Laptop Shopping - Need Help!

Help! Where do you shop for a 17" laptop? My last laptop, a GIGABYTE P55WV5-SL1, is officially dead at the video outputs. I have a mirror backup of the hard drive from which I'll be able to extract the data, but I'm going to need a replacement for the laptop itself. I know this isn't the best of times, with the chip shortage and the video/bitcoin-mining crap going on, but I am in need and can't wait. I need to configure a new laptop now.

With that, where would you suggest going, be it online or brick & mortar? I already know of the following:

• Best Buy
• Micro Center
• Newegg.com
• Amazon
• XOTICPC
• CLX

I purchased the GIGABYTE from XOTICPC and was happy with their configurator and their service last time. What else should I consider, though? Please help!

It depends. If you want to buy a prebuilt laptop, then Newegg is a pretty safe bet, as is Amazon, as long as you make sure it's actually sold by those storefronts and not some third-party reseller on those. (It makes your chances of getting a lemon that much lower).

However, I also at one point bought up a made-to-order laptop from Sager directly. The whole point of those is that you can customize the thing pretty extensively, but of course, the cost depends on what customizations.

Unless you're really looking for something to make Tim "The Toolman" Taylor go "Ahhh-ahhh-ahhh!" though, you'd probably be better served with something more mainstream - and cheaper. (The cheapest model I see on the Sager site is about $900 in stock config.)

EDIT: Their cheapest 17-inch model is about $1450.

8 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

However, I also at one point bought up a made-to-order laptop from Sager directly. The whole point of those is that you can customize the thing pretty extensively, but of course, the cost depends on what customizations.

I tried the Sager site, and the closest thing I could come up with that suited my needs (music production machine) was the NP9672M-G1 notebook (Intel i7-11000K processor), and it slotted in at $2,964.00. Even then, that's still lacking somewhat, and no, I'm not trying to build a hot rod. I need something that can serve as a stand-in to my desktop Music Computer if something goes wrong, hence the high-powered requirements.

Don’t forget the potential for second-hand.. Ive gotten a few in the range of i7 16gb memory from shopgoodwill, craigslist, and Facebook marketplace for ~$200-$250/pc and they’ve run my DAWs wonderfully for years 

6 hours ago, leejacksonaudio said:

I tried the Sager site, and the closest thing I could come up with that suited my needs (music production machine) was the NP9672M-G1 notebook (Intel i7-11000K processor), and it slotted in at $2,964.00. Even then, that's still lacking somewhat, and no, I'm not trying to build a hot rod. I need something that can serve as a stand-in to my desktop Music Computer if something goes wrong, hence the high-powered requirements.

If you're looking for something that would heavily run multithreaded stuff well, you'd definitely be better off looking for a Ryzen 5000 series. They're actually outdoing Intel in many metrics, and are the better CPUs this generation, on top of having more physical CPU cores.

I'm looking to upgrade my dusty, decade-old Sandy Bridge rig over the summer for my birthday. It's had a long shelf life, but it's time to go (along with Win7). Assuming the prices come back down to MSRP, I'll be looking at the Ryzen 5900X. It's not TOP top of the line, but it's still a physically octo-core CPU, so that's sixteen threads. More than enough for all but the most CPU-crushing work. (And if you really need more than that, there's the dodeca-core 5950X, or if you need more than that still, Threadripper.)

I'd be happy to teach you more and figure out something more suited for your needs, but you'd definitely have to tell me a bit more about your existing setup so I can establish a baseline. In general though, all else being equal, the more cores the better. It's when you get I to the nitty-gritty like clockspeeds and IPC that it becomes a tougher call, and raw speed hasn't really been the main driver of CPU performance for at least 15 years now.

25 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

I'd be happy to teach you more and figure out something more suited for your needs, but you'd definitely have to tell me a bit more about your existing setup so I can establish a baseline. In general though, all else being equal, the more cores the better. It's when you get I to the nitty-gritty like clockspeeds and IPC that it becomes a tougher call, and raw speed hasn't really been the main driver of CPU performance for at least 15 years now.

My existing desktop Music System setup is rather old. It's an Origin system that was gifted to me by a contractor who shall remain nameless. It's currently running an Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz (6 cores, 12 threads) and has 32GB of RAM. The video is an old, reliable NVIDIA GTX 970 card. It's got storage in spades: five drives, two spinning, two SSD, and one NVMe, making up approximately 11TB of storage.

Incidentally, I have since learned that Origin makes laptops, and quite powerful ones at that, in the Rocket Lake category. Of course, they're expensive, but they look well built.

Newer than mine, and double the RAM of mine, too. (I plan 32 GB for my new system too though.)

I was actually wrong earlier - the 5900X has twelve cores, the 5950X sixteen. Both support multithreading, of course, so that's 24 and 32 threads for those processors respectively.

The kicker is you'd like a laptop, and obviously in a laptop there's going to be some tradeoffs for performance versus power drain and heat production. So it rules both those out as those are desktop parts. (Definitely worth looking into if you plan to upgrade that down the line, though!)

On the mobile side of things, you'd look for a 5800H/HS/HX, or a 5900-series one with the same suffixes. Those are all 8-core CPUs, with different clock speeds, but all got a pretty good turbo clock well into the 4 GHz range with the top ones even nearing 5 GHz, and consume about 35-55W of power. The different models specs are here.

Something with the higher-end processors on that list might even run circles around your aging workstation.

What AMD has done with Ryzen is just crazy. The last time they had a lead like this over Intel it was about 2004 or so. Which is also the last time I built an AMD system, on the second PC I ever built. :P

I had my demi-decade upgrade recently -- portability is fairly important to me, so I grabbed an Asus G14 5900hs 32gb laptop. Yeah, the Ryzen processors seem fantastic. The laptop is extremely fast and the battery life is nuts for a (sort of) gaming system. I'll be very surprised if the new Intel Tiger Lake CPUs can match the Ryzen endurance and heat profile with their larger 10 nanometre fabrication. Speaking of heat, the other thing is that this system is silent most of the time, which is important to me since I also use it for recording and don't have any space for acoustic isolation in my flat.

A quick-and-dirty comparison for @leejacksonaudio, since I saw one of the CPUs the Origin site mentioned:

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-10870H-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-5900HS/m1322918vsm1452199

Obviously this won't tell the WHOLE story, but it's at least a back-of-the-hand comparer, and it shows that even the mobile Ryzen CPUs are no joke and very competitive with Intel - if not outright superior.

And for more fun, it's also quite telling against the CPU in his current desktop workstation.

Suffice to say a laptop with a good Ryzen CPU might become your main workstation in short order.

And if it's that good on the mobile side, imagine the desktop. :)

My laptop is MSI. If you want a high spec laptop then they are an option.

Edit: It is also 17” if you want size consistency.

Got it for $1200 with a year warranty.

57 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

A quick-and-dirty comparison for @leejacksonaudio, since I saw one of the CPUs the Origin site mentioned:

 

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-10870H-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-5900HS/m1322918vsm1452199

 

Obviously this won't tell the WHOLE story, but it's at least a back-of-the-hand comparer, and it shows that even the mobile Ryzen CPUs are no joke and very competitive with Intel - if not outright superior.

 

And for more fun, it's also quite telling against the CPU in his current desktop workstation.

 

Suffice to say a laptop with a good Ryzen CPU might become your main workstation in short order.

 

And if it's that good on the mobile side, imagine the desktop. :)

Ryzen laptops have been as scarce as hen's teeth in my search, and as expensive, too. What I've run across more often is the faster Rocket Lake processor - the i7-11700K CPUs. They support the newer PCIe4x4 protocol for NVMe drives, which is desirable. Again, Sager rules the roost with these - I managed to trim the price on one down to $2879.00. This number doesn't seem to piss my wife off as much as some of the others.

Yeah, Ryzens also have PCIe 4.0 support, hence why it's really a better pick *IF* you can find one.

Of course, an 11700K is a desktop-class CPU, so yes, it will run circles around even a 5900HX. If that's your options, the 11700K is the definite winner.

At that point the only real competitor left would be if you could find a laptop that's also carrying one of the desktop AMD CPUs, but it'd have to be at least a 5900X to begin scratching the 11700K, and at that point you're comparing a CPU whose MSRP is a good $200 higher than the 11700K (but you do get 12 cores instead of 8, which may or may not be a factor to you.)

Their NP9672M-G1 pre-built starts at $2799. The CPU is an 11700K, the GPU will definitely get you far for even fairly recent games (laptop GPUs are no joke now compared to 4-5 generations ago! Like 80-90% of the performance of the full desktop GPU!), the only thing you may want to bump up is the RAM since that's 16 GB stock, and maybe a faster or bigger M.2 (500 GB is awfully lean - I'd say 1 TB at a minimum, since the smaller drives also tend to have worse I/O performance). The laptop is easily upgradable up to 128 GB of RAM so that's no issue (especially if you're PC-handy), just buy some more SODIMMs with identical timings (or a replacement kit entirely) and slap them in if Sager doesn't provide the option for some reason.

The laptop does *ONLY* support M.2 drives though - no internal SATA hookups here, so any expanded storage past the M.2 is gonna come off a bigger M.2, or some sort of external drive. You've got some Thunderbolt 4 and a bevy of USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports though (one of them is even powered), so you should have no problem slapping in an external drive for archival storage or whatever. :)

The one thing that will bite you though with the Sager laptops, at least if they're anything like mine - don't expect great battery life. I think unplugged I'd get about 3 hours or so out of mine - 11700Ks are desktop-class CPUs, after all. This isn't terrible if it's a backup workstation or whatever, but if you'd like to actually do some work on that beach in Cancun or whatever, probably not going to last you very long. (Not to mention the salt in the air from the seawater will corrode stuff internally... but I digress.)

Of course, I dunno if that's what you did by customizing that model, or if you did one of the other ones and just upped its specs a bit.

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Their NP9672M-G1 pre-built starts at $2799. The CPU is an 11700K, the GPU will definitely get you far for even fairly recent games (laptop GPUs are no joke now compared to 4-5 generations ago! Like 80-90% of the performance of the full desktop GPU!), the only thing you may want to bump up is the RAM since that's 16 GB stock, and maybe a faster or bigger M.2 (500 GB is awfully lean - I'd say 1 TB at a minimum, since the smaller drives also tend to have worse I/O performance). The laptop is easily upgradable up to 128 GB of RAM so that's no issue (especially if you're PC-handy), just buy some more SODIMMs with identical timings (or a replacement kit entirely) and slap them in if Sager doesn't provide the option for some reason.

 

The laptop does *ONLY* support M.2 drives though - no internal SATA hookups here, so any expanded storage past the M.2 is gonna come off a bigger M.2, or some sort of external drive. You've got some Thunderbolt 4 and a bevy of USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports though (one of them is even powered), so you should have no problem slapping in an external drive for archival storage or whatever. :)

 

The one thing that will bite you though with the Sager laptops, at least if they're anything like mine - don't expect great battery life. I think unplugged I'd get about 3 hours or so out of mine - 11700Ks are desktop-class CPUs, after all. This isn't terrible if it's a backup workstation or whatever, but if you'd like to actually do some work on that beach in Cancun or whatever, probably not going to last you very long. (Not to mention the salt in the air from the seawater will corrode stuff internally... but I digress.)

 

Of course, I dunno if that's what you did by customizing that model, or if you did one of the other ones and just upped its specs a bit.

I've been going crazy running customizers on various sites lately, including on Sager's site with the NP9672M-G1. That's where I came up with the price I quoted earlier. It has the following main components per my spreadsheet:

Intel Core i7-11700K
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU with 6GB GDDR6 Video Memory
32GB Dual Channel DDR4 SDRAM at 3200MHz - 2 X 16GB
1TB WD Black SN850 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (PCIe4x4)

I had to skimp with the NVMe drive - wanted a Samsung 980 Pro, but could only afford a WD Black SN850. It's still a Gen4 PCIe device, though. That's an area where I might be able to upgrade later on, and where I might be able to add secondary/tertiary/etc. drives.

The power drain issue is not so much of a problem, since I don't intend to be away from a plug for very long if at all.

Yeah, if you're not a gamer, nudging down the GPU to free up some more wiggle room for the RAM and a different SSD isn't a bad idea, though the 3060 is still a plenty-capable GPU (and since it's on an MXM module, if you REALLY wanted to, you could actually upgrade that later). Probably actually still plentiful if you went with one of the 1080p screens, though the 4k one might be a bit lacking with that GPU for gaming; I'm sure for your regular old browsing/video watching/DAW stuff it'd be more than enough.

As for the SSD? Honestly, that's a pretty solid Plan B from some quick reviews I scrounged up, like this one which explicitly compares it against the 980 Pro. It meets or beats it in most categories, and where it doesn't, it's usually not very far off from it at all. Good choice!

In short? Pretty solid system considering the use-case you plan on using it for. One that certainly makes my Sandy Bridge more than a little jealous. :)

But well... a few more weeks until I'm done with my main job for the summer, then I got ten weeks with which to plan out a new desktop and get it bought up. Hopefully the 5900X is back down to MSRP by then... they're available on Amazon, but at almost $690, which is still a far cry above the MSRP of $549 (but better than a month ago when they were going for nearly $800!)

Caveat emptor, though: While you *CAN* do multiple M.2 drives, it seems like it will seriously cripple the speed:

Quote

(Factory Option) Four M.2 2280 SSD, Support one M.2 2280 SSD PCIe Gen4x4 interface (supported by 11th Gen CPU only), or two M.2 2280 SSD SATA interface (RAID 0/1), or three PCIe Gen3x4 interface (RAID 0/1/5)

So in short, you only get the PCIe 4 x4 if you have only one drive in there. The instant you put a second one in there, it'd become SATA speed, or possibly bumped down to PCIe 3. Unless I'm reading that wrong, but that's what it seems like. If you want to be sure, ask Sager before placing your order.

I had about an hour-and-a-half call with my super tech-savvy son last night. We discussed the merits of the i7-11000K and PCIe version 4 on some real-world benchmarks, and as it turns out the differences between it and the higher-end 10th-generation i7 and PCIe version 3 are negligible (2 seconds on game loading benchmarks, so transferring that to audio file streaming would result in a much smaller difference). So, he guided me instead to a Sager NP9672M-G0 laptop with an i9-10850K processor that has ten cores in it. We configured it to come out less than my 11th-generation i7 config, if only by $35 - $2,844.00 is the mark to beat now, and that's for a freaking i9 with a Samsung 970 EVO Plus! I've gotta hand it to my son - he really can be helpful when it comes to things like this.

This also negates the problem with a second NVMe drive dragging down performance, since the drives would be PCIe gen.3 instead.

7 hours ago, leejacksonaudio said:

I had about an hour-and-a-half call with my super tech-savvy son last night. We discussed the merits of the i7-11000K and PCIe version 4 on some real-world benchmarks, and as it turns out the differences between it and the higher-end 10th-generation i7 and PCIe version 3 are negligible (2 seconds on game loading benchmarks, so transferring that to audio file streaming would result in a much smaller difference). So, he guided me instead to a Sager NP9672M-G0 laptop with an i9-10850K processor that has ten cores in it. We configured it to come out less than my 11th-generation i7 config, if only by $35 - $2,844.00 is the mark to beat now, and that's for a freaking i9 with a Samsung 970 EVO Plus! I've gotta hand it to my son - he really can be helpful when it comes to things like this.

 

This also negates the problem with a second NVMe drive dragging down performance, since the drives would be PCIe gen.3 instead.

Yeah, that'll be a little beefier for you in the workstation aspect and not too far off the pace in gaming or I/O speed as well. (Most NVM drives out there don't even really saturate a PCIe3 x4 link yet, so you won't feel the pinch of that for awhile - if ever.)

Seems like you got a pretty good setup configured out then. If you don't mind, let us know how it's working out for you once you get it! It should still pretty readily thrash your desktop workstation. It may well be time to relegate it as your spare unless you got a real good reason to stick with it over the new system. :)

Of course, if a solid Ryzen 5000 series does pop up that's got one of the desktop CPUs, they're still worth a consideration, but you'd be pretty hard-pressed at this point I think to find one that's much better than what you've got. Seems to hit all the sweet spots just right.

50 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Seems like you got a pretty good setup configured out then. If you don't mind, let us know how it's working out for you once you get it! It should still pretty readily thrash your desktop workstation. It may well be time to relegate it as your spare unless you got a real good reason to stick with it over the new system. :)

 

Of course, if a solid Ryzen 5000 series does pop up that's got one of the desktop CPUs, they're still worth a consideration, but you'd be pretty hard-pressed at this point I think to find one that's much better than what you've got. Seems to hit all the sweet spots just right.

Thank you for all of your help! I do appreciate it, and will refer back to it on other matters. Now, all I've got to do is get my wife to let me pull the trigger. She's in, "I don't want to decide on this right now" mode because, quite frankly, her retirement "hobby" has got the best of her. She's absolutely swamped at the moment.

4 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

Thank you for all of your help! I do appreciate it, and will refer back to it on other matters. Now, all I've got to do is get my wife to let me pull the trigger. She's in, "I don't want to decide on this right now" mode because, quite frankly, her retirement "hobby" has got the best of her. She's absolutely swamped at the moment.

The finer aspects of married life. Maybe I should count my blessings I'm still single? :P

On 5/25/2021 at 5:40 AM, leejacksonaudio said:

I know this isn't the best of times, with the chip shortage and the video/bitcoin-mining crap going on

Ugh, I don't know how bad it got in the US, but over here the prices went straight to the moon - it's actually much cheaper to buy cars or land! I was planning to upgrade in around 2024 or so, but it seems like it's never gonna happen.

2 hours ago, Vic Vos said:

Ugh, I don't know how bad it got in the US, but over here the prices went straight to the moon - it's actually much cheaper to buy cars or land! I was planning to upgrade in around 2024 or so, but it seems like it's never gonna happen.

That's pretty bad. Prices like that are ridiculous. What part of the planet are you on?

The laptop quandary has been solved. My old, dead-ish GIGABYTE laptop arrived back from the manufacturer today, so I was able to convince my wife to let me order the Sager NP9672M-G0 with the i9 processor tonight. The grand total was $2,844.00 - the shipping was free, and for some reason they did not charge me tax (at least, not yet). Here's what I got for my our (gotta remember my wife) money:

Components
- 10th Generation Intel Core i9-10850K Processor ( 10 Cores, 20MB Smart Cache, 3.60GHz Base / 5.20GHz Max )
- 17.3" Full HD 144Hz, Wide View Angle 72% NTSC Matte Display with G-SYNC Technology (1920 x 1080)
- 90 days No Dead Pixel Guarantee Screen Calibration
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU with 6GB GDDR6 Video Memory
- Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
- Windows® 10 Pro 64-Bit Edition Preinstalled
- Windows® 10 64-Bit Edition USB Recovery Media
- 32GB Dual Channel DDR4 SDRAM at 3200MHz - 2 X 16GB
- 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
- Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 M.2 AX Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module

Software & Services
- Sager 1 Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty

Keep in mind that this isn't going to be a gaming computer - it's going to be an audio production laptop. As a result, graphics are not as high a priority as are CPU and RAM. I wish I could have spent more on SSD space, but that's something I'm going to have to rectify later on.

I am going to have to wait a bit for it, since the Samsung 970 EVO is backordered until June 3rd. I can stand a short delay. No big deal.

Thank you to everyone who helped out in this thread! I really do appreciate your input.

13 hours ago, leejacksonaudio said:

The grand total was $2,844.00

Holy Moses! That's a lot of dinero.

I was considering buying a new computer (desktop would be my preference, because of the expandability), but I would never consider spending that much. Years ago I spent about $2,400 on my first computer (mini-tower) and vowed never to clean out my wallet again for something that will likely become obsolete in 3 to 5 years.

But I do understand that you need a high end rig for your music production. [Did you consider a Mac Book Pro?]

26 minutes ago, ReX said:

Holy Moses! That's a lot of dinero.

 

I was considering buying a new computer (desktop would be my preference, because of the expandability), but I would never consider spending that much. Years ago I spent about $2,400 on my first computer (mini-tower) and vowed never to clean out my wallet again for something that will likely become obsolete in 3 to 5 years.

 

But I do understand that you need a high end rig for your music production. [Did you consider a Mac Book Pro?]

To be fair, the more expensive it is, the longer it lasts. I'm still on a 2011 Sandy Bridge for god's sakes, and I spent about $2000 on this PC when I made it.

Though to be fair, I'm also planning my upgrade for this summer, if those Ryzen 9 5000s can come down more closer to MSRP.

Sager (I've since learned is pronounced with a soft g) called today to confirm my order. Good on them. Cuts down on fraud. I feel better about them already. Anyway, I got a confirmation e-mail after the call with an ETA for shipping of June 9th (taking into account the backorder on my SSD drive). They also mentioned that they won't charge my credit card until they ship. I like that as well.

They handled me pretty good years ago, in my experience, so yeah, I was pretty satisfied with them too.

Let us know how it all turns out :)

Sager has shipped the laptop! I got notification at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning via e-mail that they'd shipped out the laptop Friday evening (June 4th, via UPS Ground). I'm now hoping that the thing will arrive by this coming Wednesday, June 9th, since that's the ETA that UPS is giving me for arrival.

[takes deep breath] Keep calm and check UPS daily ... ^_^

15 minutes ago, leejacksonaudio said:

Sager has shipped the laptop! I got notification at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning via e-mail that they'd shipped out the laptop Friday evening (June 4th, via UPS Ground). I'm now hoping that the thing will arrive by this coming Wednesday, June 9th, since that's the ETA that UPS is giving me for arrival.

 

[takes deep breath] Keep calm and check UPS daily ... ^_^

I know that feeling. I'll be doing it in a few weeks for my PC parts... that's why I'm waiting until I'm done with work. No way in HELL am I trusting anyone to just drop off a box full of expensive hardware and leave it at my damn doorstep!

Aaaand wouldn't you know it ... my wife schedules a haircut for both of us for early Wednesday afternoon, the day the laptop is supposed to get here. She used to be a UPS expert for the IRS, though, so she claims UPS Ground shipping won't get to our house until after our appointment. If she's wrong, I'm going to be very cross, as Pooh once said. Very cross indeed ... 

Double-check the day of, I'd say. If it's out for delivery, you might get a time window.

Otherwise, if in doubt, that's a good question on what to do.

Could always reschedule the hair appointment though, if worse came to worse. Certainly beats someone walking off with a multi-thousand-dollar laptop unless you live in a rather nice neighborhood.

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Certainly beats someone walking off with a multi-thousand-dollar laptop unless you live in a rather nice neighborhood.

Oh, I don't have to worry about that. Sager sent it with a signature required upon delivery. If I'm not home, I may not get the thing for another day or two, which could further complicate matters since I have a physical therapy appointment on either Thursday or Friday. Sigh.