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So, I’m looking to get a laptop to replace my desktop. Can anyone recommend a good make/model to look into? I got my desktop from CyberpowerPC and I liked it, but I don’t know if I need a “gaming” laptop per se. I do all of my gaming on my xbox. But, i do want really good 3D capabilities for things like 3D sculpting with Zbrush. I also prefer bigger laptops, so I’m mostly just looking for 17” or above. I usually try and avoid name brand computers because I hate when they preinstall a bunch of junk I’ll never want or use. I’d also like to have a lot of RAM so that I can keep design apps running like photoshop, illustrator and indesign since when I’m working I have to switch back and forth a lot, and I have no patience for slow computers. I’d also like to have the latest kind of processor out there… skywell? skylake? I dunno what they’re called anymore... I usually like to get more high end, or at least above avearge, so it will last longer. I don't need super high tech bleeding-edge though.

So that said.. anyone know of any good ones to look into?

I'd recommend posting what you said here, but also, include a price range. From what I see you probably want one with a Nvidia video card, since many of those apps support GPU offloading via CUDA. I don't think Vulkan support is anywhere near as common yet.

Have you had a 17" laptop before, by the way? As someone who owned quite a few laptops, I had a 17" laptop and hated it, it was enormous, heavy, and hot. If you only take it somewhere once in a while and otherwise use it as a desktop replacement, it would be fine, but if you travel with it even once a week I think you might want to consider something smaller - I think 15" is the sweep spot, personally.

http://www.hidevolution.com/

You can examine a wide selection of laptops here. They can get expensive as you add more and more "bleeding edge" stuff.

My price range is around $2000 or less, preferably much less but that's as high as I wanna go. I had a 17" macbook pro a while back and I liked it, yeah it was hot and heavy.. but I'm not looking for a system to carry around a lot and take with me. I mostly just want to get away from having a big tower and a cleaner desk and easy enough to move to another room and stuff like that. I doubt I'll ever put my laptop on my lap though. I'll probably keep my 23" hd monitor and use that more for when I'm working on design stuff.

I'll check out HIDevolution. I did a lot of surfing and reading last night, and found this beast and fell in love..
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/LandingPages/Arcus34/

Not a laptop, but wow. I don't know if I want an all in 1 system though, it looks cool, but definitely not the portable system I was looking for. Apparently there's a few other manufacturers like Origin PC making the same exact thing, right down to the camera and innards. I wonder if you can buy that monitor and all the pieces and build your own?

I also found this gaming laptop on Amazon that seems good
https://www.amazon.com/G752VT-DH74-17-Inch-Gaming-Laptop-GeForce/dp/B015ZG9D74

Ibuypower.com is where I bought my last gaming computer and they had amazing customer support and a good product, but that was 6 years ago. I can not speak as to how the company is now. If you are doing 3D then a gaming laptop should offer the same capabilities.

Alienware has gone to hell since dell bought them but still makes above par, hard to kill machines.

 redleger wrote:
Ibuypower.com is where I bought my last gaming computer and they had amazing customer support and a good product, but that was 6 years ago. I can not speak as to how the company is now. If you are doing 3D then a gaming laptop should offer the same capabilities.

Alienware has gone to hell since dell bought them but still makes above par, hard to kill machines.

I second this. Great bang for the buck gaming laptops. Mine from 2012 is still kicking and I use it at the occasional LAN party. They included a disc for Windows 7 with the product. The only problem I've had is the Adata SSD it came with finally croaked about a month ago after over 3 years of hard use and I had to clean it out and redo the thermal past once. It survived abuse at the hands of my wife, who destroys everything. My biggest laptop disappointment has been from HP. I paid a premium and got something underpowered and no Windows install disc.

You will want something with proper cooling.
I know the esthetics of gaming laptops ain't great. But the cooling and performance tends to be a lot better.
Personally I have both Alienware and ASUS ROG laptops.
Out of those two the ROG has better cooling.
So from your budget and needs I would look at some of the Republic Of Gamers series.
For a lot of reasons.. Both for the massive amounts of storage and the superior cooling..
And judging from the requirements you've outlined you should be able to get a hell of a good laptop for the monies..

Another option would be secondhand..
That would mean you could potentially end up with better hardware than you could if buying brand new..

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
I second this. Great bang for the buck gaming laptops. Mine from 2012 is still kicking and I use it at the occasional LAN party. They included a disc for Windows 7 with the product. The only problem I've had is the Adata SSD it came with finally croaked about a month ago after over 3 years of hard use and I had to clean it out and redo the thermal past once. It survived abuse at the hands of my wife, who destroys everything. My biggest laptop disappointment has been from HP. I paid a premium and got something underpowered and no Windows install disc.

You can download windows iso's directly from Microsoft and then use it to make a bootable USB stick with the free tool provided by Microsoft. I haven't included optical drives in my PC builds in a decade.

So much for the laptop, but thanks for the ideas .. I went back to my all in 1 idea, I was going to go with the 5K iMac at first but it was too expensive and not refreshed in a while so I didn't want to spend that much on an "old" system and then have them release the new one 2 months later. I looked up Cyberpower PC again and they had a bunch of sales going, so I got me one of these



it's a 34" curved monitor, 32 gigs of ram, i7, geforce 1070 video card and it all came out to just over $2k.. and then i found a 5% off code on retailmenot.com too so I was still just barely under budget Origin PC is making basically the same thing, but when I built one there with mostly the same stuff it was almost $1000 more so I went with cyberpower instead. And HP has one too, but it's HP.

That massive screen will be a big help when I'm doing design work, I tend to have lots of apps running and it will be cool to have all the windows open so I can see everything. I have 2 smaller monitors now, but that always kind of annoyed me, so now I can have one big one instead and a whole lot more real estate. And the gaming should be fairly awesome too.

 Ouze wrote:

 Monkey Tamer wrote:
I second this. Great bang for the buck gaming laptops. Mine from 2012 is still kicking and I use it at the occasional LAN party. They included a disc for Windows 7 with the product. The only problem I've had is the Adata SSD it came with finally croaked about a month ago after over 3 years of hard use and I had to clean it out and redo the thermal past once. It survived abuse at the hands of my wife, who destroys everything. My biggest laptop disappointment has been from HP. I paid a premium and got something underpowered and no Windows install disc.

You can download windows iso's directly from Microsoft and then use it to make a bootable USB stick with the free tool provided by Microsoft. I haven't included optical drives in my PC builds in a decade.

I'm just a bit old fashioned. I don't like taking extra steps so a vendor can save some money. Same things with drivers on a disc and any programs the machine is supposed to come with. Yeah, I know I need to leave the stone age.

There are benefits for you, as a optical drive is going to transfer about 20mb/s and a modern thumbstick is going to read about 120mb/s, which is a much, much faster install. I guess for me, I just hate having an extra piece of clutter around for me to misplace - I like being able to plug in a stick, write it in 90 seconds, and then good to go. YMMV of course.

As far as OP goes I used to have a 27" and a 24" dual display, and earlier this year I switched to a single curved 34" ultrawidescreen. I'd be curious to see what your feeling is about it. There are some things I like about the setup but there were also some things that were handier for 2 physical displays as well. I will say that I sort of regret getting the curved display vs a 34" ultrawide flat, since the curve is very subtle, and the flat was $500ish and the curved one was $750 - a high premium for a minor gimmick I found.

It is very nice for gaming and movies though.

It's probably the same monitor you have then, this is a 34" curved widescreen monitor too.. seems like there's a bunch of companies making all in 1 PC's with it with the guts stuck on the back. I think I bought into the gimmick too seems cool but I don't think the curve is totally necessary. I mostly just want tons of screen space. I was planning to get a 40" 4K TV to use as one massive monitor at one point, and if I got the laptop I was hoping I'd be able to hook that up like that some day. I think this system will be just what I need though.

I was doing the dual monitor thing, but for me I always hated having that gap in the middle so I think the one big screen will work better for me.

Now I just gotta wait 3 weeks to get my new toy :(

Threadromacing the stone!

So, I bought that all in 1 PC with the ultra wide screen, and while I love the big screen, I really think I made a mistake. Recently my day job bought me a MacBook Pro for work stuff, and I kinda love it. So, I think I should have stuck with my original plan and went with a laptop instead. I'm gonna list that PC on Craigslist and see if I can find a buyer, then get a laptop instead.

While bored at work today I did a lot of browsing. I know I definitely want a "retina" screen, so I'm looking for a 4K 17" laptop. I found this laptop on NewEgg. Seems to check off all my boxes, but it's pricey. I also noticed iBuyPower has similar ones that you can configure so I may try there instead, but they are also pricey. I think it might be because of the 7th Gen processor.. is it worth going for an older 6th gen to save some cash? It seems like there aren't too many options for 4K 17" screens out there, and they're all kinda pricey (but still cheaper than Macs).

Any good suggestions/recommendations? I don't do a lot of hardcore PC gaming, but I do a lot of graphic design and I'm trying to get good at 3D sculpting, so I want good performance and a PC that will last a long time, I'd like to get a good 3+ years out of it before I feel like I need an upgrade.

Jaysus that newegg one you're looking got some powah... should be more than adequate for your 3d rendering...

Have you looked at Sagernotebooks or Clevo? They may have better price points for you there...

I just checked Sager and they didn't have any 4K's. There are some from HP, but I worry about all the bloatware it will come with. One thing I liked about my Cyberpower PC was it was pretty much a pure and clean install of Windows 10. CP has a UHD laptop but it's only 15", I want at least 17.

When it comes to PCs I usually like to buy more high end and keep a long time, rather than mid-low end and replace more often But, I can really only go for the pricier laptop if I can get a good price for my desktop so I'll have to see how it goes.

If you're into gaming and 3D applications, I'd stick with a Desktop as the hardware is easier to replace and upgrade.

Question is, do you need a laptop? As from experience, they don't tend to last very long before the battery goes, or the fan because the cat liked to sleep on it.

I'm mostly just looking to downsize. I do my gaming on my xbox, not so much on my PC. What I would use it the most for is graphic design stuff. I have an external monitor I can plug in if I need extra space, but 90% of the time I'm just web surfing and emailing. What I really want most is the touch pad.. I've gotten so used to it, I use it more than a mouse now.. and when I'm on a normal keyboard I always reach for the center of the spacebar thinking the pad is there. I looked for touchpad keyboards and couldn't find any I liked

I don't really think I'll want to pop in a new video card or anything like that, I don't feel like I need a desktop anymore. When I get a new PC I always tell myself "Hey, I can upgrade it later" but I never do except for maybe some ram or a hard drive.

I looked around more and Dell/Alienware has a similar model for slightly cheaper. HP's 4K laptops are like $1799 maxed out, for also a lot of the same specs.. and that makes me think the HP is gonna be full of a lot of cheapy stuff.

Guess I'm leaning more toward Alienware now.. but, gotta find a buyer for my old PC first.