Gaming Laptop Recommendation

[Andry Serevi]

Hi there, I am considering purchasing a gaming laptop 'strictly for SL use' and the one I am currently looking at is:

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16, Intel Ultra 9 185H, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, Windows 11 Pro, 16 Inch.

 

Backstory:

I can't do a desktop and I daily drive a MacBook Air M2. The Air was not meant for SL, but I was away from SL for over 10 years and came back 6 months ago. So considering I have decided to stay I am looking to get a machine just for SL. 

Oh and I am not Tech Savvy, so layman's terms would be nice

Recommendation:

I have been searching for a machine that is lightweight to carry around and at the same time powerful enough to play SL with full or almost full graphics, your insight and recommendation would be highly appreciated. 

 

 

 

Edited July 16 by Andry Serevi

[Echo Fillion]

That laptop you posted should be great. 

[AmeliaJ08]

That will be more than fast enough and the Zephyrus laptops are a cut above the average gaming laptop in terms of build quality (all aluminium chassis) and has an excellent high refresh display.

Like all gaming oriented laptops there is a huge caveat: it's got a lot of power inside it, it will run hot. It's designed to but don't be surprised by this. Also remember that all high performance laptops need regular cleaning, an air blower is a good investment but it might need maintenance to clean the heatsinks and fans once a year or so. You can minimise heat and noise by limiting frame rates, it will probably be faster than you strictly need for SL so this might be something to consider.

Also while it has a large battery and a long run time (expect 8+ hours or so doing normal stuff) this doesn't apply when gaming, it will barely last an hour when gaming and running on battery due to the high power CPU and GPU it has.

Edited July 16 by AmeliaJ08

[Bree Giffen]

That's a strong laptop. Should be able to run SL on high settings. 

It's Amazon Prime day today (July 16-17). You can sign up for a free 30 day Prime trial then cancel it. I've done this in the past. There should be some game laptop discounts. Might also want to look at other websites like Newegg, Best Buy or Walmart because they run sales at this time too. 

Edited July 16 by Bree Giffen

[Andry Serevi]

Thanks Guys!

As I did a deep dive into this particular machine on Youtube, I found that there is a RTX 4090 and 4080 graphics which is higher than the 4070. However the cooling technology  for those is better. Im not sure how much of a difference that makes, was wondering if you could concur that the 4070 would be more than enough to run SL?

I appreciate that the heat will always be an issue, just don't want to go for something way too powerful. Just want a machine that would run SL effortessly, and at the same time be lightweight and portable.

 

 

[Bree Giffen]

I have a laptop with an RTX 3060 which runs SL at max settings in a very crowded area at 30fps. The RTX4070 has 30% better benchmark than the RTX3060. I'd say it will run at least 45fps in the highest demand situation in SL and faster everywhere else. 

[Jase Devin]

21 minutes ago, Andry Serevi said:

Thanks Guys!

As I did a deep dive into this particular machine on Youtube, I found that there is a RTX 4090 and 4080 graphics which is higher than the 4070. However the cooling technology  for those is better. Im not sure how much of a difference that makes, was wondering if you could concur that the 4070 would be more than enough to run SL?

I appreciate that the heat will always be an issue, just don't want to go for something way too powerful. Just want a machine that would run SL effortessly, and at the same time be lightweight and portable.

 

 

I don't like Asus anymore they changed over the years. When they brought their cheaper line Asrock, they figured out later, we can put cheap parts in Asus too and make more $$ as well.

MSI for Laptops is my choice. They are tough, they just work, I've beaten my poor MSI pretty bad over the years and its has given 0 problems even with lots of abuse.

4080 and 4090 will cost much more, and create more heat. It's all about budget 4070 fits into that and is very powerful and will run SL like a champ.

I'd get a 17.3 Monitor with it.

 

Some Options here:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-8&browsedCategory=pcmcat1589218509643&id=pcat17071&iht=n&ks=960&list=y&qp=graphicscardsv_facet%3DVideo Card~NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070^storagetype_facet%3DStorage Type~SSD^systemmemoryram_facet%3DRAM~32 gigabytes^child_laptopscreensizesv_facet%3DScreen Size~17 inches&sc=Global&st=pcmcat1589218509643_categoryid%24pcmcat287600050003&type=page&usc=All Categories

RTX 3080 model here on sale:

https://us-store.msi.com/Laptop-Deals/Stealth-GS77-12UHS-083?filter=21%2C6

 

[graceblakeley]

5 hours ago, Andry Serevi said:

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16, Intel Ultra 9 185H, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, Windows 11 Pro, 16 Inch

That's one of several dogs -woof, woof!

The dogs danglies, that is. If you can afford that then buy it. Very nice indeed. I've owned several ASUS ROG in the past and always happy with them until they became outdated and felt slow.

I currently have a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16, Intel i9-12900, RTX3070, 32GB RAM running across 3 screens and it breezes through SL just off max graphics and fine at ultra for photos - It is now two years old, perhaps another year to run before I'd like to upgrade again. I don't only use this for SL as my other game needs a very fast processor (Cities Skylines I)

Your RTX4070 will waltz it, but if money no object then I might stretch to the RTX4080 just for the sake of it. The RTX4090 would likely be unnecessary and a step too far.

My favourite laptop guy is Jarrod. He only does gaming laptops and is very precise. Here is a recent top 5 of 2024 gaming laptop videos:

 

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, Andry Serevi said:

was wondering if you could concur that the 4070 would be more than enough to run SL?

It's significantly more, SL will be SL though and throwing ridiculous power at it is a solution. The laptop 4070 will be absolutely fine and you should expect SL to run about as well as it possibly can which isn't well really but it's all relative

The benefit to going 4080/4090M is the extra VRAM really, 4070M is stuck at 8GB. Fine for now but SL does like to eat VRAM.

4080M is 12GB, 4090M is 16GB so possibly more future proof but really if SL is all that matters I'm not sure it'd be worth spending so much more.

 

 

Edited July 16 by AmeliaJ08

[Andry Serevi]

I really do appreciate this guys/girls … I have to throw this curve ball in 

Im a mac person hardcore Apple’s B****, so Im thinking instead of keeping the macbook air and purchasing this gaming laptop … maybe trade ij the air and get the macbook pro with apple silicon? 
 

Now there is this love/hate going on for serious gamers, but I am not a serious gamer nor am I producing content … 

But look for someone with knowledge on the matter to direct me; so should i go for a macbook pro M3 … and if so, any idea which chip set?

 

 

[Bree Giffen]

I've read online that the M3 pro and M3 max are the best gaming laptops so far released by Apple but they are not as good as a similar priced gaming notebooks. The reviews were comparing them using high-end games though. It looks like some SL users have discussed this before.

 

Edited July 21 by Bree Giffen

[AmeliaJ08]

On 7/21/2024 at 2:58 PM, Andry Serevi said:

Im a mac person hardcore Apple’s B****, so Im thinking instead of keeping the macbook air and purchasing this gaming laptop … maybe trade ij the air and get the macbook pro with apple silicon? 

Really not a great idea for SL. It will work but you probably won't be too thrilled with the performance and as things stand the ability to run most viewers on MacOS is time limited... by 2026 you won't be able to run x86 apps, Apple have committed to ending Rosetta 2 by then and they tend to stick to their dates. Apple are also trying to get rid of OpenGL, no guarantees MacOS will support it for much longer.

Things might change with the new mobile viewer being ported over to desktop but that isn't even finished yet. Unfortunately SL on Apple faces a pretty uncertain future right now, hopefully that changes but right now it's on shaky ground.

 

Edited July 26 by AmeliaJ08

[Dorientje Woller]

Whatever you take, avoid Intel 13 & 14 gen CPU's. Seems they are degrading at a fast pace and/or have an oxidation issue. Was first noticed on desktop CPU's but it seems that server and laptop CPU's are in the mix too atm. 

 

[Cube Republic]

Boutique often offer higher performance with  better components.You can tell them what your needs are and they'll recomend the settings. 

https://system76.com/laptops

https://www.originpc.com/

https://www.eluktronics.com/

etc

Edited July 26 by Cube Republic

[Luna Bliss]

18 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

https://www.eluktronics.com/

I can vouch for Eluktronics as Torley recommended this brand when I played around in Sansar and wanted a laptop to both travel with and do VR.  He did not steer me wrong!

[AmeliaJ08]

Eluktronics tend to sell re-badged Clevo machines, for what it's worth. Often it's difficult to get the Clevo branded equivalent in Western markets though (or it might be about the same price) but it's definitely worth checking. XMG is another brand that does this. Obviously they provide their own warranty and support though.

They're not really... laptops. I mean they are but they sometimes do ridiculous things like using desktop CPUs and stuff. They're always very fast and chonky though, they're pretty good workstation laptops... luggables, I guess. Battery life etc isn't something they care about but then gaming laptops don't tend to care about this either.

 

 

 

Edited July 27 by AmeliaJ08

[Luna Bliss]

59 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

They're always very fast and chonky though, they're pretty good workstation laptops... luggables, I guess.

It's hefty alright!  I got it to lug onto planes but don't think I'd want to.  Covid curtailed my flying plans anyway.

[JeromFranzic]

19 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

Boutique often offer higher performance with  better components.You can tell them what your needs are and they'll recomend the settings. 

https://system76.com/laptops

https://www.originpc.com/

https://www.eluktronics.com/

etc

I definitely vouch for system76 if you want Linux preinstalled. Not using one currently, I have plenty of experience installing and setting up Linux myself but I'd definitely consider them and a few other companies that do the same in the future.

I think you can add an extra partition for another OS preinstalled, of course that'll cost you extra if it's Windows unless licenses from previous installs are allowed for free (or you can install that yourself later, then activate it).

[Cube Republic]

I've heard good things about Origin too. 

These are a very good brand too https://www.pugetsystems.com/

[Yorkie Bardeen]

After one failed motherboard and one failed super ultrawide monitor, I will never touch Asus/ROG again. YMMV.

 

[Extrude Ragu]

Avoid lenovo unless you like your laptops to fall apart after 2 years and by fall apart i mean the screen shear off the hinges because they glue them on

[Andry Serevi]

So alas the verdict is out ...

My decision on a laptop is finally here and I'm on my way to get it right after I type this is in ... 

SL vs. Apple, there is a possibility that SL might not be supported by Apple going forward and the M3 Max or Pro would be overkill in playing just SL. So no to Macbook pro M3 chips. 

Zephyrus G16 Intel core ultra 9, 32GB Ram and RTX 4070 with 1TB. This shall be the laptop of choice, as it has to be thin/light, and has to breeze through SL. The4080/4090 are too much power for what I want to do. Since as I understand it, SL viewer orfirestorm depends on CPUmore than GPU and as such that Intel chip along with 32 RAM would translate into a power house machine for SL specifically.

 

Am I right in this assessment?

[gwynchisholm]

5 hours ago, Andry Serevi said:

Zephyrus G16

These have some weird configurations with power delivery for the CPU and GPU in order to keep it from thermal throttling itself into oblivion. Keep that in mind, this is a very power hungry and subsequently very hot running set of hardware in a very compact chassis for this tier of hardware. Its going to be hot and loud and will throttle under load.

Theyre also power limited variants of each the CPU and GPU, theyre not going to match reference benchmarks of that hardware.

Its a really well built machine, good material choices, and it has a top tier display with that 240hz oled panel. The relatively compact form factor is not without the trade-offs of performance and battery life though. If youre looking for fairly easy portability and need higher tier performance like this, its a good choice. Though this would also depend on how its being used.

That laptop gets like one hour of battery life under load on a good day, while its new, give it a few years and i doubt youd get half of that.

I just kinda look at it like ok, its portable, more portable than larger gaming laptops. But then it also doesnt perform as well as gaming laptops in its hardware tier, and it has almost no battery life so its portable but only for very finite amounts of time. If you travel a lot and just set this up in hotels its pretty decent? But then if youre not lugging this around constantly, id just get a bigger gaming laptop which doesnt have power limited mobile hardware in it and wont sound and feel like a jet engine spooling up when youre using it.

I think that machine is a lot better of a choice if youre mostly playing short bursts of less demanding games. Youre not going to get 240fps out of SL on that hardware without dropping the settings hard in order to appreciate the display. You would in something like CS2 or Fortnite or the variety of games that laptop is really targeting in terms of its feature set.

[Dorientje Woller]

4 hours ago, gwynchisholm said:

These have some weird configurations with power delivery for the CPU and GPU in order to keep it from thermal throttling itself into oblivion. Keep that in mind, this is a very power hungry and subsequently very hot running set of hardware in a very compact chassis for this tier of hardware. Its going to be hot and loud and will throttle under load.

Theyre also power limited variants of each the CPU and GPU, theyre not going to match reference benchmarks of that hardware.

Its a really well built machine, good material choices, and it has a top tier display with that 240hz oled panel. The relatively compact form factor is not without the trade-offs of performance and battery life though. If youre looking for fairly easy portability and need higher tier performance like this, its a good choice. Though this would also depend on how its being used.

That laptop gets like one hour of battery life under load on a good day, while its new, give it a few years and i doubt youd get half of that.

I just kinda look at it like ok, its portable, more portable than larger gaming laptops. But then it also doesnt perform as well as gaming laptops in its hardware tier, and it has almost no battery life so its portable but only for very finite amounts of time. If you travel a lot and just set this up in hotels its pretty decent? But then if youre not lugging this around constantly, id just get a bigger gaming laptop which doesnt have power limited mobile hardware in it and wont sound and feel like a jet engine spooling up when youre using it.

I think that machine is a lot better of a choice if youre mostly playing short bursts of less demanding games. Youre not going to get 240fps out of SL on that hardware without dropping the settings hard in order to appreciate the display. You would in something like CS2 or Fortnite or the variety of games that laptop is really targeting in terms of its feature set.

Despite my warning about the state of Intel Meteor Lake CPU's (13th & 14th gen CPU's) at this moment, still pulling the trigger on a laptop with such CPU's is getting yourself in troubles.

[gwynchisholm]

4 hours ago, Dorientje Woller said:

Despite my warning about the state of Intel Meteor Lake CPU's (13th & 14th gen CPU's) at this moment, still pulling the trigger on a laptop with such CPU's is getting yourself in troubles.

I wouldnt worry about it too much on a heavily power limited mobile cpu. Most of the problem was the CPU cooking itself with overvoltage for extended periods of time, but in a mobile chip on a board thats trying to keep it from catching fire, its not going to be running reference spec.

Probably still not a great idea anyway, but the alternatives arent amazing either.