Building a gaming laptop?

[challenger15]

Is it possible to build a gaming a laptop? Many people seem to think it's not possible. I believe in the old saying 'where there's a will, there's a way'. I do intend to get a $1000 laptop in the near future. So, how do I do this?

 

[LummusMaximus]

Maybe at this stage, water cooled laptops are an experiment; just showing that yes, this is a concept that is possible.

Yes, this concept is already possible. Soon, laptops would be on par with desktops. The future holds possibilities beyond any of our imaginations, my friend.

This is starting to sound like Blade Runner.

Hang on, maybe the robot's blood in that movie is just liquid cooling?

MIND FREAK

 

[challenger15]

Also looks like there goes a lot of your mobility. If you can't carry it around everywhere what good is a laptop?
And if you don't want to carry it everywhere, then why not go desktop and have more power for cheaper?

If they had a water cooling system that was completely portable and housed inside the system in place of the regular cooling system that would be really good, but if you take away a laptops portability there isn't any point to it anymore.

Now, that's something that has been playing on my mind for sometime now. I do have an urge to get a desktop instead and do all that I have mentioned here (building one and water cooling it) on the rig. Once I start water cooling the laptop, I might not be able to get mobility as an advantage any longer, which is why I am thinking long and hard about it right now. If, and only if, I decide to build a rig, what kind of build do you suggest? Something like your build:
CPU: i7-3770k - 4.2Ghz GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850 - 1000Mhz, 1400Mhz RAM: 16GB Avexir 1600Mhz CL9 Mobo: Asrock Extreme4-M SSD: 60GB OCZ HDDs: 7TB

How much did it cost you to assemble that? 7TB of HDD? You must be having mountains of files and data to store. I guess I can make do with 2TB.

Yea and once you do away with the mobility a laptop isn't as helpful. The best laptop is only mid range for PCs. Also since most you cannot overclock, there isn't a huge plus to it.

If you want to play with something fairly new and fun I would go desktop, get a new Intel CPU and "delid" it and build a nice water cooling system. The new Intel CPUs perform a lot better after you delid them.

Thanks for looking at my rig I've actually changed the motherboard since then but its a good system. I think you would do really well if you went after something like that but you could easy fix the short comings in my build as well.

Here is what I would suggest to you:
CPU: Intel i7-3770k
Motherboard: A decently good Z77 system, there are several.
RAM: At least 8GB. I don't think my system gets much boost from having 16GB but wanted to fill it to the max, and 32GB is crazy.
GPU: At this point I would say at a minimum get a AMD Radeon 7850. I have two and they have worked really well for me. I haven't been so impressed with the crossfire performance, but whenever I got the single card it has done really amazing for the price. I would say get an AMD Radeon 7970 GHz Edition or a R9 290 if possible, little pricy.
SSD: You are a lot better off to go for at least a 120GB SSD. I got mine free with the ASrock motherboard, but its barely enough to hold my OS and some minor programs. I have to use a second HDD around 200GB for all the games and stuff. But if you have a 120GB SSD theres software to move games on and off it without installing them each time so you can just keep the game your playing on it.

Then probably get the water cooling later cause all this is a bit expensive. I think at current I have around $1400 in my build and I need a better cooler. But a lot of that is in just storage.

Haha yea I do have a lot. I honestly just bought a controller card cause I needed more SATA ports. I want to add another 2TB so I can setup a RAID 5. I have about 3TB of files, but I keep two copies of everythign encase drive failure so its like having no space at all it seem.s

Thanks for your suggestion. I will be looking through your build in detail in a few hours (real busy now)., and then I will make a final decision after that. It's good that you keep backups, because you never know when any of your hdd's might fail and that may cause a great loss of work. Like you said, the advantages of having a laptop vanishes if I aim to do what I wish to do, so I guess I would be getting the most bang for my buck with a desktop.

Your rig is pretty good too. Should I get a 4th. gen Haswell CPU like the 4770k instead? The SSD is a must too, since I get to improve performance. Will get back about it later.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Also looks like there goes a lot of your mobility. If you can't carry it around everywhere what good is a laptop?
And if you don't want to carry it everywhere, then why not go desktop and have more power for cheaper?

If they had a water cooling system that was completely portable and housed inside the system in place of the regular cooling system that would be really good, but if you take away a laptops portability there isn't any point to it anymore.

Now, that's something that has been playing on my mind for sometime now. I do have an urge to get a desktop instead and do all that I have mentioned here (building one and water cooling it) on the rig. Once I start water cooling the laptop, I might not be able to get mobility as an advantage any longer, which is why I am thinking long and hard about it right now. If, and only if, I decide to build a rig, what kind of build do you suggest? Something like your build:
CPU: i7-3770k - 4.2Ghz GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850 - 1000Mhz, 1400Mhz RAM: 16GB Avexir 1600Mhz CL9 Mobo: Asrock Extreme4-M SSD: 60GB OCZ HDDs: 7TB

How much did it cost you to assemble that? 7TB of HDD? You must be having mountains of files and data to store. I guess I can make do with 2TB.

Yea and once you do away with the mobility a laptop isn't as helpful. The best laptop is only mid range for PCs. Also since most you cannot overclock, there isn't a huge plus to it.

If you want to play with something fairly new and fun I would go desktop, get a new Intel CPU and "delid" it and build a nice water cooling system. The new Intel CPUs perform a lot better after you delid them.

Thanks for looking at my rig I've actually changed the motherboard since then but its a good system. I think you would do really well if you went after something like that but you could easy fix the short comings in my build as well.

Here is what I would suggest to you:
CPU: Intel i7-3770k
Motherboard: A decently good Z77 system, there are several.
RAM: At least 8GB. I don't think my system gets much boost from having 16GB but wanted to fill it to the max, and 32GB is crazy.
GPU: At this point I would say at a minimum get a AMD Radeon 7850. I have two and they have worked really well for me. I haven't been so impressed with the crossfire performance, but whenever I got the single card it has done really amazing for the price. I would say get an AMD Radeon 7970 GHz Edition or a R9 290 if possible, little pricy.
SSD: You are a lot better off to go for at least a 120GB SSD. I got mine free with the ASrock motherboard, but its barely enough to hold my OS and some minor programs. I have to use a second HDD around 200GB for all the games and stuff. But if you have a 120GB SSD theres software to move games on and off it without installing them each time so you can just keep the game your playing on it.

Then probably get the water cooling later cause all this is a bit expensive. I think at current I have around $1400 in my build and I need a better cooler. But a lot of that is in just storage.

Haha yea I do have a lot. I honestly just bought a controller card cause I needed more SATA ports. I want to add another 2TB so I can setup a RAID 5. I have about 3TB of files, but I keep two copies of everythign encase drive failure so its like having no space at all it seem.s

Thanks for your suggestion. I will be looking through your build in detail in a few hours (real busy now)., and then I will make a final decision after that. It's good that you keep backups, because you never know when any of your hdd's might fail and that may cause a great loss of work. Like you said, the advantages of having a laptop vanishes if I aim to do what I wish to do, so I guess I would be getting the most bang for my buck with a desktop.

Your rig is pretty good too. Should I get a 4th. gen Haswell CPU like the 4770k instead? The SSD is a must too, since I get to improve performance. Will get back about it later.

Yea unfortunately it would. Unless you want to find a way to make one fully housed in your laptop. Like if you have a mini pump with coolant and all the tubing running into the laptops fan and radiator without busting out of the case then that would be awesome but since most use liquid filled copper pipes without moving to a larger radiator I'm not sure how much it would help.

Thanks It and my laptop are my favorite play things so I've spent lots of time working on them.

In terms of to go for the 4th Gen or 3rd Gen is a bit of a toss up. Based solely on Haswell and Ivy Bridge, I would say get the 3rd Gen Ivy Bridge any day. Here are the reasons.
1. Consumes less power
2. Produces less heat. Haswell added a voltage regulator on the CPU which produces a lot of heat.
3. Higher chance of a high quality unit. Haswell as a result of the voltage regulator again vary greatly between each other. One chip might only overclock to 4.Ghz while another overclocks to 4.5Ghz. Ivy does this a little, but no where near as much.
4. Sandy Bridge and by extension Ivy Bridge was built to be the highest performance processor possible on desktop. Ivy Bridge lowered power consumption and heat greatly with minor improvements to performance. Haswell on the other hand is designed much more for laptops and mobility and saw the biggest change in laptops. On the desktop Haswell only averages about 3% faster while at the same clock speed. However, Ivy Bridge easily overclocks to 4.5Ghz in most cases, a little harder but not so hard it goes to 4.7Ghz and has been seen at speeds over 5Ghz. Haswell struggles to maintain stability above 4.5ghz. So once Ivy Bridge has a higher clock speed it performs better in all situations except built in graphics, and thats not really so important.

The only real reason I see for going for a 4th gen processor is so you will have an LGA 1150 motherboard. The 5th Gen processors might fix things and have a good performance boost, but as it sits I personally think Ivy Bridge on desktops are really superior to Haswell. Haswell is trying some new things that just aren't going quite right but probably will be better in the 5th Gen but its not really sure what will happen.

 

[challenger15]

Sorry for the late reply, I couldn't get back earlier due to work-related commitments. So, after reading your earlier post, I decided to stick with the Ivy Bridge cpu you mentioned, and probably get an Asrock Z77-Extreme4-M mobo. Didn't realise that Ivy Bridge was actually superior to the Haswell cpu's, but after reading your post, I am convinced to purchase a 3rd.gen cpu instead. When are the 5th. gen cpu's schedules to hit shelves? I will be getting 8gb of RAM sticks at first, and maybe upgrade it later. With regards to the GPU, I can afford the R9 290, so I will be getting that as my dedicated GPU. And, like you said, an SSD is a must to reduce boot times and increase performance, which is why I decided to get a 120gb Samsung EVO one.

Now comes the cooling part. I will be getting a custom water cooling loop and will have to do some research about the tube fittings and pump sizes before I finally get it. That could probably be done a little later once I have assembled the pc. Do you have any previous experience installing a loop? And , speaking of cases, what case are you using? Which form factor? I kind of like the cases with transparent side glass panels so that the colourful loops can be seen from the outside. You know what sort of case that would be? Thanks.

 

[IInuyasha74]

I would advise against the ASrock Z77 Extreme4-M motherboard. ASrock has terrible terrible customer support and lies about features. It doesn't overclock well and you would be better with a different motherboard. Try ASUS or Gygabyte for the best. Or MSI is also excellent. Biostar I have now actually and its good too. I like it so far cause the great price let me get a sound card and other stuff.

Yea its all about the development purpose. Haswell is great for mobile but Ivy was just designed amazing for desktop. I don't plan for an upgrade for at least 4 or 5 years.

The 5th Gens should be better. They are scheduled originally around the end of this year, but I've heard a lot about them getting set backs.

Excellent The R9 290 should do great for you. You could also consider the R9 290X but I am not sure the performance boost is worth the cost, and its a bit over kill. I haven't read up on it heavily though so not my strongest point.

Yea SSDs boot great! Good choice

Sorry water cooling isn't my specialty. I have a friend who has done it though I could ask to hop on this forum. I would definitely say build the computer first and get cooling after for better overclocking.

I have an Apevia Dreamer X4 case. In green. Its pretty nice. I liked the larger one cause I needed more space to attach PCI and SATA devices. Though a lot of it is a matter of tastes and looks. Any half decent case can keep a PC cool so looks really seems to be the best thing to decide on after that.