Looking for a laptop to replace my old 2013 Dell Inspiron 15 laptop. Currently im using a reformatted office laptop but it's not the greatest. Any ideas? All im using it for is for school, web surfing, discord, and some gaming. Must be under 600, though under 500 would be nice. So far I found a Lenovo Ideapad for $549 that has Ryzen 5 mobile chip with Vega 8 graphics (one of the best bang for your buck integrated graphics). Also Found an Asus Vivo book with a ryzen 7 chip for nearly $600 on Best Buy. There's also a few Lenovo laptops I added that have a new ryzen chip that came out. From what I heard the graphics are slower than what is found in the Vega 8 graphics. Lenovo Ideapad S340 Ryzen 5 Asus Vivobook Ryzen 7 Lenovo Ideapad 3 New Ryzen mobile chip Lenovo Ideapad 5 Ryzen 5 I'm also interested in a custom pc. Budget is 400-800 US dollars. Altough I don't have room in my house for a custom PC I do plan on getting one once I do transfer to uni. I made a few builds which I both like. If you have any builds you want me to show you feel free to drop it System Builder - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core, GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB Gaming X, Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower - PCPartPicker ($600 build) System Builder - Ryzen 5 3600X 3.8 GHz 6-Core, GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB VENTUS XS OC, Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower - PCPartPicker ($767 build)
Personally, Im leaning towards the 600 dollar option as I don't have much money on me atm and this is my first build so I want to start off something easy. I like the 747 dollar one but now that I think about it, I think Im asking for too much
I'll go through your builds and give you feedback where needed. Build 1 1) Spend more on the CPU. Upgrading it to the 3600 for less than $10 is a good idea. 2) Spend more on the motherboard. The MSI Tomahawk Max would work well. 4) You can get the same RAM for $4 cheaper. 4) Spend more on the GPU. The GPU should cost around half your budget. 5) Poor case. For slightly more, get the NZXT H510 ($69.99) 6) Upgrade the PSU. You can get an 80+ Gold with the same wattage and semi-modular for only slightly more. Couldn't do much on such a low budget. System Builder - Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core, GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB SC ULTRA GAMING, H510 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker Bit more expensive, but you get what you pay for. Build 2 No. 1) The thing that sticks out most to me is that you have spent more on your CPU than your GPU. The CPU is way too powerful for that GPU. Downgrade to the 3600 rather than the 3600X. Not much difference in performance, and $70 cheaper. 2) Low quality MB. MSI Tomahawk Max would work better. 3) Don't bother with that case fan. It won't do much anyway at that price. 4) Spend more on the GPU. I recommend EVGA. 5) Buy a different case. NZXT sell some high quality, budget ones. Aesthetics aren't everything. 6) Use a more well-known SSD company. I recommend Crucial. Here's a few builds you could consider: AMD System Builder - Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core, GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB OC, Focus G ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker Intel System Builder - Core i5-9400F 2.9 GHz 6-Core, GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB OC, H510 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker Slightly more expensive: AMD System Builder - Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core, Radeon RX 5700 8 GB MECH OC, H510 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker Intel System Builder - Core i5-10400 2.9 GHz 6-Core, Radeon RX 5700 8 GB MECH OC, H510 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker
For the First build you listed, upgrading to the newest ryzen 5 3600 would cost me an additional $56 dollars. If the price drops I may consider it but I think the Ryzen 5 2600 is pretty great for its price point and performance. At the time of making this build, the RAM was the cheapest but it looks like there are some options that have popped up. I cannot find an MSI Tomahawk mobo. It seems all the decent ones have gone up in price so I am stuck with the current one or the ASRock A320M that has a max ram of 32 gb (I may change it to a 32GB RAM mobo since 64GB is too big). For this price point I don't see whats wrong with the GTX 1650 Super as I can play a lot of games at that price point at 60 fps or greater. I can upgrade to the 1660 but this is more of a budget build. There is a Crucial SSD but its 500 GB at $62. I can get a Team SSD that has a bigger storage capacity for a few bucks cheaper. I like both builds however it looks like I won't have much money to spend so it is going to be a bit hard for me
I would say the extra performance is worth it. There's rumours of the new AMD Ryzen series coming out in September so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a sale for the old generations then. Prices always fluctuate. Just last week the Ryzen 7 3800X was £320. It's now only £270. To be honest, I would recommend saving an extra $100-$200 and sticking with your current PC. There is a huge difference between a PC that costs $800 and $900-$1000. That's what I am doing currently at a different price. Originally I was considering spending $800-$1000, although have since increased my budget to $1600 to ensure I get the best for my money. In the mean time, I'm sticking with my 11 year old Dell laptop. It's keeping up surprisingly well considering its age and it only has an old generation Intel i5 as its CPU.
I don't mind the performance. However at this time, I'm trying to keep the costs low. If there is a price drop I'll buy it. There's a shop called microcenter near me that has this at a whopping $159.99. If it's still there I'll change it. Also I'm getting a new laptop to replace my old one. Currently I'm using an office laptop one of my parents gave me. Not the best but oh well. I plan to order the parts around end of this year when there is a sale
Anything that can run CoD MW at 100 fps (with shadowplay enabled) is a good computer to me. To me, any one of those is a good build. Of course, me caring about budget over quality, I'd choose the first but nullify it down to a regular 1060 ti, 1060 or just a 1050 ti or 1050. They all do the job. Why spend more money on the latest budget parts when the last big name parts do just as well? I prefer Intel over AMD, but I'll still say this - 10th gen i5 over lower-gen i7? Wtf? I guess your motherboard you've chosen has one of the newer sockets, but still the i7 is a lot better than an i5, and that much is provable through the cpu performance of my 2 mobile processors, a 6th gen i5 and a 8th gen i7. Results: Intel Core i5-6300U @ 2.40GHz vs Intel Core i7-8750H @ 2.20GHz [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software Less-handicapped results: Intel Core i7-8750H @ 2.20GHz vs Intel Core i5-8259U @ 2.30GHz [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software Your realistic results: Intel Core i5-8600K @ 3.60GHz vs Intel Core i7-8700K @ 3.70GHz [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software Note: The first two are on Mobile (laptop) cores. These are relatively different to actual PC processors, as they are bottlenecked to fit the needs of a laptop. You'll see for the price of around $100 more on your CPU, plus spending maybe $50 less on a GPU (a 1060 ti instead of a 1660 Ti https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1660-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB/4037vs3639), you'll get quite a bit more performance out of your CPU and find the equality in your GPU, for a slightly cheaper price because of slightly downgrading your motherboard and other components are cheaper and easier to find (as they're older). ps: you don't need to spend too much on a motherboard. Newer motherboard just means newer parts. From experience of my previous 6 laptops: I rather you just keep your currently laptop or spend $400 on something cheap with a newer i5 or something and let that last until it dies. A PC is all-round better and you should spend more money on that rather than a laptop. I made the mistake of buying an Acer Nitro 5 (older gen) during a Boxing Day sale. Within 6 months, one of the essential parts have fried/melted. It wouldn't boot the BIOS. Running a stable 96 degrees for 12 hours a day can't be healthy, I guess. And that's what will happen if you game on a laptop. I'm currently hitting it up on this old-a** Hp Elitebook 2560p, and when I play a game it runs at a stable 85 degrees... while running my mid-tier games at a stable 20fps (CSGO). I'd rather spending $250 on this over spending $800 on a nice laptop that'll last me 2 years at most. I'd rather spend $800 on a nice PC, yknow what I mean. Also: All of the builds listed here are missing CPU coolers. Unless you want your CPU to light up like thermite, I recommend getting a CPU fan. Didn't realise some of the CPUs/Motherboards come with coolers Since nobody seems to have seen this yet, I made some builds. System Builder - Core i7-7700 3.6 GHz Quad-Core OEM/Tray, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB, MA01 MicroATX Mini Tower - PCPartPicker - $790 System Builder - Core i7-6700K 4 GHz Quad-Core, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB, MA01 MicroATX Mini Tower - PCPartPicker - $720 - slightly lower-gen CPU, 2 less cores :/ System Builder - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB, MATREXX 30 MicroATX Mini Tower - PCPartPicker - $560 - budget with AMD. I like Intel better, but the 2600X is actually kinda nice, even though the bottleneck and the lifespan of AMD CPUs is quite a bit worse than Intel's. Personally I'd spend a bit more money but this is good until you need to upgrade
archerexpert777 I can help with this. I run a business building and fixing computers, I know quite a bit. It hurts me when I see someone get ripped off. WITH THAT IN MIND. System Builder - Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core, Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB MECH OC, H510 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker is your best bet. the 3600x is a waste of money, get the 3600 instead. It is $175, so relatively cheap. This list is the best you can find. The 5600 xt is easily the best GPU/price, as it beats out the 2060 in terms of performance, while beating the 1660 ti in terms of price. The 3600 is the best value CPU on the market right now, easily beating the 10th gen intel processors. the 10600k is too expensive to justify the switch, as well as future compatibility being limited. I got you a 1tb SSD, as 512gb isn't going to be enough. trust me lmao i have 2tb full of games (toooootallly legit copies not pirated how dare you suggest that) and I'm about to look for another drive. The speed increase should also be noticeable. CASE/PSU don't matter as much, but I got you an 80+ bronze to save some power, and an h510 as it is badass. Now to address pccoolguy's comments. Not true, they are terrible value rn. the 1060 ti isn't even a card. The 1050 is a third as good as the 5600 xt, and struggles in modern games. I briefly had one, instantly regretted it. the 3600 is enough to run any game at max settings at at least 60-120 fps, which should be enough. The gpu matters so much more, as fidelity is what is being improved on, not physics simulations. ty for adjustment, but I second that. laptops suck for gaming, 100%. 7700, 6700k, and 2600x all suffer from high temps with low actual performance. you will notice that the 3600 beats the 7700k, with more cores and lower temps. Also, you don't have to buy a new cooler. 1050 ti is a trash card, pls don't buy
If I want a terabyte worth of storage I could go for an HDD but like as far as I see, I'm not going to store many games. If I do need to, I can get a terabyte HDD and a small sized SSD. I couldn't find any prices for the B450 Tomahawk mobos so I went and got this. System Builder - Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core, Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB Challenger D OC, H510 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker. I think for now the pandemic has raised the prices of many components so I will not buy anything until prices do start to fall. I'll keep some builds so I have some options to choose from
SSDs get more value/money as the size increases. You aren't going to find a HDD for less than $50, and you aren't going to find the same speed ssd for less than $50 either. I really would recommend sticking with the large ssd, but it is up to you. You do have to be careful with b450 motherboards and older bc not all of them are up to date, but it may be late enough that most should be updated. That's a good choice. Prices right now are wack. PSUs, mobos, and cases are the most affected.
(Unless you haven't updated your age) How do you run a business at 15...? Enlighten me please, I want to run a business too I can agree with this, but from personal experience with AMD I just... don't like AMD much. I don't like how a laptop I bought with AMD integrated graphics and stuff ran Minecraft at 140 fps one year... and 40 fps the next. Here I 100% agree - currently the 10th gen processors are quite off-limits. I know of AMD GPUs being great value for money, but how long do they last? Lots of other people have had their opinion on it so I'll say mine: I'd rather have a computer that'll last me 4 or 5 years without upgrading rather than upgrading a GPU or CPU every 2 years, which is why I prefer Intel and Nvidia to AMD. It really comes down to personal preference and budget, yes people with AMD parts are usually people who don't want to spend a high amount of money on a PC but want optimal performance before their next upgrade, while people with Intel and Nvidia want their computer to last quite the while before an upgrade is needed. There's also people who buy the in-between, AMD and Nvidia, who care both about performance and the life of their parts. Now I reccommend this to budget builders a lot: Buy a 128gb SSD for your boot as they're only like $30, and then however much space you're going to use for games on a HDD, or multiple HDDs. Yes, the reliability and speed of a HDD is quite slow compared to an SSD, but if you're going to get a terabyte of storage for the same price of a 128gb SSD, with the downside of slower load times in games and such, what's there to lose? Once all your textures are loaded up, there's not much the HDD has to do, the exception being loading in textures on larger games with large areas (Like Battle Royale games, where there's chunks with their own details, I'd reccommend getting a larger SSD if you only play BR games. For Archer, who plays Minecraft and not many other games, a large SSD isn't needed). In shorter terms: Small-sized SSD for boot and windows, large sized HDD for the same price of small-sized SSD for games and stuff. I know that the other day I bought a 128GB portable SSD from Officeworks for $49 AUD, which is like $29 USD. 1TB Portable HDDs were pretty much the same price. With that rate, I can't imagine how much a non-portable SSD would cost. Some stores are selling things for cheaper, and others are selling for more expensive because of all the closures and the high demand for computers. Ooops. I didn't do my research. Yes, the 1050 is a shocker, and I see your point. I have a mobile 1050 in my laptop and I can only run CoD MW at more than 70 fps if I turn the render resolution down to 70 (1280x720). Seeing as Archer won't be playing most modern games, it's not that bad cost-wise. But certainly, AMD is a lot better in terms of value for money and performance. I'm just not keen on their parts, and again, it comes down to personal preference. This is a point that everyone seems to make, and most of the time, I second it. A GTX 1080 can definitely run Minecraft at a way better framerate than a i7-7700K can. My friend has his own built PC with almost the very same specs that I have in my laptop (he has a GTX 1050 Ti while I have a 1050, and he has an i7-7700K while I have an i7-8750H). The comparisons seen here are pretty much the reason why his speeds on games and other applications are so much better than mine: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-Mobile-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1050-Mobile/m223242vsm211022 https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8750H-vs-Intel-Core-i7-7700K/m470418vs3647 Obviously, laptop cores suck. However, with the GPU at almost the same speed (20% better than mine) I can say the same thing that you said about the 3600 and the 3600X - the Ti only represents about a 10% speed decrease. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1050/3649vs3650 Seeing as I made the mistake of buying my laptop, I had to make adjustments to some (and I repeat, some) of my games to get better framerates. However, I still get a stable 190 fps on CSGO (max graphics settings), 220 fps on heavily cliented Minecraft (mostly max graphics settings), 80-ish fps on CoD:MW Multiplayer (extremely low settings), 140 fps on Halo: Reach (max settings and 120fov), more than 1000 fps on Halo CE MCC (max settings), mostly because somehow the laptop came with a 4.2GHz overclock that I couldn't turn off. It runs at a stable 95 degrees celcius, the GPU varying between 80 degrees and 95 degrees and it fried 2 weeks ago. So that's that. They suffer from high temps because of the optional overclocks they come with, and are obviously enabled (the base clock is 3.8 GHz, he's enabled the OC meaning its now 4.8). They can be disabled and will not melt if it's not on, I have a friend with an i7-8700K and he runs 30 degrees on idle and 70 degrees while playing high-demand games. So I don't know where you got that high-temps info from... but I can see where you're coming from for low performance. 1050Ti isn't trash trash, yeah its not great and it never was top-of-the-line, but it's price is good for budget building. I can see why you'd prefer AMD over the 1050 Ti in this case.
When I was deciding what storage to have I opted to get a hybrid but then I realized they're just a waste of money when you can get a large HDD and a small SDD for similar price or lower and get more storage. I've been going with that for a while till about a month or two ago I started to think whether I need that much space so I opted for an all ssd with storage about half as a 1 TB HDD. I can always switch back to a Terabyte HDD and a small SSD if I do need more storage, but for now I don't think I am going to use much space. When it comes to laptops and gaming honestly just stick with a 500-600 dollar laptop as anything more wouldn't be worth it. Anything less is just medicore at best and you're better off getting a used office laptop. That's primarily the reason Im going for Lenovo Ideapad laptops. At my local OfficeMax/Office Depot (Same company basically) They have an ideapad 5 with a ryzen 5 4500u 8GB RAM and 256 SSD on sale for 520. For about 50ish dollars more you can get an ideapad 3 with the new ryzen 7 4700U with the same ssd and ram for 530 or so. I'll link you the site so you can check it out 2-In-1 Laptops - Office Depot
Its a small business, I get the word out on craigslist and the like. 0 employees lol; just me. I agree there. Laptops with AMD were trash until the 4000 series came out, in which lifetime and performance was improved quite dramatically. From what I've heard and my own experiences with my 5700 xt, they have a pretty good lifetime. Fair point. Not much else to say. desktops will always beat laptops with the same specs. I could explain this in detail, but succinctly put, power and thermals. laptops suck lol idk what else to say The 3600 was on a stock cooler, while the 7700k was clearly not. its quite a bit of extra money for the exact same performance. The reason older intel puts out more heat is bc of 12nm lithography, as compared to AMD's 7nm lithography. Smaller process node results in less heat and power required to run. your friend is also probably not using the stock cooler. it is a sticking point that Intel requires after market coolers, while AMD does not.
