SkvLTD
Senior Member
Finally and unexpectedly, Microcenter came through for my almost year-long wait to commit to a new system.
I wanted something that would last 3-5 years once again and finally let me get back on PC gaming photos and maybe even videos aside and my options looked like $1700+ and Sager (or Clevo originally) being the only and best bet due to ALL other sub-$2500 15" laptops with decent specs having piss-poor heat management when really driven hard except for these cases.
Randomly checking laptop selections last Friday I noticed Micro's interesting offering and lo and behold it was JUST what I was going to buy, but with a $1200 after usual discounts vs 1700. And the real funny part is that despite their being a catch, it's something I can live with to save a good chunk of money - Micro's mobo only has 2 slots for ram and only 1 space for 2.5" HDD unlike Sager/Clevo's doubles. As nice as it would be having 1 m.2 SSD stick and whopping 2 HDDs would be, plus either a cheap 32GB of ram or all the way to 64, I think it's something I can get by without just fine considering my past 5 years on a comparatively potato of a laptop that only had 500GB HDD and max of 8GB ram.
The key here is the 7700HQ and the 1070 GeForce with proper and future-proof 8GB of video mem. And then great default cooling design that doesn't throttle nor shut itself off like Asus and MSI could and would. Screen is mightly fine for photo work too, and much, MUCH better than the old potato one I worked with all these years. Pretty sure there's no Thunderbolt, but USB-C will do me plenty fine and when it comes to hooking up external displays this thing has PLENTY display ports to handle 4k and other goodies.
And photo work? 3 if not 4 times faster than my old laptop. I set my 10 raws to process, and by the time Firefox loads up and gets to my upload pages the shots are all ready! No more waiting ~10 seconds per shot to get processed and resized.
In all, a VERY, VERY good purchase especially considering the price and the fact that no other system would be able to game nearly as well when it comes to heat. I don't event want to think how your typical Inspiron 5000 would handle a whole 1070.
I wanted something that would last 3-5 years once again and finally let me get back on PC gaming photos and maybe even videos aside and my options looked like $1700+ and Sager (or Clevo originally) being the only and best bet due to ALL other sub-$2500 15" laptops with decent specs having piss-poor heat management when really driven hard except for these cases.
Randomly checking laptop selections last Friday I noticed Micro's interesting offering and lo and behold it was JUST what I was going to buy, but with a $1200 after usual discounts vs 1700. And the real funny part is that despite their being a catch, it's something I can live with to save a good chunk of money - Micro's mobo only has 2 slots for ram and only 1 space for 2.5" HDD unlike Sager/Clevo's doubles. As nice as it would be having 1 m.2 SSD stick and whopping 2 HDDs would be, plus either a cheap 32GB of ram or all the way to 64, I think it's something I can get by without just fine considering my past 5 years on a comparatively potato of a laptop that only had 500GB HDD and max of 8GB ram.
The key here is the 7700HQ and the 1070 GeForce with proper and future-proof 8GB of video mem. And then great default cooling design that doesn't throttle nor shut itself off like Asus and MSI could and would. Screen is mightly fine for photo work too, and much, MUCH better than the old potato one I worked with all these years. Pretty sure there's no Thunderbolt, but USB-C will do me plenty fine and when it comes to hooking up external displays this thing has PLENTY display ports to handle 4k and other goodies.
And photo work? 3 if not 4 times faster than my old laptop. I set my 10 raws to process, and by the time Firefox loads up and gets to my upload pages the shots are all ready! No more waiting ~10 seconds per shot to get processed and resized.
In all, a VERY, VERY good purchase especially considering the price and the fact that no other system would be able to game nearly as well when it comes to heat. I don't event want to think how your typical Inspiron 5000 would handle a whole 1070.