Shall I buy a desktop or a laptop?

10 years ago, I switched from having the latest and greatest desktops to laptops.I used to upgrade to a new laptop every year until finally my dream came true. To get a proper desktop replacement which is my Alienware 18.

It's running fine but I hate the idea that I cannot upgrade it to a 980GTX or one of those super Intel 750 PCIe SSDs....... I chase benchmarks and performance. I buy expensive toys to play benchmarks as that is what satisfies me...

With my Alienware 18 I am now very limited to the 2.5" SSDs, no M2 or PCIe SSDs, average screen.

I am tempted to build a desktop with a 4970K CPU running @ 4.40 GHz outside the box and like a triple Titan X in SLI setup along with that Intel 750 PCIe 1.2TB SSD but something in my always makes me cancel the order and exit the page after I have configured my PC on XOTIC PC because after adding all the bells and whistles like 1500W Corsair PSU, 32 GB of 2133 MHz RAM, Triple Titan Xs, Redline BoostOverclocking of both the CPU and GPU, it adds up to almost 9000 USD so I am scared to hit the order button and then when the new Sager laptops which I hope would have a Dual 980M GTX in SLI mode + a desktop CPU are released, I might regret my decision.

But still, getting a desktop means I am no longer limited and when a new CPU is released I can simply upgrade it or worst case scenario get a new motheborard + RAM and the CPU since I already have the case and the GPUs and SSDs/HDDs......

I am in a loss and don't know what to do. This is supposed to be my 31st birthday gift.

What I like most about the desktop build is the fact that I can get thew new ASUS PG278Q and have a large silky smooth screen thanks to G-Sync but in a laptop I am limited to the tiny 17.3" or even 18.4" which I consider the minimum screen size for enjoying anything I'm doing.

What I like about the desktop replacements is the fact that everything is in one small box, no external keyboard, monitor, connections, power supply, etc, it is very convenient.

My Alienware 18 rarely left my home, I do have Vindicator backpack which I once used to take it to a vacation I went to Turkey but that's about it. I mean I like the idea of being able to easily move the laptop *if* I ever need to but the limitations kill me

And if you're thinking why not get the desktop and the Alienware 18 for when I need to move; I can't, this expensive present for my wife has a 10K USD budget but I'd have to sell the laptop to get back some of the money we don't want to have 2 expensive gadgets in the house where only 1 would be used primarily.

Please help me clear my mind.

@Mr. Fox
@Papusan
@TomJGX
@octiceps
@HTWingNut

 

Titan X in SLI on an ROG Swift with whatever accessories you like and cheap upgrades whenever you like, desktop is obviously the way to go if you don't need the portability of a laptop.

 

I have all those things you mentioned and I love it, but build it yourself for sure. There's going to be insane markup on a build like that if you don't do it yourself

 

If you don't need mobility, get a desktop. And build it yourself.

 

Awesome! That ROG Swift and the 4970K are the most tempting thing for me right now. I saw the review of the ROG Swift and the smoothness made me drool.

Now on XOTIC PC, they have a lot of dekstops to choose from, Elite Systems, Xtreme Systems.

I am guessing I should go with the Xtreme Systems but which one?

They have Carnage, Executioner, Scourge V2, Synge, Tytan, and Powered by ASUS......

I am confused as to which base model to go for ?

Also when it comes to the choice of motheboards......which one shall I choose?

Another very important question is, it says the ASUS motherboard has 4 PCIe slots so if I want to add a Creative Sound Card and the Intel 750 PCIe SSD I should be careful not to choose more than a Dual Titan X in SLI setup because if I choose Triple or Quad Titans they would occupy more slots and thus limit my upgradability in the future? correct me if I'm wrong

 

Yea I would not go beyond 2 cards for an SLI setup, scaling past 2 cards in the majority of games makes the performance increase on the 3rd card negligible at best, and for motherboard I definitely prefer Asus to any other brand

 

Alright bro thanks, can you please help me choose a computer from XOTIC PC? I am confused as to which one, which case, which mobo....rest I can figure myself.... but the choices are a lot and confuse me

 

I'll take a look at their offerings in a bit, currently working from home so helping out customers still but I'll check through it

 

Control your urges for a few more months until Skylake is out. You're buying old technology at this point.

 

this is also some good advice, don't want to have to buy a whole new motherboard when that happens

 

I knew that is the wise choice just wanted someone to tell me. Thanks I'll wait then

I appreciate all your help guys

 

Well I did tell you the same thing when you asked about getting a new beast notebook before this

 

well, there is one thing about desktop. THEY ARE BORING(imo), unless you are into custom case/cooling. everything is modular, plug and play and there is so much thermal/electrical headroom that you don't need to worry about anything when OCing. Sure, you can snap fan/lights in it but meh.

After finishing the desktop, people turn to accessories, but there is nothing stopping laptop user from toying with accessories.

at the end of the day, desktop performances is unraveled . if high fps/numbers matters, then desktop it is.

 

Well, I'm probably done with laptops now also... unless Clevo releases an X99 beast with 5960X and dual GPU. Then I might consider giving laptops one more shot at impressing me. I'm extremely unimpressed by everything mobile now that everything has basically turned to crap.

Honestly though, don't waste your time with a desktop quad core. 4790K physics performance isn't much different than 4930MX or 3920XM in all of the benchmarks I have seen. Maybe just a tiny bit better, but not enough to get excited about. In my personal opinion, desktop quad core is a waste of money and too much of a compromise to entertain the idea. I am probably going to build a desktop monster again in the near future, but it needs to have at least a 6 core, preferrably 8 core CPU.

I'm seriously considering the possibility of kicking NVIDIA in the face and buying AMD cards even though I see their products as inferior. I'm just livid about the stuff NVIDIA is doing. By the time I get around to doing this, AMD might actually have something that interests me... or, I might change my mind, take the selfish road, and forget about settling for AMD to spite NVIDIA. Will have to wait and see what kind of mood I am in and what AMD and NVIDIA are doing when the time comes.

I need to save up about $7,000 to $8,000 for the parts, including a good keyboard and monitors (none of which I own because I never use them with my beast laptops). After about 8 or 9 years of being a high performance laptop enthusiast and playing games with the beast in my lap, the thought of having to sit at a desk to use it really makes me want to puke. I sit at a desk for work and when work is done I don't want to be at a desk any more, but I'm not paying good money for a piece of trash BGA laptop... period. If I wanted to own trash I would just get a Chromebook.

I'll probably go with an X99 octa-core Extreme CPU, triple GPU, and phase-change cooling system like the one shown below. But not in a white case... way too ugly, plus reminds me too much of crApple, so I totally hate that white look... will be an open chassis bench frame or something all black... and super massively huge and heavy, probably on caster wheels, if I go with an enclosed case.

 

Yea my next cpu will be an 8 core for sure, I want it to be total beast mode, with a curved asus gsync 4k monitor and murderbox case

 

I copied some from @octiceps : Control your Urges for a few more months until Skylake is out. You're buying old technology that this point. Wait to see what comes of high end laptops. If you can not find something or recommended on div forum, might consider building a desktop pc later with Extreme CPU and extreme liquid cooling (Integrated Phase Change system or simmilar). Be sure you acquire the technology of tomorrow. Take time to decide what you want otherwise you're going to regret you. 7-10.000 $ is a lot of money if you regret your purchase. Do not select Aw Area-51 R2. Nice design but there are restrictions on motherboard and software. Remember Dell programming the bios.... I built me PCs several years ago with phase cooling and powerful hardware. It was quite fun with hardware that kept freezing temperatures. But this is not a cheap hobby .
An example of cabinet with extreme cooling for you... http://www.ldcooling.com/shop/l/209-ld-pc-v10-phase-change-white.html
http://www.ldcooling.com/shop/ld-pc-v10-115v-usa/87-ld-pc-v10-115v-usa-phase-change.html
This I used before (in mid-2000's). Asetek Vapochill Lightspeed. Had 2 pieces of this one. The quality is certainly better today than 10-12 years ago. http://www.tek.no/artikler/asetek_vapochill_lightspeed/15483

 

LoL. This was my thought.

 

Yeah not gonna lie, my custom watercooling setup was 70% "I just want something to play with" and 30% "I could use better cooling".

@Mr. Fox Sounds like CaseLabs would be perfect what you want then -- all aluminum construction with no cheap plastic anywhere, and top of the line fit and finish. I seriously considered one when I started my watercooling project, but spending $500+ on a case just seemed insane to me, so stuck with my Enthoo Primo instead. (not a bad case by any stretch, and probably one of the best "mainstream" cases on the market, but it's no CaseLabs)

@Matrix Leader6: If you're serious about NVMe then either wait for Skylake (Z170) or go X99. Z97's NVMe support appears to be rather subpar, if you compare TechReport's results with HardwareCanucks'.

And definitely build it yourself, it's part of the fun and pride of owning a desktop, plus you end up saving money and have full control over how you want to setup everything.

 

Just gonna repeat what others have already said.
Since you don't take your lappy to places, yes, a desktop would be a much smarter buy. Build it yourself, at least choose parts yourself (PCPartPicker is a nice place to do it), order. If assembly is not your thing, shops usually can do it for a small fee, though some of them do a lousy job of cable management.
If you can wait, wait for Intel, nVidia, and AMD to release their new hardware. It should literally be around the corner.
3 way SLI... Honestly I don't see it worth it. I don't even see 2 way SLI worth it. But between those two I would just go for 2 way SLI, because some games don't scale very well, and "sandwiched" GPU will run pretty hot, unless you have some nice cooling.
If, however, you will need to have something portable, you might want to check out something like Surface 3 or a similar tablet PC. Have a real PC home for all serious work and a small tablet PC with a nice battery on the road.

 

That is one heck of a beast case! We are in the same boat of disappointment with the current laptop offerings. Nothing worth being excited about, this is the worst time to buy a laptop IMO and there's nothing out there that will get me excited like in the old days of the Alienware 18s.

Now speaking of more cores, from the Benchmarks I saw on Anandtech, even though the 5960X has 8 cores/ 20 MB Cache, the 4970K beats it in single threaded apps that don't make use of multi cores very well or in games since the base clock of the 5960X is a very sad 3.0 with a stock Turbo Boost of 3.5 GHz. Very poor for this day and age especially considering the price tag on that bad boy. Hence as Splintah recommended the 4970K is a much wiser choice since it comes with a 4.0 - 4.4 GHz stock speed giving you an easier overclock to 4.6 - 5.0 (with the right cooling)...

 

I actually ordered an Alienware Area 51 R2 from HIDevolution for about 10K USD with a triple Titan X in SLI mode setup / 5960X CPU but then I read on the forums that the DELL Motherboard cannot support a Triple Titan X in SLI mode I called them and showed them the thread on the Dell forums that states due to a BIOS limitation this setup will not work so they canceled the order. DELL didn't release a single BIOS update for the Ailenware Area 51 R2 since October 2014 and although I love their case more than anything, I don't want to shell out 10K for a system that's limited on upgrades that's no different than buying a laptop although I really really love it

 

Who says you have to run stock clock speed? If you are lucky silicone lottery then you know what can happen .
I actually ordered an Alienware Area 51 R2 from HIDevolution for about 10K USD with a triple Titan X in SLI mode setup / 5960X CPU but then..............
Tried to warn you About Dell desktops earlier with a couple of posts.

 

This is a nice video on the subject.


Splintah wasn't wrong in suggesting a quad-core CPU over octa-core. Octa-cores will only shine when you do multiple tasks at once - gaming, streaming, encoding (basically what video says).
If you don't plan on running multiple heavy processes all at once, a quad-core with higher frequency is a smarter buy than octa-core with lower frequency. For now. Things will change, but it will take time, and by then you'll probably be looking at upgrading. Wait for Skylake, drop in DDR4, and you'll be all set for a few years.

That 4790K has a higher stock frequency, so it will overclock even better (mileage may vary based on silicone).

 

http://hwbot.org/benchmark/cpu_freq...Id=processor_3637&cores=8#start=0#interval=20

 

Are those stable overclocks, as in can a PC be used on a day to day basis?
LN2 says it's not.

 

H2o
Chilling and win the silicone lottery. But 4.5 GHz on all cores does not be so impossible.

 

EEK!! 6.6 GHz on the 5960X holy cow!

 

Quad-core i7 still gets better results . Well actually E8600 with water cooling holds a record on that website, while i5 is second . After that it's bunch of 2600Ks and 2700Ks
I don't think I need to post it, you should be able to find results on that same website.

You should look at AMD CPUs .

 

This is not much to speculate on. It's no wonder that this model is in enthusiast league.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_5960x_5930k_and_5820k_processor_review,2.html
H2o cooling http://hwbot.org/benchmark/cinebenc...637&cores=8#start=0#interval=20#coolingType=3

 

Well, I don't really care what the base and turbo clocks are because I virtually never use them, for anything. I do not even perform mundane tasks like web browsing and reading email with CPUs running at stock clock speeds. My 2920XM, 3920XM and 4930MX and 4930K all run 24/7 at 4.3GHz for normal everyday work and gaming, higher than that for benching. There's no substitute for more cores. Even the Xeon processors running half the speed of the desktop quad cores rape them because of having twice as many cores and threads. If clock speeds alone were enough to make for a good CPU, then AMD would have Intel by the short hairs, LOL. There's more to it than Gigahertz. Comparing a quad against a hexacore or octacore CPU is like expecting a V6 to have more horsepower than a V8 simply because it can rev to a higher RPM.

 

Found a PC for OP:

 

All those cores, still games worse than an i7-4790K

 

If you have the option of having a desktop for your needs, there is no reason to get a laptop. I've been debating selling my laptop and just upgrading my desktop to 980 Ti SLI because really the laptop is noisier, I have to actually monitor what the hardware is doing when I'm using it (my 4.7GHz 4790K doesn't pass 60C under load unless AVX is added in which case it still doesn't go over 80C thanks to my H100i), and I don't have need for portability.

 

You just have to get creative with the space that you have. I have learned that trick well

 

Ehh I'd keep the Clevo just for collection value LOL. Probably the last SLI machine of its kind unless Clevo continues the P570WM line, but even then the SM still remains a unique machine.

 

Exactly I'm never selling my 18 with sli 880m. I like to collect alienwares I guess

 

Yeah well I get less than 1400 a month in income so the only way I could afford such a thing would be to sell the machine.

 

Sell... your body? j/k

Btw if anybody is eyeing the Intel NVMe drives, hold off for just a sec, Phison demoed their exciting NVMe controller at Computex. The benchmarks seem to indicate it will have DC P3700 like performance (DC P3700 is the enterprise version of Intel's 750 NVMe drive) but of course real performance remains to be seen in the final retail product. Still pretty exciting times ahead of us!

 

I would say no to that idea. Even if you get 1400/month it's the sentimental value that remains and you find it again til someone else sells there laptop. Like it me took me forever to find a XPS M1730 and now that I have it I won't sell it because someone wants it.

 

My M17xR1 is my sentimental machine lol.

 

https://eu.alienwarearena.com/forum...al-support-1/alienware-area-51-r2-motherboard @Matrix Leader6 you must be very glad/happy that you did not buy this garbage... These things have I known for a long time. Never buy a gaming desktop from oem's. Never...

 

Oh my next build will be from Origin PC, they are 3 guys that used to work for Alienware that opened this company and it is a true best that is fully upgradeable without the stupid limitations of Alienware

Click Me to watch the g00dn3$$

 

They don't offer anything that you can't build yourself much cheaper.

 

Why not just build it yourself? You can get a 5960x/3x titan x/1.2tb intel 750 build for under 7k http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pgbsrH

 

Because I lack the time and experience bro

 

You will gain some XP and level up after you build one yourself. As for time, surely you can spare half an hour to assemble the build.

 

Unless you plan on doing extensive water cooling (custom loop) it really shouldn't take more than 2 hours to put together. It's pretty easy, and there is thousands of guides online. The biggest pain is plugging in the front panel connectors, but most motherboards now a days come with them pre-labeled.

 

That's one of the biggest hassles for me, the motherboard connecters you know those small tiny cables that connect the power, Front USB ports, etc. and water cooling, I want a water cooling setup which I've never done before

 

Even if you are doing watercooling I would still recommend building it yourself, because imagine something goes wrong with the cooling. If you have put it together yourself you know exactly how to get it working again after a failure, and half the fun of a watercooling build is putting it together, because honestly you could just put a pre-built Corsair water cooling on it and get the same results. Also one of the benefits to using a Corsiar water cooler is that if that thing breaks and spills all over your 3,000 dollars worth of GPU, Corsair will actually cover you for it. I personally wouldn't take a risk of watercooling with such expensive parts though, but that's personal preference.

 

Bruh thte last desktop I built before the one in my sig was in 2004 (technically 2003 since all I did was upgrade the GPU from 8500 to 9800 Pro in 2004 lol). So also 11 years in between. It'll take some reading sure, because things sure have changed a lot in 11 years, but it's really not that complicated or hard.

ftfy

But it all depends, if you just want to hook everything up and have the computer working and don't care about dangling or messy wires ruining aesthetics, you can forget cable management ever existed.

If you want a watercooling setup then all the more reason to build one yourself. If nothing else you need to clean out the watercooling loop at least once a year, so even if you get someone else to do it for you (at a huge cost), you still need to know how to maintain it, so might as well just learn to do everything yourself.