or used without a lot of luck. That kind of price to performance only really happens with self built desktops, and that's still not super easy.

[Xinjinmeng]

I do recommend that your portable devices shouldn't have too much storage, as they tend to get lost or stolen. I always recommend getting off-site backup, like Backblaze.

I would also recommend closeout/remaindered machines. My vendors of choice are the Dell Outlet and MicroCenter.com

https://outlet.us.dell.com/GDOOnline/On ... I0MDA3Il19

https://www.microcenter.com/search/sear ... 291+519+43

Good luck!