Want to Buy Laptop (Part 2)

Last week I was thinking of getting a laptop for mobility, for gaming, and for work. Gaming-wise I'm not playing any hit title, the most graphic intensive game is just Path of Exile, the rest are just Indie or MOBA games which the likes of GTX 1050 Ti can easily handle.

After searching around, the Apex-15 from Aftershock seems to be the most value for money, anywhere else this kind of specs for a laptop can easily go over S$3000 which is just too much.

Aftershock APEX-15 laptop - S$2534

• Intel® Core™ i7-8750H Processor (Six Core 8th Gen)
• NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050TI 4GB GDDR5
• 15.6 Inch FHD IPS wide color gamut display (1920x1080)
• 32GB DDR4 2666MHZ (16GB X 2)
• Brown Tactile Mechanical Switches (Silent Linear Feedback)
• 500GB SAMSUNG 970 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD (Read up to 3,400 MB/sec, Write up to 2,300 MB/sec)
• Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 9560 (High Performance Wifi)
• Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

But I realised that for a laptop especially one with a dedicated graphics card, there is one haunting issue which is heat. No matter how well the design is, a laptop contains both the CPU and GPU in one case and if you ever see the inside of a laptop, it is fully packed with hardly any free space, so that means airflow cannot be good, one fan or two fans don't make much difference unless you are in a server room with blasting air-con. After this, I gave up on a laptop.

Then I checked out those All-In-One (AIO) PCs, only Aftershock have the specs that I want but it looks so huge and bulky, and not cheap, I mean if I were to get a AIO, it would be to replace my TV so I would prefer those classy ones.

Aftershock NEXT All-In-One - S$2648

• 32" 144HZ FHD Display (1920x1080) with 100% SRGB
• Intel® Core™ i7-8700 Coffee Lake 6 Core Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.6 GHz)
• ASROCK H310M ITX/AC (ITX Motherboard) (Essential Option)
• NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5
• 32GB DDR4 2666MHZ (16GB X 2)
• 500GB SAMSUNG 970 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD (Read up to 3,400 MB/sec, Write up to 2,300 MB/sec)
• 802.11ac WiFi (2.4G / 5G WiFi) With Bluetooth 4.0
• Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit

Disappointed and reluctantly I went back looking at tower CPU, currently I'm using a mid tower so I'm never ever going to get the same again because it's taking up a lot of precious space and it's bulky, so I tried looking for smaller ones and managed to find Small Form Factor (SSF) PCs running with Mini-ITX motherboards. I found these 3:

• LOUQE Ghost S1 - 199 Euros (casing only)
• Dan A4-SFX - 225 USD (casing only)
• Dreamcore Bullet - Starting at $1250

Dreamcore is similar to Aftershock, looks like local brand too, but I find Dreamcore have better variety in terms of casing after all they only sell desktop CPUs. So anyway Dreamcore's Bullet looks like a good choice:

Dreamcore Bullet SSF - S$2465

• AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3.2 / 4.1GHz 8 Core 16 Threads
• Gigabyte B450I Aorus Pro Wifi
• Noctua NH-L9
• Klevv Performance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-2666MHz
• GTX 1050Ti 4GB
• 500GB Samsung 970 Evo M.2 NVMe
• 1TB Seagate Barracuda 2.5" HDD
• Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit
• Dual-Band Wireless-AC1200 + Bluetooth 4.0

One thing about this Bullet is that I don't know how good is the airflow especially since it is such a small case, but the Ghost S1 and Dan A4-SFX have many positive online reviews and videos whereas I can only find one HWZ review but it doesn't say anything about temperature. I thought I might get the Ghost S1 or A4-SFX and then buy the parts separately, price would probably be about the same as the Bullet, then I happened to chance upon this:

Intel® NUC Kit NUC8i7HVK - 1608 USD (S$2193)

The beauty about this Intel NUC is that it is small, like the size of a home router, and it comes with Intel® Core™ i7-8809G Processor with Radeon™ RX Vega M GH graphics. The processor is 8th Gen, and the graphics is better than the 1050 Ti.

• NUC8I7HVK with i7-8809G with Radeon RX Vega M GH
• CORSAIR Vengeance Performance 32GB
• Samsung 970 EVO 500GB
• Windows 10 Pro (USB - English)

And then all I need is just buy the RAM and SSD will do, I think I'll go for this.