Inconspicuous Gaming Laptop

[Deleted member 86764]

After about 15 years, I’m finally considering going back to PC for some gaming. I’ve set myself a few limitations, one of which people probably won’t agree with:

- The machine needs to be portable: I do a fair amount of travelling with work. A laptop is all I’m after – no beige boxes, or boxes with embarrassing LEDs flashing all over it.

- I do not want any alien faces, any ugly logos, or attempts to make curves similar to a sports car adorning the case. I want a good grown-up laptop that just so happens to be a crazy games machine.

- It needs to have as good a GPU(s) as possible within the price range.

- Price limit is 2000 of her maj’s English pounds (It’s quite a nice limit that I wouldn’t normally spend, but I’ve had a recent change in circumstance that’s allowing it)

I’ve found a decent machine on scan.co.uk’s website that would appear offers the best value-to-power ratio:

17.3” 3XS Graphite LG1725
1080P, 60hz screen
Intel Core i7 4710MQ*
16GB RAM 1600Mhz
2x GTX 980Ms in SLI

*The price differences between the processors are huge, it’s possible to pay up to £680 more for the 4940MX which only appears to have a slight speed increase and a 2MB larger cache. I can’t understand why the price goes up so considerably for a tiny increase.

I don’t really care to play in 4k and doubt the above would be all that capable except on old games anyway (since it has mobile processors). So what do you think, is it possible to do all that much better for the price? I couldn’t find anything that matches the above.
I’m half tempted to pick up a Surface Pro 3 instead.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

That's a Clevo P377 and you'll find other rebrands from other stores. You'll find that same model from Schenker and other stores in Europe, and it could be cheaper.
The P377 is a beast in performance but also a beast in size, weight and overall bulkyness. Plus, the screen uses a mediocre TN panel unless the store is specifying otherwise.

If looks are a concern and "ultimate performance" isn't your final goal, I'd definitely take a look at the Gigabyte high-end sub-brand Aorus.
Namely the Aorus X7 Pro, it seems to be within your budget. You lose from 2*980M 4GB to 2*970M 3GB, but you gain an IPS panel, faster CPU, better sound and a much, much thinner and portable machine. There are some curves at the back, but nothing like the horrible Asus G7 series.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

I couldn't see the P377 on the UK Schenker website, but there's a P723 that's possible to configure to having a better CPU at a similar cost to the Scan site.

The Aorus X7 Pro looks very nice (the promotional video is awful though). It's a tough call, I think I'd go with performance over slimmer design.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The Clevo P377 is the name for the base model, but Clevo doesn't sell their own laptops. They sell their models to reseller stores so the stores themselves can customize them and give them different names. The XMG P724 is Schenker's name for the Clevo P377. Other stores will call it something else. You can see the stores in EU selling Clevo laptops here.

The only thing I truly dislike about the Clevo is that no one seems to change the laptop's awful screen, every store adopts that TN panel.
I would gladly trade performance for an IPS panel. Not to mention the Aorus is already very well served for storage (2*256GB SSD in RAID0 + 1TB HDD), whereas the Clevo P377 for £2000 I find around only bring a 500GB HDD.
If you're going with the Clevo, I strongly suggest that you pay a bit more for a decend SSD, be it in M.2 or mSATA forms.

 

[London Geezer]

Wait. There's laptops with double GPU setups, as in SLI?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

There have been SLI laptops for almost as long as there is SLI, yes (nVidia's SLI, of course).

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Wait. There's laptops with double GPU setups, as in SLI?

Tempting isn't it. None of these look like horrific Alienware machines either.

 

[London Geezer]

I'm in love with my retina MacBook Pro but it's definitely not a gaming system. Who knew! SLI in laptops!

 

[swaaye]

Are the ASUS gaming notebooks too ugly for you? I like how quiet ASUS keeps their gaming notebooks. These things need airflow and they design for it. Some (all?) Clevos sound like hair dryers when in a game. Look these things up on Youtube for some listening. I also like how ASUS is using IPS screens now.

If you want something with SLI though I don't think quietness will be part of the equation.

 

[orangpelupa]

i wonder how heavy that laptop must be... one gpu with cooler is already heavy...