(Part 2) Best products from r/lowendgaming

I have this:
http://www.amazon.com/VivoBook-X202E-DH31T-11-6-Inch-Laptop-VERSION/dp/B009F1I1C4

(price was about same, but in €. you know, that 1€=1$ thing sellers do)

overall I'm very happy with it. But I have to remind myself every now and then that it's not supposed to be a gaming laptop, and that I actually have a real gaming PC.

I bought it because portability was a true concern, since it was an upgrade from an EEEPC701. I didn't feel like starting to carry a weighty laptop around. plus, hardware-wise, it was a GREAT upgrade. but it was never meant for gaming... the thing is that I'm too stubborn to not try it every time I go on vacation. heh, skyrim worked great. but it was winter, then. lol. also, I have played many (oldish) games on it. just, not in summer.

eeepc specs: celeron @900Mhz, 512 Mb ram, intel GMA915, 7" screen. I was SO proud of it... (it worked really great even with those specs).

I recommend the EVGA-brand 750 TI GTX card.

You've already upgraded your power supply a bit, but that particular card will run on a minimum 300-watt power supply, and it's a pretty good plug and play option. Also it's $110 or so on Amazon.

Or spend thirty bucks more and get the GTX 950, which has been doing everyone well for years.

But it's your call. Either way will do you very well. Congrats. :)

Assuming you want something new, it's a pretty tight budget to work with, but there are still some laptops that have dedicated graphics to give you a modest gaming experience. This is in contrast to other laptops which use integrated graphics that have much less power when it comes to gaming. At this price range, you'll have to consider laptops that come with AMD CPU's instead of Intel, but it's still viable. Here are a few suggestions:

Acer Aspire V5-552-X814

HP Pavilion 15-n220us

The above laptops are around $600, but you should be able to find them for less.

If you'd like something really portable, consider the Dell Venue Pro 11. It's a 10 inch tablet which runs a full Windows 8.1 and it can handle some of the games on your list, such as Civ 5 and LoL. Another one to consider is the Asus T100. Both of these tablets are in the $500 range.

If you're willing to consider buying a used laptop, you will get much better performance given your budget. If you want to explore that path, I'd suggest visiting /r/hardwareswap to see if anyone is selling a suitable device. Something like a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 or a Lenovo Y50 would be great if you can get a deal on a used model.

If you can scrape up an extra 92 bucks...

https://www.amazon.com/Asus-X756UX-17-3-i5-6200U-NVIDIA/dp/B01NCAKQWP/

I know might be way beyond your budget but this is an amazing laptop at that price. 950 instead of the 940MX and 17 inch screen.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M5G7EQ3

This looks rather sweet too.

Althought that Acer you posted with the 15" screen for 519 looks solid. Man I'd love to have one of those myself haha.

Wish I could afford a laptop that could do some gaming.

I just bought a 1650 a few weeks ago purely because it was the best without an additional power connector (for my stock Dell 265W power supply lol). I would go that over the 1050Ti - they're close enough in price and the 1650 is sufficiently better that it's not worth getting the older card imo.

However, if you can upgrade your PSU you'd get more performance out of a better card with an external power cable - the main selling point of the 1650 to me is that it doesn't need more than the 75W from the motherboard, and it's a little pricey for performance if you don't care about the low power requirements. The 1660 or 1660 Ti would be a better bet if you had more power to play with and wanted to stick with Nvidia like I did. I hear good things about the RX570, can't say much more than that though.

After lots of research between different cards I bought this 1650 (below), and it's been working great so far. Very quiet operation (as far as I can tell, I usually wear headphones) and only 75W power requirement.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07QPXT4NG

Hope this helps!

On RAM I get the feeling there's some variants of the R14 but I found this CNET page:

https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-aspire-r-14/specs/

Says 1 memory slot and 1 memory slot free. I don't know if that means 2 total or just the one. I mean how can it have memory and one slot "free"? I'v probably putting more thought into this than CNET did. Anyway it's max memory is 12 gigs. So unless you have a different variant you should be able to upgrade the RAM.

A 120 gig hard drive should be able to handle the OS and games this thing will run without much issue. Unless you really have to try and run GTA V or something. My GPDWin only has 64 gigs of internal storage and I have maybe 20 games installed. They're little games that can "run on a potato" though.

The specs on the CNET page mentions a USB 3 port. So you could use this USB 3 SSD drive and get - well not SATA speeds - but still pretty fast.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XNN2WQM/

Not to say $100 on this old laptop is that worth while but it is fast drive and it would add some space.

Also-also - and I'm just assuming you're using windows 10 here - if you have had this laptop for a year or two and upgraded to the latest 10 version as prompted you may want to think about wiping out the hard drive installing windows fresh. You'll free up so much storage this way.

https://www.amazon.com/Asus-SABERTOOTH-X99-LGA2011-V3-Motherboard/dp/B00VUK54F0

I don't remember if this is the exact board, but some of the newer Asus motherboards for Xeon chipsets still support XP due to server/enterprise environments. I was surprised as well for laptops, specifically a Panasonic Toughbook CF-C1, a laptop released in 2011, still had XP drivers, again, due to it being a business/enterprise laptop.

Also, XP 64 unlike 32 I think has no 16 bit emulation layer for 95/etc, type stuff.

The magic of an SSD on a PC is moving only what you wanted sped up onto it. Personally, I put my OS and any games newer than 2015 on it. The rest go to a rather slow 1TB internal which I use for short term storage and usable stuff.

Skyrim has questionable load times when I played it a few years back. Worth speeding up, maybe just get a smaller drive to put games you want to load quickly?

IIRC 240gb was like $30-$40 for cheap ones on amazon (back them up weekly JIC), which would make the bottle neck either your graphics card or amount of RAM or single core processor speed. Heck, 512 Samsung EVO are $80ish, definitely the most effective and cheapest upgrade if you haven’t already done it yet.

Bonus: I’ve been using a older one as my boot drive for a while now, it takes longer to type in my 12 digit password than it takes to boot to the login screen. It’s glorious

If you were to buy something like this and add this graphics card you'd have a system that's a LOT better for gaming than your MacBook. You won't have a ton of options for upgrading without replacing the power supply. And you'll probably want to add another hard drive. But for something straight forward and inexpensive it's not a bad setup. This video has some examples of what a system like this is like.

EDIT: but of course your best bet is going to be used PCs on local classifieds. Easy things to look for are CPUs with at least 4 cores. And PCs with decent newer graphics cards or high end older graphics

Here's the laptop: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M18UZF5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_2ID0AbMS4HNPH

(The 7th gen i5 model.)

Note that I don't have the laptop yet, this is what my friend will lend me when I go on a trip, I would bring my desktop with me if I could but oh well :(.

I usually play games like Rainbow Six Siege and Far Cry 5 on my desktop, will this laptop atleast play these games on the lowest settings? If not, can I at least play games like Rimworld, Prison Architect and Divinity Original Sins 2? And if so at what graphics settings?

Thank you in advance.

Hi guys! Can I play efficiently Battle Brothers and Stoneshard on this laptop?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/14-1-Full-Windows-Laptop-Dual-Band/dp/B07D5H84NL/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?keywords=gaming+laptop&qid=1570117878&s=gateway&sr=8-6


Battle brothers spec :

MINIMUM:
OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10
Processor: 1.2 Ghz
Memory: 1024 MB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL 3.3 compatible video card with 512 MB
Storage: 1500 MB available space
Additional Notes: Make sure your video drivers are up-to-date!
RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10
Processor: 2+ Ghz
Memory: 2048 MB RAM
Graphics: OpenGL 3.3 compatible video card with 1024 MB
Storage: 1500 MB available

Stoneshard:

MINIMUM:
OS: Windows 7/8/10
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 or equivalent
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 7600 512 Mb or equivalent
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 500 MB available space
Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card
RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows 7/8/10
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 or equivalent
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 7600 512 Mb or equivalent
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 500 MB available space
Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card

Thanks!!

That RAM is intended for servers/workstations, and won't work with an Optiplex 390; you need unbuffered non-ECC memory. Something like this would work, though it's much more expensive as buffered ECC RAM isn't exactly in high demand. For what it's worth Dell's manuals are usually outdated, and underestimate the max amount of RAM you can use. That i3 supports 8GB sticks so your max is really 16GB, although it doesn't make much sense to use that much RAM.

The 750 Ti is still a good choice, but it's getting long in the tooth. A 1050 Ti is the most powerful 75W card out there, although with prices starting at $145 and only going up it might be a bit out of reach. 1050's are still more powerful than a 750 Ti but those start at $115ish new. The Radeon RX 460/560 are worth considering too, and are priced similarly to the Nvidia options. Really it comes down to what deals are available to you. I'd go for the cheapest of the 4 cards I mentioned if you can, and a 750 Ti otherwise.

At first it looks like an interesting offer, however my google returned this:

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-i3650-3133SLV-Desktop-Silver/product-reviews/B019TTJDY6

From where I quote:

> starsWorks in a somewhat limited way, but has serious limitations on abilityto upgrade

The dude notes issues with CPU and RAM upgrades. For that price, I would not consider them issues but...

> A study in cost minimization results in; "The WALMART MACHINE"
>
> ...
>
> And where are the slots? There are like no slots any more. Have we gotten to the point that nobody needs to add any cards to any machines, like ever? its a very cheap non upgradeable system. Dell has not published the wattage of the Inspiron 3650 power supply.
this model has a BGA motherboard, that does not allow you to upgrade the processor, without replacing the motherboard.

Another user notes you have one vidcard slot. Be warned GT730 is garbage. It would be garbage even on my almost ten years old Athlon. It's easy: when you read DDR3 on a card --> garbage not worth owning much less paying.

Now, the point: rock bottom mainboard like this don't in fact support better cards. Well, they do on paper but your mileage will vary. Besides, with that PSU you'll have an hard time.

Download it. /s

I have that processor and those graphics in my laptop (and an amd dedicated gpu but I usually disable it). I would definitely suggest another stick of ram because it'll double the bus size that the igpu (integrated gpu) can access, therefore a higher effective memory speed. It can take DDR3-1600 204 pin SO-DIMM sticks.

Patriot is good, here's a 4GB stick for $30: https://www.amazon.com/Patriot-1600MHz-PC3-12800-SODIMM-PSD34G1600L2S/dp/B009WIW8CO/

$550

Honestly maybe playing some WOW or older stuff. I have a desktop for some big boy games. MOST of my time is streaming ISO files, browsing and ripping stuff

I just hate knowing I can spend about $140 or so and get a dedicated

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N0HKA02/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ALSNNIPTIUDG2


And this one with an HD 620 looks great for the price





Here is what I was looking at

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-E5-575-33BM-15-6-Inch-Processor-Generation/dp/B01K1IO3QW/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1494377559&sr=1-3&keywords=acer+laptop

SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive, or similar, if you have a USB 3.0 connection; SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 64GB USB 2.0, or similar, if not. Easy to leave in place without worrying about destroying the drive or port. I've had good experience with the SanDisk line of micro USB thumb-drives. I have one plugged in to my dash in the truck, another in a portable radio, and a third in a netbook. No issues. I use them to hold music mainly; but video, documents, pics, etc do just fine for storage/retrieval. You could go with portable HDD if you need a ton more room, they work for the same application(s) you just cannot plug it in and forget the way you can the micro thumb-drives.

You could get away with the same application on an SD card, though for video you will want to check and see what SD bus speed your rig supports. The latest, UHS II, has throughput comparable to USB 3.0 thumbdrives/HDDs.

If you are thinking of trying to load games on an external device you will want to look at external SSD's. They have the best throughput based on your available connection type (3.0, C, Thunderbolt). USB 3.0 SSD's have about 4x the transfer rate of 3.0 HDDs. They are rather pricey though.

What's the price? okay, $560, not bad, but if you spend a bit more than $200 you can get something that gets 50fps in Mad Max instead of 20fps, but you said really light gamer so I'd say get the $560 one, I'm pretty sure that it's the best there is for less than $600

This is good:http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-i7559-763BLK-Full-HD-GeForce/dp/B015PYYDMQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1454130960&sr=8-3&keywords=GTX+960M

Have a look at this.
You can play but I'm not sure about future proofing.