New/refurbished Gaming Laptop

Jteggebraaten

Hi there! I’m looking for a new/refurbished laptop to run some CAD programs and game. One of the programs (Blender) recommends these specs for optimal performance. Would love you hear your thoughts on what would work well. 64bit eight core CPU 32gb RAM Graphics card with +12 GB RAM Thank you for your help. -Josh

Ian

Greetings,

From what I am seeing this is the only laptop we'd have right now that meets those specs: https://www.microcenter.com/product/633027/asus-rog-strix-scar-17-g733qs-xs98q-173-gaming-laptop-computer-black

TheUnknownCynic

I just purchased an Asus ROC Strix G713Q, 64 bit Ryzen 7, 4.2 GHz, 8 core, 16 thread, 32 Gb gaming laptop from Microcenter.  

It wasn't the brand I wanted but they were "out of stock" on the model I wanted, so they up-sold me this.

It should have been named the "POC" instead of "ROG" (Republic of Gaming).

If you have a chance to buy this laptop: DON'T DO IT!!!  Maybe similar Asus laptops will produce similar results.

I don't know how it runs Windows, because I don't do Windows, but most of the Linux's won't install on this POC, which was, by the way, touted as a gaming machine that COULD run Linux. No!  

Most Linux's throw a "No compatible video mode found -- Booting in blind mode" error when installing Linux....or they'll just stop displaying messages and seemingly go "out to lunch".  That's a Grub problem arising from AMD's lack of support of Linux.  GRUB2 and some AMD firmware file will fix that but it's a pain to do.

Asus put so much effort into the NVME drives that any USB SATA drives you have to run externally take forever...and ever.  So, run out and spend $300-$400 more dollars on an NVME drive or just repupose the one that comes with Windows installed on it; you have to if unless you want to grow old faster than the computer does 

It only gets worse:. If the laptop ceases to boot, or stops at the boot password (if you have one) and won't let you type in the password, disconnect everything, turn the power off, and turn the power back on holding down the f11 key. (There's a YouTube that shows them pressing the F8 key but says to press F9....  No.  Hold down the F11 key to reset the laptop.)

In summary, this Asus ROG Strix G713Q Gaming computer is an $1.8K boat anchors...or should be....