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Looking for a 17" - 18" Gaming Laptop


StevenMal

Question

I'm looking for a new gaming laptop

-Unfortunately due to my current living situation it MUST be a laptop

- $3000 budget

- Country of purchase: United States

- Preferably 18" screen with 1920x1080 resolution, or 17" screen

-Windows OS

- Looking to play games on Max/High settings with 60fps with a GTX 980M or GTX 980M SLI

- i7 that won't bottleneck a 980M or 980M SLI

- Minimum of 4GB RAM, preferably 8GB RAM but no more than 16GB

- Weight is not an issue

-Battery life is irrelevant because I will be plugged in whenever in use.

-SSD not required, but certainly welcome

- Minimum 1TB HDD

-Must have a optical drive

-Must have a built in mic

-Webcam optional

- At least two USB ports, with one USB port on the right side of the laptop

-Aluminum steel chassis preferred but not required

-Backlit keyboard necessary

-I'll also primarily be using headphones so loud fan noise isn't an issue as long as they keep the laptop cool.

I'd like it to be as cool as possible since I will primarily gaming/using it on my lap although there will always be some kind of flat, hard surface, such as a white board or hard cover book, between my lap and the laptop, probably a laptop cooler.

I've done a little bit of research and I know I DON'T want an Alienware, ASUS, Dell, Acer or Lenovo. I've been considering a $3000 configuration of a Sager laptop from xoticpc.com but I'm open to recommendations (hence this thread). If anyone has any recommendations for a $3000 configuration of a gaming laptop that exactly or closely fits these requirements I'd appreciate them.

Also, it's worth noting that I used to have an Alienware M18x. I loved it but I soon found out that Alienware is an overpriced rip-off brand...even though my own personal experience with my M18x was very good. I found out that I could've have gotten better laptops for cheaper. Dell doesn't offer any laptops I want currently and Dell has notoriously AWFUL customer service; the Dell Facebook is literally nothing but complaints about the customer service. Alienware is not offering the M18x anymore either so I'm almost considering trying to upgrade my old M18x.

I'm not tremendously interested in Acer's or Lenovo's gaming laptops, especially since I want to maximize the $3000 budget I've been allotted but I'll certainly consider any recommendation. The Acer VN7-791G-792A and the Lenovo Y series are okay but I think I can do better. As I've heard plenty of excellent reviews I may consider the ASUS G751JY-DH71 but I'm not happy about the laptop being difficult to take apart or the battery being impossible to remove. I also don't like the placement of the eject button for the optical drive.

I'm heavily considering the Sager NP9377. If I decide to get my new laptop with SLI what do you recommend for adequate laptop cooling? Will a laptop cooler be sufficient? I'm also considering CPU undervolting if that would help.

I've been getting a lot of ASUS recommendations, specifically for the ASUS G751JY. I don't like how the ASUS laptop is difficult to take apart, how its impossible to remove the battery and where the optical drive eject button is. The Gigabyte P37X is an excellent recommendation I received but I don't like how hot the laptop can get because it is so thin (although I acknowledge that this is because it is very light-weight). I also don't like how the laptop caps framerates when the fan isn't at full speed. It's also very noisy but the noise and heat are surely to be expected in a gaming laptop, especially one so thin.

I definitely want to maximize my laptop's specs for the $3000 budget allotted to me which is why I'm interested in Sager and SLI, although I may consider the ASUS G751JY.

I'm worried about a few things though... I heard from another thread in another forum that the i7 4710HQ is "such a limiting factor, its not even funny'" but from someone else on another forum I heard that none of the quad-core i7 processors would bottleneck 980m SLI. That's why I posted this thread. I don't know how to figure out what processors won't bottleneck a GPU setup, specifically which i7 processor won't bottleneck a 980M SLI setup. One person said the 4710HQ would be limiting and someone else said none of the i7s would bottleneck 980M SLI.

I'm also worried about the display. The display is supposed to be an IPS display at 60Hz I think and TN displays are supposed to be better because they're faster. Is it really a huge difference when gaming or is it something I can deal with?

I'm still open to suggestions and would appreciate any advice. Thank you.

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I currently own a MSI gaming laptop, and i can only give it my praise.

About the pricing of those in your area i am not sure if they fall inside budget, but they should do so i imagine.

They come pretty much from slim and portable all the way up to big and powerful - take a look through their website :)

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One person said the 4710HQ would be limiting and someone else said none of the i7s would bottleneck 980M SLI.

Might be that the HQ is soldered to the motherboard is the limiting part? Honestly ppl worry about 'bottleneck' too much...

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Sager np9773 hands down.

Uses desktop CPU 4790k, screen is matte ips that is overclockable to 100hz and has good cooling.

I have a desktop computer with core I7 5820k with GTX 970 and there is a noticeable difference in FPS (especially min.) between 3.3Ghz and 4+Ghz on a high refresh rate monitor (BenQ xl2420z 1080p 144hz).

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

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StevenMal

If youre gonna go with a laptop I would go with the MSI GS70 MSI GS70 Stealth Pro-003 Gaming Laptop Intel Core i7 4710HQ (2.50GHz) 16GB Memory 1TB HDD 256 GB SSD(128 GB mSATA SSD x 2 RAID 0)NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB 17.3" Windows 8.1 64-Bit Multi-language - Newegg.com . I don't have one personally but I have a buddy I game with a lot and this thing blazes by my y510p consistently. Plus MSI is a top brand when it comes to gaming PC's I have heard the customer service is top grade too. It may be worth looking into.

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1 MAINGEAR Nomad 17 980m (laptop-nomad17-980m) - $3,009.00

Chassis: Nomad 17 Performance Chassis with backlit keyboard (case-nomad-937-176262-03x)

Exterior Finish - Notebooks: Standard Black (notebook-black)

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 4980HQ 2.8GHz/4.0GHz Turbo 8MB L3 Cache HD 4600 [47W] back-ordered 4 weeks (cpu-intel-i74980HQ)

Memory: 16GB Corsair® Vengeance™ DDR3-1600 1.35V (2x8GB, SODIMMs) (mem-corsair-CMSX16GX3M2B1600C9)

Graphics and GPGPU Accelerator: NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 980M 8.0GB (gpu-GTX980m)

Operating System Drive: [sSD] 250GB Samsung® 850 EVO [520MB/s Sequential Reads] (hdd-samsung-850evo-250)

Hard Drive Bay Two: 750GB Western Digital 7200 RPM SATA 2.5" (hdd-WD7500BPKT-750GB)

Optical Drive One: 8X DVD Dual Layer Burner (optical-integratedlaptopDVD)

Audio: Integrated High Definition Audio (audio-integratedHD)

Ethernet Adapter: On-board Gigabit Ethernet (nic-onboard)

Wireless Network Adapter: Atheros® Killer™ 802.11 AC + Bluetooth Wireless Accelerator (wireless-killer-AC)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit [Free Upgrade to Windows 10] (os-windows8.1)

Security Software: Free 1 Year Subscription! McAfee AntiVirus Plus (security-mcafee)

Primary Battery: 7800mAh 9-cell Li-Polymer removeable battery pack (battery-9cell-nomad17)

Web Cam: Integrated 2.0MP Webcam (webcam-2mp)

Memory Card Reader: All-in-One Integrated USB 2.0 Flash Card Reader & Writer (fcr-allinone)

Angelic Service Warranty: Lifetime Angelic Service Labor and Phone Support with 1 Year Comprehensive Warranty (warranty-1yearstandard)

Good portable and handles even "higher resolutions". :)

Price: 3009 USD

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as others mentioned before, i would defintly advice you to get .. well basically any msi laptop with that fits your requirements. at first i was sceptical coming from only desktop-pcs before. for me performance was never really an issue and the quality is also top notch in my experience

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Hey StevenMal and everybody who wants a Gaming-Laptop like his requirements.

If you really want a good Laptop at a budget like $3000 i would prefer choosing a Razer Blade 2015 Gaming Laptop.

This Model is Slim, has enormous power, backlit Keyboard, and a really nice looking Style. It has all what you need to play and nearly fit with your requirements. Except the Optical Drive and the display size.

If you don't give a *** on Style and only want pure power, i can recommend buying a MSI GT80. This Laptop has a NVidia GTX980M, at least 4GB of RAM and enough Space to upgrade HDD/SSD. The MSI GT80 comes also with a mechanical Keyboard (awesome) . If you want to look yourself, here the sources of both:

Razer_Blade

MSI_GT80

PS.: A bit expensive, but if that is not enough, you can still choose the GT80 Titan SLI from MSI:

Titan_SLI

Greetings ;)

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