Thin laptop with gaming specs, suggestions?

[BearSole]

I'm going into mechatronics engineering next year for university. My highschool has provided all students with Chromebooks through a deal with Google, but my Chromebook is starting to die quite quickly. I've been looking for a high quality laptop to replace, that I could also use for university level engineering, as well as playing some games. 

 

I've been looking at the Asus ROG Zephyrus, Razer Blade 15, and msi GS65 Stealth. 

 

In this laptop I'd want:

-8/9th gen Intel i7

-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti / RTX 2060 / RTX 2070 (2060 and 2070 can be Max-Q)

-16+ GB of RAM

-Either 1TB SSD, or 1TB HDD and additional 512GB SSD

-m.2 SSD

-Good air flow and cooling so it's not on fire every time I try to use CAD software

-Backlit keyboard is always fun, but not absolutely necessary

-Thin chassis highly preferred

-Good battery (~6hrs) very highly preffered

-15.6" inch screen, IPS

 

If I could have any suggestions on which laptops would be a good fit for what I need, that would be super appreciated, or any suggestions on specs that I should or shouldn't have in it.

 

Thank you!

[LukeLinusFanFic]

I saw last year's HP Spectre X360 (Linus' the best so far in 2018) is available refurbished on Amazon, top specs for 1150$. If Radeon M graphics are enough for you, it's a good deal imo.

[dizmo]

Generally gaming and battery life don't go hand in hand. If you want a laptop with good battery life honestly I'd go with a Lenovo, and build a small gaming rig for your house.

You missed the most important thing...budget.

 

Welcome to the forum.

[BearSole]

I would build a small rig, it would definitely be better and probably cheaper for gaming. However, as an engineer I'll be mostly living in the labs and library. Spending all my time there. Which unfortunately means I have to pay the hefty premium for convenience of portability. 

 

What you said, @dizmo, about gaming and battery life not going together, doesn't the Razer Blade 15 have a pretty solid mix of the two? From what I understand it was ~6hrs of battery life, but I could be completely wrong. And thank you for the warm greetings!

 

[dizmo]

6 minutes ago, BearSole said:

I would build a small rig, it would definitely be better and probably cheaper for gaming. However, as an engineer I'll be mostly living in the labs and library. Spending all my time there. Which unfortunately means I have to pay the hefty premium for convenience of portability. 

 

What you said, @dizmo, about gaming and battery life not going together, doesn't the Razer Blade 15 have a pretty solid mix of the two? From what I understand it was ~6hrs of battery life, but I could be completely wrong. And thank you for the warm greetings!

 

I meant do both. Lenovo has some pretty deep discounts on their laptops for Black Friday, so depending on your budget you might be able to get both.

If you're mostly in labs and librarys, you shouldn't be gaming there anyway

I'd never buy a Razer laptop, the quality simply isn't there. Take, for example, the fact that half or more of the ones Linus bought for staff had to be returned.

 

Whatever you do, don't sacrifice battery life for gaming. You should be focusing on class, not games.

 

On an unrelated side note, have you looked into the future viability of the field you're going into?
I have a friend who works at a major power provider, and he said they had tons of engineers applying for laborer positions because there's simply not enough demand for engineers; it's one of the most saturated fields. Mind you that's (probably?) civil engineering, but it's still something I'd look into if you haven't already.

[flashiling]

7 hours ago, dizmo said:

I'd never buy a Razer laptop, the quality simply isn't there. Take, for example, the fact that half or more of the ones Linus bought for staff had to be returned.

@dizmo if i may ask a little off topic here since i'm thinking of getting a razer blade.

why did they return their pc's

[dizmo]

5 hours ago, flashiling said:

@dizmo if i may ask a little off topic here since i'm thinking of getting a razer blade.

why did they return their pc's

They all had issues of some kind. I don't think they really got into what went wrong, but they were problems that required RMA.

[Super Spartan]

14 hours ago, BearSole said:

I'm going into mechatronics engineering next year for university. My highschool has provided all students with Chromebooks through a deal with Google, but my Chromebook is starting to die quite quickly. I've been looking for a high quality laptop to replace, that I could also use for university level engineering, as well as playing some games. 

 

I've been looking at the Asus ROG Zephyrus, Razer Blade 15, and msi GS65 Stealth. 

 

In this laptop I'd want:

-8/9th gen Intel i7

-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti / RTX 2060 / RTX 2070 (2060 and 2070 can be Max-Q)

-16+ GB of RAM

-Either 1TB SSD, or 1TB HDD and additional 512GB SSD

-m.2 SSD

-Good air flow and cooling so it's not on fire every time I try to use CAD software

-Backlit keyboard is always fun, but not absolutely necessary

-Thin chassis highly preferred

-Good battery (~6hrs) very highly preffered

-15.6" inch screen, IPS

 

If I could have any suggestions on which laptops would be a good fit for what I need, that would be super appreciated, or any suggestions on specs that I should or shouldn't have in it.

 

Thank you!

Out of all the laptops that I've owned, I loved the Alienware m15. It is super thin yet packs a lot of power. I got it from HIDevolution with their thermal upgrades so it never overheated the build quality is superb. Not to mention, I specced it with the 90WHr battery so it gave me 7 hours of battery life doing light work like browsing the web and watching YouTube.

 

Check the models here: Alienware m15

 

When you're in the laptop customization page, I recommend that you choose "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads." That reduces your CPU/GPU temps by as much as 15C which is a must in today's laptop which sport fast CPUs/GPUs to prevent over-heating and thermal throttling. 

[BearSole]

18 hours ago, dizmo said:

I meant do both. Lenovo has some pretty deep discounts on their laptops for Black Friday, so depending on your budget you might be able to get both.

If you're mostly in labs and librarys, you shouldn't be gaming there anyway

I'd never buy a Razer laptop, the quality simply isn't there. Take, for example, the fact that half or more of the ones Linus bought for staff had to be returned.

 

Whatever you do, don't sacrifice battery life for gaming. You should be focusing on class, not games.

 

On an unrelated side note, have you looked into the future viability of the field you're going into?
I have a friend who works at a major power provider, and he said they had tons of engineers applying for laborer positions because there's simply not enough demand for engineers; it's one of the most saturated fields. Mind you that's (probably?) civil engineering, but it's still something I'd look into if you haven't already.

@dizmo I guess I didn't word that too well. I meant that a gaming laptop was a good fit because I'll know that it can without a doubt perform what I need it to. And also a game or two in my free time sounds like fun, ya know? And thank you for the advice about engineering. That probably is civil though, like you said. Mechatronics is a mix of electrical, mechanical, software, and robotics, so there's a huge market for mechatronics engineers, and they could also be placed in any of those four fields.

 

Also, I'm curious about the same thing as @flashiling, why did they return their Razers?

[BearSole]

Just now, BearSole said:

@dizmo I guess I didn't word that too well. I meant that a gaming laptop was a good fit because I'll know that it can without a doubt perform what I need it to. And also a game or two in my free time sounds like fun, ya know? And thank you for the advice about engineering. That probably is civil though, like you said. Mechatronics is a mix of electrical, mechanical, software, and robotics, so there's a huge market for mechatronics engineers, and they could also be placed in any of those four fields.

 

Also, I'm curious about the same thing as @flashiling, why did they return their Razers?

Oh wait nevermind, I didn't see those other messages, thanks @dizmo

 

[BearSole]

4 hours ago, Super Spartan said:

Out of all the laptops that I've owned, I loved the Alienware m15. It is super thin yet packs a lot of power. I got it from HIDevolution with their thermal upgrades so it never overheated the build quality is superb. Not to mention, I specced it with the 90WHr battery so it gave me 7 hours of battery life doing light work like browsing the web and watching YouTube.

 

Check the models here: Alienware m15

 

When you're in the laptop customization page, I recommend that you choose "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads." That reduces your CPU/GPU temps by as much as 15C which is a must in today's laptop which sport fast CPUs/GPUs to prevent over-heating and thermal throttling. 

I did take a look at the m15's before, they seemed to be the perfect fit, but once you start adding things on to them the price skyrockets (Canada). Thanks for the advice though, I'll look into it a little more.

[Super Spartan]

8 hours ago, BearSole said:

I did take a look at the m15's before, they seemed to be the perfect fit, but once you start adding things on to them the price skyrockets (Canada). Thanks for the advice though, I'll look into it a little more.

You don't need to buy everything at once. Just go with one of the listed models that suits your budget then upgrade it slowly when you are able to.

 

the most important is to get the basics right like the upgraded thermal paste + thermal pads so you can use our laptop without it overheating then adding RAM or SSDs later is easy.

[genexis_x]

Which country are you from?

[BearSole]

9 hours ago, genexis_x said:

Which country are you from?

Canada

[genexis_x]

Mag-15 would be my pick but I'm not sure how much is it for Eluktronics to ship it