17.3 Cosmos IV Bought

[Rat]

17.3 Cosmos V Bought

Here's what I've ordered:

Cosmos Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 6700HQ (2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)

Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)

Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 950M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12 <------- Might be the DDR5 version, not sure yet

Memory - Hard Disk NOT REQUIRED

M.2 SSD Drive 128GB SAMSUNG SM951 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2000MB/R, 650MB/W)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 6x BLURAY ROM, 8x DVD ±R/±RW & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE

Memory Card Reader Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)

AC Adaptor 1 x 120W AC Adaptor

Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND

Sound Card Via® 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH

USB Options 3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD

Battery Cosmos Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (48.84WH)

Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

What do you think for a budget gaming rig? Ta.

 

[Oussebon]

What do you think for a budget gaming rig? Ta.

How much did that cost btw? Easier to say how balanced a build vs alternatives with the price to hand

The GTX 950M is not a very powerful GPU. It will struggle or be incapable of running some games even at fairly low settings at native resolution. It's about 25% weaker than a desktop GTX 750 ti according to futuremark figures:
http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu It's well below the minimum requirements for some games e.g. Deus Ex MD, or Witcher 3. People can still run Witcher 3 on lower than the official minimum, but it's worth bearing in mind.

If you didn't need it to be a laptop, a desktop would almost certainly be better value (fps per £). If you need it to be a laptop and you have a limited budget, your alternative options are ofc pretty limited, and I'm certainly not saying "don't buy it". I'm just being frank about the expectations you should have depending what games you end up playing on it.

 

[andbra952]

Here's what I've ordered:

Cosmos Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 6700HQ (2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)

Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)

Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 950M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12

Memory - Hard Disk NOT REQUIRED

M.2 SSD Drive 128GB SAMSUNG SM951 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2000MB/R, 650MB/W)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 6x BLURAY ROM, 8x DVD ±R/±RW & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE

Memory Card Reader Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)

AC Adaptor 1 x 120W AC Adaptor

Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND

Sound Card Via® 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH

USB Options 3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD

Battery Cosmos Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (48.84WH)

Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

What do you think for a budget gaming rig? Ta.

Well, IMHO budget and i7 are quite the opposite. With that GPU, 8gb ram and the i5 were more than enough. Also choosing the i5+8gb ram could have given you the chance to get a gtx 960/965 (for the same price) that would really have made the difference. That's just an opinion so take it as is.

 

[Rat]

It was £850 all in. I purchased it primarily as a work machine for my degree with the option of running some games on it, hence I went for the processor and the RAM. Other than the OS and Microsoft Office I probably wont put much else on the M.2. Any games etc will be run from an external HDD and all my docs etc will go up into the cloud. £850 was stretching my budget as it was. I'm more of a first person shooter and world of tanks kind of guy so I'm hoping the GPU will be ok for that at least.

I have never had an M.2 SSD before, will booting from it be that much quicker than a normal HDD or am I getting my hopes up?

 

[Oussebon]

will booting from it be that much quicker than a normal HDD

Yes. That Samsung should be pretty fast.

Like Andbra I too would have been inclined to suggest the Optimus VII with a GTX 960M and only 8gb RAM (which is still fine for games), but the Blu-ray drive is expensive and makes that not possible.

 

[Rat]

Its work first gaming second so I'll stick with it. I noticed there are two versions of the 950m, a ddr3 version and a ddr5 version. I asked why it couldnt be swapped for the ddr5 version and they said it comes soldered onto mobo and even if it wasnt the bus couldnt handle it. Is this true? if not I am handy with a soldiering iron and I could swap it at a future date if i decide I want to play games more?

 

[Oussebon]

Even if you could physically remove the 950M DDR3, you wouldn't even be able to buy a 950M with GDDR5. And if you could, the motherboard probably wouldn't support it (if PCS told you it didn't, they're probably right). And even if it did, it wouldn't be worth the performance increase compared to saving up for a desktop or a better laptop for games anyway. Rule of thumb is to assume you can't replace a laptop GPU.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-950M-DDR3-vs-GDDR5-Review.159861.0.html

It would be a little bit like replacing an RX 480 4gb with an RX 480 8gb in a desktop PC. Although that would be an entirely straightforward operation, it just wouldn't be worth it.

Better to stick with the work-focused spec and if you want a gaming machine in future, deal with that issue at that time

 

[Rat]

I have an old quad core XPS 420 (Q6600) running windows 10 64bit 8gb ddr2 and Palit GTX 680 which so far runs everything on max setting that I have tried so I'll just game on that then. As long as my laptop runs World of Tanks, Netflix, Amazon prime, Spotify and YouTube well enough for when I'm away then I'll be happy (outside my course work of course).

 

[Oussebon]

Should be more than fine for WoT: https://eu.wargaming.net/support/kb/articles/52 Prolly not the highest settings (GTX 660, the GPU in recommended specs, is ~50% better than a 950M - GTX 680 is about twice the performance of the 950M) but as you can see it's way over the minimum. And streaming stuff will be pretty trivial.

 

[Rat]

Awesome. Thx for the input. Just have to wait for it to be built and delivered now.