Gaming Laptop Alienware R5 - £2000 budget

Hi all,

Been a long time since I've been in the market for a computer, let alone a gaming laptop.

Budget: £2000 approx

Size wise I'm looking at either a 17" or would consider a 15"

Any recommendations on the screen? G-Sync? 1080 - 1440 - 2160? 60Hz or 144Hz? G-Sync? Not really sure whats best seems to be a tossup between lower res but better refresh rate or high res but 60Hz. What would be best for gaming (MMO's, RPGs, MOBAs some FPS)

GPU ideally to be suited to the screen, so 1070 or 1080 (can a 1080 really squeeze out enough for 4k?)

Is the i9 worth the massive cost increase? I can't see what improvement it would make for gaming over the i7.

I have previously looked at the Razer Blade Pro 17" however after watching a few videos I'm very concerned about cooling, or total lack of vents. Is the cooling much better on the Alienware 17 R5?

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This is the rough build I've gone with so far:

Processor
8th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-8750H (6-Core, 9MB Cache, up to 4.1GHz w/ Turbo Boost) >> i9 worth it or not?

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64bit, English, Dutch, French, German, Italian

Color Choice
Silver >> Will be changing to Black option not avaialble on website

Video Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 OC with 8GB GDDR5 >> Worth upgrading to a GTX 1080? Can they even do this without also upgrading to i9?

LCD << Not sure on this one the options are as follows:
17.3 inch FHD (1920 x 1080) 60Hz IPS Anti-Glare 300-nits NVIDIA G-SYNC Enabled- Silver Chassis
17.3 in QHD (2560 x 1440) 120Hz TN+WVA AG 400-nits NVIDIA G-SYNC, Tobii Eye-tracking
17.3 in UHD (3840 x 2160) 60Hz IPS AG 300-nits NVIDIA G-SYNC w/ Tobii IR Eye-tracking-Silver Chassis


Memory
8GB, DDR4, 2400MHz; up to 32GB >> Worth upgrading to 16Gb?

Hard Drive
256GB PCIe M.2 SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD

Wireless
Killer 1550 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0

Keyboard
Internal UK/Irish (QWERTY) Backlit Keyboard

£1800​

Thanks for the advice as always

 

I think the UHD panel is 400 nits if it's the AUO one. Someone here mentioned that they also do a Sharp 4K which is 300 nits, so they say "300 nits". I think the Sharp is not G-Sync.

The +£400 for the i9 is extortion. However I cannot see a combo with the GTX 1080 without the i9 - unless you look at the R4. I also had decided that I did not need the i9 but then I do not remember what happened and I ended up with it.

I personally cannot see why a 144Hz/120Hz panel would be better than the 60Hz. Would I be able to see the difference if you did not tell me which is which? Because there is a huge difference when you look at a 4K screen (vs FHD) and the added bonus that the AUO has fantastic colours and brightness.

The GTX 1080 can *just* keep up on the 4K screen however I presume that a 2K screen @ 120Hz would pose the same load more or less. I am getting average 41 FPS on the Far Cry 5 test and it is GPU bound. I could OC the GPU maybe, others have done it successfully, but how much more would I get?

I would not bother with 8GB RAM, this is how much is on the 1080! Modern games and software (those browsers) eat into it so quickly then it starts to swap on the disk and slows down - I'd go for 32GB unless you are planning to buy the memory after market however when I was looking I did not find memory cheaper than Dell so I just went ahead and got the 32GB.

 

The i9 is worth it if you do CPU intensive tasks like rendering or gfx design / mining, it's overkill for gaming and not needed now or within the next few years in my opinion.

The GTX1080 is a worthy upgrade for sure, especially if you go QHD or 4K screen (I.e. it's future proof, 1080p will likely be dead/dying in a couple of years). The GTX 1080 overclocked can run most / all games at 4K at 60 FPS with medium / high settings depending on the game. An i7 is perfectly adequate to feed a GTX1080.

So screens can be decided like as follows:

• Hardcore gamers, casual FPS gamers or gamers who are used to a 120Hz display - Go QHD (2K)
• Casual gamers who are used to 60FPS who watch movies and are into graphic design or are very picky on contrast and colour accuracy - Go UHD (4K)
• A compromise, have less than a GTX1070 or less money to spend or again are very picky on contrast and colour accuracy - Go FHD (1080p)

 

For me there is a BIG difference. Best way to see this is to see this side by side a game running at QHD 120FPS and G-sync next to 60FPS. Difference in smoothness is night and day. Any hardcore or casual FPS gamer will notice this

5-10% tops, not a lot of difference at that low framerate. Do you have a 4K screen and a GTX1080?

Spot on advice, I agree

 

Maybe 120Hz is observably more fluid, however 4K > 120Hz in my opinion. This 4K 60Hz screen has been around for ages, I hope they produce a 120Hz soon, along with a new series of VGAs.

Yes that is the combination I have.

 

Fair enough, each to their own I guess

 

I got mine with the i9 1080 gtx 32gb of ram and 256SSD and 1tb and qhd G-sync panel for £2500 when they had 15% off, which will come around again soon i'm sure. if you went with the 1080 screen and 16gb of ram thatll be around £2k with 15% off. I started off the same, had a budget then thought if im spending this much i might as well go all the way and not think dam i should have got the best spec i could at the time, but thats just me.

 

As long as you are not aiming for 4k with high fps screen, 1070 is currently more then enough. i9 is overkill, it runs hot even on 4 ghz with stock paste and will need lm repaste if you want to get it higher. 8750h is incredibly fast cpu on its own and will perform the same as 8950hk without lm repaste. 16gb ram is enough for gaming. My advice: 8750h 1070 16 gb ram and a alienware graphic amp in 2 years with recent gpu, that will blow any 1070 or 1080 out of the water.