Need help finding a new notebook

[stricken404]

TL;DR (full story below): I need a small form factor notebook that has the potential to play some decently intensive games using either some lower end dedicated GPU (GTX 950M, GTX 1050, GTX 960M), or the ability to use an external GPU enclosure (Thunderbolt 3). Full checklist below. My specific use case involves moving to a new apartment in a metro area and I'm leaving my hulking desktop at my parents. I need a notebook that I can carry with me comfortably, so ultrabook proportions are a must. The largest notebook I will consider is the XPS 15, no 15 inch notebooks larger than that will fly (sorry). It should be able to game decently. We're not talking maxing out Watch_Dogs 2 at 60 fps or anything, just playing stuff like Killing Floor 2 at 1080P60 or GTA V at medium/high at 1080P60. 

 

Checklist:

-SSD for boot, either as an option, or by default. If the SSD it ships with is an anemic size (128GB, 180GB) a secondary expansion slot for an additional SSD would be appreciated, or an expansion slot for a 2.5inch HDD.

-1920x1080 display. Though if it's a very compelling 1366x768 display in a 13.3 inch screen, it's workable.

-Dedicated GPU or the ability to use an external GPU (Thunderbolt 3 support)

-14 inch or smaller form factor (largest I'll accept is the Dell XPS 15 because it's closer to a 14 inch offering)

-Core i7-6500U/7500U or better. A true quad core i5-6300HQ/7300HQ is also very welcome. 

-No heavier than 5.4ish pounds

-8GB of RAM minimum. Ability to upgrade to 16GB by adding another 8GB DIMM is appreciated, but not a deal breaker.

-Decent trackpad. I'm coming from an HP Folio 13-1020US with a very good glass trackpad.

-Keyboard doesn't need to be anything special, just can't be horrid. (backlighting is pretty much a must though)

-Should be less than 1200 bucks (I know I'm busting you guys up with this budget, but there's some promising notebooks that fit the bill, I just need help picking them).

 

Notebooks that I'm considering thusfar:

Alienware 13. Yeah it's as heavy as a 15 inch, and thick. But it has a dedicated GPU, an SSD by default, and a true quad core HQ processor. Also has the cheapest external GPU option. Very upgradeable. Only 2GB GTX 1050 options.

HP Spectre x360 13. Thin and light. 1080P display. Kaby Lake i7-7500U, nice speakers, nice touchpad, Thunderbolt 3 support. No dedicated GPU :(. Only a dual core. 

Dell XPS 15. Awesome built quality. Decently upgradeable. Small for a 15 inch. Beautiful display. No options ship with an SSD for under 1400, forcing me to either clone the 1TB spinner inside to an SSD I purchase separately, or hopefully it ships with the copy of Windows to install myself. Dedicated GPU with a 4GB VRAM option. True Kaby Lake quad core i5.

Razer Blade Stealth. Nice display. Ships with an SSD by default (albeit a small one). Core i7-7500U, official Razer Core support, nice keyboard, thin and light. Razer Core and other TB3 eGPU options are expensive.

MSI GS43VR 14. Not sure about build quality or display. Slightly over budget. GTX 1060. Quad Core i7, 16GB of RAM, SSD+HDD by default. Don't like how overly gamer it looks with the MSI badge on the lid. Would rather have the Alienware 13 at that point, just with more options added.

 

Notebooks I've cut from the list so far:

Dell Inspiron 7559 Gaming. Too big. Tons of flex. Very upgradeable. Screen is only okay. Very good specs for the price. Under budget, but still too big and thick. 

Dell Inspiron 13 7000 Kaby Lake. Core i7-7500U, good build quality. No Thunderbolt 3 support kills it. Under budget.

Dell XPS 13. Pricing is hilariously screwed up. For a non anemic SSD (256GB+) and just the base 1080P display with 8GB of single channel RAM, and an i7-7500U it's over 1600 bucks. Awesome build quality and TB3 support, but at the cost of entry, adding another 300+ for an external GPU enclosure is just crazy.

 

Any suggestions or recommendations are welcome! 

 

 

[Light-Yagami]

So you want a laptop that is decent specs (SSD and stuff) and supports TB3. Correct? And your budget is?

[stricken404]

Yeah, I'll do a TL;DR for you. Decent specs (SSD, ULV Core i7) and either dedicated graphics, external GPU support, or both. 14 inches or smaller.

Budget is 1249 USD, anything closer to 1100 is a plus. 

[Light-Yagami]

http://www.laptopmag.com/laptop-finder?id=254562&curquestion=7&answer1=3&answer2=4&answer3=3&answer4=2&answer5=1&answer6=2

 

look here if any of the chosen laptops fit your description. They might be more expensive than your budget is. Not granted that all of them support TB3

[Droidbot]

Protip: a U series processor will bottleneck the shit out of a 1070 or even a 480/1060

I'd say go for the Alienware, quite fond of their brand. Their support is top-fucking-notch (except it's in India, but their technicians are in the country usually) and their products are quite robust. I've heard that the A13 even has good cooling.

[stricken404]

Whoa. What a neat site! Seems I'm on the right track with the Spectre x360 13 and Alienware 13. Thanks very much! 

 

Gonna look into the Asus Zenbook offerings, might as well check out some RoG stuff too. 

[stricken404]

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

Protip: a U series processor will bottleneck the shit out of a 1070 or even a 480/1060

I'd say go for the Alienware, quite fond of their brand. Their support is top-fucking-notch (except it's in India, but their technicians are in the country usually) and their products are quite robust. I've heard that the A13 even has good cooling.

I knew I was onto something with that. Having a 13 inch with a true quad core AND a dedicated GPU is awesome. Very upgradeable too. And yeah, I figured that the dual core ULVs would have that issue, which is why I was pretty psyched about the Alienware. Also they have the cheapest external GPU offering, and the quad core HQ processor to accompany it

 

The two Alienware 13 offerings I'm looking at have a GTX 1050 2GB or GTX 1050 Ti 2GB. The Ti model comes with the 1080P display included in the price.

Will the 2GB GDDR5 be an issue in games? I've never ever hit the VRAM limit while gaming before on desktop. What happens if I do? At 1080P, I assume it could happen pretty easily with only 2GB of the stuff.

 

Huge props to Dell for what they've accomplished under Michael Dell's reacquisition. 

[Droidbot]

1 minute ago, stricken404 said:

I knew I was onto something with that. Having a 13 inch with a true quad core AND a dedicated GPU is awesome. Very upgradeable too. And yeah, I figured that the dual core ULVs would have that issue, which is why I was pretty psyched about the Alienware. Also they have the cheapest external GPU offering, and the quad core HQ processor to accompany it

 

The two Alienware 13 offerings I'm looking at have a GTX 1050 2GB or GTX 1050 Ti 2GB. The Ti model comes with the 1080P display included in the price.

Will the 2GB GDDR5 be an issue in games? I've never ever hit the VRAM limit while gaming before on desktop. What happens if I do? At 1080P, I assume it could happen pretty easily with only 2GB of the stuff.

 

Huge props to Dell for what they've accomplished under Michael Dell's reacquisition. 

It's 13" with a QC.. I love my EliteBook (it's got a quadcore, eGPU support, 4G, dual SSDs) because it's 12.5". 

That's pretty good. 

 

Maybe try for a 1050 Ti 4GB. It's a good card, on par with a desktop 770 and you won't be bottlenecked by the video memory. 

[stricken404]

3 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

It's 13" with a QC.. I love my EliteBook (it's got a quadcore, eGPU support, 4G, dual SSDs) because it's 12.5". 

That's pretty good. 

 

Maybe try for a 1050 Ti 4GB. It's a good card, on par with a desktop 770 and you won't be bottlenecked by the video memory. 

I've been running an HP Folio 13-1020US for the past four and a half years of my university life. The old Folio and Elitebook lines are awesome. Folio for the affordability and the early SATA III SSDs and Elitebooks for the true quad cores. Anything will be an upgrade from this 1366x768 TN panel, and this Intel Core i5-2467M with HD 3000 graphics haha.

 

Sadly, the next option up from the GTX 1050/Ti for the Alienware 13 is the GTX 1060. That's way out of my budget. For the Alienware graphics amplifier, I'll be cannibalizing the MSI GTX 1070 8G GAMING from my desktop anyway, but for mobile gaming it seems I'm pretty much stuck with 2GB of VRAM unless I find 300 bucks on the ground.

 

What can I expect performance wise if I hit that 2048MB limit? What happens? Stuttering? Freezing? Will getting the faster Ti version remedy some of the VRAM amount insufficiencies? 

[dizmo]

What a wall of text!

What exactly is the purpose of the laptop? Will it be sitting on a desk most of the time, or will you actually be using it on the go?

If it's a desk dweller, and you've considered an external GPU enclosure, I'd suggest a mini ITX build.

Does the U version of the i7 greatly outperform the i5? The i5 is way, way better battery life wise if it's a university machine.

When you're looking at Dell and such, do keep in mind that upgrading the SSD isn't usually worth it via their site. I usually just take the one that has the main guts I want, and upgrade the SSD after. Much, much cheaper.

Looking at them, the Alienware seems pretty solid.

Don't bother with the Razer one. Both the laptop and the external GPU box are overpriced.

The XPS 15 honestly looks overpriced for what it is.

Just some of my cents.

[Droidbot]

6 minutes ago, stricken404 said:

I've been running an HP Folio 13-1020US for the past four and a half years of my university life. The old Folio and Elitebook lines are awesome. Folio for the affordability and the early SATA III SSDs and Elitebooks for the true quad cores. Anything will be an upgrade from this 1366x768 TN panel, and this Intel Core i5-2467M with HD 3000 graphics haha.

 

Sadly, the next option up from the GTX 1050/Ti for the Alienware 13 is the GTX 1060. That's way out of my budget. For the Alienware graphics amplifier, I'll be cannibalizing the MSI GTX 1070 8G GAMING from my desktop anyway, but for mobile gaming it seems I'm pretty much stuck with 2GB of VRAM unless I find 300 bucks on the ground.

 

What can I expect performance wise if I hit that 2048MB limit? What happens? Stuttering? Freezing? Will getting the faster Ti version remedy some of the VRAM amount insufficiencies? 

I've currently got a 3360M in this little guy, upgrading to a 3740 or 3720QM eventually. It's socketed like a desktop, which is cool.. Got OSX running for productivity and I can swap to Windows for gaming or apps that need it. 3 years later and it's still faster when upgraded than a proper laptop these days.. 

 

The 1050Ti should come in a 4GB variant. 2GB is ehhhh, kinda enough maybe idk for 1080p gaming - I used to have a 2GB 770 and I couldn't go above high textures in GTAV. It just tries to pull stuff from memory and back very quickly and on a HDD you feel it doing so.

[stricken404]

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

I've currently got a 3360M in this little guy, upgrading to a 3740 or 3720QM eventually. It's socketed like a desktop, which is cool.. Got OSX running for productivity and I can swap to Windows for gaming or apps that need it. 3 years later and it's still faster when upgraded than a proper laptop these days.. 

 

The 1050Ti should come in a 4GB variant. 2GB is ehhhh, kinda enough maybe idk for 1080p gaming - I used to have a 2GB 770 and I couldn't go above high textures in GTAV. It just tries to pull stuff from memory and back very quickly and on a HDD you feel it doing so.

Whoa, I had no clue the Elitebook is so upgradeable. That's badass. 

 

It definitely exists in 4GB GDDR5 configurations, but sadly they are not offered for the 13.:(. 

 

The thing you pointed out about storage is interesting. The Alienware 13 can be customized a little bit. I wouldn't mind adding an extra 100 bucks to ship with the 256GB PCIE SSD to help remedy some of the VRAM insufficiency with faster fetch speeds. The stock SSD is a 180GB SATA III M.2.

 

I'll probably do that then! Thanks for all the help. This is pretty much a given that this is my best option. It has a bigger battery than the XPS 15 unless you spring for the 1600 dollar version of the 15, and the cheapest eGPU enclosure. I'm pretty much sold. Also, the ability to add another M.2 drive for mass storage with something cheap, and upgrade RAM is awesome. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'll be going from hardly even being able to play Terraria or Minecraft on minimum while on the go, to a GTX 1050 Ti. I'll take it.

[Droidbot]

23 minutes ago, stricken404 said:

Whoa, I had no clue the Elitebook is so upgradeable. That's badass. 

 

It definitely exists in 4GB GDDR5 configurations, but sadly they are not offered for the 13.:(. 

 

The thing you pointed out about storage is interesting. The Alienware 13 can be customized a little bit. I wouldn't mind adding an extra 100 bucks to ship with the 256GB PCIE SSD to help remedy some of the VRAM insufficiency with faster fetch speeds. The stock SSD is a 180GB SATA III M.2.

 

I'll probably do that then! Thanks for all the help. This is pretty much a given that this is my best option. It has a bigger battery than the XPS 15 unless you spring for the 1600 dollar version of the 15, and the cheapest eGPU enclosure. I'm pretty much sold. Also, the ability to add another M.2 drive for mass storage with something cheap, and upgrade RAM is awesome. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'll be going from hardly even being able to play Terraria or Minecraft on minimum while on the go, to a GTX 1050 Ti. I'll take it.

lmao you'll slam both of those games into the ground very easily. you'll probably be able to play GTA, OW, CS, etc on the go (or in class if it's a boring lesson)