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I have a friend who's getting a computer part funded by the government, and she's asked me to lend a hand. She'd like to be capable of gaming on it, but as far as I can see, all of the models they're willing to fund come with integrated graphics instead of separate cards. The logical solution there is to buy a model that can have a graphics card bought and installed separately after the laptop is acquired, but to be frank, I don't know enough about the internal mechanics of laptop computers to know which models that would be possible for.

This is the page:-
http://dsastore.barrybennett.co.uk/index.php/notebooks.html?limit=25

All told, she can buy up to a value of £700, but would prefer it to be as cheap as possible without sacrificing too much to performance.

So firstly, is it possible to do what I've described above? If so, for which models?
Many thanks gents.

Laptops tend not to be expandable in that way. You won't be able to buy a separate graphics card to install - I'm not aware of any laptop that allows this.

This Acer laptop has a low-end gaming graphics card and is only slightly over budget...

http://dsastore.barrybennett.co.uk/index.php/notebooks/i5-processors/acer-aspire-f-15-f5-573g-5996-2-3ghz-i5-6200u-15-6-1920-x-1080pixels-black.html

Crispy78 wrote:
Laptops tend not to be expandable in that way. You won't be able to buy a separate graphics card to install - I'm not aware of any laptop that allows this.

So do they use modify the motherboard to lock you in or something? Because on one or two of those laptop models, if you look elsewhere, you can buy the machine with or without a graphics card. Surely that would imply that even if you then buy the one without the graphics card, the appropriate slot should be there to plug that specific graphics card into and the necessary space within the laptop casing?

http://www.morecomputers.com/product.aspx?pn=20EVA02SUK&man=Lenovo

Here's an example. This one is available without the graphics card on the list she can buy from, but it can be bought with or without a card elsewhere apparently (it mentions it can take an AMD card).

It's possible for a modern laptop not to include a graphics chip at all, because the Core I3/5/7 series CPUs all have an integrated graphics processor built into them. These perform as well as you would think in gaming, which is to say, very poorly. They aren't made for that. At one point my GPU blew out and I was stuck rocking my I7 graphics while waiting for the RMA to arrive.

From my glance, none of those laptops has a dedicated GPU, which means none of them will perform well in a modern graphically intensive game, although you might be able to get by in some older ones.

There is no real path to upgrade graphics on a laptop. There are some old attempts to do this, like the MXM standard, but those all were abandoned years ago and to be frank they didn't really get much traction even then. Laptops have extremely model-specific cooling and power needs that really do not lend themselves to the flexibility of a desktop - dropping in a 1070 graphics card, for example, will almost surely greatly exceed the entire power budget of the whole rest of the laptop. You'd need a machine that is purpose built to support that specific card's heat and power requirements.

It's possible to install an external graphics card into a dock, but these an extremely hacky, complex method that will almost certainly exceed the cost of just buying a dedicated gaming laptop.

The only things that you can typically upgrade on a laptop are:

RAM - up to the motherboards maximum architecture allows regardless of how much physically fits

Hard Drive

Usually the wireless network card, although this is typically replacing a broken one rather than an upgrade

Sometimes there is a slot for installing an M2 SSD, although not always. This is a newer feature.

I think that's about it.

 Ketara wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
Laptops tend not to be expandable in that way. You won't be able to buy a separate graphics card to install - I'm not aware of any laptop that allows this.

So do they use modify the motherboard to lock you in or something? Because on one or two of those laptop models, if you look elsewhere, you can buy the machine with or without a graphics card. Surely that would imply that even if you then buy the one without the graphics card, the appropriate slot should be there to plug that specific graphics card into and the necessary space within the laptop casing?

http://www.morecomputers.com/product.aspx?pn=20EVA02SUK&man=Lenovo

Here's an example. This one is available without the graphics card on the list she can buy from, but it can be bought with or without a card elsewhere apparently (it mentions it can take an AMD card).

In a manner of speaking, yes. You basically get whatever graphics chip is built in to the system board. You will find some laptop models will offer a variety of graphics options - but they're all built in to the system board, you can't buy an extra graphics card to install in to a laptop. There's generally not enough space in the chassis to do so, and the cooling required would be completely model-specific - you tend to have something like a heat-pipe going from the chip to a radiator by a vent in the chassis, with a fan to blow air through it. That sort of setup has to be designed specifically for the laptop and the graphics chip.

 Ketara wrote:
I have a friend who's getting a computer part funded by the government, and she's asked me to lend a hand. She'd like to be capable of gaming on it, but as far as I can see, all of the models they're willing to fund come with integrated graphics instead of separate cards. The logical solution there is to buy a model that can have a graphics card bought and installed separately after the laptop is acquired, but to be frank, I don't know enough about the internal mechanics of laptop computers to know which models that would be possible for.

This is the page:-
http://dsastore.barrybennett.co.uk/index.php/notebooks.html?limit=25

All told, she can buy up to a value of £700, but would prefer it to be as cheap as possible without sacrificing too much to performance.

So firstly, is it possible to do what I've described above? If so, for which models?
Many thanks gents.

So is it literally they will only fund laptops from that site, or can she buy from anywhere as long as the end price is within the £700 she can afford?

If it is the latter I'd suggest looking around other sites. MSI make some budget gaming laptops which fall within that £700 budget (probably looking mostly at the GL series, maybe GP series if you can find a discount/she has a little bit of leeway at the top end of the budget). She could also look at PC Specialist to configure one herself (if you go this route I suggest getting it without Windows installed as you can get an OEM copy of Windows for ~£20 as opposed to the £90 that it costs to get it pre-installed from them).

If you're stuck with that website then I don't see it being possible. Apparently the government would rather pay more for laptops which can do less in order to make sure people can't have fun.

 Ouze wrote:

It's possible to install an external graphics card into a dock, but these an extremely hacky, complex method that will almost certainly exceed the cost of just buying a dedicated gaming laptop.

I just did a quick look, and, yeah, external GPU docks ain't cheap.
And they either require a proprietary connection or the new Thunderbolt USB-C from what I saw.

I see. Thanks for the advice gents.

Does it need to be a laptop? You get much more bang-for-buck with a pc, even if they aren't as cool

pc build guideline http://pc4u.org/guide-for-building-a-cheap-gaming-pc-with-a-rx480/

byshop wrote:
pc build guideline http://pc4u.org/guide-for-building-a-cheap-gaming-pc-with-a-rx480/

Self-build won't be an option. It's a government scheme involving a specific supplier of pre-built systems. My brother got something similar to help when he went to university, on account of his dyslexia.

I helped source a friend with a new PC for gaming, and did a bit of research. Excluding self build which wasn't an option, and came up with this:

https://www.palicomp.co.uk/amd-avenger-kav3