Ask HN: Recommended Gaming Laptop for Work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recommended Gaming Laptop for Work?

5 pointssmusamashah7 comments

I have a Razer Blade 15 (from work) with RTX 3080 with 64GB memory and this machine is a beast. I can run IntelliJ, have chrome open with loads of tabs and play a game (or even two) at the same time on one of the two external displays. It almost never slows down.

The keyboard, battery and cooling on this machine is really bad though. Keyboard is designed for gamers, not humans (e.g. no back light on alternate letters at all). Battery only lasts 1-2 hours and is swollen.

I am looking for personal laptop with same or better GPU for work and gaming etc but won't get a Razer because of aforementioned reasons. I need Nvidia GPU to run StableDiffusion and other cool stuff which is only possible on Nvidia.

Any recommendation?

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I had an Alienware 15 when I worked for a place that was developing machine learning models long ago. It worked for that and it plays games well too. My employer was able to get it through their contract with Dell too.

That was in early 2017, my 2013 mac mini gave up the ghost early this year and at about the same time the keyboard panel of the Alienware developed a bulge so it is no longer usable as a laptop but it is going strong being used like a desktop machine.

My take though is that all "desktop replacement" laptops have their batteries go bad and in a year or two they are good enough to run from one conference room to the next after that.

If you want an A.I. dev machine your best bet may be to build a desktop machine, I built one in January 2023 with a 16 core AMD processor case full of perforations, a glass side, RGB bling and an RTX 4080 because that's what I could get.

When I am on the go I log into it from a basic iPad with a cheap bluetooth keyboard and mouse, usually to use my RSS reader YOShInOn which is a web application but with RDP if I want to do something more.

These laptops should not always be charging their batteries or should have some to disable them. We need this more now removable batteries are now a rarity. Mine is always plugged which is the reason why it last an hour now. It use to last around 8hrs in the beginning.

I would get a desktop if I could but I live in a rented place which don't have room for a desktop setup. My work setup with laptop always plugged on dock with multiple displays is already taking the space of a desktop setup.

You should build a tiny desktop! My node 202 literally takes up less floorspace than my open 14" laptop.

I wish I could use a desktop but I do need the portability, even if it was just picking and moving to another room or sofa. Also don't want to have two stationary setups in the house.

The Asus G series has great cooling, and good keyboards. Battery is great on the AMD CPU version, but you cannot get any semblance of battery life with the GPU active for long periods. Community linux support is also pretty good through the asus-rog community (check out their discord), which I would highly recommend for testing generative AI.

My 2020 G14 is still kicking, no swolen battery or anything (though I ended up building an tiny "portable" 3090 desktop in a Node 202 for AI). If portability is a priority and price is not, Asus has somehow stuffed a mobile 4090 (aka a desktop 4080 die) into one of the new 14" G14 SKUs.

Also, if you are in the US, they regularly go for deep discounts in Best Buy, specifically. No idea why: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?id=pcat17071&sp=...

Had a look and Asus Rog series have really good specs and some have good review on notebookcheck.net

Dell Precision 5680 would be a good choice, if it cannot be Razer.

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