Gaming PCs

[Moonface]

Somehow I didn't know Intel had reached i9 processors even though in hindsight it was obvious they would have hit that point.
Seems like you have a build that'll last you a pretty good while though by the looks of it. How much did it come to for it?

[zoldos]

It was $1299 in total, but split into 6 payments on Amazon. My old PC died unexpectedly (had that build for many years), so timing was an issue. But we had just enough to get the new one. What a relief. I was very stressed.

[Monocle]

@zoldos Hey that's a sweet ass set up! Considering you have 16 gigs of ram, I'm assuming it's DDR4 which means it is way more accessible to buy ram. I want to try DDR5 but pricey and availability. Plus I'm still on a 5900x so I don't think there's any motherboards for both.

I have a 3070 myself and it's still a beast even after 40 series released

[Moonface]

So @ShiraNoMai decided to look for a new laptop for me earlier today (I forget what prompted her to do it in that exact moment) and she managed to find this laptop from Dell that had $500 off:

• Processor: Intel Core i9 (13th Gen, 24 cores)
  
• Graphics: NVidia GeForce RTX 4060, 8GB GDDR6
  
• Memory: 32GB DDR5
  
• Storage: 2TB M.2 SSD
  

It should be arriving in a couple of days, and it'll be interesting to see what it's like having 4x the amount of RAM that I currently have and whatever level of upgrade the processor and graphics cards are compared to what I have now too.

[Mr EliteL]

Here's what I bought recently, have the box right next to me ready to be opened too. I wanted to make sure it arrived safe and sound and most importantly in my physical possession.

MSI Raider

• 17" 16:10 QHD+(2560 x 1600), 240Hz IPS-level panel
  
• Intel Core i9-14900HX Processor
  
• RTX 4080, GDDR6 12GB
  
• DDR5 32GB
  
• 4TB NVMe PCIe Gen4x4 SSD
  

If I was stupidly crazy I know I could go higher but I didn't want the absolute best a laptop can give plus it's way too much, just little below that but far more than what I decided on 3 years ago. Paid a bit more than I liked but decided to not settle on something cheaper, just get this beast now and be done with it, no more searching, no more wishing I had something better.

What I have/had before using Genshin and some other games:

• 15.6" FHD 1920x1080
  
• Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics (below recommended for Genshin)
  
• 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
  
• RAM: 8GB
  
• 1TB SSD
  

[Moonface]

Dang, we both got pretty similar specs by the look of it at a glance. How much did your one cost @Mr EliteL?

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah those are some BEEFY specs on a laptop, easily over the 2-grand mark if I had to make a guess. I'm very happy for you, though, EL; I think that's a good investment. I also have a MSI Laptop (mine's a Stealth model) and it's a pretty solid build. Has some minor issues (battery was dying & replacement battery I got was DOA; will hang if left on idle for multiple hours (nothing a force shutdown can't fix; it boots in seconds)) but I've overall enjoyed all the specs it had to offer.

Make sure you keep it sufficiently cooled, I'd say. The beefier the laptop, the more hot it'll get. Definitely invest in a cooling pad if you don't already have one.

[Mr EliteL]

It was originally £3.7k, got it for £2.9k instead. Yeah my plan was to aim for under 2k but ended up going under 3k. It's noisy as hell but I did lower the fan usage so it's not going crazy when I'm just downloading or just surfing the web for no damn reason. If I play a game I'll put the fans up a bit more. Well, fan in this case as one fan doesn't work like I mentioned in Prime Day Sales, and also mentioned there getting a better cooling pad for it.

I booted up Wuthering though and it is gorgeous so it's only the fans at the moment that are a slight problem. It's nice and quiet at low fan power though, just have to change settings every now and then.

[Dragon Lord]

Nice laptop, Elite! Yeah, I figured with a 4080 and 4TB SSD, you'd probably be pushing close to 3K. Though hey, $700 off is pretty damn good. MSI is, from what I've seen around, a very good brand to get as well, so very nice choice. Also yeah, unfortunately gaming laptops will have loud as hell fans. Just one of the trade-offs you gotta make for having all of that in much smaller housing.

Enjoy WuWa in all of its glory! It's a very beautiful game and glad you'll get to see that in full now! I'd say the same for Genshin, but PS5 Genshin is actually the better looking version, so you've already seen it at its best, haha. Well, outside of playing on an OLED TV instead, but small details.

[Moonface]

It was originally £3.7k, got it for £2.9k instead. Yeah my plan was to aim for under 2k but ended up going under 3k. It's noisy as hell but I did lower the fan usage so it's not going crazy when I'm just downloading or just surfing the web for no damn reason. If I play a game I'll put the fans up a bit more. Well, fan in this case as one fan doesn't work like I mentioned in Prime Day Sales, and also mentioned there getting a better cooling pad for it.

Hold up, you spent almost 3k on a laptop and a fan doesn't work? I'd be sending the thing back for a replacement rather than accepting that.

[Mr EliteL]

I haven't checked the fan out yet myself, but it's not being bothersome at the moment, although I haven't used it for a really extended period apart from when downloading the two games, but my small fans helped it during that. I played unplugged and the fan didn't come on while playing Wuthering, it's so much calmer nor did it get hot. The new cooler fans today should do more than the small four fans as well so I will turn the fan settings down unless there is a moment where it does get too hot.

[Dragon Lord]

Now that you and Moon have new laptops that can handle games better... it's time to bring you guys to Cape Hope! Where I definitely won't use cursed objects to get everyone killed.

[Moonface]

Now that you and Moon have new laptops that can handle games better... it's time to bring you guys to Cape Hope! Where I definitely won't use cursed objects to get everyone killed.

I don't think I've seen/heard that game mentioned before (unless I'm being forgetful again (highly likely)). I just tried looking it up but even with "cape hope game" I get results for everything but what you're actually referring to.

[Dragon Lord]

Ah, sorry, got the name mixed up. Thought it was Cape Hope, but I actually meant the new Point Hope map in Phasmophobia.

[Moonface]

Ah, sorry, got the name mixed up. Thought it was Cape Hope, but I actually meant the new Point Hope map in Phasmophobia.

Ohhhh~. I thought you were talking about a different horror game like when you've brought up Demonologist (did I get the game right there?) in the past. My bad.
It would be interesting though to see if @Mr EliteL can finally play Phas again now he has a better PC. I can't see a good reason why not.

On a side note, it's wild how fast everything is now that I'm running purely off an SSD, whereas my old laptop only had a few of my games on the SSD so OS stuff and other programs were still running off the HDD that it came with.