Hardware PC Hardware, Building, and Advice

[Spirit]

Graphics card looks good for decent gaming.
Everything else seems solid for what you are looking forward to doing.

A 1080p monitor is good for battery life although some would say go for a higher one. As now most peeps like quad HD.

Processor , ram @32gb (wowza) Ac dual band and 1tb hdd are solid.
If you need more storage you can always upgrade.

Looks good to me for productivity.

So when can you ship this bad boy out to me??

As soon as you get your own $14000 Scholarship for your Freshman year
And thanks I've asked a few people and they also think it's all good. This is my first time building a PC so I'm no expert but I know what does what :P

 

[Charlie]

As soon as you get your own $14000 Scholarship for your Freshman year
And thanks I've asked a few people and they also think it's all good. This is my first time building a PC so I'm no expert but I know what does what :P

A laptop build just needs a little more finess in comparison to a desktop due to the narrower room for bridging connections.

Good luck / enjoy / grats

 

[Styx]

So I'm building my own Laptop as I'm in major need of an upgrade and have a lot of money to spend. I'll mainly be using it for browsing, Media and work, with a bit of gaming on the side. Here is the current draft I have at the moment so I was wondering what anybody else here thinks of it? Anything you'd add? If so, why?

Metabox Alpha N150RD1

• 15.6" FHD 1920x1080 IPS WVA Matte 60Hz LED
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM
• Core i7-6700HQ Processor (6M Cache up to 3.50 GHz)
• 32GB DDR4 2133MHZ (2 x 16GB)
• Crucial MX300 525GB SATA 3 M.2 SSD
• 1TB 5400RPM HDD
• Intel 8260 AC Dual Band WIFI/BT (up to 867 Mbps)
• DVD +- R/RW DL Slim Line
• Win 10 Home 64BIT License & Media - Installed & Ready-Out-Of-The-Box
• 2 Year Metabox Premium Care Return To Base Protection
• 
  
• 
  
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016
• Razer DeathAdder

Approximate Price: $2,121.00

Honestly, I think the GPU will hurt you in the long run even if you only game a little. How much would it cost ya to upgrade it a little? Other than that, it is a very good laptop. Replace that 5400 RPM HDD some time in though.

 

[Spirit]

Honestly, I think the GPU will hurt you in the long run even if you only game a little. How much would it cost ya to upgrade it a little? Other than that, it is a very good laptop. Replace that 5400 RPM HDD some time in though.

Yeah the finished order was changed. I bumped it up to 7200RPM

 

[LordOTaco]

I'd love to help anyone out with stuff like this. I'm a web developer for my day job but I've also had to troubleshoot and compare components for price to performance quite a bit as well. I've built my own rig for video editing and gaming as well.

I also know you finished the order but for future reference/recommendation especially in laptops it benefits to have an SSD as your boot drive for the OS and programs (or have the M.2 as the boot drive) and the 1TB HDD for your mass storage for music, vids, games etc. SSDs are far faster and more reliable as they have no moving parts (ie spinning disks) the reason this is particularly important in laptops for college is many times laptops will be moved lifted and carried around while on and since the HDD disk is spinning while this is happening it will oscillate in ways its not supposed to. It wont kill it after a year or two and will be fine but throw in 4 years on it and the wear will noticeably degrade performance and sometimes can even result in the loss of data altogether.

 

[Pat]

I also know you finished the order but for future reference/recommendation especially in laptops it benefits to have an SSD as your boot drive for the OS and programs (or have the M.2 as the boot drive) and the 1TB HDD for your mass storage for music, vids, games etc. SSDs are far faster and more reliable as they have no moving parts (ie spinning disks) the reason this is particularly important in laptops for college is many times laptops will be moved lifted and carried around while on and since the HDD disk is spinning while this is happening it will oscillate in ways its not supposed to. It wont kill it after a year or two and will be fine but throw in 4 years on it and the wear will noticeably degrade performance and sometimes can even result in the loss of data altogether.

Seconded, this is the recommended setup for both laptop and desktops these days. SSDs are still expensive, so wasting valuable space on data such as music or videos is unnecessary, HDDs are still better for that purpose, keeping them on SSD doesn't give much performance benefit. On the other hand, keeping OS files on a SSD makes a great deal of difference since they need to be accessed continuously and also it's easier to back up a drive which isn't filled with such data. Music and videos can be stored on an external disk with simple copy/paste operation but backing up an OS is tricky which requires a dedicated imaging application.

 

[Spirit]

I'll keep that in mind. I'll try it out for a while and will always have the option to upgrade

 

[Taorero]

So I'm building my own Laptop as I'm in major need of an upgrade and have a lot of money to spend. I'll mainly be using it for browsing, Media and work, with a bit of gaming on the side. Here is the current draft I have at the moment so I was wondering what anybody else here thinks of it? Anything you'd add? If so, why?

Metabox Alpha N150RD1

• 15.6" FHD 1920x1080 IPS WVA Matte 60Hz LED
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM
• Core i7-6700HQ Processor (6M Cache up to 3.50 GHz)
• 32GB DDR4 2133MHZ (2 x 16GB)
• Crucial MX300 525GB SATA 3 M.2 SSD
• 1TB 5400RPM HDD
• Intel 8260 AC Dual Band WIFI/BT (up to 867 Mbps)
• DVD +- R/RW DL Slim Line
• Win 10 Home 64BIT License & Media - Installed & Ready-Out-Of-The-Box
• 2 Year Metabox Premium Care Return To Base Protection
• 
  
• 
  
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016
• Razer DeathAdder

Approximate Price: $2,121.00

Big question for me will be if this build will be final or if you will have the possibility in the future to upgrade (RAM for example).
It is definitely a very, very good build. If your main thing is gaming, not even a console can compete with a state-of-the-art PC build with the latest stuff. If you need it for work related stuff like graphic design or programming your build is more than enough but again I recommend desktop. Laptops will always give you mobility but sometimes a cheap one does the same thing and you can always have your desktop as main.

 

[LordOTaco]

Big question for me will be if this build will be final or if you will have the possibility in the future to upgrade (RAM for example).
It is definitely a very, very good build. If your main thing is gaming, not even a console can compete with a state-of-the-art PC build with the latest stuff. If you need it for work related stuff like graphic design or programming your build is more than enough but again I recommend desktop. Laptops will always give you mobility but sometimes a cheap one does the same thing and you can always have your desktop as main.

RAM expansion is definitely something to consider. Also on a side note different CPUs support different amounts of RAM. For example my 5820K in my main rig supports up to 64GB of DDR4 while a 5960x will support up to 128GB (not that you'll need that much but its something to keep in mind).

As for a gaming PC you don't necessarily need a state of the art one to out do consoles. Particularly in the GPU department. a 1050ti which is a very affordable GPU destroys 1080p gaming and by that I mean true rendered 1080p not the upscaled stuff from 720p or 900p you see on the Xbox One or PS4.

 

[Spirit]

Big question for me will be if this build will be final or if you will have the possibility in the future to upgrade (RAM for example).
It is definitely a very, very good build. If your main thing is gaming, not even a console can compete with a state-of-the-art PC build with the latest stuff. If you need it for work related stuff like graphic design or programming your build is more than enough but again I recommend desktop. Laptops will always give you mobility but sometimes a cheap one does the same thing and you can always have your desktop as main.

Oh I already have an optimal desktop for gaming, even though I've slowed down in that area lately. This laptop is for my studies when i'm in my dorms at Uni and other, away-from-home usage. So It's great that people think my laptop is great for Home Usage, but it's only intended for mid end gaming anyway.

 

[LordOTaco]

Oh I already have an optimal desktop for gaming, even though I've slowed down in that area lately. This laptop is for my studies when i'm in my dorms at Uni and other, away-from-home usage. So It's great that people think my laptop is great for Home Usage, but it's only intended for mid end gaming anyway.

Yeah another thing with "gaming laptops" especially now is that their battery lives suck pretty bad. Most lasting 2 hours tops. Especially now I actually saw a laptop well over 3000USD with two GTX1080s in it. The thing needed not one but two power bricks on the go. -.-

 

[Taorero]

Oh I already have an optimal desktop for gaming, even though I've slowed down in that area lately. This laptop is for my studies when i'm in my dorms at Uni and other, away-from-home usage. So It's great that people think my laptop is great for Home Usage, but it's only intended for mid end gaming anyway.

In that case I will go with powerful enough, all laptops suffer the same thing... Battery and upgrade room. A good CPU and a decent GPU (usually gaming ones), should give plenty of time with it. Another thing to bear in mind is that CPU under i5 or FX will give you a lot in the beginning but you will feel a drop in performance after a year, let's not even get into the second.

 

[samajo]

Same here. I built my own PC recently, upgraded from gaming on an old laptop. My performance gains compared to my laptop are through the roof. It feels like an addiction - I must build more PCs. Anyone else feels the same way?

 

[greyssy]

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