New Member: Looking for a new laptop!

[Specter]

Hi,
I have been on the look out for a new laptop now for the last 7 weeks to replace my Sony Vaio -i5 8GBram(Upgraded to 8GB), 500GB SSD(Upgraded) and Geforce M410m - yes it is very old - though the SSD drive upgrade brought new life into but now it is crashing and freezing up - so time for a new one !
I have looking for :-

1. Intel i7-10xxx chip
2. Nvidia RTX2060
3. 16GB DDR4 2666MHz
4. at least 500GB SSD
5. USB Type A/C ports

I will mostly using it for software development and perhaps get back into some PC Gaming again?

I found the ideal laptop on the ASUS store but it has been going on back order for weeks now and now the ETA is end of August!
I had thought I should stick to the big named brands but to be honest I look at the prices and what you get and I feel I am being ripped off.

So today I decided to see what my options are and I came across PC Specialist, and I have seen them around for years but didn't feel confident in choosing them in case I ran into problems.

So I guess my questions for the people who have bought and kept on buying from PCS are:-
a. Would you recommend them ?
b. What is the after sales support like?
c. How responsive are they when you have problems?
d. How good is their PRE-sales support? I have a few questions about their laptops.


I look forward to hearing back from you all
Thanks
Ken

 

[Stephen M]

I have bought several PCS machines over the years, mainly laptops but also a desk top and found them all excellent and had no problems with them.

There will always be the odd problem but those reported on these fora were nearly all sorted very quickly.

Probably best to phone for the quickest answer but they are quite good with emails, usually two to three days, although present times are effecting everything.

Why an Intel 17? Have you looked at the Nova, a laptop with an AMD desk top CPU. Currently AMD are way ahead of Intel who have thermal and security issues and do not look like improving in the near future. The Nova is a 15.6" but there should be an AMD 17.3" fairly soon.

 

[Specter]

I have bought several PCS machines over the years, mainly laptops but also a desk top and found them all excellent and had no problems with them.

There will always be the odd problem but those reported on these fora were nearly all sorted very quickly.

Probably best to phone for the quickest answer but they are quite good with emails, usually two to three days, although present times are effecting everything.

Why an Intel 17? Have you looked at the Nova, a laptop with an AMD desk top CPU. Currently AMD are way ahead of Intel who have thermal and security issues and do not look like improving in the near future. The Nova is a 15.6" but there should be an AMD 17.3" fairly soon.

Thank you for your reply.
It is good to know that PCS are having repeat customers - I like that -

As for i7, I have a work laptop i7 and it's very fast (8th gen)
I've never bought an AMD for myself though I have bought one for my wife and seems to be okay.

I've not heard anything about those issues you mention but I will now have a look around.
Do you have an AMD at the moment and if so what is it?
I am interested in understanding about the GPUs from AMD vs Nvidia's?

thanks
Ken

 

[Stephen M]

Unfortunately I bought my last machine, an i9 desk top just before the AMD Ryzens were launched and do regret not waiting now. The i9 is OK in desk top as there is better cooling but would still not recommend it over a Ryzen.

I do not really do anything that is going to stress a GPU, am not a gamer, so will leave others to comment on that issue.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thank you for your reply.
It is good to know that PCS are having repeat customers - I like that -

As for i7, I have a work laptop i7 and it's very fast (8th gen)
I've never bought an AMD for myself though I have bought one for my wife and seems to be okay.

I've not heard anything about those issues you mention but I will now have a look around.
Do you have an AMD at the moment and if so what is it?
I am interested in understanding about the GPUs from AMD vs Nvidia's?

thanks
Ken

When we say an AMD build that means the CPU, not GPU. For GPU it’s always recommended to go nvidia as they have far better driver support.

To stress the gpu you’d use furmark.

 

[Specter]

Well I must admit my head has been turned !
Avid Intel fan until I started to look at the Ryzen 7 Looking a the various benchmarks from different sites the 4800H is a beast!

 

[Specter]

When we say an AMD build that means the CPU, not GPU. For GPU it’s always recommended to go nvidia as they have far better driver support.

To stress the gpu you’d use furmark.

Thanks for this. 👍

 

[Charlas]

If I could have gone over to AMD this time I would, but needed a machine I can travel with so that's the DTR machines out, and the Ryzen 4000 won't have a good gpu for a while yet, so 10th gen intel it is then. But if I built a new desktop at the moment to replace my dual Xeon one, it would be Ryzen based for sure, although dual 12core/24thread Xeon is still getting the job done for VM/media server at the moment.

 

[Specter]

If I could have gone over to AMD this time I would, but needed a machine I can travel with so that's the DTR machines out, and the Ryzen 4000 won't have a good gpu for a while yet, so 10th gen intel it is then. But if I built a new desktop at the moment to replace my dual Xeon one, it would be Ryzen based for sure, although dual 12core/24thread Xeon is still getting the job done for VM/media server at the moment.

I would go for a Nvidia card but now edging towards the R7 4000H

 

[SpyderTracks]

Well I must admit my head has been turned !
Avid Intel fan until I started to look at the Ryzen 7 Looking a the various benchmarks from different sites the 4800H is a beast!

It's an amazing processor, think we're going to see some serious changes once NVidia 2070 and 2080's are allowed on AMD laptops, it's going to leave intel dead in the water.

The AMD's use literally half the power for more throughput, just insanely good.

 

[Specter]

When you say allowed, do you mean there is some technical restrictions on having RTX 2070 on AMD?

 

[SpyderTracks]

When you say allowed, do you mean there is some technical restrictions on having RTX 2070 on AMD?

It appears currently, that Intel have paid off the laptop manufacturers so that they'll only allow RTX 2070 and upwards cards on Intel laptops.... it's highly criminal and I have no doubt there will be a class action lawsuit for anti-competition.

" AMD has no specific answer to why this is the case but Frank recommends asking OEMs about the matter rather than AMD. Frank mentions that while Ryzen 4000 laptops are available with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 mobility GPU, it might not be the case for a prolonged period however all other options below the RTX 2070, such as a GeForce RTX 2060, would definitely be coming soon. It looks like that OEMs are keeping high-end options exclusive to Intel-based laptops and this is what Intel had already boasted about during its presentation of the Comet Lake-H chips at CES 2020. "

AMD's Chief Architect Confirms More Ryzen 4000 Laptops Coming This Month In Radeon / GeForce Flavors With Up To NVIDIA RTX 2070 GPUs

AMD has confirmed that more Ryzen 4000 CPU powered notebooks in AMD Radeon RX & NVIDIA GeForce RTX/GTX flavors are coming out this month.

wccftech.com

Intel know how much trouble they're in, the laptop market was the only area they still held an advantage, this is a sinister and illegal ploy by them to help them remain competitive for a couple more months.

The thing is, AMD have their own next gen GPU's being released in september, and by all reports they're set to destroy the RTX2000 series in performance anyway, so I think the reason AMD aren't shouting about this is because they plan to pair their laptops with their own mobile GPU's for even further dominance anyway.

 

[Charlas]

AMD still aren't the be all and end all in gaming, as they still have a couple of issues to resolve with lag between their chiplets, but with the Xbox and Ps5 using them, I'm sure we will see workarounds for the 1% and 0.1% issues they have

 

[SpyderTracks]

AMD still aren't the be all and end all in gaming, as they still have a couple of issues to resolve with lag between their chiplets, but with the Xbox and Ps5 using them, I'm sure we will see workarounds for the 1% and 0.1% issues they have

That's only on their current Zen 2 chips though, the next Zen 3's are supposed to fix that. But yeah, hopefully their research into the XBox and Playstation designs will offer a BIOS update for PC Gamers to improve the lag there currently.