Computer illiterate... need help!

Alright so. I have no idea what I’m looking at when buying these things. I can obviously cross check the recommended requirements listed on the website (which is what I’ve been doing so far) but when I dive deeper into google searches it seems like game performance goes beyond that when considering laptops.

So yes, I’m looking to buy a gaming laptop. And, yes, I know. Desktop will get me more bang for my buck and will probably give me a better overall experience. But I travel a lot for work, so this is the route I need to go.

I’ve been looking into all these black friday/cyber monday deals and honestly it’s all just a bunch of ‘mush’ to me at this point. I did however come across a recommendation to check out cyberpowerpc. So I did, and came across this:

Tracer III Slim 15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080)
CPU: Intel® Core™ Processor i7-8750H 2.20GHz Turbo 4.10GHz 9MB Cache Processor (Coffee Lake)
Freebie of Processor: None
Motherboard: Intel® HM370 Chipset
RAM / System Memory: 8GB (8GBx1) DDR4/2400MHz SODIMM Memory (Performance Memory by Major Brands)
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5 (INCLUDED)
Video Capture Card: None
M.2 SSD: 240GB WD Green Series M.2 SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - Seq R/W: Up to 540/460 MB/s, Rnd R/W up to 37/68k (Single Drive)
Operating System: Windows 10 Home (64-bit Edition)

Coming at a price tag of $200 cheaper than the regular listing, it intrigues me. What kind of performance can I expect with it? I play with a cooling fan, would I need to buy a “stronger” one? If such a thing exists. On my current laptop I’m used to playing settings at 2 and the game looks awful and runs at like 30-40 fps, would this machine change the way I see the game? Ideally if it could run at a high rate at a settings level of 7 in 5 man dungeons and pvp I would be ecstatic.

If anyone takes the time to read all this, much thanks in advance!

It will play WoW at 1080p/60fps with high-ultra settings. (Most on Ultra, CPU-crippling options like Draw Distance, Shadows, and Water turned down to between 5-7) at 60fps most of the time.

There are places you will dip, but 4,000$ rigs also dip in those places, so its not a deficiency of the computer.

However, that 1050Ti is going to age EXTREMELY poorly. Itll be fine for right now, but even in 12-18 months its gonna be unable to do other games at 1080p even at med/high settings.

Unless, for some reason, you MUST have a full-performance laptop to use, and that must ALSO be the computer you game on, my recommendation is… dont buy a laptop.

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Yikes… that thing is 1000$?!

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Manufactures are out of control crippling machines with single channel ESPECIALLY on integrated graphics machines. I’ve seen this with $2000 laptop with quadro card even!

If you NEED it to be a laptop, this is a much better choice:

www.newegg.(com)/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834154830&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC--pla--Gaming+Laptops-_-N82E16834154830&gclid=Cj0KCQiArenfBRCoARIsAFc1FqcGcPdCtXzervZIpFLEJbTJbCfxFnmYWKrIwBRnQfXbdKr3pbsWecAaAp4nEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

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Remove the () around “.com”

Another alternative: www.walmart.(com)/ip/117583685

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LOL this is the exact reply I figured there would be. Time to look elsewhere.

I’m confused…are you upset with Kagthul or the price of the machine?

No I appreciate all the feedback! It’s helpful. My reply was about the computer, not you guys. Poorly worded I guess. I was just saying how I should have figured the one that caught my eye was overpriced for what it was.

Gonna check out the two posted in here and keep digging around.

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sorry, just hard to tell in text sometimes. Good luck! Kagthul has good advice, i recommend you follow it.

Single channel doesnt cripple Intel machines. Unless you are doing some VERY specific tasks, the performance difference between single and dual/quad channel is negligible - within the margin of error. For gaming and daily driving, its 100% irrelevant.

Got a hard cap spending limit? This laptop has a vastly superior graphics card and isn’t a whole lot more expensive than the one I’m looking at, assuming the one I looked at you were which was like $1.2k
www.newegg(dot)com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834154900&ignorebbr=1

This ones only about 100$ more if you do the mail in rebate.

Note: remove the (dot) in the link I gave and replace it with a . sorry I can’t paste links on here. Idk how much longer the sale on it is gonna last, but hopefully you’ll see before it ends.

Further information with my thoughts here; what’s driving the price up of the laptop is the m.2 SSD, m.2’s are faster than standard SSD’s but are quite costly when even standard SSD’s are pretty expensive. My main concern is that GPU series is quite low tier. I saw some benchmarks of a desktop 1060 which was hitting around 30-40 FPS if I recall on max settings in raid. Laptop variants of hardware are quite weaker.

Haha that’s funny it most certainly has a nearly free good boost in performance. It’s HUGE difference if you don’t have a dedicated gpu.

If you dont have a dedicated GPU, then you aren’t gaming on it.

And having only an iGPU would be one of the “very specific tasks” that dual-channel matters for. However, even there, for the tasks you’re actually doing on an intel machine with an iGPU, single channel wont matter. You’re not doing anything that will thrash the GPU. If you are, you’ve got the wrong machine.

Nice try trying to pick out a miniscule edge case though.

Could try looking on this site for deals.
slickdeals(dot)net/laptop-deals/

I would look at something with a 1060 or better, ssd and 16gb ram but 8 still is good to.