Nova 15.6 budget(ish) build

[Steve2]

Hi guys.

I've not been around here much, but the community here is really friendly and informative so i thought I'd post my spec and get some final feedback before taking the plunge - a big thanks to some of the members and mods for their assistance with my queries.

The concept:
So this build is a stop-gap build for when I visit my friends and family (I'm a good 200 miles away ) - several times year (and 3 weeks for Christmas). It has to be as good as my current 5 year desktop build for as cheap as i can possibly get, better is always nice, but the idea is that steam will sync my saves and i wont see much of a difference (other than the monitor differences). My 5 year old desktop is i5-4690k, an overclocked 970 and 16Gb RAM (price comparison: £1600, including aesthetic wires and two 24" inch monitors so maybe £1300 of actual computer).

Chassis & Display
Nova Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
I was actually looking at one of the Optimus models for a while, but then realised the NTSC colour accuracy thing. The Nova is really the only one in this price range with the 72% panel as i'd still like to be able to watch movies/shows.

Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 3 3300X Quad Core CPU (3.8GHz-4.3GHz/18MB CACHE/AM4)
Vs the 3100, the bang for buck ratio is pretty tasty.

Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Max Hz for Ryzen! - I've been talking with some of the regulars about 3200 compatibility (link) - seems promising.

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
I almost settled with the 1660 ti as the price difference (especially performance wise compared to my 970) isn't that huge and i'm not interested in ray tracing - but hey, its a 2060 and i felt like splurging a bit!

1st M.2 SSD Drive
128GB ADATA SX6000 LITE M.2 2280 (1800 MB/R, 1200 MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
The storage is probably the most noticeable "cheap out" - this is mostly due to 1. not using it frequently and 2. I'm used to a 5 year old Samsung SSD for OS (~500 r/w) and have about 6 ageing storage HDDs (two of which from my previous build that lasted 10 years! - I'm waiting for it to die 😅) so the lower end m.2 is still a significant upgrade for me.

Keyboard Language
15" NOVA SERIES UK KEYBOARD
PCS seems to be the only laptop supplier with a "normal" keyboard layout making it my primary choice - unless (all)other retailers have a really bad localisation issues with their display images - its a really minor thing and it's silly, but it really frustrates me. Why make the left shift so big that you have to make the enter key small!

Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Buying this myself.

Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
30 Day Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs

Total Order Price (Inc. promo code)
£994.00

All in all i'm quite pleased I managed to get the price sub £1000 even if i could drop another ~£60 on the graphics and the 15.6" PROTEUS VIII comes out at ~£100 more, so its close.

Love to hear what people think. Am I too fussy, or perhaps missed some glaringly obvious thing?

 

[Steve2]

Weird..that build comes out at £1009 when I spec it

Just to be aware, in case you weren't already: The Nova has a pretty poor battery life (1-1.5 hours maximum) due to it's design (using desktop CPUs instead of laptop variants) as a desktop replacement. If it's always plugged in, it's fine

Beyond that, for the budget and your need for a 72% screen, not really any other options. Personally, I'd up the warranty to Silver (£5 more) just to give longer coverage on carriage costs etc...would also up the dead pixel guarantee to a year for only an extra £7 (peace of mind).

Thanks for the feedback nursemorph, you've pointed out some really important things I've overlooked in my excitement, especially the warranty - I had forgotten about that completely.
The price is due to a -£15 promo code - I'm not sure of the rules regarding posting it, but if anyone is interested, you can google it or i can PM you.

 

[FerrariVie]

Another thing that's worth mentioning is the fan noise, but if you're ok with that, then all good.

I would just go for a 500Gb SSD (even if intel) instead of a 128Gb SSD (not good enough even for windows alone) and an HDD. If you have 6 HDDs laying around, none of them are 2.5"? You could add them to the nova later on.

 

[Steve2]

I would just go for a 500Gb SSD (even if intel) instead of a 128Gb SSD (not good enough even for windows alone) and an HDD.

Is the 128Gb ADATA really that bad? Or do you just mean it doesn't have enough space? It comes as stock on some of the prebuilt laptops here, so I assumed at least it wasn't terrible.

 

[FerrariVie]

Is the 128Gb ADATA really that bad? Or do you just mean it doesn't have enough space? It comes as stock on some of the prebuilt laptops here, so I assumed at least it wasn't terrible.

I'm talking about space. The SSD is also a bit slow, but that's why it's cheap. However, any slow NVME will still be faster than a SATA SSD.

 

[Steve2]

I'm talking about space ... ... ... However, any slow NVME will still be faster than a SATA SSD.

I'm going to take your advice but go for the 256Gb low end M.2 - I think it's a good compromise. Still faster than I’m used to and as a comparison, I still haven't used all my 850 Evo 250Gb boot drive in my desktop. Unfortunately none of my desktop's HDDs are fit for purpose...though my housemate is selling is old shuttle's parts right now.

I just can't not have a HDD - the price per byte is just too good. Maybe I'm just a data hoarder. 😝 I'll put all my media on there as well as good few handfuls of games and I'll be set for good long while (I'll be relying on Steam cloud sync for saves 🤞).

With the extra warranty, pixel guarantee and storage I'm up to £1015 and remembered I still have to buy a copy of windows 😬 Not a problem though, the extra security for the price is worth the peace of mind (and only £9 for double the boot drive size 🤯).

As a final tweak I'm reconsidering the 1660 ti to shave off another £60. Would I really regret that extra bit of oomph? I don't care about ray tracing in the slightest and "benchmarks" are not too far off each other. I'd probably swap in the Samsung 250GB SSD too just for that extra quality/reliability and still be under par.

 

[FerrariVie]

I'm going to take your advice but go for the 256Gb low end M.2 - I think it's a good compromise. Still faster than I’m used to and as a comparison, I still haven't used all my 850 Evo 250Gb boot drive in my desktop. Unfortunately none of my desktop's HDDs are fit for purpose...though my housemate is selling is old shuttle's parts right now.

I just can't not have a HDD - the price per byte is just too good. Maybe I'm just a data hoarder. I'll put all my media on there as well as good few handfuls of games and I'll be set for good long while (I'll be relying on Steam cloud sync for saves ).

With the extra warranty, pixel guarantee and storage I'm up to £1015 and remembered I still have to buy a copy of windows Not a problem though, the extra security for the price is worth the peace of mind (and only £9 for double the boot drive size ).

As a final tweak I'm reconsidering the 1660 ti to shave off another £60. Would I really regret that extra bit of oomph? I don't care about ray tracing in the slightest and "benchmarks" are not too far off each other. I'd probably swap in the Samsung 250GB SSD too just for that extra quality/reliability and still be under par.

That is up to you, but I would prefer a better GPU than a better SSD, for the simple reason that the SSD can be replaced in the future, while the GPU can't. And going for the RTX2060 is not just about ray tracing (I don't have any RT games myself), but you're getting a newer generation GPU, that will support newer technology and will still give you about 15% more performance than a 1660ti:

Source

 

[lauwai]

That is up to you, but I would prefer a better GPU than a better SSD, for the simple reason that the SSD can be replaced in the future, while the GPU can't. And going for the RTX2060 is not just about ray tracing (I don't have any RT games myself), but you're getting a newer generation GPU, that will support newer technology and will still give you about 15% more performance than a 1660ti:
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Source

Definitely spend the money on parts you can't upgrade unless the price is too good. I don't think I'd go lower than a 2060 at the moment for any sort of futureproofing. The 1600 series GPU are base level at the moment and will struggle with near future releases IMO.

You could just order the laptop with a boot M.2 drive and get a USB 3.0 enclosure for one of your current HDD drives and dump media on there to be portable. You can always add extra M.2 or SSD at a later date.

 

[Steve2]

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Source

Are you saying the cards in these laptops acctually desktop model cards? I was under the impression they would be the mobile variants (though i guess the term "desktop replacement" would suggest otherwise) and have been basing my research on the mobile variants.

Those results do indeed look like desktop variant results so it's hard to deny. The mobile variants benches show a difference of ~5% average.

 

[lauwai]

The CPU in the Nova are the same as the desktop PCs. The GPU are mobile versions but the performance difference between different chips should still be about the same as long as you're comparing mobile to mobile and desktop to desktop. A 1660TI will always be less powerful than a 2060 whatever the variant.

 

[FerrariVie]

Are you saying the cards in these laptops acctually desktop model cards? I was under the impression they would be the mobile variants (though i guess the term "desktop replacement" would suggest otherwise) and have been basing my research on the mobile variants.

Those results do indeed look like desktop variant results so it's hard to deny. The mobile variants benches show a difference of ~5% average.

As @lauwai said, the Nova does indeed use mobile gpus and those benchmarks I showed were from laptops with a similar chassis (the link to the full video is in my post)

 

[Steve2]

A 1660TI will always be less powerful than a 2060 whatever the variant.

This is true and i'm totaly prepared to go for the 2060's ~15% performance increase if it is infact that. I dont think i'd be prepared to pay the extra if the reality was more inline with the mobile vs mobile results below (this all considering that i'm perfectly happy with my 970's performance in my desktop).

Going off the charts which i've been mostly doing (just one example here):
desktop vs desktop and mobile vs mobile

And also checking another video that states "mobile" in the title.
GTX 1660 TI Mobile vs RTX 2060 Mobile | GAMING LAPTOP COMPARISON by H-Tech

While i can't personaly vouch for any source, both videos seem to show the same results and fit inline the destop vs destop benchmakrs i posted.

🤣😩

Edit: I might just spend the £60 to avoid a headache 😂

 

[FerrariVie]

This is true and i'm totaly prepared to go for the 2060's ~15% performance increase if it is infact that. I dont think i'd be prepared to pay the extra if the reality was more inline with the mobile vs mobile results below (this all considering that i'm perfectly happy with my 970's performance in my desktop).

Going off the charts which i've been mostly doing (just one example here):
desktop vs desktop and mobile vs mobile

And also checking another video that states "mobile" in the title.
GTX 1660 TI Mobile vs RTX 2060 Mobile | GAMING LAPTOP COMPARISON by H-Tech

While i can't personaly vouch for any source, both videos seem to show the same results and fit inline the destop vs destop benchmakrs i posted.

Edit: I might just spend the £60 to avoid a headache

I actually don't know how notebook check does that comparison (if real tests or simulations) and also we don't know what version of the 2060 (and 1660ti) they're running.

From what I can remember, the 2060 on the Nova is the refreshed version (2020) and it has a tdp of 115w, which is quite more than the 90w on the 1660ti and that translates on the higher performance difference. I might be wrong though, but those figures are what I remember from jarrod's tech video that I posted.

 

[Steve2]

There are several benchmarking sites I've found over the past several weeks (bascially every one google takes me to) that show the same mobile vs mobile(~5%) and desktop vs desktop(~15-20%) differences, funnily enough I even found a Tom's Hardware article on the notebookcheck.net findings (while not initialy the same topic, the last part does point out this discrepincy between the differences in cards on both platforms).

Thanks for the extrea info, I need to do some more digging.

 

[briggm]

I would also go for the 2060 over the 1660ti in this system. The advice on laptops is generally to go with the best GPU you can afford, and even if the difference between the two isn't earth shattering, £60 extra seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[Steve2]

I think i get whats going on now - sorry for being a bit slow with this, I couldn't just throw away weeks of conclusions out without investigating my mistake first.

The benchmark results from notebookchecker (among others) are infect for the TDP 80w "older model" as fevieira suggests - this was confusing to me as apparently it was a stealth move by NVIDIA, and without knowing this specifically, It's very easy to overlook.

There are a few minor discrepancies with dates on some reviews and benches vs at least one of the refresh dates, but i'm willing to give the benefit of doubt here as it's clear I don't know the whole story (and to be honest cant be bothered to do much more detective work). So looks like i'm sticking with the 2060

Thank you all for your advice. I appreciate you taking the time and being patient with me .

(edited link)

 

[FerrariVie]

I think i get whats going on now - sorry for being a bit slow with this, I couldn't just throw away weeks of conclusions out without investigating my mistake first.

The benchmark results from notebookchecker (among others) are infect for the TDP 80w "older model" as fevieira suggests - this was confusing to me as apparently it was a stealth move by NVIDIA, and without knowing this specifically, It's very easy to overlook.

There are a few minor discrepancies with dates on some reviews and benches vs at least one of the refresh dates, but i'm willing to give the benefit of doubt here as it's clear I don't know the whole story (and to be honest cant be bothered to do much more detective work). So looks like i'm sticking with the 2060

Thank you all for your advice. I appreciate you taking the time and being patient with me .

(edited link)

Yes, I know choosing a laptop by the GPU is really confusing! The manufacturers/resellers (PCS included) don't tell the TDP of the GPU, but that is quite an important aspect of it! The performance (and heat ) is totally dependent on this. Even the same GPUs could have different TDPs, as I've seen 2070 MAX-Q with both 80 and 90W and will never know what you'll get until you find a review online from someone with that exact same make/model.

I know that the Nova has the refreshed versions based on lots of research I did on other forums and also based on my own Nova. It has the 2070 not 2060, but it is indeed the 2020 refreshed version.

 

[ubuysa]

As the Jedi Master @SpyderTracks frequently says "Be one with the Force, Should You!"...hang on, nope, wrong movie

I applied to be a Jedi Knight once. I failed the practical. And the medical.