Most affordable laptop on market to run sl

[Meadow Poppy]

Hi good people 

 

I would really appreciate your thoughts on the most affordable laptop on the market currently to play SL?

[Alwin Alcott]

8 hours ago, Meadow Poppy said:

Hi good people 

 

I would really appreciate your thoughts on the most affordable laptop on the market currently to play SL?

Nearly all laptops will run SL
The real question is, what would be the best machine for you, your requirements and your budget.

[Candide LeMay]

If you want to have a decent experience in SL, look for cheaper gaming laptops. For example this is currently listed for $729 and would run SL fairly well when plugged into power.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C4Q84N34?tag=rtings-zz-lt-20&ie=UTF8&th=1

Is that affordable? I don't know

[AmeliaJ08]

Nvidia 3050 6GB GPU based laptops are cheap and 'enough'. Not great but enough for a pretty good experience and frame rate.

You definitely want some dedicated graphics hardware, a 3060 would be preferred but rarely fall into the cheap category. 1650/Ti/1660 laptops are also enough but 4GB VRAM is on the lower end of acceptable, these are mostly on clearance at this point so there are bargains to be had there just don't expect too much.

Also consider 2060/2070 series laptops since these too are on clearance if you can find any left.

16GB system RAM is a requirement and most will have this, do pay attention though since I do see the odd 3050 machine with 8GB RAM still on sale - factor in the cost of bringing it up to 16GB if necessary (not much). NVME SSDs are standard across the board though so no worries there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[gwynchisholm]

Basically any laptop made in the last decade will play sl, playing well is a different story.

A lot of this depends heavily on budget though. Pretty much any entry level gaming laptop will play SL pretty good and those devices start under 800$ usually 

Though if you’re mega broke, I used a used thinkpad P50 mobile workstation for a while, and that runs sl pretty well and they can be had under $300, they’re from 2015 and come with skylake quadcore i7’s or xeons, either a Quadro m1000m or m2000m. Any configuration of that will do fine. They’re probably in line with some of the best overall value for hardware like that, just obviously within their price range. Because as mentioned, an entry level gaming laptop will do a lot better, but it’ll cost more than twice what a used mobile workstation would.

Edited December 21, 2023 by gwynchisholm

[filz Camino]

18 hours ago, Meadow Poppy said:

Hi good people 

 

I would really appreciate your thoughts on the most affordable laptop on the market currently to play SL?

"affordable" is a bit of a meaningless term, it means different things to different people depending on their income.

better to state a maximum (and perhaps a preferred) budget.

likewise to "play SL", almost any computer will actually work, after a fashion. do you want a great experience or are you happy to accept something less than that?

Edited December 21, 2023 by filz Camino

[Meadow Poppy]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:24 AM, gwynchisholm said:

Basically any laptop made in the last decade will play sl, playing well is a different story.

A lot of this depends heavily on budget though. Pretty much any entry level gaming laptop will play SL pretty good and those devices start under 800$ usually 

Though if you’re mega broke, I used a used thinkpad P50 mobile workstation for a while, and that runs sl pretty well and they can be had under $300, they’re from 2015 and come with skylake quadcore i7’s or xeons, either a Quadro m1000m or m2000m. Any configuration of that will do fine. They’re probably in line with some of the best overall value for hardware like that, just obviously within their price range. Because as mentioned, an entry level gaming laptop will do a lot better, but it’ll cost more than twice what a used mobile workstation would.

I really appreciate your reply! So incredibly helpful and it will be here in a couple days. I guess my choice of words may be wasn’t the best but affordable, I thought was the nicest way to say cheap cheap, cheap cheap wink wink wink wink anyway, thanks again for your insight. 

[Candide LeMay]

On 12/26/2023 at 10:46 PM, Meadow Poppy said:

I really appreciate your reply! So incredibly helpful and it will be here in a couple days. I guess my choice of words may be wasn’t the best but affordable, I thought was the nicest way to say cheap cheap, cheap cheap wink wink wink wink anyway, thanks again for your insight. 

Well let us know what you got and how well it works, especially when tested with the current LL PBR viewer. More people will be looking for affordable upgrades.

[AmeliaJ08]

If this discussion wants to move in a more specific cheap laptop for SL direction I have been getting a lot of these through lately - Dell Precision 5540 workstation laptops:

https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/dell-precision-5540

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-ie/precision-15-5540-laptop/5540_setup_specs/display-specifications?guid=guid-73443647-46c1-4c83-8587-59732301c848&lang=en-us

They are a very good value on the used and IT liquidation side of things, most seem to have 32GB of RAM - some 16 - and basically all of them are a higher spec Core i7, i9 or even the occasional Xeon model. They have Quadro T1000/T2000 4GB GPU's normally as well (but this was an option so check, pushed for CAD/3D work though so they seem to normally be specced) which is approximately the same card as the GeForce 1650, tiny difference in memory speed but a T2000 is essentially a 1650 4GB and is good enough for SL, not perfect but adequate. 256-1TB NVME SSD's in all models. 1080P or 4K panel, nice looking display.

$400-$500 on ebay regularly and the price only dropping, people like me buy them and flip them. They're well built, aluminium/carbon fiber and far superior in quality to most 'gaming' laptops in terms of build.

I can't really find anything of equivalent quality and value except some HP ZBooks but I'm less familiar with them. They are the same chassis and hardware as the XPS of their generation with most parts interchangeable. Newer models with RTX-equivalent Quadro cards are available too for a little more.

 

Edited January 3 by AmeliaJ08