Laptop for gaming, is this viable?

[Larsenex]

Greetings again. I am looking to get a laptop simply because its so darn mobile. Is gaming on a laptop viable?

I understand how memory is shared in a laptop and this is shared for the video and cpu. My biggest concern is battery and heat. I have heard that both are issues.

Can you DIY a laptop like you can a desktop or is this best left the brand names?

 

[GhostRyder]

Well gaming on mobile is more than just viable, I know plenty of people who do it over having a desktop because of the exact same reason, being mobile.

As for heat, as long as you buy a decent gaming laptop from a reputable brand, you don't have to worry, only a few gaming laptops I have ever seen with issues that are caused from heat.

My suggestions for brands are as follow:

MSI

Asus
Sager

All three have decent cooling solutions and good prices. I personally have an MSI GT70 with a i7 and a GTX 675m. Most gaming laptops will automatically have an i7 which on the mobile will be more than enough for the CPU, the GPU tends to be the area you run into trouble. Mobile GPU's are not nearly as powerful as the names suggest, a GTX 675m for instance is not anywhere near a Desktop GTX 670. So you are going to spend a lot of money to get a decent gaming laptop that will do games like BF3, what games do you play?

 

[Jad Chaar]

MSI and ASUS laptops are Overpriced IMO. Get a Sager.

No, you cannot DIY, they only come in prebuilt form factors.

When you get a gaming laptop, dont expect to get more than 1 hour of battery life since the parts are very high end and consume a lot of power. The only real advantage to them is that you can carry them around (they are definitely not light, but can be lifted around). Heat is definitely an issue because you dont have 120mm fans in a laptop pushing air out. Instead, you have very dense heatsinks and blower fans. Heat is gonna be an issue of course, but it isnt to the point where the laptop is melting xD.

 

[junky77]

Budget? specific games? screen size?

 

[LinkedKube]

If you're all about color, you had red, love blues and can deal with greens I'd go for sager. They have a lot of options and different platforms to choose from.

 

[Route44]

Look into Xotic PC, PC-Digital, Power Notebooks, and Mythlogic. All carry the Sager brand and they all offer various options and pricing depending on how you want to configure your laptop. They also have great reputations for customer service.

I bought my son a Sager from Xotic a couple of years ago for college and gaming and it is still going strong. We were fortunate to be able to configure his system in a 1600x900 screen resolution on a 15" screen in matte. The color rendition is beautiful. The only thing you need to be aware of is that the speakers in a Sager are poor to only fair, otherwise no complaints.

Please do yourself a favor: Get a good cooling pad.