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It’s been a truism that with every CPU and GPU upgrade, game designers have pushed the envelope and made use of every ounce of performance and then some. But RAM requirements had been holding steady. That’s starting to change. Read the requirements for the newest gaming titles and you’ll see the same increases in CPU and GPU recommendations. That’s natural, because as Intel and AMD produce faster products, game developers do everything they can to squeeze out every ounce of performance. Often, that means pushing things beyond the current generation with anticipation of faster CPUs and GPUs to come. For the last ten years or more, the recommended RAM has mostly held steady at 16GB. That is starting to change. Today, several games are including 32GB of RAM in their recommendations, primarily for running at 4K and/or with ray tracing turned on. Here come RAM hungry games The following are a couple of examples of ultra-demanding games that might make you want to consider configuring your next PC gaming PC with 32GB, or upgrading your existing machine. Returnal Returnal originally recommended 32GB of RAM but took that back when the game was released. The implication is that 32GB is likely a good idea, but it’s a lot to swallow especially with DDR5 RAM being so expensive. Right now, its specifications show the following: Minimum CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB RAM: 16GB DDR4 Medium CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT RAM: 16GB DDR4 Recommended CPU: Intel Core i7-8700 or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT RAM: 16GB DDR4 Epic CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 10GB or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT RAM: 32GB DDR4 Ray Tracing CPU: Intel Core i7-11900K or AMD Ryzen 9 5900K GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6590 XT RAM: 32GB DDR4 Diablo IV This title pushes the envelope when it comes to RAM requirements. Low-end CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD FX-8350 GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon R9 280 RAM: 8GB Medium CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K or AMD Ryzen 1300X GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 470 RAM: 16GB High-end CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT RAM: 16GB 4K CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 40 Series for DLSS3, or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT RAM: 32GB Which games benefit the most from more RAM? Even if a game doesn’t require 32GB, many will run much better than with 16GB. This is particularly true for multiplayer games where you can host your own server. In that case, you’ll want as much RAM as possible as you add more players. But that’s not the only kind of game where more RAM is helpful. Games with extremely immersive environments and ultra-high-quality graphics can use more RAM. This depends in part on how much VRAM (video RAM) your GPU has installed, because if a game’s graphics max out VRAM then the overflow goes to normal RAM. Games that use large maps can also take up more RAM. The larger the map, the more elements of the virtual environment that need to be stored. Some games have incredibly large maps that can use as much RAM as you’re willing to throw at them. Examples of games that can use a lot of RAM include Ark: Surival Evolved, Star Citizen, Galactic Civilization 3, and Microsoft Flight Simulator. Some of these are older games that have received updates over the years increasing their requirements for the best performance. While you can still get away with 16GB of RAM with most games, if you want to future-proof your gaming PC, then 32GB is the way to go. Can you allocate more RAM to a game? Windows 11 allows you to allocate more RAM to any program that needs it. That’s important if you’re multitasking, that is, if you’re running other applications along with your game. In fact, the more you multitask, the more RAM you’ll need. If you’re a heavy multitasker who also runs high-end games, then 32GB of RAM or more is a wise investment. To allocate more RAM to a game, you simply need to open the Windows Task Manager, select the Details tab on the left-hand side, right-click on the game’s executable, and select “High” under “Set Priority.” That will allocate more resources to the game, including RAM. Note, though, that this means your other background applications will receive less RAM. Again, that argues to add as much RAM to your PC as you can afford. The more RAM, the better (usually) As applications, not just games, become more complex and demanding, the need for RAM continues to increase. There was a time when 8GB of RAM was sufficient, but today, you’ll want to opt for at least 16GB of RAM. If you’re buying a laptop, then you’re probably stuck with whatever amount you buy up front, so plan carefully. Heavy gamers should start considering 32GB as the norm, especially if they multitask. And it won’t be too long before you’ll be required to run with 32GB if you want the best experience.

A few factors influence the gaming laptop experience more than the display. Performance is first on the list – without a fast enough CPU and GPU, frame rates will suffer when you run your preferred games at the resolutions you want and with the desired features turned on. The keyboard is also important, given that it’s one of the most important tools for interacting with the gaming environment, and the mouse is just as important. But without a quality display, the entire gaming experience can be ruined. Poor colors, low contrast and brightness, slow refresh rates – all can contribute to a disappointing experience no matter how fast the laptop. That’s why recent developments in display technology are so welcome. There are several display technologies that have been used in gaming laptops over the years. Those include IPS, TN, and VA. More recently, we have OLED displays making a splash and even more recently mini-LED displays are the latest and greatest. A quick survey of the gaming laptop field shows that IPS, OLED, and mini-LED are the most popular and most important technologies, and so those are the ones we’re going to focus on here. IPS: it just keeps getting better In-plane switching (IPS) displays took over the laptop market in general years ago, and they’re the most popular among all kinds of machines. That includes gaming laptops, where their wide viewing angles, great colors, and potentially high refresh rates are great qualities for gaming. And IPS displays have been getting better over the last few years, with the average display having wider and more accurate colors, higher brightness, and better contrast. The biggest improvement for gamers in IPS displays is in their refresh rates, which is important if you want tear-free and smooth gaming visuals. The higher the refresh rate, the more frames per second the display can show. You can get up to a whopping 480Hz refresh rate on the Dell Alienware X17 R2 and M17 R5. Those are Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) panels at 17.3 inches, and so you’re trading sharpness for refresh rates, and 480Hz is overkill. But more meaningfully, you can easily find 240Hz displays at QHD+ (2,560 x 1,600) and higher resolutions. Given how demanding modern titles are, few laptops that will push even 240 frames per second, meaning a 240Hz display is plenty for the vast majority of gamers. See Deals on Dell Alienware Laptops Where IPS displays aren’t the best is in their response time, which usually ranges from between 1ms to 5ms or sometimes more. This matters most to competitive gamers where a slower response time can result in lag that can make a difference between winning and losing a battle. OLED makes for beautiful colors and inky blacks Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays have become more popular in gaming laptops over the last couple of years. Unlike IPS displays, that use light emitting diodes (LEDs) to shine light through liquid crystals, each OLED pixel is its own light source. OLED displays offer spectacularly wide and accurate colors, incredibly deep contrast, and decent brightness (although not always as bright as IPS). See Deals on OLED Gaming Laptops As an example, while the average premium IPS display covers around 75% of the AdobeRGB color gamut, the typical OLED display is closer to 100%. And color accuracy is usually under a DeltaE of 1.0, which is the standard for excellence, compared to the typical IPS display that can be closer to 2.0 (which is still very good). OLED displays also do better with high dynamic range (HDR) content thanks to their contrast, showing off a ton of detail in darker scenes. OLED panels are also available with fast refresh rates, up to 240Hz, with the Razer Blade 15 offering a QHD (2,560 x 1,440) OLED panel running at 240Hz. An additional advantage of OLED is that the technology provides for extremely fast response times, well under 1ms. The combination of high refresh rates and low response times makes for incredibly smooth, tear-free gaming. See Deals on Razer Gaming Laptops OLED displays use more power, and they can theoretically suffer from burn-in, where any static image that’s displayed on the screen can become a permanent fixture. But so far, it seems like burn-in hasn’t been a major problem with laptop displays. Mini-LED brings incredibly high brightness The most recent addition to the stable of gaming laptop displays is mini-LED, a technology that first appeared on Apple’s MacBook Pro. Like IPS displays, mini-LED panels also use LEDs to shine light through liquid crystals. The difference is that the LED lighting zones are much smaller and can be individually controlled. That allows for more contrast (deeper blacks) and mini-LED displays can also be a lot brighter, up to a theoretical 1,600 nits on the MacBook Pro compared to an average of 400 nits for premium IPS panels. Mini-LED displays also offer wider colors than IPS but not as wide as OLED, and they’re also very accurate. Their contrast rivals that of OLED displays, but their brightness is much higher. That makes mini-LED great for HDR content, and the first gaming laptops with the technology were released just this year. Note that mini-LED displays don’t offer the fast response rates of OLED, coming in closer to IPS panels in this metric. A great example is the Razer Blade 16, which has a 16-inch mini-LED dual-display panel that can run at UHD+ (3,840 x 2,400) and 120Hz or Full HD+ (1,920 x 1,200) at 240Hz. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 also offers a mini-LED display that runs at QHD+ and 240Hz, with a peak brightness of 1,100 nits and a response rate of 3ms. If you want to run modern games that offer HDR, then mini-LED is the best option. See Deals on Mini LED Gaming Laptops The future is bright The only problem with the dramatic improvement in gaming laptop displays is making the choice between technologies. For the most part, consider IPS the “budget” option and the one that offers the absolute highest refresh rates, while OLED is great if you also want to use your gaming laptop for creative work. Mini-LED is the best option for HDR content and for anyone who simply wants the brightest display.

Acer just announced its most powerful gaming laptop ever, the Predator Triton 17 X. It sports the latest in CPU, GPU, and display technology and starts out at a whopping $3,800. But it’s not alone. Here are a few other examples of the most powerful gaming machines available today. Acer Predator Triton 17 X It’s not just us calling the Predator Triton 17 X, to be available in May, Acer’s most powerful gaming laptop ever. That comes straight from Acer, and it’s no surprise. The machine is powered by the 55-watt Intel Core i9-13900HX, a 24-core, 32-thread CPU with eight Performance cores running at up to 5.4GHz and 16 Efficient cores running at up to 3.9GHz. It can ramp up to 157 watts on demand, making it an incredibly fast CPU. The Predator Triton 17 X can also equip Nvidia’s most powerful GPU, the GeForce RTX 4090 that utilizes the latest Ada Lovelace technology that includes advanced Shader Execution Reordering (SER), Nvidia’s third-generation ray tracing, and DLSS 3 that uses AI to provide better quality and even greater frame rate performance improvement. The machine toes the line between a conservative laptop and a gaming machine, with aggressive venting and per-key RGB lighting but without the ostentatious case design of some gaming laptops. And it’s built around a QHD+ (2,560 x 1,600) IPS display running at 240Hz and providing up to 500 nits of brightness. RAM can be configured up to 32GB of DDR5-5600MHz chips and up to a 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD. It’s a fast and attractive laptop that’s well worth its high price. Deals on Acer Gaming Laptops Razer Blade 16 Razer gaming laptops have one of the most iconic aesthetics, with the same black chassis that enjoys the same kind of elegant lines as Apple’s MacBook Pro. It’s a look that works anywhere, and the new Razer Blade 16 ups the screen size just slightly with a new dual mode 16:10 UHD+ (3,840 x 2,400) mini-LED display that runs at up to 120Hz at its full resolution and 240Hz at Full HD+ (1,920 x 1,200). It provides the best of both worlds when it comes to visual performance. Inside you’ll find up to the slightly faster Core i9-13950HX CPU and the RTX 4090, at a hefty price of $4,300. Drop down to an RTX 4060 and a QHD+ IPS display and you can spend $2,700. Either way, it’s an expensive laptop. The per-key RGB keyboard is excellent, as is the spacious touchpad. Performance is excellent and the look and feel are unparalleled among gaming laptops. The Razer Blade 16 offers an elegance that most gaming machines lacks, along with all the performance. Deals on Razer Gaming Laptops Alienware X16 Dell’s Alienware lineup is another iconic brand that melds unique aesthetics with high performance. The Alienware X16 is a prime example, with a thin and light chassis that sports a sleek and modern look. Packed inside is the Core i9-13900HK, a 14-core, 20-thread CPU that’s slower than the HX model in the other machines here but still fast enough for modern titles. You can equip up to the RTX 4090, with 32GB of LPDDR5-6000MHz RAM and 4TB of storage in RAID 0 thanks to two 2TB drives. Two QHD+ IPS panels are available, one running at 165Hz and the other at 240Hz. The Alienware X16 aims more for a sleek chassis than the utmost in gaming performance, and that meets the needs of a sizeable market. It’s not an inexpensive laptop, though, starting at $3,050 and maxing out at $4,000. But if you want a full-size laptop you can more easily carry around, then the Alienware X16 is a solid option. Deals on Alienware Gaming Laptops Asus Zephyrus G14 You can’t build a list of powerful gaming laptops without including AMD. The company’s latest Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs offer excellent gaming performance, and the Asus Zephyrus G14 is a more portable machine that still packs in tons of power. First there’s the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, an 8-core/16-thread CPU running at up to a 5.2GHz max boost rate. It’s mated with up to 32GB of fast DDR5-4800 RAM and up to a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. You can also choose up to the RTX 4090, meaning that you’ll get the fastest graphics performance available in a laptop today. And you’ll also enjoy a smaller laptop that’s 0.81 inches at its thickest point and weighs just 3.79 pounds. And its chassis, while not overtly gamer-oriented, features the Asus AniMe Matrix LED panel on the lid that can display text, animations, and more. The Asus ROG Nebula HDR display, a 16:10 mini-LED panel at a QHD+ resolution and offering up to a 165Hz refresh rate. The Zephyrus G14 offers a supremely powerful gaming laptop in a much more portable form factor. We don’t have pricing yet for the most powerful configurations, but it starts at around $1,800 for the AMD CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an RTX 4070. So, it’s likely to be less expensive at the high end than some other options on this list. Deals on Asus Gaming Laptops Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Lenovo’s Legion Pro 7i is notable for its attractive pricing, offering a configuration with a Core i9-13900HX CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and RTX 4080 for $2,680. It’s pricier at $3,600 when fully configured with an RTX 4090 and 32GB of RAM, but it performs extremely well at the $2,680 price point. According to at least one review, the Legion Pro 7i punches well above its weight class, providing both creative and gaming performance that competes with machines equipping the faster RTX 4090. And the design is conservative enough to be used in all kinds of environments, including the professional locales where its creative performance can shine. It does have per-key RGB lighting and an RGB “U” light up front to add some panache. The Legion Pro 7i doesn’t offer a mini-LED display as do some other top machines, but its IPS panel is QHD+ at up to 240Hz. It has enough brightness and good enough colors that it can serve as both a gaming and productivity machine. The Legion Pro 7i deserves a place on this list mainly because it can be purchased for a lot less money while still providing great performance. Deals on Lenovo Gaming Laptops This is just the beginning There are plenty of other great gaming laptops coming out in 2023, and so this is just a sampling. As the year progresses, we’ll see machines that are just as fast and offer both OLED and mini-LED displays that provide enhanced gaming experiences. And that’s a great place to be if you’re looking for a new gaming machine.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. With the announcement of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 marks an important turning point. After several years of being unable to buy a reasonably fast GPU for anything less than $1,000, things are finally starting to change. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is an affordable next-gen GPU that you can actually buy today. Crypto is down, and so are GPU prices Up until about the middle of 2022, it was nearly impossible to find an affordable GPU that you could buy off-the-shelf for anywhere near its list price. You were looking at well over $1,000 for even a midrange GPU, and just about the only way to get a decent option was to buy a pre-configured desktop with the GPU included. Even then, prices were inflated, but not nearly so much as if you were to source the GPU yourself. This was because of supply shortages and the voracious demand of cryptocurrency, which is “mined” using GPUs because of their raw speed at performing the necessary calculations. Both of these influences started to wane last year, meaning that it was sort of, kind of easier to find a decent GPU for a price that didn’t break the bank. Flash forward to April 2023, and things are even better. You’re still looking at around $1,200 for a high-end GPU like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 that lists at $1,200, but that level of card has always been expensive. It’s been at the midrange and low-end that things have been ridiculous, and Nvidia just changed that with the introduction of the RTX 4070. Yes, it’s not cheap at $600, and that’s $100 more at list price than the RTX 3070 that preceded it. But you’re getting a lot more performance out of the GPU and, most important, you can actually buy the GPU at this list price. For example, the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4070 12GB can be purchased today for $600. It’s in stock and ready to deliver. That’s almost a miracle compared to just a couple of years ago. And according to early benchmarks, the card delivers performance that’s similar to the RTX 3080, a card that would have cost you more than twice as much not that long ago. Based on today’s latest technology Best yet, the RTX 4070 is based on Nvidia’s latest Ada Lovelace architecture, so you’re not buying yesterday’s technology. According to Nvidia, the architecture provides more than twice the speed as the previous Ampere architecture while drawing the same power. Ada Lovelace Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs) are much faster, doubling the speed and offering up to 90 TFLOPs of Shader performance in the fastest chips compared to the previous generation’s maximum of 40 TFLOPs. Nvidia also incorporated Shader Execution Reordering (SER) technology into the Ada Lovelace architecture. SER takes inefficient workloads and reorganizes them so their more efficient and execute more quickly. That can increase frame rates by as much as 25%, while again doubling shader performance. There’s also a third generation of Nvidia’s ray-tracing technology on-hand. Improvements in ray-triangle intersection throughput can be as high as 2.8X, offering up to 191 ray-tracing TFLOPs of performance compared to 78 RT-TFLOPs in earlier GPUs. Opacity Micro-Map Engines and Micro-Mesh Engines further accelerate ray tracing. The Tensor Cores, which provide the AI necessary for things like DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), which speeds up frame rates by intelligently producing higher resolution frames from lower resolution data with higher quality than ever. This allows for higher frame rates without giving up noticeable quality, and Nvidia’s newest DLSS 3 takes the technology to new levels. There’s even more technology to speed up gaming performance, and Nvidia has provided software that accelerates things even further. And all of that is available in the RTX 4070 at a reasonable price. Performance is promising so far Note that Nvidia has also introduced the RTX 4070 Ti that retails around $800 MSRP, and it offers more processing cores, ray tracing cores, and tensor cores, running at a faster speed. So, you’re giving up some performance for that $200 difference in price. But, you’re still getting all of the Ada Lovelace improvements, which is what makes the RTX 4070 so special. And according to benchmark results, the RTX 4070 is around 17% slower than the RTX 4070 Ti while being 33% less expensive. That’s an attractive value proposition. If you’re looking for a 4K gaming GPU, then you’ll want to jump up to the RTX 4080. But the RTX 4070 does just fine at 1440p, which is a sweet spot for many gamers. The card was able to hit around 112 frames per second (fps), for example, in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla running at 1440p and Ultra High graphics. That’s a demanding title, and the RTX 4070 handles it with aplomb. If you want to play your games with ray tracing turned on, then you’re going to be more inclined to spend the extra $200 on the RTX 4070 Ti. In Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition 4K running at Ultra RT, for example, the RTX 4070 managed just 48 fps compared to the RTX 4070 Ti at 63 fps. That’s a meaningful improvement. Even so, finally an affordable choice Yes, GPUs are still one of the more expensive components in a desktop gaming PC build. But the RTX 4070 helps out by requiring less power than the RTX 3070 and can thus utilize a less costly power supply. And it’s a tremendous improvement in performance for just $100 more. Finally, there’s a GPU you can actually buy today that will meet both your budget and your performance demands.

There’s a long list of companies that make gaming laptops. It ranges from the standard crew of Dell, Lenovo, HP, other major manufacturers to tiny boutique shops. And that’s not including white box builders who will sell you a laptop without any real brand standing behind it (and with desktop PCs, that includes machines you build yourself). The primary makers often have a set of configurations that they’ve put together with specific components at set price points. You’ll find them sitting on retail shelves and other online sellers, including the manufacturer’s own website. Maybe you can find a configuration that will work well for you, with just the right mix of speed and pricing. If so, then you’re all set. But you’re not limited to these standard configurations. There are ways to get a more custom build that more precisely checks off all your boxes. We won’t talk about building your own laptop, because compared to desktops they’re much more tightly designed using proprietary parts that you can’t just buy off the shelf. But short of something homebuilt, you can get a laptop that suits you easily enough. Also, compared to desktop PCs, your laptop choices will be more limited, again because laptops aren’t simply assembled from off-the-shelf parts. Note that there are two potential downsides to a custom-built laptop. First, they can take longer to get because you’re not picking something up that’s already sitting on the shelf or in a warehouse ready to go. Second, your return options are often more limited, either to no returns at all or restocking fees that may not apply to pre-built machines. Note as well that some companies’ configuration options change often, as do the prices, usually based on sales and component availability. Use a major manufacturer’s configurator If you’d rather buy a gaming laptop from a major company, perhaps because you like its brand or you trust a larger company to provide better long-term support, then in some cases you’re in luck. Some of the biggest players have custom configuration options on their web site that let you pick and choose from among various components. As we’ll see in the “boutique” section below, the options are often relatively limited. But they’re wider than you’ll find if you just pick up a pre-built machine. Unfortunately, the number of companies that provide custom, or built-to-order, laptops, is limited. Examples of those that do include Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Companies like Razer, Asus, MSI, Acer, and others just offer predefined configurations with only a few exceptions, and some of them only sell via retailers. We’ll use Dell’s Alienware gaming lineup as an example. You can go to the company’s Alienware shop and select from a list of current laptops. If you go to Dell.com and navigate to the Alienware link, the shop is where you’ll end up. You can click on each listing to get more information on the model, and underneath each listing’s header you’ll find a “Customize ->” link. Take the new Alienware X16 as an example. It’s a new machine with a spectacularly modern chassis and powerful components, and you can find out all about it by clicking on the Tech Specs and Features links. To the right, you’ll find the configurator, which provides a selection of boxes you can check to choose from among various component options. Dell isn’t offering that many options for the Alienware X16 as this article is being written. You can select the operating system, the amount and configuration of storage, and the display type. But the CPU, RAM, and GPU have no additional options. That could change in the future as Dell rolls out more options. As you can see from the screenshot, the entry-level configuration for the Alienware X16 costs $2,999.99 and includes an Intel Core i9-13900HK CPU, Windows 11 Home, 32GB of LPDDR5-6000 RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU, a single 512GB SSD, and a 16.0-inch QHD+ IPS display running at 165Hz. Click a few boxes, though, such as upgrading to 4TB of RAID 0 storage made up of two 2TB SSDs and choosing the 240Hz display, and your price jumps to $3,599.99. Dell only offers its configurator on its web site, so if you want a pre-built laptop you’ll need to go shopping at retail outlets. HP, on the other hand, offers both pre-built and customization options at its gaming store. If you look at the screenshot, you’ll see both “Add to Cart” and “Customize & Buy” options. Click on one of the latter and you’ll be taken to HP’s configurator for that laptop. HP’s configuration options for the OMEN Laptop 17t-ck100 are a lot wider than for the Dell Alienware X16. We can’t show you the entire list in a reasonable screenshot, but you can choose the laptop’s color, operating system, CPU and GPU, RAM, storage, support services, and additional software and accessories. For some reason, as this article is being written, HP isn’t listing the laptop’s price. Usually that will be on the page and it will update as you change components. Choose a boutique shop You can also find a variety of smaller companies online that will customize a laptop for you. In desktop PCs, these companies can offer a bewildering array of options because they’re essentially choosing components you could buy yourself and building a machine for you. In laptops the options are often less diverse because there’s not a cottage industry of peripheral makers for laptops. Take CLX Gaming as an example. Choose customizable desktop configurator and you’ll quickly get lost among all the options. The screen below extends pretty far down the page with a staggering number of different machines to choose from. Its laptop offerings, though, are more limited. There’s really just one machine available, the CLX Anubis, and its configuration options are similar to those you’ll find from the major vendors offering customer laptops. You can choose the display type, the GPU, and the amount of RAM and storage, just as you can with the major companies. But, CLX offers more choices in some cases. For example, you can choose not just the amount of storage you want but the specific SSD as well. Search and you’ll find it There are many more companies out there that will sell you a customized PC, so your favorite search engine will be helpful here. But the bottom line is that you don’t have to accept just the pre-configured laptops that are offered on retail shelves and online. Do a little digging, and you can build just the right gaming laptop for your needs.

Sure, you can put your new gaming laptop on a desktop, maybe add a nice gaming mouse, and get to playing your favorite titles. You’ll probably spend some time tweaking the settings, overclocking where you can and making sure all drivers are up to date. After all, the whole point of that gaming machine is to get the highest possible framerates with all the exotic features turned on. Then again, maybe that’s a limited perspective. As we wrote about in an earlier article, gaming laptops can be used for a lot more than just gaming. Their sheer power lends itself to the most demanding productivity tasks and even professional-level creative workflows. There’s no good reason to let all that performance go to waste if you have real work that needs to be done. So, the question then becomes, how can you make a gaming laptop the center of your computing experience? The good thing is, it’s no harder to do than with any other laptop, and in fact it might even be easier in some respects. And much of what we talk about here will apply to most laptops and not just gaming machines, so if you have a thin and light laptop that you’d like to use as your primary PC, read on. Lots of ports One thing that tends to differentiate gaming laptops from some other classes, particularly thin and light machines, is that they come stocked with tons of ports. That’s particularly true of larger gaming laptops, say 16-inches or more, that have big chassis with lots of rooms for expansion. As an example, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i is a 16-inch laptop that can be configured with a superfast CPU and GPU and that provides awesome gaming and creative performance. It’s a fine example of a laptop that both play games and do real work, and it’s jam-packed with ports. You’ll find four USB-A ports for legacy peripherals, two USB-C ports (one with Thunderbolt 4 support), an HDMI 2.1 port for connecting an external display, and an RJ-45 Ethernet port for a hardwired network connection. That’s as many ports as some desktop PCs, and it means that you can connect every possible peripheral you might need in your primary PC setup. Gamers sometimes like to use wired mice and keyboards to eliminate the latency and connection issues the sometimes pop up with wireless devices, and the Legion Pro 7i has you covered with plenty of USB-A ports. If you want to connect multiple displays, then you’re fine there two, with the ability to attach up to three 4K displays thanks to the two USB-C ports and HDMI. And if you want the fastest internet connection, then you can use the Ethernet port to connect directly to your router and avoid wireless latency. Some smaller gaming machines don’t have quite as many ports, and the same goes for some that are thinner and lighter. The Razer Blade 16, for example, has a decent selection of ports but it’s not quite as diverse. There’s no Ethernet port, for example, meaning you’re limited to wireless connectivity unless you add an USB ethernet adapter. Go even smaller, thinner, and lighter, and you’ll find yourself running into issues getting everything setup. Docking stations to the rescue That’s where docking stations come in. They’re devices that provide one connection to a PC, usually a laptop, and then a host of ports for attaching additional peripherals. They can support multiple monitors, a handful of USB-A devices, Ethernet, and more. The most functional and powerful docking stations use Thunderbolt 4, a connection that’s increasingly common and one you’ll find on just about every recently introduced gaming laptop. One solid example of a Thunderbolt 4 docking station is the $310 Kensington SD5700T, which connects to the PC with a single Thunderbolt 4 cable that can also pass up to 90 watts of power to the laptop. That’s more than enough for most thin and light machines, but for gaming laptops you’ll want to keep using your proprietary charger – many of which provide 300 watts of power or more. The Kensington SD5700T offers a wide range of ports, including four USB-A ports, four USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support (three downstream and one upstream), an RJ-45 Ethernet connection, a 3.5mm audio jack for external audio support, and an SD Card reader. It will support up to two 4K displays at 60Hz, along with all of the same peripherals that you’ll get from connecting directly to the Legion Pro 7i. The docking station has one huge advantage over connecting natively, and that’s that it provides a single connection to plug and unplug as you move your gaming laptop around. It’s tedious to disconnect and reconnect multiple cables every time you want to take your laptop on the road or return to your office, and the docking station’s single cable avoids that inconvenience. The disadvantage of a docking station can be performance. There’s a limit to how much bandwidth you can pass over a single Thunderbolt 4 connection, and depending on your gaming laptop you might get better performance by connecting directly. For example, the Legion Pro 7i’s HDMI 2.1 port is more likely to support external monitors with higher refresh rates, which will be important if you want to connect a gaming monitor that supports more than 60Hz. By default, HDMI 2.1 supports up to 120Hz at 4K and up to 240Hz with lower resolutions (where many gamers tend to play anyway). Either way, it’s easy enough Whether you go with a gaming laptop’s built-in ports or add a docking station, it’s easy enough to turn it into the centerpiece of your computing experience. By far the most productivity- and gaming-enhancing aspect is the ability to connect multiple monitors, which gives you more screen real estate to work and play with. Overall, you’ll likely find yourself the envy of your desktop PC gaming friends who are tied to one location.

By definition, what is a gaming laptop? On the outside, gaming laptops usually have an ostentatious aesthetic like RGB lighting, huge jet exhaust fans, and funky designs; the Gigabyte Aorus is a prime example of what a gaming laptop looks like. Other gaming laptops take on a more mainstream look, like the Razer Blade 16, which sports a cohesive design that resembles a more standard laptop aesthetic. Beneath the exterior, gaming machines typically employ powerful CPUs and discrete graphics cards and enhanced airflow and cooling features built into the design. Gaming laptops tend to have a thicker build in order to accommodate the cooling and are heavier as a result. What is a creative laptop? Creative laptops or creative workstations are a different class of laptop—but one that bears a strong resemblance to a gaming laptop. Creative workstations have become more popular over the last several years and come in mainstream and commercial varieties configured with fast CPUs and GPUs with special attention to airflow and thermal performance. Two examples are the MSI Creator Z16, a mainstream laptop geared towards creators, and the Lenovo ThinkPad P15v Gen 3, which is considered a portable workstation. The drivers make a difference Those laptops tend to come with special driver versions, like Nvidia’s Studio GPU drivers, that are optimized for reliable, fast performance in creative applications like Adobe’s Creative Suite and engineering and design applications like AutoCAD. Those drivers tend to perform worse in games than a GPU’s standard drivers, which are usually optimized for gaming performance. In the case of Nvidia’s drivers, it’s relatively easy to switch back and forth between Studio and Game Ready drivers, so that’s something to keep in mind. In terms of hardware specifications there can be a fortunate overlap between gaming and creative laptops. For our purposes, we’ll set aside commercial machines, which are typically purchased by corporations, and focus on mainstream creative laptops targeted toward consumers. Here, you’ll find that many gaming laptops can meet the needs of both gamers and most creators. They can provide the power to churn through demanding video editing processes while achieving high frame rates in modern gaming titles with advanced features like ray tracing and high dynamic range (HDR) turned on. But there are some important criteria to keep in mind when choosing a gaming laptop for content creation. CPU performance You’ll want a configuring the fastest CPU you can afford. CPU performance is actually more important for creative apps than games. As of this writing, the fastest CPUs include Intel’s 13th-gen 55-watt Core i9-13950HX, which has 24 cores (eight Performance and 16 Efficient) and 32 threads and can run its Performance cores at up to 5.5GHz. Comparably, the 55-watt Ryzen 9 7945HX has 16 cores and 32 threads running up to 5.4GHz. If you’re using your laptop solely for gaming, those CPUs are overkill. CPU clock speed is an important factor for gaming performance, but games usually do not take advantage of all those cores and threads: these are features more attuned for content creation applications. GPU performance It seems logical that gamers would be more concerned about GPU power, given that graphical performance is the name of the game for achieving high frame rates. The GPU plays an important role in many creative applications as well. Adobe Creative Suite can use the GPU to speed up intensive tasks like video encoding, for example. Display quality Here’s where you need to be most careful in selecting your gaming laptop if you have serious creative work in mind. The needs of gamers and creators are different when it comes to displays, but there are laptops that can meet both needs if you’re careful in your selection. Gamers want a display that will match up well with the CPU and GPU combination to achieve the fastest refresh rates. That means a display that’s not higher resolution than it needs to be and with a fast refresh rate to avoid tearing and other artifacts while gaming. Certainly, the standard 60Hz refresh rate in most laptop displays isn’t good enough. Gamers also want plenty of brightness and contrast to make for the best image possible. What gamers aren’t as concerned about is color. They don’t need the widest colors, measured in terms of gamuts like sRGB and AdobeRGB, and they don’t need the most accurate colors. Creators, on the other hand, need the widest color gamuts they can get and the highest accuracy. That means, for example, achieving 95% or higher of the AdobeRGB gamut with a color accuracy of DeltaE 1.0 or less. Gamers can get by with a 75% AdobeRGB and a DeltaE of 2.0 or less and still thoroughly enjoy their gaming experience. Most gaming laptops that use IPS displays won’t provide the kinds of colors that creators are looking for. Today, your best bet is a laptop using an OLED or mini-LED panel. Both can provide very wide and accurate colors, and they also provide deep contrast. And mini-LED in particular put out tons of brightness. Creators want those attributes as well. The MSI GE Series OLED is an example of a gaming laptop with fast components and an OLED display that runs with a refresh rate up to 240Hz. If you want the highest brightness you can get, which is great for HDR content, then mini-LED is your best bet. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 will give you just that, with a mini-LED display that also runs at up to a 240Hz refresh rate. And that’s not all You’ll also want to make sure that the gaming laptop has a comfortable keyboard that’s good for long-term typing sessions and not just mashing keys while gaming. And the size and look will also be important. But what we’ve covered here are the most important considerations, and there are numerous gaming laptops available that can please the gamer inside you while allowing you to get your creative juices flowing.

Gaming laptops are like other categories, with multiple sizes that meet varying user needs. And the gaming laptop industry has responded. Some gamers want the most powerful laptop they can get to run modern titles at the highest resolutions and with all features, like HDR and ray tracing, turned on. That dictates powerful CPUs and GPUs that run hot and need a lot of room for thermal management. Then there’s screen size, where some gamers want the largest panel for the most immersive experience. Other gamers care less about performance and would rather have a laptop that’s easier to carry around. They’re okay with a smaller screen and slower components, as long as they can play most games at reasonable frame rates and graphical detail. It’s a balancing act, and one that has produced a variety of laptops meeting the needs of all these different kinds of users. Which is the best size of gaming laptop for you? 13-inch gaming laptops Yes, there are 13-inch gaming laptops, and they appeal to users who want the least amount of gaming laptop to carry around but aren’t as worried about performance. Let’s face it – there’s only so much space inside such a small chassis and keeping things cool can be a challenge. Perhaps the best example of the class is the 2023 ROG Flow X13, a brand-new 13-inch laptop announced at CES 2023. It comes with an AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070. That’s an incredible amount of power to so easily carry around. Plug in the Asus XG add-on, and you can equip up to an RTX 4090 for a true gaming platform that’s no longer so portable. 14-inch gaming laptops A more common highly portable gaming laptop size is the 14-inch class, which offers slightly more room inside while still being small enough to easily carry around. The 14-inch laptop has generally become more popular for adding some additional screen real estate without requiring a much larger chassis. Even so, there’s more room inside for better thermal designs and more airflow, and so 14-inch gaming laptops can most often be configured with some powerful components. The Razer Blade 14 has been the best version for a couple of years, offering up to a very fast AMD Ryzen 9 6900HZ CPU and an RTX 3080 Ti for playing modern titles at 1440p with graphics turned up. The 14-inch display runs at up to 165Hz in the QHD version, allowing high frame rates with no tearing. There’s a reason why the Razer Blade 14 has garnered strong reviews and is at the top of a lot of best-of lists. 15-inch and 16-inch gaming laptops The sweet spot for years has been the 15-inch laptop, actually built around 15.6-inch 16:9 aspect ratio displays. There’s been a wide range of variation in this space, with some thinner and lighter laptops and some that have been pretty hefty. But the extra chassis size provides a lot more room for faster components and better thermal management – hence, typically much faster gaming performance. The industry has been migrating to 16-inch laptops lately, adding a bit of screen without massive increases in chassis size. It’s a lot like the adoption of 14-inch laptops over 13.3-inch machines, and for the same purpose. We’re glad to see the change, because more screen is a good thing especially in this particular laptop size. We’re also seeing most manufacturers adopting 16:10 aspect ratios, which provide taller displays and hence more room for productivity work – and after all, these machines are often using for work as much as for gaming. The Razer Blade 15 is one of the holdouts in the 15.6-inch panel size, and it remains one of the best rated gaming laptops around. It can be configured with fast Intel 13th-gen Core i9 CPUs and RTX 4070 GPU, which means it’s not the fastest gaming machine but it’s one of the thinnest and lightest. And example of a newer 16-inch gaming machine is the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, which in reviews has demonstrated monster performance. 17-inch gaming laptops The largest mainstream gaming laptops come in at 17.3 inches, providing extremely large screens and in many (but not all) massive chassis. If you want some of the best thermals, highest-end components, and best keyboards and port selections, then the 17-inch class is the way to go. Just remember that they’re going to be bulky, both large in widget, depth and (typically) thickness and also the heaviest gaming laptops you can buy. Dell’s Alienware x17 R2 is an example of a 17-inch machine that’s rather thin for the class and still offers outstanding gaming performance; in particular, its “absurd” 480Hz refresh rate has reviewers buzzing. The x17 R2 is still running previous gen Intel 12th-gen CPUs and Nvidia RTX 3000 GPUs, but it’s a fast gaming laptop nonetheless. For something comparable with current gen specs, HP’s Omen 17 is an example of a newer machine introduced at CES 2023 that has Intel 13th-gen CPUs and Nvidia RTX 4000 GPUs. 18-inch gaming laptops If you want to go really massive, then you can opt for an 18-inch laptop. There aren’t as many to choose from and so they’re not exactly mainstream, but if you want the absolutely largest display and chassis, then they’re an option. It’s another newer gaming laptop that’s not quite available for sale, but in hands-on reviews has been impressive. It offers a mix of high-end Intel 13th-gen and AMD Ryzen CPUs and Nvidia and AMD GPUs, with an 18-inch display running at a crazy 480Hz refresh rate. Which gaming laptop size is right for you? There are two questions to answer when it comes to picking the right gaming laptop size. Do you want to run the newest games at the highest frame rates, resolutions, and graphical detail with features like ray tracing and HDR turn one? If so, then you’ll be looking at a 15-inch or larger laptop. On the other hand, if you want a laptop that’s easier to carry around and you’re less demanding in your performance needs, then a 14-inch or 13-inch laptop might be the ticket.

In 2003, everyone’s favorite entrepreneur, Wario, had an idea. Instead of spending all his time making one big game, he would aggregate several smaller games, put them together in a curated collection, and distribute them. He was ahead of his time. We aren’t advocating for a new Warioware release (Well, we are. Warioware is awesome. It’s just not what we’re talking about here). We are saying that there is a lot of power in the idea of creating a curated content platform for smaller games, and we might very see that happen in the future. If you aren’t heavily into the indie game scene, then you probably get all your indie titles from Steam, Epic Games, or maybe even first-party digital stores on consoles. However, hundreds of thousands of indie titles come out on more indie-friendly platforms like Itch.io, Gamers Gate, and Game Jolt every day. That’s just full titles. There are heaps more demos, alphas, and prototypes to play. They are all free, take no time to download and install, and can be played in a few minutes to a few hours. They are also some of the coolest experiences that are out there to be had, titles that fool around with genre and mechanics in ways AAA titles are afraid to. And they are impossible to find. That’s the problem with any platform that has tons of titles. You have to go searching yourself. Every so often a neat title comes out and outlets pick it up, write an article about it, and it catches on in mainstream consciousness, but for each title that lucks out, there are hundreds and thousands of titles that don’t. This is because curation on these platforms, and arguably curation on big platforms like Steam, is pretty bad. Sure it can show you the most popular games and it can sort by tags, but tags can sometimes be deceiving. Steam is trying to tailor recommendations to your preferences and they are getting there, but there is still a major barrier: cost. It’s really difficult to take a chance on a lot of games on Steam because they cost money. Spending money on a game you never played before and know nothing about is always a crapshoot, and if you are living on a budget you’d likely be a little hesitant to make impulse purchases, and there aren’t a whole lot of games that have free demos. But that’s not the case on platforms like Itch.io and GameJolt. Most of the games there have free demos, or are still in development and have free alphas. Yes, there are plenty of games you can buy and you should spend money to support your favorite developers, but the wealth of free gaming experiences is a truly untapped goldmine, both for gamers like us, and for developers in terms of exposure. So the question is, how do you get these games in front of an audience? This brings us back to Wario. Wario is a genius. He predicted in 2003 that one of our primary methods of consuming media would be through short-form content. We all Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, all platforms build upon short easily digestible, and, more importantly, easily scrollable media. Each tiny bit of content on these platforms can be consumed in a short period of time. If you like it, you comment, share, and interact, and “the algorithm” will make choice pieces of content float to the top and curate them to people based on their preferences, followed tags, and general viewing history. If you don’t, just scroll past, no harm, no foul. This is our breakneck speed low attention high content social information age. While lots of people like to pull an “old man yells at cloud” and complain about this media landscape, we think it can be harnessed for good. We have short-form platforms text, pictures, and video, why not games? Well, as we said before there are platforms that have tons of short-form proof of concept games. All that would have to be done is to package them in a familiar social media formula. So here’s the thought. Think of a service like TikTok. You get to scroll through game after game, watching a video or trailer being played. At any time, you can click play, and BOOM, you are trying the game out. This can be done with game streaming, especially since most of these small indie games don’t take a whole lot of graphical processing power. You play for a bit in some shortened demo version of the game, see if you like it, give it a few comments, and then scroll on to the next one. Or maybe you just scroll to the next one if you are bored. If you find one you really like, you can purchase the full version, or pre-order it if it’s not out yet, or perhaps even just wish to list it. In a perfect world where our game streaming services aren’t so... bad… you could do this with AAA gaming platforms like Steam too. It would require many, MANY more games to have available demos, or at the very least publishers would have to be comfortable with users playing small snippets of an otherwise complete game. Why do this? Well, social media platforms are built around one philosophy: ease of access. Absurd ease of access. They want nothing coming between you and the content that you scroll through endlessly. They want to keep your eyes on their platform. It’s how they make money. And ease of access is, in fact, one of gaming’s biggest problems right now. Finding, trying, and buying games that fit your tastes is still kind of difficult. It requires a lot of research, a lot of skepticism, and a lot of purchases that end up being duds. Yes, this model works just fine now, but it could be better. Why not harvest the immense attention retaining power of social media for the good of gaming everywhere? Let’s face it, we aren’t going to be getting our demos at events like E3 anymore. The pandemic saw fit to put a stop to that. So we might as well think of new and interesting ways to try games that we might potentially love. I mean what else are we going to do, bring back Blockbuster Video? Ugh… perish the thought.