Building a new PC versus buying a gaming laptop

andrei.jatariu

I have a budget of around 1600 euro and I am looking to buy either a gaming laptop or build up a PC for about 1300 euro and get a Chromebook for college. Any recommendations?

What do I need:
- portability to get my laptop at college;
- a good pc/laptop to render videos, work in adobeAi/Ps/Id, AutoCAD
- play games (max settings on Microsoft FSX simulator and need a great and immersive monitor)

as a gaming laptop I was looking to get the ASUS Strix GL 502 with Nvidia GTX 1060 Graphic card

Sonics2k

Most people here would recommend a PC, and you could even build a very good PC for your budget and keep it in a compact size. Gaming laptops tend to suffer from overheating, harder to upgrade and a shorter lifespan.

tadcan

What software do you need for college?

K.O.Kiki

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£174.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock H170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£83.86 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£56.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial MX300 275GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£68.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Toshiba 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£61.57 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card (£394.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Thermaltake Versa H15 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (£34.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Super Flower Golden Green HX 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (£59.90 @ Amazon UK)
Monitor: BenQ XL2411Z 24.0" 144Hz Monitor (£219.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1156.26
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-23 03:36 BST+0100

€1300 exactly.

*edit*
Also it's actually overkill; you could easily drop the GPU to a 1060 6Gb.

Don't forget that Black Friday sales starts 25. November; all electronics retailers like to discount stuff.

WhoWhatWhere

Gaming laptops aren't a great investment to be honest. For one thing the parts aren't as good as their desktop siblings and are more expensive.
Such as, a stick of RAM could be 35 euro for a PC but 70 for a laptop, hard drives and such are the same deal. Upgrading your CPU and Graphics card is probably not happening unless you can solder and the best part of a PC is if a part breaks, you just identify, if in warranty send for repair, if not, buy a new one and move on. If for example your laptop CPU fries it's a very expensive trip to the repair shop if they can even fix it or most likely a new laptop. As well as cooling perfomance desktops are much better so you can push your GPU and CPU a bit harder. And in 3-5 years when your graphics card is getting old and grey you just pick up a new one for a couple hundred and keep going a new laptop would cost 1600+, like you've said. For editing and media you don't need to spend 1300 on your PC anyway. You could go sub 1k and buy a better laptop again for college. With the extra 600 you could buy a laptop that would be reasonably effective for media production if your PC needed repair and you needed some assignments done. Shop around, amazon is okay, but if you can get some used parts on adverts you'd save a fair bit and often people put them up a month or two old which is perfectly good.

Oh and if you've got a HD Tv there's no exceptional need for a monitor.

And please make sure you account for a copy of Windows, a mouse and keyboard when you're building your PC, it's easy to forget them but it's essential.

andrei.jatariu

Thanks for Black Friday date. Didn't know when exactly kicks off.

andrei.jatariu

WhoWhatWhere wrote: »

Gaming laptops aren't a great investment to be honest. For one thing the parts aren't as good as their desktop siblings and are more expensive.
Such as, a stick of RAM could be 35 euro for a PC but 70 for a laptop, hard drives and such are the same deal. Upgrading your CPU and Graphics card is probably not happening unless you can solder and the best part of a PC is if a part breaks, you just identify, if in warranty send for repair, if not, buy a new one and move on. If for example your laptop CPU fries it's a very expensive trip to the repair shop if they can even fix it or most likely a new laptop. As well as cooling perfomance desktops are much better so you can push your GPU and CPU a bit harder. And in 3-5 years when your graphics card is getting old and grey you just pick up a new one for a couple hundred and keep going a new laptop would cost 1600+, like you've said. For editing and media you don't need to spend 1300 on your PC anyway. You could go sub 1k and buy a better laptop again for college. With the extra 600 you could buy a laptop that would be reasonably effective for media production if your PC needed repair and you needed some assignments done. Shop around, amazon is okay, but if you can get some used parts on adverts you'd save a fair bit and often people put them up a month or two old which is perfectly good.

Oh and if you've got a HD Tv there's no exceptional need for a monitor.

And please make sure you account for a copy of Windows, a mouse and keyboard when you're building your PC, it's easy to forget them but it's essential.

Thanks for advices. I was aware of all your points made above. For college I probably need something light and portable such as a chromebook as I only do Web browsing and typing in word.

ShadowHearth

I would not put much faith in black Friday. Its American holiday more then Irish. I always see excitement for black Friday every year and there is always **** all deals to be had.

As mentioned above, I would go with suggestion above of splitting it to budget for laptop and pc. 1k eu will buy you a really great 1080p gaming pc and editing machine and 600eu will buy you a very very decent laptop, which will actually be able to do some of the work in collage too. Chrome book is just way too weak for anything, but browsing Internet.

andrei.jatariu

tadcan wrote: »

What software do you need for college?

When in college just need Web browsing and microsoft office. When I'm home I need to use AutoCAD, PS, AI and be able to play the latest games and play Microsoft Flight FSX at max settings.

K.O.Kiki

andrei.jatariu wrote: »

When in college just need Web browsing and microsoft office. When I'm home I need to use AutoCAD, PS, AI and be able to play the latest games and play Microsoft Flight FSX at max settings.

Go for an i7-6700 + GTX 1060 6Gb / RX 480 8Gb then.

WhoWhatWhere

andrei.jatariu wrote: »

Thanks for advices. I was aware of all your points made above. For college I probably need something light and portable such as a chromebook as I only do Web browsing and typing in word.

I get you but if your PC breaks down having a decent laptop will be a god send.

Digital Solitude

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Go for an i7-6700 + GTX 1060 6Gb / RX 480 8Gb then.

His college level stuff will be fine on the college PCs, which tend to be i5 based machines and laptops, he's not going to need an i7.

K.O.Kiki

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I would not put much faith in black Friday. Its American holiday more then Irish. I always see excitement for black Friday every year and there is always **** all deals to be had.

As mentioned above, I would go with suggestion above of splitting it to budget for laptop and pc. 1k eu will buy you a really great 1080p gaming pc and editing machine and 600eu will buy you a very very decent laptop, which will actually be able to do some of the work in collage too. Chrome book is just way too weak for anything, but browsing Internet.

There were loads of great GPU deals last year IIRC.

Annoyingly, Eurogamer removed their old articles on it.

super_sweeney

Personally i am not on a gaming laptop. the Aorus with Dual 970 GPU(http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X7%20Pro-SYNC) and its brilliant plays everything. very loud though with the fans. I did always have PC in the past but now i travel a bit for work so its handy to be able to throw the laptop in the bag and bring it with me and still be able to game watch movies ect. So perhaps weigh up your options as to what your doing with it. When i had a desktop i did bring it place but it was once every 6 months so to be hones that really did not both me and i preferred the customization options that i had back then as well.