PC Sherdog Gaming Laptop & Review Thread (OP Updated Apr-2019)

Ezekiel 25:17 said:
Threres just so much more you are capable of with desktops at a much lower price tbh. You are correct. It only makes sense for people who travel a lot. I had a pretty powerful laptop back in the day, but it was still nothing compared to my desktop which cost less.
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Indeed, my desktop is 10 years old and still adequate for my needs. The only reason I own a laptop now is that I need it for work.
 
So, I've had a 13 inch HP spectre laptop for about 3 and a half years now. Loved it because of it's physical design and OLED screen, and the specs on it are kind of the sweet spot for me in terms of my mobile needs - 16 GB RAM and a 1065 CPU - smooth enough for movie watching, multiple web browsers and messengers open etc. Years ago though the speakers stopped working. I was ok with this given I generally used headphones with it and audio worked fine with that. I did however attempt to get my speakers back through all sorts of trouble shooting and testing - driver searches/uninstalls, bios changes, etc but the end result was always futile largely because "audio device not found" was the common error.

So, today, I did a system reset (not restore, reset) with option to keep my personal files. And voila, my speakers work again. It feels weird hearing them after so long lol. But now I'm wondering if I do system updates will they go away again? As a bit of an aside, it could be psychological, but it's feeling an little extra peppy and efficient in performance - possibly due to cleanup of useless apps that were taking up resources prior.
 
Unknown Pleasures said:
So, I've had a 13 inch HP spectre laptop for about 3 and a half years now. Loved it because of it's physical design and OLED screen, and the specs on it are kind of the sweet spot for me in terms of my mobile needs - 16 GB RAM and a 1065 CPU - smooth enough for movie watching, multiple web browsers and messengers open etc. Years ago though the speakers stopped working. I was ok with this given I generally used headphones with it and audio worked fine with that. I did however attempt to get my speakers back through all sorts of trouble shooting and testing - driver searches/uninstalls, bios changes, etc but the end result was always futile largely because "audio device not found" was the common error.

So, today, I did a system reset (not restore, reset) with option to keep my personal files. And voila, my speakers work again. It feels weird hearing them after so long lol. But now I'm wondering if I do system updates will they go away again? As a bit of an aside, it could be psychological, but it's feeling an little extra peppy and efficient in performance - possibly due to cleanup of useless apps that were taking up resources prior.
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It's simple. If you're using windows, create a system restore point and then you can revert back to the current configuration if the next update fucks up your speakers.

Rinse/repeat with restore points/updates until you're fully up to date.

Edit: that might not have been clear. I mean, restore point, update, test sound, restore point, update, etc.
 
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I just bought an HP laptop (15-fc0093dx -- not a gaming computer, but on sale for a good price) and the first thing I wanted to do was dual boot with linux and then ignore windows forever, and the fucking thing won't let you boot into a USB stick. It says there's a secure boot violation. I go into the bios and turn off secure boot, save and reboot, and get the same error. Go back into the bios, and secure boot is still on. Try again. Fail again. Secure boot still on. WTF. Looks like it's going back to BestBuy.
 
JBSchroeds said:
I just bought an HP laptop (15-fc0093dx -- not a gaming computer, but on sale for a good price) and the first thing I wanted to do was dual boot with linux and then ignore windows forever, and the fucking thing won't let you boot into a USB stick. It says there's a secure boot violation. I go into the bios and turn off secure boot, save and reboot, and get the same error. Go back into the bios, and secure boot is still on. Try again. Fail again. Secure boot still on. WTF. Looks like it's going back to BestBuy.
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Is the bios up to date?
 
Andy Capp said:
Is the bios up to date?
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This is straight out of the box. Could be. Might not be. Unfortunately I don't care to fuck around with it too much in case BestBuy won't accept a return. HP only have one BIOS listed on their support page and its from January, listed as F.10 Rev.A. I'd have to dig it back out of the box to check version numbers, but it sounds like they've only got the one version.
 
JBSchroeds said:
This is straight out of the box. Could be. Might not be. Unfortunately I don't care to fuck around with it too much in case BestBuy won't accept a return. HP only have one BIOS listed on their support page and its from January, listed as F.10 Rev.A. I'd have to dig it back out of the box to check version numbers, but it sounds like they've only got the one version.
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I can understand that, but sadly, that's all I've got. Good luck with the return.
 
JBSchroeds said:
I just bought an HP laptop (15-fc0093dx -- not a gaming computer, but on sale for a good price) and the first thing I wanted to do was dual boot with linux and then ignore windows forever, and the fucking thing won't let you boot into a USB stick. It says there's a secure boot violation. I go into the bios and turn off secure boot, save and reboot, and get the same error. Go back into the bios, and secure boot is still on. Try again. Fail again. Secure boot still on. WTF. Looks like it's going back to BestBuy.
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I found this suggestion with a Google:
Try setting a supervisor password in BIOS and then reboot and enter the Uefi Bios again and try disabling secure boot.
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Otherwise, just consider the bootloader locked despite whatever illusions of control are presented.
 
The guy at the PC shop said that a separate GPU in a laptop
use much power even when idle, is that true ?
Better to have onboard GPU for light gaming
 
Joe_Armstrong said:
The guy at the PC shop said that a separate GPU in a laptop
use much power even when idle, is that true ?
Better to have onboard GPU for light gaming
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As in integrated vs discrete or external vs internal? If it's the former, yes, dGPU will always draw a bit but you can also just disable it and turn it on only for gaming.
 
Madmick said:
I found this suggestion with a Google:

Otherwise, just consider the bootloader locked despite whatever illusions of control are presented.
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Andy Capp said:
I can understand that, but sadly, that's all I've got. Good luck with the return.
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Sorry for the late reply, death in the family kinda fucked everything up.

Anyways, looked to be a combination of crappy UI and user error. After 'save and exit' the bios the screen would go black and I'd start smashing escape to get back into the bootloader. Well, there was an additional confirmation screen (that I did not see mentioned) that would pop up after that black screen that required you type in a randomly generated number string to confirm you really really really wanted to turn off secure boot, and my mashing escape was skipping right through it. After I figured that out I got my dual-boot setup with Tuxedo OS (basically a variant of kubuntu that replace snaps with flatpack and comes with laptop-specific tweaks/apps).

Oh, and the linux installer couldn't repartition the windows install so I had to boot into windows anyways and shrink the volume from there. I got around having to make an account by enter 'user' and 'thisisfake' when they asked for a microsoft login; it kicked me past that step for being invalid. None of the other workarounds (something about opening a terminal and typing a specific command) worked, possibly due to it being an OEM install, but the bogus login got me past it just fine.
 
Joe_Armstrong said:
Is a 4070 overkill for a laptop ?
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I will leave the detailed analysis to the experts ITT, but my anecdotal experience is that when you pair a high end processor and video card (one's not much good without the other I think) and put them in a laptop, they generate far too much heat. Far far too much. That really shortens the life of your hardware. I have to use one of those laptop cooler things to do anything remotely demanding.

Now, I sometimes say, anecdotes aren't worth a fuck, so take the above FWIW, but I won't be buying such a thing* again when I can get one for much less that will last far longer, all things being equal in terms of product quality and so on.


*the one I have now
 
It'll handle most games you throw at it, depends on the size (and by extension cooling). It's really just a matter of if you're cool with a hot and loud laptop because there isn't a real way around that.
 
Joe_Armstrong said:
Is a 4070 overkill for a laptop ?
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Concern with heat and power consumption is always valid, but look to Notebookcheck for the most exhaustive benchmarking and analysis of mobile hardware:

The 4070 Mobile took a lot of negative criticism when it launched because of its relative lack of performance improvement over the previous generation, but the silver lining there many overlooked was it won't consume as much power, and therefore won't generate as much heat. The system averages 161W power consumption while running The Witcher 3 on the laptop screen. That's almost exactly the same as the previous generation's step down on the GPU ladder, the RTX 3060 Mobile, which averaged 155W, and still not too much more than the RTX 2060 Mobile before that which averaged 146W. Compare that to the RTX 3070 Mobile which consumed a whopping 395W even when running off an external monitor (so probably over 400W if they ran it locally).

So the 4070 now runs more like a xx60 card, and thus the heat concerns are greatly diminished.
 
Question for @Madmick or anybody who might be able to shed some light on the subject for me.
Should I even bother using the overclock options given to me in the Armory Crate software utility that came installed in my Asus ROG?
By the looks of the interface I could move the sliders up by quite a bit.
Base clock offset is sitting at 50/200 MHz and memory clock offset is at 100/300 MHz.
Do the potential gains bring too much risk of excessive heat or other issues like shortening the lifespan of components?
Are the gains going to be noticeable?
I haven't touched them in the five months
I have had had the computer because I really don't know what clock offset means or how adjusting it affects the GPU.
My laptop has an NVIDIA 4080 and an Intel I9 - 13980HX, the computer has a max TGP of 175 W.
 
Your Salad said:
Question for @Madmick or anybody who might be able to shed some light on the subject for me.
Should I even bother using the overclock options given to me in the Armory Crate software utility that came installed in my Asus ROG?
By the looks of the interface I could move the sliders up by quite a bit.
Base clock offset is sitting at 50/200 MHz and memory clock offset is at 100/300 MHz.
Do the potential gains bring too much risk of excessive heat or other issues like shortening the lifespan of components?
Are the gains going to be noticeable?
I haven't touched them in the five months
I have had had the computer because I really don't know what clock offset means or how adjusting it affects the GPU.
My laptop has an NVIDIA 4080 and an Intel I9 - 13980HX, the computer has a max TGP of 175 W.
Click to expand...
Honestly for a laptop, I would undervolt before over-clocking. While you could gain some extra performance, these 13th gen chips are already pushing their TDP close to the limit.
 
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