What's your mobile gear, eh, I mean, laptop?

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Thread: What's your mobile gear, eh, I mean, laptop?

  1. #1
    Great White Shark mikeysg's Avatar
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    What's your mobile gear, eh, I mean, laptop?

    I used to think gaming on laptops was a fantasy, last time I'd tried it was way back on an AMD Turion powered laptop, as to what GPU or iGPU it had, I can't for the life of me remember! Anyway, with my recent spade of overseas travel, where I stay for 2-3 months in a single stretch, mainly Canada and Thailand, I figured it was about time I got myself a decent gaming capable laptop. I wasn't willing to pony up a whole wad of cash for TOTL laptops, or even mid tier ones for the matter, I just needed one that would sate my gaming appetite while I was away. Did some looking around, finally went for a used Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with following specs:
    AMD R7 5800H
    RTX 3070 140W
    2560x1600 165Hz G-sync display
    2x 8GB DDR4 3200MHz system RAM
    Win11 Home

    Also, I dunno about you guys, but gaming on those laptop flimsy membrane type keyboard isn't ideal, and damage to the keyboard as a result of frantic keystroke would cost a bit to repair. So, I went with a Keychron K2 Wireless mechanical keyboard, also snagged a good wireless mouse in the Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed. Hence, I'm able to play games while overseas, and surf the net, type messages normally (like now) whereas the though to typing a lengthy reply on my phone isn't appealing. Anyway, here are a couple of pics. Oh yeah, while overseas, I'm using a pair of Creative Pebble V3 portable speakers, not the Logitech ones in pic as they're a tad bulky.

    The same keyboard, with ghost/transparent keycaps all blinged up!
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    Main Rig - All AMD build: R9 3900X | GB X570 Aorus Xtreme | 2x 8GB 3600CL17 Patriot ViperRGB | Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6900 XT | 256GB Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 (OS) | 4TB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD | 2TB Samsung QVO SATA SSD | 2x 1TB Samsung 850 EVO | 6TB WD Black | Corsair HX 1000 Platinum | CM H500M | Samsung LC49HG90DMEXX 32:9 | iFi Micro iDSD BL | LG SL8YG Soundbar | 64bit Win10 Pro

  2. #2
    Defiant Shark Johnmcl7's Avatar
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    I think the Legion 5 Pros are good for the money and if I was buying a gaming laptop now I'd go for one of those or the Legion 7.

    Back in 2020 before the pandemic and I was planning to travel I bought an Alienware M15 r1 with a hex core i7-8750H and RTX 2060, I chose this model as it had non-soldered ram (the R2 version was soldered) and three SSD slots so I could cheaply upgrade it to 32GB ram and 2.2TB SSD storage. Performance wise it's pretty good and I've found some uses for it, I take it out to the garage to run Zwift for indoor bike training and I can take it round to friend's houses to play some games with the children. However in general I really dislike it and it's not this laptop specifically, it seems a general gaming laptop thing - it's far too noisy and runs incredibly hot. My desktop has a fairly toasty 12 core processor and RTX 3080 but runs very quietly even under full load, back in the prime of this site I was mainly using gaming laptops as I travelled 120 miles daily for work and those machines were fantastic all rounders I could use on my lap and without headphones on.

    I've been toying with picking up a non-gaming laptop to carry around instead but the problem with many of these machines is they're thinner, just as noisy and hot but also lack ports and use more soldered parts.

    Leviathan - AMD Ryzen 9 3900x, Noctua NH D15 Cromax, Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB DDR 3200Mhz, Nvidia RTX 3080 10GB, 4TB SSD/26TB HDD. Fractal Design R6, Corsair RM850X
    Rocinante - Intel i7 8750H, 32GB RAM, RTX 2060, 2.2TB SSD, Alienware M15 R1

  3. #3
    Great White Shark mikeysg's Avatar
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    Yeah, such gaming laptops like ours aren't exactly light nor are they small. but they do get the job done, and in this case, gaming for me. It's been a hoot playing Metro Exodus PC Enhanced, Serious Sam 3 BFE, Serious Sam 4 and Siberian Mayhem. Besides, it's pretty good at ripping some of the BR discs I'd gotten, via MakeMKV and Handbrake.

    Surfing the net is also better than, say, using my Samsung Tab S5e though I do find myself squinting at the screen because 16" is just a tad small an old fella like me. The great thing about the Legion 5 Pro I'd gotten is that storage and RAM is easily upgradeable if I'm so inclined. As a matter of fact, I'd added a 2TB NVMe M.2 drive purely for game storage, got a bunch of my Steam, EGS, EA, etc games installed.
    Save Ana
    http://www.jpages.net/HelpAna.htm

    Main Rig - All AMD build: R9 3900X | GB X570 Aorus Xtreme | 2x 8GB 3600CL17 Patriot ViperRGB | Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6900 XT | 256GB Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 (OS) | 4TB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD | 2TB Samsung QVO SATA SSD | 2x 1TB Samsung 850 EVO | 6TB WD Black | Corsair HX 1000 Platinum | CM H500M | Samsung LC49HG90DMEXX 32:9 | iFi Micro iDSD BL | LG SL8YG Soundbar | 64bit Win10 Pro

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