New machine advice please~ =)

[DrFesty]

Hey guys! Sorry I couldn't come to the last LAN - was very sad to miss it. I thoroughly enjoyed the LAN in April, and am hoping to be in attendance at the upcoming one on April 20th.

Alas! I am in a bit of a bind and need some advice. My current machine is rather old, so I'm in the market for a new one. I was considering a Macbook, however if it's possible to obtain a model with satisfactory specs for a lower price, I'm up for that too. Because it's got to the extent where I've had to uninstall Steam from this machine, as it has such difficulty running games smoothly.

Aside from my machine problems, things are going well! Getting well-settled in Glasgow and starting a job in research with the Medical Research Council in January, haw!

Gonna have to work on a costume for April too...

[CyberDrac]

The Rock Direct machines seem to offer some reasonable bang for the buck, but you're looking at around £1600 to £1700 in laptop form and has limited upgradability and hence longevity ... alternatively you could get a luggable small tower system which would kick ass ... it depends on your transport arrangements.

[[KTFO]i-LiMiT-i]

Whats your budget?
Desktop or Laptop?

[bsoltan]

I've been told that Macbooks aren't actually that bad for mild gaming if you get the right spec.

If you were still interested in a Macbook that is. A fair few Steam games now run on Mac, but for the price of a copy of Windows you can Bootcamp into that and play any games you like.

As with a non-Apple laptop a dedicated GPU card would be required.

Just a suggestion not to rule it out for gaming if that's what you wanted in the first place.

[Twysta]

I would recommend if portability isn't a major issue to build or get someone to help you build one. It's far cheaper and you can get a much better spec

Although depending on where you are situated this could possibly be an issue.
The newer macbooks aren't so bad for gaming but are seriously over-priced especially if you're getting it to be a games machine.

[Kanonfodda]

Have you considered a shuttle case? would make it quite protable without restricting you on design too much. Slightly higher cost, but they do come with built in Motherboard:

http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=shuttle

• http://www.scan.co.uk/products/shuttle- ... d-hdmi-dvi - £215.60
• http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-co ... 95w-retail - £227.00
• http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-(2x4 ... hx-xmp-16v - £46.56 (can double this up if you want 16gb, there are four slots available)
• http://www.scan.co.uk/products/369581tb ... 32mb-cache - £77.52
• http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-gain ... hdmi-plusf - £150.67
• Total - £772.79

Just a quick spec, obviously it will need keyboard, mouse and monitor etc (but I assume you have those already). Someone with more indepth knowledge can probably give you some better info, but this should be a good start

The one problem with shuttle cases is getting a GFX card that will fit inside it

[DrFesty]

Hey guys, thanks for all your advice =D Once I am back in London, I will definitely consider building myself a rig - but for now I will be settling for a laptop. Taking all your advices into account, I think I've found the best one to suit my budgets and my needs for the moment. And as I have a new job starting in May, I can afford it! \o/ I know this'll be the best place to come for help when I start building my own rig ^_^