My laptop is 7 years old starting to show it's age. I'm worried it will die soon so I've been looking for a replacement, but DAMN are decent laptops expensive these days.

I would like something powerful enough to play stuff like Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 and FF:7 Rebirth (And most importantly, Monster Hunter Wilds when it comes out) at a decent framerate. It also has to be a university laptop, so nothing covered in RGB lights that looks like an Alienware fucked a Cybertruck, please.

I don't want to spend a ton of money, but am I being unrealistic? I don't want to spend 5000 on a computer, that's ridiculous, my car cost less than that.

Yes it's a shitty car, that's not the point. Stop judging my poor ass.

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Have you considered a Steam Deck? Cheaper than a laptop and can play a good amount of modern games. You can get a dock for it to connect to a larger screen.

    I was playing Miles Morales on it and it looked sounded and played great. Also did you know the processors are code named Arieth and Sephiroth?

    I can play BG3 on it. It's functional. Looks....ok, but the fun with it is in the dialog. On PC you can mod the shit out of it too which you can then make everyone naked and big boned. 😉

    But it you are looking to play on a laptop with all the bells ans whistles expect to be spending over $2,000 at least..and at that point you might as well get a full blown desktop.

    • yoink [she/her]
      ·
      4 months ago

      worth noting that steam decks are still not 'officially' available in australia

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Will a Steam Decks play my GoG games and emulators though? I dunno, they're still pretty expensive in Australia and I'll be needing a laptop for work/uni anyway.

      I hear good things about them though... Hard choice for sure

      • The_sleepy_woke_dialectic [he/him]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Yes and emudeck will set all your emulators up for you and you only have to drop the roms and bioses in their respective folders

        /SNES /GBA /PSP etc.

        It handles all the controller bindings and adds all your roms directly to your steam library complete with cover art and organized by console into folders.

        It's a pretty capable PC for the price too.

          • The_sleepy_woke_dialectic [he/him]
            ·
            4 months ago

            I hope so too! Hey do you get chinese computers for cheap over there? Here in the states we can't buy xaiomi or Huawei products anymore and there are a few nice looking ones.

      • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Emulators yes. They have a Linux desktop underneath it. I'm sure you can play the GOG games but it might take a bit of playing with. Steam runs the games through a compatability layer called Proton.

        Here's a step by step