hm, yes, but the fan in the pack also disperses heat through the sides in stead off up. It generally keeps the back of the laptop cool.

I did not see the hand thing, but skipped ahead as soon as I got 'laptop' and 'heat'. If is is hand, then I can see more problems, depends on where the graphics card is placed, as it is usually the one getting warmest. If it is right under where you usually rest you hand it can be noticeable.

I have exactly the same (Belkin), but the downside is that it produces a bit more noise in itself. Plus reserving one more USB port of course.

I bought it for one of my older laptops though which did have heat problems, but then that was because its fan(s) were starting to fail so it was just a stopgap solution to keep it running a little longer. I think that laptop was close to 10 years old already. I used it for spare parts, and after that I haven't had use for the cooling pad. Let's see if ASUS G75 will need it.

Much love for your post in general. Laptop gaming works fine. Are there compromises? Of course. Nothing in PC gaming is without compromise, and that includes desktop gaming.

Depends on how much extra, and whether you'll use it. I think it was something like a $50 bump when I got mine; we don't have any other BluRay players in the house and I wanted to be able to play BD movies at some point. Was a snap to hook up to the larger monitor in the kitchen, via HDMI through the receiver, and I really appreciate having spent that extra little bit of money at the time. A cheap stand-alone player would have been about the same price, so it was worth it in this case. If we'd already had a BD player in the house, I would have left it off the build sheet.



Others have asked about and commented on the harmon kardon speakers in the laptop. I had them on my previous Dell and now have a JBL setup in the newer Dell. Either is fine, but you won't get much bottom end; top and middle range are decent. They're also not great at positional / spatial sound so you'll want to consider a good set of headphones for FPS games. Having the drivers separated by only 12-14 inches and directly in front of you just doesn't give enough separation for channel differentiation, and certainly not like cans or discrete speakers will do. For games where sound isn't crucial to gameplay then the built-ins are probably just fine.

Along those lines, I saved a bit by sticking with the onboard sound instead of the SoundBlaster upgrade and it works nicely for my battle-worn ears. If you're going to pony-up for the upgraded audio processor then definitely look into headphones or powered speakers if you don't already have a decent set.

Hmm, for $50 extra, doesn't sound too bad. But at least the online shop from where I was going to buy the ASUS G75, the price jumps extra 219€ ($278) if you choose a Blueray drive instead of a DVD-RW drive (it is a BR reader + DVD-writable). That sounds a bit steep for something I'm not sure I'll ever use, I don't even own any BR movies, at least not yet.

Yeah, I looked at it just a bit ago on Dell's site, and on the XPS 17" line that I'd consider if buying today it looks like $100 upgrade now. Dell are constantly fiddling around with the pricing on this or that upgrade so I think maybe my timing was just right for that particular component. For a Sager (the other brand I considered at the time), it's currently $80. Not horrible, but not great.

I bought my Compaq Laptop in October 2010 for $350 from Amazon with no tax. When i bought it, i did not plan to use it for gaming, but now its my primary gaming platform, lol. It started when i bought Dragon Age Ultimate for $7.50 and it ran fine on my laptop. Here are the specs:

AMD Athlon2 Dual Core 2GHz
ATI Radeon Integrated Graphics (up to 1.5Gb)
3Gb of RAM

I have to run most games in medium or low settings and non-HD, but thats fine with me. The only games that i have problems with are the newer indie games like (Renegade Ops, Magicka) because they only run in HD mode and the programmers did not code for Integrated graphics properly, so i cant play those games. Why do programmers do this? If i was a programmer, i would code for integrated graphics because alot of non-gamers have it and they may pickup the game if it runs on their system. They are losing alot of potential customers by coding only for good graphics cards.

I wonder if HEAT will be the limiting factor for laptop gaming. Will the new games produce so much heat that laptops wont be able to handle it? Thats my main concern for gaming on a laptop - proper COOLING.

My advice is to buy a NEW low end laptop for around $350 and it will probably run most games fine in med to low settings. It will save you alot of money. DO NOT by refurbished crap...you've been WARNED.

My buddy just bought a high end gaming laptop, 2700 USD and it's still not as good as my 1300 USD desktop (which I spent way too much money on). Yes, you can get a gaming laptop, my argument is decide whether you actually need one, because the compromises to which you're referring are pretty steep and cost-wise a gaming desktop plus non-gaming laptop may actually be less total cash/compromise than trying to get a "one-size-fits-all" laptop.

So is it possible? Certainly. Is it the best choice for most people who seem to tread that path? I'm not convinced.

It really depends what you consider as a gaming laptop... if you are a graphics freak... that wants to play everything on Ultra settings... yeah the PC is the better choice. But if you can take normal graphics a 1000-1200 $ laptop will do the trick.
The refurbished Qosmio that the OP showed is quite a catch...cause the normal price for that laptop is somewhere near 2500$(at least here) for 1100$ the specs are pretty good and you get a very good multimedia center (Bluray optical drive,descent GPU & amazing audio quality). And you can bring all that with you anywhere.

Personally I preffer laptops cause I usually work on nightshifts and the pc's there are awfull even for facebook games... so the laptop save my ass :D

I see. Just hoping that someone doesn't get the impression that laptop = crappy gaming, which isn't the case at all, and then end up getting something else that doesn't really suit his or her needs / wants.

Thanks everyone for the responses! I wish I could mark more than one as "solution".

Anyway, I was lured away from newegg by a deal on bestbuy and someone contributing some extra dough to make it happen. Really excited to check out Witcher 2 now! AND Shogun 2! Finally that will run!

Thanks again to everybody for all the help!

So, what did you buy?

Heat is the issue that laptops always have to fight with, but to me it would seem they are going better with this. I remember when my brother's HP (non-gaming) laptop's keyboard became defective, just because the components were so hot that they apparently melted something from the keyboard.

Anyway, this review of e.g. ASUS G75 suggests it is surprisingly quiet even under heavy load, and doesn't run so hot either.

http://www.gaming.fi/keskustelu.php?ketju_id=182&kat_id=9997

Just have to keep the machine clean...

As for desktop noise, I've previously fought that by putting one in a cupboard, but then the ventilation becomes a problem again.

I haven't completely ruled out buying also a gaming desktop, but a laptop will probably still be my main gaming PC (hence I want it to be powerful enough to play also most of the new games, not just the oldest GOGs), and the extra desktop would be there just so that it can hopefully play also future games like those running on the forthcoming Unreal engine, which apparently won't even run on current hardware (console or PC).

But then, it could be also that I find all this to be futile, as I keep playing mostly older titles anyway. I guess what has mostly triggered me now is that I want to buy a powerful Win7 gaming PC (laptop) before Win8 becomes mainstream. In the long run, maybe it will become my latest retro PC for playing pre-Win8 games. :)

And I have some games sitting in my repository that I can't play with my current hardware, e.g. Witcher 2.

BTW, one of the points for me preferring laptops also is my retrogaming machines. Since I still play some PC games that have severe issues outside Win9x (even in XP), it is much nicer to keep around a Win98SE laptop, than an old cranky desktop. At worst I've had three different gaming desktops side by side (two of the retro), and it became kinda hard to juggle between them in the same space, with one monitor, swapping keyboards etc.

I'm hoping though that virtualization keeps advancing so that you can easily have Windows PCs from different eras easily in on machine, even for gaming. Including also different graphics cards from different eras etc. Apparently we are not quite yet there. Then there'd be no need for me to keep any retro PCs around.

I guess I'll continue this discussion instead of starting a new thread.

So I got myself the ASUS G75 at last, and finally got around to play with it more. It cost me 1399€, it is the version with no 3D screen, Geforce GTX 670M, 8GB RAM, 750GB HD and DVD-RW (no Blueray). Some initial impressions.

This is definitely the biggest and heaviest "laptop" I've ever used, even the power supply is gigantic, about 3-4 times bigger than the power supply of e.g. Lenovo T400. It is more a portable desktop replacement than anything else, but that was to be expected. I like the big 17" screen, but on the downside this does not fit at all to my old backbag I specifically bought for my laptops, which can hold both of my older 14" laptops _together_, with all possible accessories for both like USB speakers, two gamepads, even a box of gaming CDs. But G75 will just not fit into it even alone, so I need to be shopping for a bigger backbag or laptop bag at some point.

I was considering buying G55 which has a 15" screen, but I still opted for G75 as it has an extra free bay for another internal hard drive (currently 750GB, I might buy another just for the kicks and to make it even heavier. :) ) Also I did read about some heat issues with certain G55 specimen on ASUS forums, but not for G75. And G75 is a tad faster too, with 670M vs. 660M.

Noise: As promised by some reviews, this is surprisingly quiet for a gaming laptop. Under heavy load you can certainly hear the fans getting louder, but it is fully bearable to me even in the middle of night. I think it is considerably less noisy than e.g. my PS2 console (the bigger/older PS2 model), and not that much noisier than Lenovo T400, which I consider quite quiet. The noise does not seem to be a problem on this one.

Heat: Another definite plus. I played some heavy games for an hour or two, and the keyboard feels cool all the time. I've experienced some laptops where the keyboard really does seem to become considerably warm or even hot under load, certain cheapo eMachines laptop, and sometimes even my work T400 laptop.

Workmanship: Overall it is quite sturdy, no annoying bending feeling on the keyboard as in some cheaper laptops I've tried. The keyboard is passable, not nearly as good as in business level Thinkpads and such, but quite ok for gaming and casual net usage, I'm writing this with it. For writing a book, I'd possibly use an external keyboard.

Ports: 4x USB 3.0 which is good, and the normal HDMIs etc. No eSATA which was a small minus, even though I am unsure whether I'd ever use it anyway (USB may be good enough for external HDs). The only little surprise to me was the lack of Express Card expansion slot, but then I probably just assumed wrong that pretty much all laptops would have it. I don't know why I thought that. Then again, the only use for it on my T400 is that I bought a 4-port USB expansion card for the T400, as one of its three USB ports got broken. G75 doesn't need more USB ports that much, or if it does, I guess I'll use my external USB hub. The USB ExpressCard was just a more elegant solution for some extra USB 2.0 ports, no extra cables etc.

Performance: I tried playing Crysis, Crysis 2 and Metro 2033 on it, as I've heard they can still be considered good benchmarks for demanding PC games. Note: my threshold for frames/second can be quite forgiving, I consider e.g. 30 fps fully fine for a single-player FPS, and can bear even less. So when I say "smooth", I don't necessarily mean 60 fps.

Crysis seems to run pretty smoothly with all settings at max, vsync on, running in 1920x1080. I think I'll probably keep playing it with those settings, I reached a village on the beach and at least until then didn't feel any significant slowdown.

Crysis 2 first felt quite fine with everything maxxed out (ultra) in 1920x1080, but at some points outdoors where there were lots of burning debris around, I saw some jittery when turning fast. I dropped the resolution to 1600x900, which helped making it feel fully smooth all the time. That's probably how I'd personally play the game since I couldn't really tell much difference between the two resolutions. I might experiment with the settings a bit more, maybe everything doesn't need to be at ultra and the res can go back to 1920x1080.

Metro 2033 was pretty much the same story as Crysis 2. Everything maxxed out (including physics), but 1920x1080 could cause some occasional slowdown when things get more hectic, so dropping the resolution to 1600x900 helped to make those smooth too.

I still want to see at least how Witcher 2 performs, I've heard it can be also quite demanding. But not today, got to sleep too (I was late at work today, came home around 9pm).

Overall, I'm quite happy with it so far and it easily met my expectations. I'm glad I bought it, let's see an upgrade a couple of years from now (or later) if and when the next gen consoles make this and all other current gaming PCs obsolete performance-wise. At least I know this seems to run quite nicely at least 2012 and earlier PC games, and kudos for ASUS for the heat- and noise-management on this one.