looking to get into PC gaming

I want to get a gaming laptop but I have no idea what to look for and what makes one laptop better than the other one, I have a budget of $1,500 but if there is a huge difference I am willing to go up to $2,000, I am in Canada so prices are in CDN

The people over here might be a little more focused on getting you into your PC gaming needs.

I'm not knowledgeable enough in laptops but there's one thing that i know. These money can get you a monster of a pc but might be barely enough for a mid range gaming laptop.

@budwyzer: ok cool thanks will ask around on there.

@giant_gamer: really ? I kinda figured a gaming laptop would be more expensive but by the way you make it sound it's a wast of money and should just get a desktop

Eurocom M5 Pro

Can you be convinced to get a desktop instead? I have used a gaming laptop out of necessity but if you can, you'll get more bang for your buck from a desktop. If the idea of building a PC is too much for you, you can use newegg to build one to the specs you want and stay within budget. If you need a laptop though ASUS has some good ones. Not as expensive and pretty powerful.

Yeah, laptop gaming is far from ideal. Unless you're dead set on getting a laptop for portability reasons, your dollar will stretch MUCH further with a desktop.

@bad_karate: Ya I can be convinced, I just use my laptop for work sometimes and just wanted to have one for everything, more of a convenience factor. I could get a desktop and just keep the laptop I have now for work and shit. I just know nothing about PC and how to build one but always wiling to learn. It will be a month or so before I get it so have lots of time to get knowledgeable.

@thebrokenpinion: additionally high end gaming laptops can never be as powerful as their pc counterparts (on top of their high cost), not to mention the inability to overclocking .

Btw i use a laptop for gaming on the go but it's only for non demanding games like counter strike or hearthstone.

So, i think that you should first get a desktop, have fun with the best experience possible then once you have enough money go for a laptop for pc gaming on the go.

Here's a desktop build if you end up going that way. I can make one that factors monitor and OS into the price if you want.

@corevi: Ahh thanks for that, but what's the difference in all the stuff ? like I see Intel Core i7-4790K for $368 and Intel Core i7-5820K for $445 what's the difference ? the higher the K the more power and wtf is K ?

@thebrokenpinion: K is an unlocked chip that you can overclock. The 5820k is a six core CPU with Hyperthreading, 4790k is four cores with Hyperthreading.

I recommend something along the lines of an i5-4690k.

@mb: haha I have no idea of anything you just said I am going to have to do some goggling, If I am going to bulid my own PC I want to know the in's and out's of everything.

@thebrokenpinion: That's probably a good idea.

Intel processors have three sets of designations. There's the iX which is basically just how good it is, an i7 will be faster than an i5 of the same clock speed. Then there's the model, in this case 4770. Generally a higher number is better. The last one is whether it's unlocked or not, which is denoted with the K. An unlocked processor can be overclocked while a locked one can't.

@thebrokenpinion: Intel make a bunch of different processors. i3 are the least powerful budget processors. i5 is mid-tier. i7 is high end. Within each tier, there are a bunch of processors with different clock speeds and features. For example, here is intel's comparison of the three main i5 processors. The clock speed is going to make the biggest difference. The integrated graphics stuff can be completely ignored because you'll have a separate graphics card for that. And the advanced technology stuff probably isn't going to make a huge amount of difference.

If the graphics card is a K model, that means at it standard it runs the same as the non K version, but unlike the K model it can be overclocked. Overclocking means running it at a higher clock speed than the specifications state.

For gaming, you probably aren't going to see any major differences between a high-end i5 card and an i7 card. Whilst games need a decent processor, their bottleneck is usually the graphics card. With the leap in prices beyond an i5-4690k, you're probably best off going with that rather than an i7, which is really only going to benefit you if you plan on doing heavy video editing or other processor-heavy tasks.

I'm fairly new to this PC building stuff too. I'm planning on building my first PC soon and I've been researching fairly extensively. I'd recommend checking out reddit's /r/buildapc, they know their stuff.

@thebrokenpinion: I really suggest dropping the laptop idea and just going for a desktop. I did a gaming laptop for my first go around and ended up regretting it. It's nice that it's prebuilt and requires no set up, but for the money you pay for a good gaming laptop you could get a much better laptop. Mine lasted around 4 years. It was great for the first 2 years, but it showed it's age quickly.

I built my own PC about 3 months ago, here is about what I did: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ssully/saved/BbHp99

The i7 is a little overkill for gaming, I got it mainly because I do work with virtual machines every now and then(could use more RAM in hindsight...). If you went with a build similar to mine you could easily shave off a few hundred by going for a lower CPU.

EDIT: I highly recommend you build out your PC using PCPartpicker.com. It will make it easy to post your specs here and get feedback.

@thebrokenpinion: When it comes to gaming laptops, you have to make significant compromises. Basically: Portable, reasonably priced, powerful. Pick two. Actually, in a most cases, pick one.

A desktop has the advantage of being far more powerful than a laptop of the same price, as well as being easily upgradeable. When your system starts showing its age in a few years, you can toss a new graphics card into your desktop and have everything be hunky dory. If your laptop can't keep up, well, tough luck, that'll be another $1500 for a new system.

thanks for all the help you guys saved me from getting a laptop and wasting my money

My last gaming laptop was 1300 USD and lasted maybe 2 years, running everything at medium.

http://www.ncix.com/article/NCIX-PC-gaming.htm#start - There you go, Canada.

Desktop all the way, the only good thing about gaming laptops is they keep your hands toasty during winter.

@thebrokenpinion: I am sure this thread has already given you your answer, but I felt that I should give tell you about a couple of my experiences.

I have owned three gaming laptops in my life. I can afford to purchase an actual gaming pc AND a gaming laptop. With my history of Laptops, I have learned some things that frustrate me with laptops, in general, but especially gaming laptops.

• They need to be plugged in at all times to function as a Desktop Replacement. I had a Dell XPS M1710, that I purchased in 2006, and if the laptop wasn't plugged in gaming performance dropped in half while t he battery gave out after an hour of play time. This is an extreme example of a high end laptop (this cost me almost $4000), and technology has certainly helped this problem, but not much though. My current Gaming Laptop (Lenovo Y50) allows me to red-line performance almost like it was plugged in, but the battery is dead in a hour and a half (almost five hours if I am not gaming). The worst offender was my 2009 Asus w90. Because it was packing two 4970's is crossfire, the battery only lasted an hour and a half for non-gaming use and about a half-hour of half-speed gaming.
• You are looking at paying twice the price for half the performance of a Desktop. My Y50 cost me $1300 after taxes and it doesn't perform anywhere near as well as the $800 computer I built for my roommate.
• Unless you spend ridiculous amounts of money, Laptops are mass produced, because of this they are more prone to failure than a custom built PC. My Dell had to be RMA'd six times, thankfully I spent enough money that they sent out a repair guy, but it was a constant problem that persisted even after they just swapped me a replacement. My Asus also had to be RMA'd twice and that was the most painful customer service experience of my life.
• Here is the uber-secret that not many people know about about. Most gaming laptops cannot use native drivers and you have to be at the mercy of your manufacturer to sort verify a drivers integrity first. This has been a thorn in my side the entire time I have owned gaming laptops, the worst being my Asus with two AMD 4970's in it. AMD drivers are garbage, and AMD used to release one driver every month, then a hotfix to solve an epic bug. Well the problem I used to run into, was a game being released, crossfire not working because I need a driver, then having to wait a month before I could play the game because Asus (this happens with Lenovo and Dell) hasn't finished QC'ing yet. I mentioned hotfix earlier because I had an experience where I waited forever for an Intel patch, and when that was released and didn't work I found out that there was a hotfix for my problem, a hot fix that Dell wasn't going to QC, meaning no release for my laptop. I actually had to spoof my own computer into thinking it had desktop hardware in it to allow the hotfix installer to actually run on my machine.

This is the kind of bullshit that I have had to put up with when using gaming laptops. So because of the hassle, I can only recommend gaming laptops under specific scenarios.

1. You are financially secure enough to blow $2000 on a hobby. Meaning, are you a 30+ year old, single that is well established in his carreer and doesn't have the money-traps called children.
2. You live in a trailer, share a one bedroom NYC apartment with a roommate, or rent the space under someones staircase for $1000 a month in Whistler. Basically any house where space is so limited you physically do not have the space for a desktop.
3. You are always moving from one place to another and are fully aware that you will always be able to plug in your laptop.

As you can see, you can probably sum up those three scenarios as being desktop replacements, not portable gaming machines. I would say that unless you meet one of those three scenarios, you are better off building a desktop. If portability is an issue, for example if you are a child whose parents are divorced and you need to move your PC a couple of times every week, then you should just build a system to mini-ATX spec (a steam machine is basically a mini-ATX spec PC without Windows installed) and use your PC like a console. You will spend less money, it will be just as portable, and you will have a better gaming experience.

If you still want to buy a gaming laptop, then you have to ask yourself what you are going to do with it? If you are going to be playing League of Legends, WOW or Path of Exile all day, you can probably do with taking your gaming laptop money ($1300-$2500) and just buying a $600 regular-assed laptop because League can play on anything. If you want to play something more complex, I would look into Lenovo Y50 touch. It really is the best price / performance gaming laptop on the market that I am aware of right now.