help All-in-One Gaming Laptop or Gaming PC/Secondary Laptop?

[Viexi]

Hey everyone! I'm hoping I can get a bit of insight from y'all today.

The issue is that I've been wracking my brains over whether or not to sell my aging PC and go all-in on a gaming laptop that'll do everything or to get myself a decently fast 2-in-1 general purpose laptop and to begin to reuse my home PC again.

For reference, my PC at the moment is:
i7 6700k (@ stock clocks)
GTX 960
16GB 2133 RAM
1TB HDD

I've been out of PC building for a good while so I didn't know what the state of play was like in regards to the later i7 generations, but it turns out that as far as laptop processors go, they're only just beginning to catch up to my 6700k. As the i9 is faaaaar out of my budget, no matter what I do, I'd be sacrificing some element of CPU speed if I replace my PC for a powerful gaming laptop.

GPU is a different story however. A laptop's 1060 (including Max-Q) seems to handily outperform my 960 in most regards now. As long as I don't go for a 1050 or 1050Ti in my laptop, I'll be upgrading. This is definitely a good plus for me.

I'd like to use the machine for video editing and processing as well and have previously used Sony Vegas, but I've heard that Premiere Pro would make better use of an Nvidia GPU? Can anyone confirm? If that is the case, the drop in CPU performance could perhaps be made up by the GPU upgrade, on paper. As I plan on keeping with Intel 8th gen, CPU performance is still a high priority (~i5-8300H) but would need to be a compromise that wouldn't go much higher than that.

If I go for a general purpose laptop, it'd be no lower than an i5-8th gen which would still be plenty good for me to do most of my lighter tasks (maybe even including lighter video and photo editing) as well as hobby writing. I do like me some hobby writing. In this case I'd maybe consider one of the higher grade HP Pavilion 2-in-1's (which handily comes with an i5-8265U, a nice upgrade over the 8250U) and an Nvidia MX130 for those barebones GPU accelerated processes. I could focus on putting the extra money towards a decent 1060 (and an SSD) for my desktop PC and use that as my main workstation, which would still be leaps ahead of most laptops. Either way I feel I'm planning to spend approx. the same amount in either direction.

Also the 2-in-1's are pretty damn attractive. I can't pretend I don't prefer their looks, battery life, portability and overall decent performance for the size. I don't really like the "GAMER" aesthetic of gaming laptops, and needing to carry a power cord ontop of a 2-3kg beast doesn't appeal to me much... But I do love me some bells & whistles. And RGB. Oooh baby dat RGB.

Hate "GAMER" aesthetic but loves RGB, go figure. ANYWAY. Sorry for the long post but I've been trying to decide for about 2 weeks now.

tl;dr - Do I sell my PC and sacrifice CPU performance but improve GPU performance? Or get a secondary laptop and upgrade my home PC? What would you do with a budget of ~£900 (~~~$1200)?

Some links:
- i5 comparative scores (General and Gaming vs My Desktop)
- GTX 960 vs 1060 relative performance comparison (Max-Q)
- Potential candidate? HP Omen (i5-8300H, GTX 1060 3GB)
- Potential candidate? HP Pavilion (i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD)

[Brooksie359]

I would always go with 2 systems that are good at what they are meant for rather than one that is ok at both. Gaming laptops don't really work all that well as laptops tbh and are outclassed by desktops in gaming. 

[Slottr]

Upgrade the gpu in your current system, then buy a mid/high tier laptop like the base xps 13/15 or one of the newer thinkpads 

[Commodus]

I'm always of the mindset that it's better to have two purpose-built machines than get one system that's nothing but a compromise.  The laptop will neither be as portable as you'd like it to be nor as fast as a desktop, even if the gap has closed a bit.

 

Besides, there's an advantage to having two systems: if one conks out, you're not completely hosed if something breaks.  That's mostly useful if you work from one system, but it's still nice to have that backup.

[Magus]

[deleted]

[wasab]

My machine is older than yours but it runs everything 920p and Max settings 30 fps or more on my shitty 920p monitor. My question is do you really need to upgrade?

[genexis_x]

If you have the budget, I would always suggest desktop+laptop

 

If portability is very important, laptop

[Viexi]

I've got to be honest whilst I was typing this out I think I'd mostly convinced myself that one system was a worse idea, so to see that the decision is unanimous towards having two separate systems just helps solidify it.

 

Thanks for the help!

[MandoPanda]

17 hours ago, Viexi said:

I've got to be honest whilst I was typing this out I think I'd mostly convinced myself that one system was a worse idea, so to see that the decision is unanimous towards having two separate systems just helps solidify it.

 

Thanks for the help!

Decided on what you will buy yet?

[MandoPanda]

18 hours ago, Viexi said:

I've got to be honest whilst I was typing this out I think I'd mostly convinced myself that one system was a worse idea, so to see that the decision is unanimous towards having two separate systems just helps solidify it.

 

Thanks for the help!

This is what I would do if I were you with a $1200 budget:

 

Laptop:

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Yoga-720-Touch-i5-8250U/dp/B076V6DPZN/ref=sr_1_7?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1542255994&sr=1-7&keywords=lenovo+yoga+13+inch#customerReviews

 

GPU:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814932012&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker, LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

 

SSD:

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B0781Z7Y3S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1542257492&sr=8-3&keywords=500gb+evo+ssd

[Viexi]

17 hours ago, MandoPanda said:

This is what I would do if I were you with a $1200 budget:

 

Laptop:

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Yoga-720-Touch-i5-8250U/dp/B076V6DPZN/ref=sr_1_7?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1542255994&sr=1-7&keywords=lenovo+yoga+13+inch#customerReviews

 

GPU:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814932012&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker, LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

 

SSD:

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B0781Z7Y3S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1542257492&sr=8-3&keywords=500gb+evo+ssd

Thank you so much for the help! Honestly the fact that I have enough spare for a decent SSD and a 1070 absolutely blows my mind.

 

So the laptop I decided on is this one: https://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=5ET23EA&opt=ABU&sel=NTB

 

It was £750 down to £630 (so about $800, though tech seems to generally be a bit more expensive here). It's a big boon in that it has the newer 8265U, and the build quality is very impressive! It's not too far off of the Lenovo Yoga you suggested as well.

 

I'll possibly hold off on the desktop upgrades until after the holidays, but then comes the real fun