Hey WoW friends. I bought myself a really good laptop around the middle of Pandaria. She’s a beauty. When I got her she ran WoW at max settings and way over 60fps. I could do anything. She’s been to Draenor, Legion, BFA and Shadowlands. Now I am staring at Dragonflight, an irony since my laptop is MSI and has an actual dragon on it (a not insignificant reason I bought it), and…she just doesn’t have it. I hate it, but she is below the minimum system requirements for both my CPU and GPU. I am mostly ok in spaces alone, but I was getting 1-2 fps trying to fight the elemental world boss events. Even with everything set to low and or disabled. So, I think its time to finally break down and replace her. I do have a budget, I can’t just go google something with a Titan GPU or get an Alienware machine lol. And it does have to be a laptop. My husband has a desktop but there just isn’t room for a second reasonably. I need the portability and size of a laptop. I have one I’m eyeing and I wanted to get opinions. I could probably spend a little more, but prefer to keep it in the $1000-1500 range. If there is something a little more that is somehow a godly amount better, feel free to post it tho. Here is the link to the one I’m looking at.
https://www.newegg.com/black-msi-gf-series-katana-gf76-12ue-026-gaming/p/N82E16834156204?Description=gaming%20laptop&cm_re=gaming_laptop--34-156-204--Product&quicklink=true
Please let me know what you guys think. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. The specs seem good to me, but I am no expert. I also can’t tell if it can fit a secondary ssd, as I can take the 512 out of my current laptop to move it. My current laptop has two hard drive slots, so I have a 128 and a 512 ssd. Its not quite as pretty as my current one, and I really wish it could have multicolored backlights for the keyboard like my Steelseries keyboard on mine, but still. Also, I don’t need it to be insane, mostly I just play WoW. Thank you all in advance!
TLDR: Is this laptop I’m looking at any good for WoW
i can’t find the service manual for this laptop… but looks like there is 2 M.2 ssd slot. is the SSD om the old laptop an M.2 or the 2.5 inch ssd?
You can spend half and still get great results. I bought my lower-end laptop 2 years ago for $600 and it runs WoW like a champ. I raided with it recently and I don’t have any complaints at all. My main PC is a beast so I know the difference between top-end and my laptop and I’m still very happy with it.
Best Buy has this - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-predator-helios-300-15-6-fhd-165hz-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-16gb-ddr5-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3060-512gb-ssd/6504563.p?skuId=6504563 It’s a little better for $300 less.
If you want to keep shopping around, look for laptops with at least 16GB of RAM and an RTX 3050. Anything with those should have a good enough CPU and expansion slots for SSDs. My cheapo Acer Nitro laptop has 2 M.2 slots and a spot for a 2.5" drive.
Edit: I should elaborate on the CPU. If it’s AMD Ryzen you’re probably fine, and if it’s Intel 12th gen you’re fine. Intel 11th gen I would avoid simply because 12th gen is so much better.
Looks good, if you can handle a 15.6" there’s this. $1399 https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16834725204?sdtid=16213594&Item=N82E16834725204
Pick up a bigger monitor for when at home and be gtg.
One thing that might keep in mind when buying laptops is quality control and build quality.
For example ASUS makes gaming laptops that look amazing on paper and can actually be amazing, but their quality control has serious issues and so it’s almost as likely that you’ll get a unit with some kind of quirk (e.g. problems with uniformity of screen backlighting, case being creaky, etc) as you will a good unit.
Also there are a lot of laptops that have attractive looking specs at a price that seems to be too good to be true, and these will usually cut corners on build quality — e.g. thinner case, more flexy frame/keyboard deck, noisy or bad cooling, etc. Not necessarily a problem for everybody, but someone who carries their laptop around a lot might want something that’s more solid and won’t fall apart from basic usage.
There are a number of laptop reviewers on YouTube that can be used as a point of reference, but also search reddit with google (put site:reddit.com after your laptop model, for example lenovo legion 5 pro site:reddit.com) to see what actual buyers are saying — chances are if there’s any kind of common issue with the model multiple people will have spoken about it there.
That MSI laptop will be playing wow for years to come. I’ve had MSI laptops before and one thing to note is their trackpads suck. After reading some reviews the webcam doesn’t seem to have a privacy slider.
I would get a laptop cooler for this as thinner budget laptops tend to run hotter because they have to cut corners somewhere to maintain the price point.
The 12700H is the laptop variant of the 12700 desktop CPU. It’ll still perform nicely so that’s good as wow is a cpu heavy game.
16gb of RAM imo is the bare minimum for a gaming computer but for wow you’re easily fine with that.
The 3060 is a nice midrange gpu.
512GB drive is small but if you’re just playing wow then it’s perfect.
The display is a IPS screen so it will have decent color accuracy and viewing angles. 144hz is nice but it doesn’t specify gsync so not sure on that. They usually market gsync displays. It’s 1080p so that 3060 will play any game at medium to high settings for years.
It has plenty of ports including a HDMI port for connecting an external monitor if you wanted.
All in all I’d say it’s a decent gaming laptop for the price.
I’d pull the trigger if you don’t find a better black friday deal.