Lil' advice on gaming laptop for old SIMs?

[Drmbb]

Hey y'all,

So I have not had a gaming PC since around 2012 or so when my old ACER desktop died. That and its predecessor had worked well for about 9-10 years with Destroyer Command, Silent Hunter III, IV and V and a few other titles like Jutland. So now I would like to get (some) of those and others (UBoat for one) up and running again. By necessity, I would like to use a 17" laptop as I already have two desks occupied with work related hardware - a 2018 Mac mini with 2 27" displays and peripherals for personal & work stuff, and an employer provided Lenovo T460P with docking station and 32" monitor - so there really is nowhere to put another desktop, and I don't want to go back to switches and that cabling mess/nightmare with shared monitors and such.

I was looking at Sager as I know a bit about their history. Not averse to Alienware or MSI or ACER or any others really though. The Sager build I was thinking of was a 17.3" (1920 x 1080) with a 9th gen 8-core i7, 32GB RAM and 1TB Samsung SSD and either an Nvidia GTX 2060 or 2070 and I would upgrade to Windows 10 Pro (I also have old licenses for Windows XP, 7 and 8 I could use and may in virtual machines if needed)

My thinking on this is I can still use this for some coding and simulations I sometimes do for work (mostly in R) but it should be fine for the sort of naval SIMs I like to play both old and new. The GTX 2080 seems gross overkill and is not worth the price premium to my mind over the 2060 or 2070 with this years updates by NVidia. Similarly, the price premium for an i9 cpu doesn't seem worth it to me, not for the gaming certainly, but also for my work (if I need that much of a difference over an i7 I would turn to available AWS cloud servers anyway with a lot more cores available).

I would appreciate thoughts from you folks since you are all running and using the exact sorts of PC games I want to get going again.

While I have to use Windows 10 on my work laptop, I really don't claim to be all that savvy with it. I know MacOS and Linux like the back of my hand (was an OS X public beta user 20 years ago, and have used UNIX (mostly IRIX and Solaris) & Linux for decades), but Windows I sort of just muddle through. And I have been out of the mainstream PC gaming tech for awhile so catching up!

Thanks for advice, thoughts, tidbits and all!

[Mike Abberton]

The specs overall seem fine. If you want more info about specific parts, I would recommend the following sites:

www.pcpartpicker.com

www.userbenchmark.com

Both sites allow you to play around with configurations and make some value judgements on what parts to target. Userbenchmark is also helpful if you are buying a pre-made system and someone else has benchmarked it.

One note on a gaming laptop. I have had a couple from both MSI and Acer, and I've never had much luck with longevity. Not sure if it's the way I was using them or what, but most didn't last much more than 18 months before I started to notice problems (random shutdowns). I was usually sitting with the laptop in my lap (on a book or lapdesk for better cooling) as opposed to the laptop on a table, so maybe it was a cooling issue. Combined with a difficulty to find parts or reliable upgrades, I gave up last time and went back to a desktop. As I said, it could be me and the way I used them, but I am personally pretty much done with laptops for gaming.

Mike

[Drmbb]

Thanks for the reply. I get what you're saying about the limitations of a laptop, and cooling is always an issue with one I suppose. I am still stunned that the Lenovo T460P my employer has for me, which draws in cooling from the bottom and vents to the side, is designed to work with a docking station that effectively blocks the bottom cooling intakes? Who at Lenovo thought that one up?

For me right now it is just space limited, so at least the laptop gets me back into the game (bad pun apology!). Between work and personal machines I am more spread out now than i could/should be, so I do need to think about a more efficient setup anyway to consolidate desks.

As long as the laptop lets me delve into UBoat and Wolfpack, and explore getting older titles back up and running it will be a worthwhile investment that way for me. I can figure out the long(er) term issues later, or sell it later and put that towards something more stable long term.

[Mike Abberton]

The MSI laptops I had generally used bottom intakes and side or back vents. When gaming, I tried to use books or other hard surfaces to keep the bottom clear for good air flow (the books also helped keep the vents a little above exposed skin as the air could get fairly warm).

Assuming you do go with the laptop (and I completely understand the reasons), maybe look into one of the cooling pads/bases for it.

[Threadfin]

A few years ago I decided a gaming laptop was perfect for my situation. I bought a Sager as well. Everyone says they are inferior, and in a sense they are, but it worked great, ran everything I could throw at it. After a couple of years it's age began to tell and I started building desktops again.

A couple of points from my experience.... the thing ran hot. It was already mentioned, but worth it again. I would never have considered using on my lap. Like Mike said, I used some books to make two piers on either end so that air could flow beneath it while sitting on a table or desk.

Mobile versions of graphics cards are not quite the same as their desktop cousins. It might say 2070, but might also have the 'M' suffix? It will work great, it's still a very powerful card. But they still are less capable than the full version of the card.

The power 'brick' that came with the laptop was close to the size and weight of an actual brick!

Despite everyone I knew advising against it, I found it worked really well for the games I was in to at the time, and that included plenty of AAA titles. The only real drawback was the price. Compared to a similar desktop, the laptop was considerably more expensive. And I don't build laptops, like I do my other PCs, so can't save money on the DIY route.

[Drmbb]

I got the Sager today (fast build from them and expedited shipping included) and am installing WolfPack and Uboat now!!! The only custom aspect of the order was RAM and a Samsung SSD in place of the default hybrid drive, but otherwise it is one of their in stock builds.



Yes, it is a beast of a laptop and I would never even want it sitting on my lap, so I have a swing over table for my lazy-boy so I can work there and will likely use that. The thing weighs nearly 9lbs, and you're right, the power brick is huge and with a thick, thick cable and old-style four-prong connector. I have a couple of old raised cooling type pads I used with past mac laptops that I could use to give it a good inch or so clearance underneath.


Sager claims it is using the true 2019 updated desktop Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 and the NVidia control panel would seem to confirm that (as do the vents, where the whole underside basically is vented for intake). Size and weight wise though, it seems to stack up similarly to all the other 17" NVidia 2060/2070/2080 gaming laptops I looked at so at least it is not overboard that way.


If I did not have to use a Lenovo laptop and docking station for work, I would have space for a desktop, but for now at least this will be enough and should be fun. Just need Steam to finish downloads and installing!

[Threadfin]

Congrats and enjoy. That one should easily handle whatever you throw at it.


I worded my last post awkwardly, saying "Everyone says they are inferior, and in a sense they are". It appears I may be talking about Sager, when I meant laptops in general compared to desktops. My experience with the Sager was positive.

[Drmbb]

Thanks, I did get what you were referring to though. As far as build quality goes, I agree - while it is a beast of a laptop I now have things running well and the quality of the Sager seems pretty decent (for far less than say, a Dell AlienWare with similar hardware). Battery life is crap of course, but it is desktop hardware in a (big = huge) laptop case, so I get that - not planning on using it much if at all on battery anyway.



Silent Hunter 3 with GWX and SH3 Commander works fine. I have never tried LSH3 as it post-dates my previous days with SH3, so have downloaded that too to try out in time.



Silent Hunter 4 1.5 with Trigger Maru also looks good and runs well.


SH5, Uboat and Wolfpack all run fine and the graphics are good, I just have not had time yet to get into them. Not liking the need to hold mouse button to look around in SH5 though - that's obnoxious to deal with seems to me. Just seems a step back somewhat in player experience form SHII, II and IV?


I have a bunch of stuff I may try to get working too - Destroyer Command and B17 Flying Fortress would be cool - still have those CDs (and SH11 too). It is fun to revive these old games and discs I have stuffed away! These were all good games in their day.

[Mike Abberton]

Sounds like a nice rig. Enjoy!

Mike