Possible new gaming laptop

scotho

scotho

Bronze Level Poster
Hi there, viewed a few other threads and pieced together this laptop.

Main use will be for gaming, anything from FIFA, Project CARS, FO4, Hitman to the likes of Minecraft, etc.

Feedback would be appreciated!

Budget: £1000-£1400



Chassis & Display
Defiance Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 6700HQ (2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 - 6.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1, G-SYNC
1st Hard Disk
1TB SLIM SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
M.2 SSD Drive
250GB WD BLUE™ M.2 SSD (up to 540MB/s R | 500MB/s W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 200W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + MIC/Headphone + SoundBlaster X-Fi MB3
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ WIRELESS-AC 1535 M.2 GAMING 802.11AC + BLUETOOTH 4.1
USB Options
3 x USB 3.1 Type A, 2 x USB 3.1 Type C AS STANDARD
Battery
Defiance Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (60WH)
Keyboard Language
DEFIANCE SERIES RGB BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
DVD Recovery Media
Windows 10 (64-bit) Home DVD with paper sleeve
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS & UK OFFSHORE ISLANDS / N IRELAND
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Quantity
1

Price £1,412.00 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/defianceIII-17/AMYgmPxfP7/
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Looks very good.

You may well want to consider the PM961 M.2 SSD since it's substantially faster for £9 more. Or the SM961 for a further £13 which is even faster.

Especially if you use MO2 and mods for FO4. And if you don't, you should! :D
 
scotho

scotho

Bronze Level Poster
Thanks guys!

Decided to go for the SM961 M.2 SSD, why not!

It would be silly not to mod FO4 ;)

Also upgraded the HDD to a WD Black 750gb (so now got the 7200 rpm)
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
The 750gb WD Black is £10 more than the generic 1Tb HDD. The 1tb WD Black is only £9 more than that and has twice the cache as well. Worth going for in my opinion.

Which would be +£19 for the WD Black and +£22 for the SM961.
 
S

Shine

Active member
If it's for gaming you may also consider 2x8GB ram instead of 1x16. I did a lot of reading before buying mine laptop and apparently 2 sticks are better, they'll run in dual channel mode and provide around 30-35% better performance than single stick. Unfortunately PCS doesn't have 2x8GB option anymore so you will have to buy 1x8gb from them and 1x8gb from somewhere else and put it in by yourself.
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
30-35% better performance than single stick
Click to expand...
Where did you see that out of interest?

The difference in gaming is likely to be barely measurable, in most cases. http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1349-ram-how-dual-channel-works-vs-single-channel/Page-3

There's a Hardwaresecrets article which shows single channel often outperforming dual channel in games but their site has produced results I find really weird and to be outliers in a number of articles so I tend to avoid or treat with caution what they publish.

There's a NUC blog which shows massive improvements http://nucblog.net/2015/09/dual-channel-vs-single-channel-does-it-matter/ but that's a) for integrated graphics (which benefit more from RAM frequency than dGPU gaming http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/6 typically does, so I guess it's no surprise to see the extra bandwidth of dual channel helps there too) and b) was only tested in synthetic benchmarks, which do seem to scale better with things like multicore CPUs, faster RAM, etc, while real world gaming performance may not care at all.

That said, I'd still go for dual channel over single channel because why not, but I wouldn't expect 35% more FPS :)
 
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S

Shine

Active member
Tom's hardware forum. Yeah I can see now that % is way to much. Ok I will leave advising to experts.
 
R

rav007

Enthusiast
Shine said:
Tom's hardware forum. Yeah I can see now that % is way to much. Ok I will leave advising to experts.
Click to expand...

No, if you advise just back it up with sources in your original post so people can cross-reference your information. You may have found a comprehensive study that did show that kind of difference and nobody else saw the study yet. Alternatively the study may have been with specific hardware and shows that high a difference on specific games.

There's nothing wrong with you trying to help other people out, we're all trying to do that.
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
As above, advice based on your experiences and knowledge is always an asset :) Apologies if my post suggested anything different!

I wasn't claiming to be an expert - unlike many of the posters here I've never worked in an IT or technical position. When I give advice I usually support it with links so other people can get the info from the horse's mouth and make their own mind up.

Shine - as a side note related to your question about making sure you found the right kind of RAM, what I omitted from my PM is that I don't give advice in PMs because if I get it wrong nobody can see it to correct me. So posting on the forums where if there's any doubt people can discuss it is always best IMO.
 
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