Gaming Laptop Beginnings
In 2023 I decided to get rid of my gaming PC to try out a gaming laptop. I knew there were plenty of negatives for doing this like price and heating issues, but figured I’d give it a go. I kept an eye out for deals at the time and found a Lenovo Legion 5 Gen 7 AMD (15″) with RTX 3070 Ti for sale and snatched it.
Specs:
Processor AMD Ryzen™ 7 6800H Processor (3.20 GHz up to 4.70 GHz)
Operating System Windows 11 Home 64
Graphic Card NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3070 Ti Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6
Memory 16 GB DDR5-4800MHz (SODIMM) (2 x 8 GB)
Storage 1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 TLC
Display 15.6″ FHD (1920 x 1080), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 100%sRGB, 300 nits, 165Hz, LED Backlight, Narrow Bezel
Camera 720P HD with Array Microphone & Electronic Privacy Shutter
Battery 4 Cell 80Whr
AC Adapter / Power Supply 300W
Pointing Device ClickPad
Keyboard 4zone RGB Backlit, Storm Grey – English (US)
WLAN Wi-Fi 6E 2×2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.1 or above
Warranty 1 Year Courier or Carry-in
I used this setup for about 1 year for various games like Rocket League, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Diablo IV, Hogwarts Legacy mostly. Here’s just a few quick notes regarding my experience:
- Gaming was always smooth when just using the built in screen and GeForce recommended settings
- When using an external monitor there seemed to be stuttering and various weird issues I would always run into. I tried using a Lenovo Docking station, but found using the built in HDMI port was the most stable
- Although the RTX 3070ti worked well for the most part, it was never going to reach anywhere near the 40 series with the laptop version
Overall I think the laptop suited my needs, but came across a good bundle deal from Microcenter that I didn’t want to miss(CPU, RAM, Motherboard bundle). After convincing my girlfriend to make the drive to King of Prussia’s Microcenter and ordering the rest of my parts off of Amazon it was time to start building the PC.
Final Build
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Graphics Card: ASUS TUF Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 OC Edition
RAM: G.Skill 32G 2X D5 6000
Storage: Samsung 990 EVO SSD 1TB M.2
Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming B650-E WIFI
Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow Tempered Glass Mid-Tower ATX
Heatsink: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE CPU Cooler
Power Supply: EVGA 1000 GT, 80 Plus Gold 1000W
Total: ~$1550
The Build Process
Now I haven’t built a PC for probably 5+ years at this point, so I was a little rusty with the initial setup, but figured I would remember as I built it. After struggling for about 30 minutes with the heatsink I finally decided to watch a video on installing it. There was essentially just a certain way you had to position the bracket for an AMD socket and was pretty easy after seeing this.
Everything else went swimmingly and I discovered that modern power supplies are now modular, which was hands down one of the best moves that the industry could have made for PC’s.
Final Thoughts
Ever since booting the PC up for the first time it’s been a great machine! I’ve been using it at least weekly for about 3+ months now and haven’t had any issues so far. The first game I played through was Black Myth Wukong, which is one of the more intense Ray Tracing games on unreal engine 5 at the time of this writing.
I was surprised at how low the fans run even when playing on ultra settings for this game. It’s nowhere near as loud as the Lenovo laptop used to get. I was equally impressed with the quality of the Asus TUF brand on both my graphics card and motherboard. Both were sturdy and heavy so it seemed like they’re made out of great materials.
All in all I’m glad I made the switch back to a custom built PC and it should be future proofed well past 5 years.