MSI Laptops for gaming and other use??

[ZayZe]

So I've been thinking about buying a powerful laptop, and I was wondering if anyone had personal experience with them. I'm in the military and I'll be in need of something more portable than my gaming desktop that I currently have. I don't trust people around my belongings, and just because you may serve the country, they still are thieves and other things.. haha. Also I was wondering if it was worth it to get a SLI laptop? (Dual graphics card)

Give me some thoughts and feedback!!

[BrokenPromise]

well, i can't really help you with the thief problem. If you're worried about people stealing your stuff, i'd hold off on buying something unless you have a place to safely store it.

From my experience, gaming laptops are always less powerful and more expensive than tabletop options. I think it has to do with the power supply and cooling.

Not sure why you need 2 graphics cards. I'll admit that's out of my area of expertise, but back in the day you did that if you wanted to run 2 programs at the same time, or on different monitors. I think in most cases you're better off with one powerful video card instead of two, but don't quote me on that.

Also, what do you plan on playing? If all of your games are five years old, you really don't need that kind of hardware.

[ZayZe]

Well I play some graphically intense modern games. One for example would be Arma 3. I do casual stuff like just write things. I know what you mean by some gaming laptops are a bit overpriced, but I'm no newbie in the PC department. One of the laptops I've been looking at are here.

Click Here

I should've been more specific about what I'm asking about. What I'm asking is like.. what's the reliability of a laptop? Is it good to invest in a expensive laptop? Do they overheat a lot of the time? Are SLI laptops more prone to that than just a single graphics card laptop?

I'll have a safe place to store it, but if I were to bring my desktop, it's just a big honkin' thing that I don't want to haul around.

The idea of buying a laptop is to make it easier to haul around so when I move to a new duty station or if I get deployed it's nothing but a thing to bring it along.

[Keyguyperson]

Can't give you any tips on overheating and such, but two graphics cards are usually worth it from what I know. Be sure not to get dual AMD cards though, AMD cards aren't as good when you're running two of them together and you lose most of the benefit. That being said, if you can get one really good card then it'll usually be enough. My desktop has been using a single AMD card for it's whole lifetime and I got it back in 2013. You'll also want an Intel processor, since they're universally superior in pretty much every way (which I have to assume you already know). An AMD processor is pretty much useless on a laptop, the only reason one works on my desktop is because it's a ridiculously over-engineered eight core. The laptop you posted should, with my limited knowledge, be just fine. It's leagues better than my desktop, and my desktop has been able to run pretty much every game above 30 FPS on ultra (good enough for me, because my old one ran things at 10 FPS on a good day). That laptop should be more than enough. If you're on a tight budget, I might even suggest going a bit lower (assuming you can survive not having 120 FPS constantly, which I know a lot of people can't). But then again, I don't know anything about gaming laptops since I'm not gonna spend almost $3,000 on something I would rarely use in my life where I never, ever go anywhere.

So what I'm saying is: Looks good but don't buy it because I said that, wait for someone better versed in laptops to tell you.

[ZayZe]

@Keyguyperson

Thanks for your input! I'll keep that in mind. I think I will go SLI. I'm not really on a tight budget. I'm willing to spend up to $4,000 if need be. Maybe more...IF it's worth it.

I'll wait for more input as you suggest, but it'll be some time before I actually get around to buy it since I can't do anything till March.

[Dion]

So I've been thinking about buying a powerful laptop, and I was wondering if anyone had personal experience with them. I'm in the military and I'll be in need of something more portable than my gaming desktop that I currently have. I don't trust people around my belongings, and just because you may serve the country, they still are thieves and other things.. haha. Also I was wondering if it was worth it to get a SLI laptop? (Dual graphics card)

Give me some thoughts and feedback!!

@ZayZe

So, I'm an avid gamer myself and I have had experience with both desktops and laptops. Currently I'm running on a rather average Acer. Here's my specs (from the sticker, if you want the actual specs feel free to ask and I'll get them for you but they're not that impressive.)

AMD Quad-core A6-6310 ('Up to 2.4GHZ' but detection programs cite 2.0GHZ.)
AMD Radeon R4 graphics
8GB RAM
1TB HDD

Not really anything worth a tonne, but I can run some of the less intensive games (for example, CSGO runs rather well).

Here's my first advise. Don't get a laptop purely for gaming. Get a laptop for mobile working platforms, and then see if it's worth it to invest into a working laptop that might play a game or two well. As mentioned before: laptops are always, always worse than desktops. I'd rather take a desktop with slightly worse specs than a laptop with ultra specs.

Reason being that in a year I can replace the shitty specs in my desktop with ease, where as with the laptop you're investing in another laptop already because you cannot switch parts on a laptop. It's virtually impossible.

You're not looking to compare a computer against a laptop. You're looking to compare a 4000$ laptop against a 1000$ desktop in year 1, then looking to compare a new 4000$ laptop against 500$ parts in year 4, etc. It's just a shitty investment, economically.

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Now on to part two. If you do decide to get a laptop, get an external HDD. I cannot repeat this enough but keeping your laptop tidy and neat and low-memory usage is much more important for a laptop than for a regular desktop. Use an external HDD to store your games. Preferably get a second HDD to store work related stuff or business related stuff or personal stuff. Keep the laptop as clean as you can.

That goes for desktops too, but it goes double for laptops.

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I've never ran into problems with my laptop myself, no things like overheating, or strange things happening. So they're not unreliable. But the catch is that if a part breaks, again, you're not looking at a 800$ replacement, you're looking at 'does it fall under my warranty? No? Shit, now I have to buy a new 4000$ laptop.' simply because you cannot replace parts on a laptop. Ever. Well, you can do it, but it'd void the warranty instantly and there's a very very large chance to fuck it up. Just don't do it.

[ZayZe]

@Buddha Valid points.

I'll keep everything you said in mind. The fact that the laptop does get old and outdated will always be a problem.

I'm still going to consider buying a expensive laptop, simply because I need the performance no matter what. I need to be able to play any game I want across the board, with good performance.

We shall see when the time gets closer to buying one. :P