Anyone else losing interest/passion for enthusiast laptops?

These past 6 months have seen my passion for enthusiast laptops wane and practically die off. I barely visit NBR these days as nothing interests or excites me on the market.

I just invested some spare funds into my hi-fi hobby (and last remaining tech hobby) rather than aside for a new machine like I originally had planned. I just don't see a platform that will give me years of fiddling fun that existed previously.

Does anyone else share this feeling? I doubt I will ever get another gaming laptop the passion is pretty much dead in me. What a shame it was fun guys.

 

I have a similar opinion. I hold MSI responsible to the larger degree with the MXM fiasco (they make clevo's gpus).

As an enthusiast with a desire to tinker and upgrade SFF desktops are rapidly becoming my thing, with my lil AORUS for mobility.

 

This forum (no fault of its own) has seen a drastic decrease in participation over the last two years at least. I'm surprised because I figured since mobile computing was surpassing desktops that it would be more popular. But I think because of Intel and Nvidia stranglehold on the market, and the push for BGA, there is little to get excited about any more and very little differentiates one laptop from another. Plus for a lot of people Chromebooks and smartphones get 90% done of what they need. Personally, I still prefer a solid Windows PC, whether desktop or notebook.

 

Yep, I have mixed feelings about this as well!

Dunno, but with the release of the P870DM2/3 I realized that the refreshments cycles becomes always shorter; Nvidia and Intel are cooking their own soups and AMD? Well, they're sittin' this out it seems.

Upgradeability with current LGA-rigs? Is hit or run nowadays, though Prema mentioned that with the release of the DM2/3 + Pascal Clevo engineered the next generation of standard PCB-Layout. Remains to be seen....
Without Prema-Magic we could also go BGA as well and makin' Crapple happy!

When new high end top rigs are released every six months or so then it doesn't feel special anymore acquiring one because you have to fear that yours is eol at the moment a new rig is released!

I mainly observe this forum because I have nothing to add of value with my current rig. Just too old tech!

 

Sound points made. There is little that differentiates between products these days. BGA has been pushed down our throats to choking point.

I may still mess around and do a eDP to LVDS conversion mod for the M15x for fun but that platform is getting really ancient now even with a heavy OC. If only it had Sandy Bridge I would more enthusiastically mod it.

Also I think AMD hasn't helped. Personally I have been waiting for something in MXM format to use instead of Nvidia. They release e9550 and e9260 but for some reason nothing hits the market at all. I don't want to retire my hobby using a Ngreedia card.

 

haha what does that make the M15x..? Cave age tech!

 

^^THAT was my hope as well! But it seems that these ones behave like the Dell cards for Clevo's in the past! LED's blinking, fans are kickin' full blast and then the rig shuts down! It was mentioned that the temperature sensors of these AMD cards aren't compatible to the Clevo layout and therefore neither Prema-Magic would help! And with that my hope/passion died, because I won't be able to acquire a Phoenix or Tornado for the next few years.

 

Nope buddy! This is respected "oldtimer-tech"!

 

I don't completely agree with this. Yes, participation has certainly declined on its own to a degree, but for me and a few others I know it is not because of a lack of interest...rather it is not wanting to participate in a community that I find is becoming increasingly toxic. There have always been trolls, but when some of the most prominent members on the forum have become zealots for one cause or another and travel the forum looking for someone to "educate" in a very rude, condescending and unrelenting way, it doesn't foster open communication.

I would love to post more of my laptop reviews to NBR as I have done in the past, but the prospect of having to constantly respond to someone coming in and completely changing the atmosphere with their fanaticism just doesn't appeal to me.

Obviously this is just my opinion, but a lot of the newer folks probably don't remember how collegial the atmosphere was here 10 years ago. I still love high performance laptops, just not NBR as much.

 

I'm not sure what I'll do if Msoft keeps its current business model and Linux/SteamOS isn't fully supported by the next console cycle. I may just go to PS5 and buy a cheap laptop for what will be "old games" by then when I need to replace hardware if it isn't.

 

Your sig, says it all amigo.

 

I've given up on my niche of small notebooks.

Is it really that hard to fit a GTX 1060, a 13-14" dynamic/adaptive sync high refresh rate display, Thunderbolt 3, one 2.5" slot and two M.2/mSATA slots, decent speakers, and a decent battery in a small notebook?

Not a single 13/14" notebook currently sold today has all of these... One or two, rarely three, but not everything.

 

I found quite a few friends on NBR. Never met in person yet but the quality of the members here is pretty high indeed. The forum has always been spirited with members responding quickly and passionately. It is true that the forum has changed over the years, I remember the days of Vicious and the golden era of gaming laptops was also afoot back then.

Now the era has changed and many knowledgeable individuals have withdrawn or settled down in their lives perhaps. What I like about NBR is that it isn't overly snobbish like so many other tech forums. The atmosphere at NBR gives space to newbies where elsewhere they wouldn't dare utter a breath.

Perhaps give the forum a try again humans are never perfect but the forum is a special place.

 

This forum has been around for ages now, of course, it has grown out of its adolescence but nevertheless people have been around for years.

I remember lurking since 2007-ish until finally feeling like I had things to add.

Unfortunately as time has shown, the greedy bast**ds have crippled the hardware in todays laptops. The gaming market for desktops is so strong and so strong, that the laptop market has become a larger niche area.


My MSI MS-1762 is unforntunately for the time being going to be my last gaming laptop. I have my two others machines and my Chromebook to do all the school work, otherwise a mini maybe even micro-ATX build can be the same size as my laptop for lesser money, and upgrade friendly without any hassle too!

I still visit the forums, and contribute, but there's less and less being done

 

Nope. Never had one to begin with.

I do feel the pain of my brethren who are/were into such laptops.

 

I believe there is a marker for this but it is changing. Most people will either go all out for a desktop build or get a high-performance laptop to maintain some portability.

 

I'm nothing if not a contrarian. After 4+ years of using a MacBook Pro as my primary machine, I'm more interested in high-performance DTR machines. Perhaps my current Clevo doesn't quite fall into that category, but it's certainly a far cry from what I was using every day. I'm even thinking about upgrading to a machine with a GTX 1080.

 

You are not the only one. One by one, things have added up over time to make me feel like I just don't have the passion that I used to. One by one, things have been killed off and changed in ways that I cannot condone. What started the snowball effect for me was Windows 8, and going away from the traditional desktop OS. Then it was Haswell with its heat issues. Then it was the inability to upgrade the GPU's in my M18x R2 to 980m's without using black magic to make it work correctly. Then it was BGA taking over the world. Then it was Microsoft going even further away from what Windows 7 was with the release of Windows 10. Then it was the unknown future of MXM GPUs because of the design stunt that was pulled with Pascal. The latest one is the locked down firmware on the sBIOS and now the vBIOS as well.

To me, the slow death started in 2012 with the release of Windows 8, and it's been getting worse with each passing calendar year.

EDIT: Typo. Meant Pascal, not Kepler.

 

The M18x R2 was indeed a shame although it was eventually patched to allow upgrade to 980M's I think right? Or was that the Alienware 18...

 

Yep, that's also true sadly! Whereby I must say that's understandable. As a matter of fact BGA is the Nemesis of all LGA parts. The more BGA evolves the more LGA will diminish! We already see the outcome of this: Alienware, MSI (partly), Gigabyte, ASUS, and so on....
I am not so sure, if we would have been able to enjoy the Phoenixes and Tornados, if not due to our "Crusader"-community and their efforts to live up for the name of what an "enthusiast" rig should be like. Kudos to them!

On the other side that does not necessarily mean that a (partly) BGA machine has to be utter crap like @iunlock so clearly demonstrated with his reviews of AW and MSI rigs. Naturally not as powerful as LGA and MXM but fine enough for (hardcore) gaming and benching in its own class after proper preparation has been made. Kudos to them either!

Personally I like to tinker with my hardware. There would have been no fun, if all were soldered. Pimping up old machines and breathing new life to it! I'm not a friend of BGA either!

 

Yes, W8 the mortal enemy of todays gamers. W10 is just cr**.

 

I haven't lost interest. Hell, I might have more interest lately. But what I do lack is time. I no longer have the time I wish I had to use them. But I still like finding any excuse just to boot my laptop and use it, despite having other devices capable of doing it (like browsing). I like the feeling powerful/responsive that it has.

 

I'm fine with BGA. Just not as the ONLY option. I like that Clevo and MSI continue to push top end notebooks that still support modular hardware. But they have to use desktop CPU's to accomplish it, so it somewhat defeats the purpose of a portable machine IMHO. For the price, unless you really really need that power in a portable form factor, it's a niche market in a niche market. You could just as easily build a SFF PC and tote it around with you in a duffel bag like I used to do in my old Shuttle PC days.

Mobile computing has always fascinated me because I feel like it's the ultimate in design optimization. Fit as much as you can in as small of an "OPTIMIZED" space that you can. This doesn't mean make it as small as you can so it throttles, just optimizes the size and power to the performance and temperatures.

 

The R2 was patched by the work of a user here on the forums. The 18 was resurrected by Dell and shipped with the GTX 9xx cards.

 

I feel like this is the general attitude of people right now (and I share it), but there are extreme voices that dominate the conversation.

 

Was about to say this. Gone are proper mobile parts (and I'm not talking about CPUs only *cough*10series*cough*) - binned, with consistent performance, unlike whatever was released after Ivy (and some of the Haswells).

For me it all started with 16:9. The whole move was for cheapness, so lo-and-behold things turned-out even cheaper than my wildest nightmares.


There's nothing of interest and nothing to be passionate about nowadays. Even with proprietary GPUs, people were still able to snatch an upgrade back then - ask M1730 users (8800m GTX SLi -> 9800m GTX SLi) or G50vt (9800m GS -> GTX 260m). People were looking high and low for compatible GPUs. CPU upgrades were taken for granted. There were revisions within same generation, people were chasing certain steppings... The general tune was that everything can be tweaked and upgraded.

That's not the main problem though. I think that people have changed and tweakers and modders are a dying breed. I love to tweak and mod, but I do realize how time, money and nerve consuming this hobby is or rather - was. Nowadays the only thing that has left to be upgraded is RAM and SSD/HDDs and I'm pretty certain that a huge amount of people can't be bothered to do even that. It's just that people like it easier nowadays.

 

THIS, I think this sums up the problem in general with this forum. LGA and BGA from what I've seen both have their advantages and disadvantages but some here with their elitist behaviour are certainly driving people away for not agreeing to their opinion.

I do still visit this forum once in awhile to check out whats new and read the discussions as they still give me an interesting insight and viewpoint from a different perspective, because as I've found out it's still one of those sites which hold gaming laptops in high regards, anywhere else you get the usual "gaming laptops are overpriced", "just get a desktop ffs" arguments. So yeah, the elitist behaviour from some members aside, in general I feel it's still pretty good place to get support and suggestions for gaming laptops

 

This is true. There is very little that you can tinker with any more, unless you go with custom heatpipes, etc, but that's a major undertaking.

 

I wouldn't say I've exactly lost interest, but the market isn't as exciting as it was before.

Some of the best milestones imo were the M18x series and X7200/P570WM series.

Those were some of the most exciting times. We had an all aluminum design (m18x) with amazing battery life and mxm/socket components.

We also had the X7200/P570WM, these brought in real enthusiast level desktop CPUs(not the mainstream stuff you see in the P870DM etc).

MXM prices are expensive(they always have been) but now you need $1,300+ for a high-end gpu , whereas the high end of the days (780M/980M/etc) were around $700-800.

There's no longer a standard (mxm 3.0b) for everyone to follow so upgrades are dying slowly.

I did sell my desktop and went completely laptop. Before I would have a monstah desktop with the highest end gpu and then something like a M18xR2 or P570WM.

Just my opinion.

 

There are significant points made. I'll share my expression too..

Thanks to NBR/TI I bought my MXM Alienware M15x long back when it was the golden days of computing with the Nehalem i7 and the 260M It was my first GPU LOL. I enjoyed a lot but was young back then, I tried a lot for the 460M and 5870M, 6970M and 7970M but failed *due to a ton of issues* wasn't active that much, Still remember Svl7 being so active at that time on TI and NBR, I wanted to get the M17x R4 but It wasn't in production anymore, Also that M18x R2 dream. Really missed that too. Missed those golden days, But Later I got my Ranger, late to party but It was much satisfactory and learned a lot !!

NBR is really like a home & family for me, gained a lot of friends and brothers, hope it continues the same way in future & will be enthusiastic and fun. The Alienware's departure was a huge blow and industry's shift to BGA was rather very uninspiring when It comes to performance machines, Socketed parts & the Win10 (But hey we have the LTSB !! ), Time changes people and Yeah the current demographics have radically changed, People don't think anymore. But thanks to Prema/J95/Fox/Phoenix & NBR-TI Vets (sorry might have missed a few), Clevo and MSI's LGA machines for keeping the Adrenalin pumping, I feel rejuvenated despite the setbacks, not all is lost, Really wishing for the best, After all we are the tinkerers and the iconic representation of a mature & always evolving Notebook Computer forum (Remember that Clockblock fiasco ?), Lets keep it that way..

... Cheer up fellas what's all with the gloomy weather we still got more ...

 

And both those tracks are old Giorgio Moroder products.. Champ!

 

This is pretty hard. Harder than I thought, and I was certain that it wont be a walk in the park. Bending, twisting and flattening them to match one's design is something that only a machine can do, not someone with ancient tools (coil spring for bending and pipe for flattening) and bare-not-very-precise hands. Eventually I might get the desired result, but it seems that the extra pipes I got for testing (on top of the ones that would go into the mod) wont be enough. Means, I'll have to buy new ones, means even more money and delay and to get things even "better", there's no source of sintered wick 400mm pipes (the one I got them is long gone). As I said, modding is pretty time, money and nerve consuming hobby... but I LOVE it

 

It's just this on a small scale, right? What's so hard about that?

 

I don't know, I am having a blast with my new GX800...plenty to tinker with here! I could probably have fun with this thing and never install a single game

 

Aligning 3 of them next to each other with all the twists and bends... And that's the "easy" part. The really hard one should look like this:

http://imgur.com/a/IZPGj

How close I'll get to this? Remains to be seen. As I said, I'm only human with two hands and not the best suited tools for the task.

Also there's still the question what I'll use to "glue" them. I hope that MesoGlue would hit the shelves eventually, it would be the best case scenario. It's all questionable from there on - soldering - yeah, good luck with aligning and leveling all of the pipes and heatsinks; AS Premium Adhesive - nowhere near as good as solder.

 

for me i still enjoy laptops, i enjoy the forum but i think more and more, machines are able to do things better now, more and more machines can run all games well, the gap isn't as wide as it once was, i originally came here in 2008 to get help with a machine that could run games ok, i ended up with a GTX260m in a clevo machine and although at the time it wasn't the top tier card it was still solid and there where not very many machine brands that equipped it, it was a bigger investment, firstly in price and secondly in getting something that would do what i wanted it to.

these days more and more options are available, it doesn't seem as confusing or nerve-racking so the hype for enthusiast machines might not be as prominent, but i still enjoy reading about machines, i love seeing how far notebooks have come, and the decrease in the gaps between the "gaming notebooks" and the "gaming desktops".

 

I'm done with gaming laptops for now... Until, the situation get's better and less BGA crap gets shoved down our throats, I'll stick to desktops...

 

Congrats on the GX800. Pretty cool machine you got there.

 

I'm for the desktop/tablet setup myself. Nice desktop for heavy gaming/work, and then the tablet for browsing/light gaming on the go.

 

@King of Interns I lost my interest in gaming/enthusiast laptops about two years ago, when realization came that dual-core i5 with iGPU can run almost all games just fine - even though at low settings - yet gives much more flexibility in choosing convertible form-factor, security features, connectivity and business-class quality no current gaming machine can provide - making an overall much more versatile tool for both work and leisure. My approach is that since there are no photorealistic games - and, frankly, we're very far from that since like 99% CGI in movies just screams that it's CGI - I don't give a damn about quality settings, as long as game runs at reasonable fps - and there is no point in maintaining a gaming mastodon. I even no longer care about eGPU possibility for my next machine - never used it on current ones, anyway. Obviously, I don't do video editing, or other really heavy tasks on regular basis either - otherwise my opinion may have been different.

I was always very excited about internal storage - that is something I am constantly in heavy need of, and even though for the past years market never failed to disappoint me by not meeting my demands - partly because my needs grow slightly faster than higher capacity products are introduced - there was always hope that one day I'll finally be able to have all the data I need inside a single laptop. With the recent spike in SSD prices and ubiqituos switch to expensive, low-capacity m.2 form-factor, my hopes and interest fade every day; I come to gruesome realisation that I will have to rely on external storage for a few more years, to say the least. For reference, at the moment I would be satisfied by 8TB fast SSD storage in m.2 2280 form-factor, be it SATA or NVME - that won't cost an arm and a leg. Considered getting 2x 4TB 2.5" before, but they're very expensive dead-end.

 

My enthusiasm has just begun in earnest because I recently got my hands on an HP G1 Zbook 15 which supports MXM. I'm just now hitting the enthusiasm pain points of Price, Availability, and Form Factor(MXM A vs B)

 

My enthusiasm will never die on me simply because of the nature of my work, I work on board a ship and I still want to be able to play games whenever I'm off duty, so desktop is never an option. As for the BGA hating, BGA still gets the job done for most people who doesn't care about overclocking, swapping out MXM's which is a pain in the ass for the less tech savvy people and not to mention it's expensive too.

 

Yeah, when mobility is such a factor and you don't want a massive machine you have to cut corners somewhere and a lot of consumers have decided that socketed CPU/GPU is a corner they're willing to cut.

 

I think people just go in phases like me for example I joined in 2007 had a laptop for awhile then sold it got into desktop for quite awhile then sold it then into phones as my doit all and now I have a new laptop and here I'am again.Anyway sounds good.....

 

Well said. Depends on need a lot too. Where I lived before, a laptop suited me best, plus I had occasional LAN gaming sessions. Since I moved over a year ago, now a desktop works great, I don't have much need for a gaming laptop, and unfortunately my face to face gaming sessions are so few and far between that my trusty old 970m still works fine for those times.

 

In a desktop phase myself at the moment, but you're right, it definitely goes in cycles.

 

Have to agree it depends on my need at the time. I got my first "gaming" laptop in college when I met my now wife. I was spending more time at her place so I sold the desktop and got a 260m laptop. Was blown away by its relative performance. Stayed on the laptop train and carried my GX660 overseas to the sandbox for an entire year.

After I got home and was finally established in my career I got married and got a house so a laptop didn't make sense or so I thought. Got a desktop again and Incan it tell you how amazing it was. Desktops for me just are the pinnacle of performance and customization. However since I travel for work I found myself wanting a laptop to game on while traveling. I tried the BGA thing and while they are super portable they never really did it for me. The tech is just not there yet. I'm not a super socket elitist but I also hate being locked down. I like tinkering as well as gaming. If they can make a thinner light BGA overclocking beast I would be on board. I feel we're gettin close to what I'm looking for but not quite yet. Maybe a few more years and even the thinner laptops can hang with the beefy laptops.

Again it comes down to needs. I would love a lighter and smaller laptop but I'm not willing to totally sacrifice performance for it.

 

I dunno, certain extreme people bag Razer left, right, and center here and my Blade had given me nearly zero issues for almost 3 years of 1000s of hours of gaming abuse while I see LGA units having issues and failing left and right. So it goes both ways, but some people are just unable to understand all sides of an issue without resorting to whipping out immature attacks. I can see how that would turn potential members off with unnecessary toxicity.

I'm actually going to turn to an LGA unit next because there's finally a relatively light and quiet one that looks attractive. But I have to say rolling through threads here there's a ton of helpful people around still even if some posts constantly have my eyes rolling out of my head.

It's still a fun and worthwhile community if you can take the "educators" with a grain of salt and realize there's many legitimate sizes to fit all kinds of wants and desires and none of them are "wrong". At least not worth resorting to ridiculous extremism over.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

I'm in the same boat as well. I think buying a laptop as expensive as a MacBook Pro is not a good idea if you stay home with it all day. Even if you go out with it, you run the risk of getting it stolen. Most $300-500 laptops today should be able to handle business-related programs and activities other than gaming.

I plan on selling my laptop to venture out in the desktop world and also experience 144hz for possibly the first time. There's desktops portable enough to be a laptop, but they are either HTPCs or Mini-ITX builds which cost a bit more than MicroATX or ATX builds. I usually don't bring my laptop's elsewhere so I can afford having a desktop.

 

I'm curious—is it the Clevo W650KK?