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For those missing sturdy builds, ports, replaceable parts, explore gaming laptops. They have all those and are built to last and be upgradeable. Just ensure to

For those missing sturdy builds, ports, replaceable parts, explore gaming laptops. They have all those and are built to last and be upgradeable. Just ensure to use it in. Integrated graphics mode and the battery backup would be great too. And thanks to the better thermals, parts don't fail so easily.

bodge5000 5y ago
Maybe you've had better luck, but in my experience, I'd advise avoiding gaming laptops like the plague. The build quality is alright depending on how you look at it. Better than most other laptops, but most other laptops are half the price. Looking at laptops in the same price range, usuablly they're about the same in my experience. They're fairly upgradable, you can swap the RAM and storage and often the battery, but that's about it. Where they really fail is on the thermals. They certainly have better airflow than non-gaming laptops, but the amount of heat they produce is orders of magnitude more, and the gain in cooling is not as great as the gain in heat generated. Most gaming laptops have a battery that will last maybe 3 years at most. Mine (which I'm looking to replace) didn't even last 1 year before it swelled to the point where I could get the backplate back on with the battery still in. Luckily it works for the time being on permenant power. Meanwhile, my old x240, which I've had for about four years, is still going strong with no issues. I push that laptop hard, far harder comparitive to its specs than I did the gaming laptop. Edit: For clarity I should say that my particular gaming laptop was a Razer Blade, which I do hear is one of the worse performers in terms of thermals, although its also listed as one of the best for build quality and upgradability, so its a bit of a mixed bag. I had an older gaming laptop which had better thermals but worse everything else, so as usual, YMMV
- option_greek 5y ago
  The secret is in tuning of GPU and CPU TDP to a lower level to ensure the thermals are much better. In a gaming laptop they come configured much higher while in regular laptop its much lower. So to make this work, the laptop will have to be run a lower TDP mode (which will still beat normal laptops on thermals and power) and switch to integrated graphics. Most manufacturers provide software to do just that. The battery life also increases once the thermals become better. On top of that, manufacturers like Asus provide software to extend battery lifespan by capping the max battery charge to 60%. This helps a lot because most of the time battery life goes down when laptops end up being on adapter all time (like gaming laptops tend to be).
  - bodge5000 5y ago
    Oh believe me, I did. I did just about everything I could think of to cool my laptop (I had an nvme cooling pad in there, a shortcut to temporarily turn my fans up when the temps got a bit high, I even took a dremel to my laptop stand so it could get more air in and out, and of course as you mention the TDP settings). Either these measures were all taken too late (~6 months into owning it, though I had a stand and the nvme cooler from day 1), or they merely extended its life. It has been a hot summer here, and UK houses are built specifically to trap heat, plus I have another which generates a bit of heat a few metres from it for work, so I am in a fairly hot room, but the thinkpad is in the very same room, without any of the cooling measures taken (I usually use it in bed, the bane of a laptops cooler) and as I say, its still chugging along. Not saying its impossible to have a well built, well cooled gaming laptop, but in my experience, they're not the go to for reliability
- officeplant 5y ago
  Better luck here, but I shy away from thinner gaming laptops like the ones Razer makes. Thick chunky laptops weight a ton but then so does my old thinkpads. Thin laptops have ruined our ability to cool things reasonably. They weren't the most powerful, but Dells Inspiron series of gaming laptops have been pretty good the last few years. Especially when it comes to price Dell and Acer keep putting out sub $700 gaming laptops you can often find on sale for $600 or $650. They almost all have an open m.2 slot or 2.5inch bay for extra cheap storage and swappable ram. Currently I'm on a Maingear Vector Pro (Ryzen 5800H / Nvidia 3070) and a blessing is just how tweakable the fan profiles are as well as power adjustments for each of the saved profiles I have setup. AMD's lastest mobile parts are still extremely performant with a 35W power cap if I want to keep the fan speed down. All else fails I can just hit the 100% fan button and even under full load the cpu is hovering around 78C and gpu around 68C. It's loud but I don't do rendering often so its a compromise I'm willing to have for the amount of portable power.
  - junar 5y ago
    FYI, Dell no longer uses the Inspiron brand for gaming laptops. The successor line is called "G Series".
  - bodge5000 5y ago
    I used to have a thicker gaming laptop and yeh thermals were certainly better, but I found its build quality lacking and performance just wasn't really there comparative to its massive size and pretty high price. Credit where credits due to the razer, it performs admirably, and is built well, it just can't keep itself cool. I've heard good things about the dell laptops, although that was mainly the XPS range which are more thinkpad competitors. I think for the time being though I'm going to avoid high spec laptops as a desktop replacement, I'll either settle for the drop in specs and use one of my many thinkpads as my main computer, or get a desktop.

bodge5000 5y ago

Maybe you've had better luck, but in my experience, I'd advise avoiding gaming laptops like the plague. The build quality is alright depending on how you look at it. Better than most other laptops, but most other laptops are half the price. Looking at laptops in the same price range, usuablly they're about the same in my experience. They're fairly upgradable, you can swap the RAM and storage and often the battery, but that's about it. Where they really fail is on the thermals. They certainly have better airflow than non-gaming laptops, but the amount of heat they produce is orders of magnitude more, and the gain in cooling is not as great as the gain in heat generated. Most gaming laptops have a battery that will last maybe 3 years at most. Mine (which I'm looking to replace) didn't even last 1 year before it swelled to the point where I could get the backplate back on with the battery still in. Luckily it works for the time being on permenant power. Meanwhile, my old x240, which I've had for about four years, is still going strong with no issues. I push that laptop hard, far harder comparitive to its specs than I did the gaming laptop. Edit: For clarity I should say that my particular gaming laptop was a Razer Blade, which I do hear is one of the worse performers in terms of thermals, although its also listed as one of the best for build quality and upgradability, so its a bit of a mixed bag. I had an older gaming laptop which had better thermals but worse everything else, so as usual, YMMV

option_greek 5y ago
The secret is in tuning of GPU and CPU TDP to a lower level to ensure the thermals are much better. In a gaming laptop they come configured much higher while in regular laptop its much lower. So to make this work, the laptop will have to be run a lower TDP mode (which will still beat normal laptops on thermals and power) and switch to integrated graphics. Most manufacturers provide software to do just that. The battery life also increases once the thermals become better. On top of that, manufacturers like Asus provide software to extend battery lifespan by capping the max battery charge to 60%. This helps a lot because most of the time battery life goes down when laptops end up being on adapter all time (like gaming laptops tend to be).
- bodge5000 5y ago
  Oh believe me, I did. I did just about everything I could think of to cool my laptop (I had an nvme cooling pad in there, a shortcut to temporarily turn my fans up when the temps got a bit high, I even took a dremel to my laptop stand so it could get more air in and out, and of course as you mention the TDP settings). Either these measures were all taken too late (~6 months into owning it, though I had a stand and the nvme cooler from day 1), or they merely extended its life. It has been a hot summer here, and UK houses are built specifically to trap heat, plus I have another which generates a bit of heat a few metres from it for work, so I am in a fairly hot room, but the thinkpad is in the very same room, without any of the cooling measures taken (I usually use it in bed, the bane of a laptops cooler) and as I say, its still chugging along. Not saying its impossible to have a well built, well cooled gaming laptop, but in my experience, they're not the go to for reliability
officeplant 5y ago
Better luck here, but I shy away from thinner gaming laptops like the ones Razer makes. Thick chunky laptops weight a ton but then so does my old thinkpads. Thin laptops have ruined our ability to cool things reasonably. They weren't the most powerful, but Dells Inspiron series of gaming laptops have been pretty good the last few years. Especially when it comes to price Dell and Acer keep putting out sub $700 gaming laptops you can often find on sale for $600 or $650. They almost all have an open m.2 slot or 2.5inch bay for extra cheap storage and swappable ram. Currently I'm on a Maingear Vector Pro (Ryzen 5800H / Nvidia 3070) and a blessing is just how tweakable the fan profiles are as well as power adjustments for each of the saved profiles I have setup. AMD's lastest mobile parts are still extremely performant with a 35W power cap if I want to keep the fan speed down. All else fails I can just hit the 100% fan button and even under full load the cpu is hovering around 78C and gpu around 68C. It's loud but I don't do rendering often so its a compromise I'm willing to have for the amount of portable power.
- junar 5y ago
  FYI, Dell no longer uses the Inspiron brand for gaming laptops. The successor line is called "G Series".
- bodge5000 5y ago
  I used to have a thicker gaming laptop and yeh thermals were certainly better, but I found its build quality lacking and performance just wasn't really there comparative to its massive size and pretty high price. Credit where credits due to the razer, it performs admirably, and is built well, it just can't keep itself cool. I've heard good things about the dell laptops, although that was mainly the XPS range which are more thinkpad competitors. I think for the time being though I'm going to avoid high spec laptops as a desktop replacement, I'll either settle for the drop in specs and use one of my many thinkpads as my main computer, or get a desktop.