Mobile vs Desktop?

[Mr.Twabfish]

I need a little help choosing my first real gaming rig. I have been looking at Either building my own PC, or buying a laptop. My Budget cannot exceed $2000.00 US, but if you have an idea/suggestion, go ahead and chuck it at me!

OK: here is my PC (I have a monitor, keyboard, mouse... ect) http://pcpartpicker.com/p/vmhRLk . Now for the laptop. I was looking at Dell's Alienware 15, paired with their graphics amp. I will be doing a lot of traveling (College) But, assuming I get the desktop, I have a laptop available. I will be playing games such as Battlefield 4, Battlefront 3, Titanfall, (And the sequel) ect. I will only be running one monitor. I am looking to get most of my games around 50-60FPS in 1080p. (High-medium settings).  Any comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Aytex]

I recently got my friend to buy a asus rog laptop, what the plan was if you travel a shit ton, to just take the laptop, but if he does settle down he can just sell the Laptop and still have a wicked desktop

[Vercii]

Added an HDD because 256GB won't last long and changed the PSU. You should be able to find a decent laptop for around ~$800. I can't recommend you one because I've never really looked into gaming laptops. 

 

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VBRL6h
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VBRL6h/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($219.99 @ Micro Center) 
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($34.50 @ Newegg) 
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($153.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($41.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 256GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($179.99 @ Micro Center) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($49.89 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 390 8GB Double Dissipation Video Card  ($328.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Case: NZXT S340 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($63.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($99.99 @ NCIX US) 
Wireless Network Adapter: Asus USB-AC56 802.11a/b/g/n/ac USB 3.0 Wi-Fi Adapter  ($64.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Total: $1238.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-11 10:14 EST-0500

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id get a cheap, light laptop for on the go use, like a used t420. Then id get a desktop gaming pc. Carrying around a gaming laptop isn't fun with all the weight.

[The_KIASER]

On my first gaming rig i was in the same shoes, ended up going with a 1400$ Asus ROG laptop. Great laptop, still running fast and kicking ass, great support too from asus. With that said though, I will never buy a "Gaming" laptop again, now that I have built my desktop. It's the upgrade-able part of the desktop world that will make me never go back to laptops, plus now i know how low profile you could build a desktop gaming rig. That laptop has spent 95% of its life chilling on top of a desk with a mouse connected to it. When i went to build my desktop, I realized how much money i could of saved if I was able to reuse parts and pieces from a previous build, which would of meant money spent on better components. I just couldn't recommend a gaming laptop anymore, unless your on the go all the time business man who loves to game in the down time and you make good money.

[The_KIASER]

11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get a cheap, light laptop for on the go use, like a used t420. Then id get a desktop gaming pc. Carrying around a gaming laptop isn't fun with all the weight.

Agree with this a lot... my gaming laptop is bulky and heavy...

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 minutes ago, The_KIASER said:

On my first gaming rig i was in the same shoes, ended up going with a 1400$ Asus ROG laptop. Great laptop, still running fast and kicking ass, great support too from asus. With that said though, I will never buy a "Gaming" laptop again, now that I have built my desktop. It's the upgrade-able part of the desktop world that will make me never go back to laptops, plus now i know how low profile you could build a desktop gaming rig. That laptop has spent 95% of its life chilling on top of a desk with a mouse connected to it. When i went to build my desktop, I realized how much money i could of saved if I was able to reuse parts and pieces from a previous build, which would of meant money spent on better components. I just couldn't recommend a gaming laptop anymore, unless your on the go all the time business man who loves to game in the down time and you make good money.

I personally have a dell mobile workstation(like a gaming laptop but with a docking connector, plain metal built, quadro graphics). I carry it everywhere and like it becase i do lots of video editing on the go and its great to have realtime 4k edits where ever i am. But those 8 pounds are heavy and not fun to walk 3 miles with on your back.

[Mr.Twabfish]

Here are my thoughts... based on what you guys said, I should definitely get a desktop for long lasting/upgradableness, However, I still am a bit hooked on the whole Graphics AMP from Alienware...(At least for my college years) could you guys give me a solution that allows for a desktop upgrade in the future, say maybe a couple years later when the mobile chip in my laptop begins to get behind the curve?  (I don't think I could take the bait and go for a cheap, used laptop.) I definitely agree about the weight though...

[crystal6tak]

That 6600K 390 build you linked is pretty "real" if you ask me lol.

 

Anyways, ask yourself, do you actually see yourself playing games on the go? Would you actually have enough free time at school or anywhere else where you'll be like "I'm going to pull out my laptop and play some triple A titles!"

 

If you don't, grab the Surface Pro 4 i7 or the Dell XPS 13. They're small, very light, have great battery life, and powerful enough to do school work with ease. Heck if you don't mind playing games at 480/720P at lowest settings, they can still run some triple A titles at 50-60fps! Given the SP4 costs 1600 USD and XPS 13 costs 1400 USD, you'll have plenty extra to grab a new GPU to upgrade your current build. Especially when new GPU's coming out soon, you'll have a chance to jump on that.

 

Here's BF4 on the SP4, 1440x900 on low. Crank it down to 1280x720 and you'll get a solid 60fps. SP4 uses the i7-6650U while the XPS13 uses i7-6500U. Meaning the iGPU in SP4 is MUCH more powerful than the Dell XPS 13 (48 vs 24 EUs). So buy the SP4 if you want to game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC9in6brBEQ

 

If you really do want a proper gaming laptop, I see two options. One with decent battery life, and the other with shit battery life.

 

Decent battery life would be the Aorus X3 Plus V5. With xoticpc you can configure it to be below 2K usd. It's an impressive little laptop. 13.9 inch, 6700HQ, 970M, 3200x1800 panel, and 5 hours battery life.

 

Shit battery life but the best performing would go to the Clevo P650-RG. 15.6 inch, 6700HQ, 980M, G-Sync 3840x2160 panel, for under 2k usd as well. Battery life again, is incredibly bad. Since it has a 980M and no optimus (Having G-Sync means no optimus btw). Can't find reviews but I'll guess battery life around 2 hours. But it is by far the best performing laptop you'll get at the price. 980M with G-Sync, can't get any better without the price going nuts.

 

Hope this helps!

[The_KIASER]

Can't post it now, but i will later when i get home. I have a good idea for a build for you. The desktop tower would be upgrade-able and around 1500$, the rest of the 500$ could be spent on a decent laptop for on the go/school work. Is the monitor you have 1080???

[Mr.Twabfish]

Yes. Its a HP pavilion 22xw (21.5 inch)

[Mr.Twabfish]

On the laptop topic, I have an HP Envy j007-cl with an AMD A10 5750, 16 gigs of ddr3, and a Samsung 850 EVO Right now. It's battery life is really bad, but I have it plugged in a lot, so that could be wear on the battery. So if you guys think that could hold out a while longer, it opens up a bit of $$ for other things.

[The_KIASER]

So, take a little bit of you budget money and go grab up a good but cheap replacement battery for that laptop you have and keep using it for daily shit and school work and what not. Figuring that you are now down to 1900$ budget, you can build one wicked desktop for 1080p gaming. Putting together a component list now that should be a good setup...

[The_KIASER]

@Mr.Twabfish do you want a windowed case? What would be a preferred color scheme if so? Are you looking for a full size tower or do you want the tower to be as small as possible?

[Mr.Twabfish]

A windowed case would be cool. I was looking at any combination of white+something else. I really want to showcase the hardware while giving it a clean, appealing look. A full size tower is fine, as I have no problem with space. I would like it to be fairly quiet- and go ahead and add a bit to the price for led strips, or custom cables... ect, I don't mind spending a bit extra for a badass case.

[The_KIASER]

Well here it is... I know it's very similar to my own build, but I'm gaming at 1080 and it is a fucking awesome machine that's very upgradeable. This is the refined version of it (learned a lot since building it) and this is how i would build it if i had to do it again. The x61 is amazing at keeping the CPU at very low temps, even at an overclock of 4.6ghz, i did change out the fans for the Fractal Venturi's, and it made a huge difference in noise. The hybrid 980ti is going to run cool, quiet, and give you a great OC if you choose to do any overclocking. The case is a simple, clean look, and compact design. I have 16gb of ram, have never used over 5gb of it, so I went with the 8gb there. The RAM is extremely overclock-able if you wanted to, although at the XMP speed of 2133hrz you get the best latency's. I put in an 120gb SSD for the OS drive, and the HDD for a boat load of games. If you install a game, play/beat it, then uninstall, I'd just put in a bigger SSD alone. It's what I do personally, just make sure you back up to an external, in case it were to ever fail. Go to Kinguin.net or a similar site and buy an OS key there, windows 10 was around 20$ last i checked.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gdW2t6

 

Again, I know this is really similar to my build, but I put months of thought and consideration into every part I picked. Just a few little things I would do differently now. If this isn't the kind of build you were looking for, hit me up and we can try the million other options out there. Happy to help you if you want it...

[The_KIASER]

2 minutes ago, Mr.Twabfish said:

A windowed case would be cool. I was looking at any combination of white+something else. I really want to showcase the hardware while giving it a clean, appealing look. A full size tower is fine, as I have no problem with space. I would like it to be fairly quiet- and go ahead and add a bit to the price for led strips, or custom cables... ect, I don't mind spending a bit extra for a badass case.

lol posted to late... I'll do another build in a bit that will have a different tune to it. Almost went with a white build but a lot of people don't like them so i changed it up last minute

[Mr.Twabfish]

@The_KIASER: This one is cool though- something similar in white and I will be severely attracted. I really like that 908ti Hybird: I have not seen it before.  One thing: I had been putting a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD in my other possible builds, and was wondering if I would see enough of a performance boost between that and a standard SATA Drive.

[The_KIASER]

Just now, Mr.Twabfish said:

@The_KIASER: This one is cool though- something similar in white and I will be severely attracted. I really like that 908ti Hybird: I have not seen it before.  One thing: I had been putting a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD in my other possible builds, and was wondering if I would see enough of a performance boost between that and a standard SATA Drive.

Speed difference between an SSD and HDD???

[Mr.Twabfish]

No, lol  A SSD on SATA like the Kingston you have in the build you sent me

[The_KIASER]

The Corsair or NZXT??? Corsair is a bit bigger than the NZXT...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139055

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146189&cm_re=NZXT_s340-_-11-146-189-_-Product

[Mr.Twabfish]

Loving the NZXT S340.

[The_KIASER]

cool, one sec... changing out some parts, should be pretty sick with a very good color scheme

[The_KIASER]

How about this???

With the hue+ lighting system on white or blue lighting, it would look sick, even found a SSD to match the white and blue color scheme.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/4bgD6h

[Mr.Twabfish]

That looks awesome! I will spend a little while looking at reviews and such... and I will get back to you.