Gaming Laptop or Desktop for College?

[OkLoL]

Currently I have a HP laptop from 2011. Should I buy a gaming Laptop like the Razer Blade or build a Desktop for the same price? I will be living at home and going to college, and I am a computer science major.

[HPWebcamAble]

IMO a good gaming laptop is too heavy to transport very much. I'd only get one for trips where I need good horsepower to game, stream, or edit videos.

I'd build a desktop. You'll generally get better performance for the same price.

 

What's your budget? What games will you be playing? Will you be editing/streaming?

 

[manikyath]

if both your home and your school have a decent uplink (talking at least 10Mbit both up and down) you'll love what i did:

gaming desktop at home doin' the do

shitty old laptop

teamviewer into the home rig for the numbercrunching in class.

 

i've done "steam in-home streaming" in college before, so i doubt regular ordinary school work will be an issue.

[Mark77]

As a CS student, you need a solid business laptop that's relatively easily portable, can run Linux and Windows very well, is pretty rugged, and ideally, is of a similar model to what everyone else is using. 

 

In some CS programs, this may very well end up being a Mac, which is a whole 'nother discussion, but if everyone is using a Mac, well, you pretty much are obliged to dance the same tune.  But if its still a PC, I'd suggest figuring out which of the major brands is used heavily in/by the CS department, and buying a nearly identical unit.  Typically it will be one of Dell, HP, or Lenovo.  Refurb business laptops from those names are a dime a dozen.

 

Go out and buy the proprietary docking station that such laptop usually will attach to, and a pair of nice 24" or 27" business-class screens to connect to it.  This will save you a lot of hassle and probably the USB/Ethernet/Video connectors on your laptop from wearing out/being damaged over time. 

[OkLoL]

3 minutes ago, HPWebcamAble said:

IMO a good gaming laptop is too heavy to transport very much. I'd only get one for trips where I need good horsepower to game, stream, or edit videos.

I'd build a desktop. You'll generally get better performance for the same price.

 

What's your budget? What games will you be playing? Will you be editing/streaming?

 

2400 max

[HPWebcamAble]

3 minutes ago, neonfirefox said:

2400 max

@Mark77 had some good points, you probably need a laptop more than a desktop, for classes.

 

2400 can get you a good gaming laptop, or you can spend ~half, and save up some more for a desktop as well.

[Mark77]

1 minute ago, neonfirefox said:

2400 max

Well I picked up a Dell Latitude E6440 the other day with 14.1" 1080p screen for $300, added a SSD and 8gb of RAM for another $100, and for $400, basically have a system which would work just fine as a PC for a CS program.  Leaving you another $2000 to build that crazy gaming rig at home if need be. 

 

If I had $2400, I'd rather replace my laptop 2 or 3 times (or more) during my course, than spend the whole $2400 up-front and have to use the same hardware for the next 4-5 years.  Or build a proper gaming rig, with proper video cards.  Laptop gaming sucks, and even if you can tolerate spending a lot of money on a laptop, you're still going to suffer poor performance compared to buying a $200 GPU and throwing it in a gaming desktop.

[2FA]

I would say spend maybe ~$600, maybe a bit more, and put the rest into a desktop. You'll have a nice laptop and desktop that will outperform the hefty gaming laptops.

[Mark77]

p.s.  I'd be surprised if you actually did anything in your entire 4-year CS program that couldn't run perfectly and adequately well on even a 9-10-year old laptop.  Don't fall into the trap of thinking that owning a better computer is going to make you a better CS student.  In fact, it may even be the opposite. 

 

What's the configuration of your HP anyways?  Maybe you could throw a SSD and maybe a little more RAM into it to give you a machine to use until you figure out what the computing environment "on campus" is and then buy a newer/nicer laptop accordingly.

[EIijah]

Trust me you don't need anything special for a laptop, build a nice desktop and get a cheap laptop and put an SSD in it. 

[OkLoL]

2 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

p.s.  I'd be surprised if you actually did anything in your entire 4-year CS program that couldn't run perfectly and adequately well on even a 9-10-year old laptop.  Don't fall into the trap of thinking that owning a better computer is going to make you a better CS student.  In fact, it may even be the opposite. 

 

What's the configuration of your HP anyways?  Maybe you could throw a SSD and maybe a little more RAM into it to give you a machine to use until you figure out what the computing environment "on campus" is and then buy a newer/nicer laptop accordingly.

core i3 6gb ram 1tb 7200 drive

[Mark77]

3 minutes ago, EIijah said:

Trust me you don't need anything special for a laptop, build a nice desktop and get a cheap laptop and put an SSD in it.

Just along the theme of recommending a 'business' laptop, a nice 'feature' is that parts are usually abundant on eBay and usually relatively cheap.  So if something is broken, its not hard to get a replacement fairly quickly.  Whereas with some of the gamer or consumer-oriented hardware, a year or two from now, if you want a new keyboard, or if you broke a piece of plastic or a hinge, it'll be a much more significant hustle to find replacements. 

[Donut417]

Id build a nice gaming desktop and get you a decent laptop. 

[KnightSirius]

Short Answer: For 2400$ You can build a nice desktop and pick up a nice ultrabook. Assuming of course you already have a monitor + KB/M.

 

Long Answer:

I don't know if its your first year at College but if it is trust me carrying around a laptop is a VERY nice thing to have, not a gaming laptop though I know a couple people who lug them around and they HATE it. But a nice ultrabook or a thinner standard 15" laptop very useful and I'd recommend it.

 

So again, with ~2400$ you can do a ~1200$ Desktop (again assuming you already have a monitor + KB/M) and then get an ultrabook in the ~1000$ range like a Razer Blade Stealth or an XPS series ultrabook from dell to carry around the college!

 

[Donut417]

35 minutes ago, Webrider99 said:

Short Answer: For 2400$ You can build a nice desktop and pick up a nice ultrabook. Assuming of course you already have a monitor + KB/M.

 

Long Answer:

I don't know if its your first year at College but if it is trust me carrying aroudn a laptop is a VERY nice thing to have, not a gaming laptop though I know a couple people who lug them around and they HATE it. But a nice ultrabook or a thinner standard 15" laptop very useful and I'd recommend it.

 

So again, with ~2400$ you can do a ~1200$ Desktop (again assuming you already have a monitor + KB/M) and then get an ultrabook in the ~1000$ range like a Razer Blade Stealth or an XPS series ultrabook from dell to carry around the college!

 

As some one who has a Gaming Desktop and Laptop. I wish I didnt buy a Gaming Laptop and bought something with better battery life.