I’m upgrading to a new laptop (unfortunately, a desktop is not viable for me right now). It’s a VR gaming machine, with some potential work with machine learning (me learning about it). I’ve got a system option, but it’s into price flinching territory, and wanted a once over, from those more in the know.
Are there any obvious flaws in it, and is it reasonable for the price?
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Display: 1 x 16.0" IPS | 2560×1600 px (16:10) | 240 Hz | G-SYNC | 95 % sRGB
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Graphic Card: 1 x NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop | 12 GB GDDR6
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Processor: 1 x Intel Core i9-13900HX
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Ram: 2 x 16 GB (32 GB) DDR5-5600 Samsung
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SSD (M.2): 1 x 1 TB M.2 Samsung 990 PRO | PCIe 4.0 x4 | NVMe
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Keyboard: 1 x Mechanical keyboard with CHERRY MX ULP Tactile switches
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WLAN: 1 x Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 | Bluetooth 5.3
It prices up at €2,809.31 (£2,484.57 or $3,130.80) including shipping and taxes.
It’s worth noting the system comes with an optional external water cooling system, so the CPU and GFX are less thermally limit, when it’s plugged in. It also has a proper keyboard, not the normal membrane ones.
What are people’s opinions? It is a reasonable price, or am I way too far up the diminishing returns slope?
Only 1tb of storage for VR gaming and AI models seems too low. Also the Samsung 990 Pro is overkill unless you’re working with high speed uncompressed video editing or something afaik. Someone else should chime in on that.
There is an unused m.2 slot. I was considering adding an additional large, slower drive later on. It’s mainly to keep the OS as snappy as possible. It also means the black Friday discount kicks in (requires a Samsung drive). Amusingly, I work in broadcast TV, so working with uncompressed video does happen.
My research into the 980 Vs the 990 is that the sequential r/w is only a little slower, but random r/w takes a significant hit. I might just bite the bullet and adjust to a 2tb 980 for €69 more.
Make sure the memory is upgradable (a scary amount of laptops are soldering it in these days) because you’ll eventually want more than 32. The latest in ML is hyper ram hungry so I’d be looking at 64 to start, but you can make it work with 32.
You’re also going to run out of disk space at 4 tb, let alone 1tb. The drive size is a non starter, especially with raw video, vr, ml etc….
You’re gonna want some external drives and a lot more internal space
Memory is definitely upgradable, I believe even the CPU is a socketed desktop one.
I’ve held back a little on the ram to keep the price within my hard budget. Ditto with the hd (though likely too far, by the sounds of it). Both can be upgraded down the line, while the GPU etc can’t.
I’ve also already got a couple of usb 3 external SSD drives, as well as some bulk backup drives, hooked to my home NUC.