affordable gaming laptop

[Guest]

my son wants to play CSGo. I have been searching and trying to educate myself. I found two laptops I am considering. Will they be suitable?? I am a bit concerned that they are refurbished and that I may not be able to buy a warranty. I would love help ty

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Refurbished-Pavilion-17-f000-17-f053us-17.3-LED-BrightView-Notebook-AMD-A-Series-A8-6410-2-GHz/42467857

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Pavilion-B5Z52UA-G7-2269wm-Notebook-PC-AMD-A8-4500M-1.9-GHz-Refurbished/44907487#about

 

[itmoba]

Well, I have good news, bad news, and ugly news:

{*} The good news is that there's nothing wrong with buying a refurbished PC or laptop (or a Mac/Mac laptop) -- in reality, there aren't many problems with buying refurbished in general.

{*} The bad news is that you're wasting your money by buying an HP. These machines are notoriously unreliable and of pretty abysmal quality. I highly recommend going with an Asus.

{*} And the ugly news is that neither of the laptops you're considering are suitable for CS:GO.

 

[Guest]

thank you for replying. I have been pulling my hair out trying to find something suitable. but I have been learning a lot. How can I buy a laptop for under 500. that will play CSGo rather smoothly? I am not looking for perfection. And I will consider looking at an ASUS

 

[jaguarskx]

If you are willing to up to $510 + free shipping and no tax (unless you live in CA, TN or NJ), then you should consider the following Acer Aspire E5-573G-56RG. It has a Core i5-5200u CPU which is more powerful than the above two laptops. It has a 1920x1080 resolution screen which is higher than the other laptops. That means the desktop is "bigger" which translates to being able to see more things on the screen at once. It also means playing games at that resolution is a lot more demanding. And it comes with a dedicated nVidia 940m graphics chip, while not very powerful compared to graphic chips in more expensive laptops it is much more powerful than integrated graphics and will have no problems playing CSGO with very high graphic settings.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315065&cm_re=acer_940m-_-34-315-065-_-Product


It is basically the least expensive laptop you can buy with a dedicated graphics chip. Anything less and your son will need to rely on integrated graphics to play games which can be doable for some less demanding games like CSGO, but generally not recommended.

 

[Guest]

hey this one is looks really great ty! I checked out the benchmark comparison and so far it's the best one yet, although I was looking at laptops mostly at $400. or less. But I did notice that a lot of the cheaper laptops I was looking at had dedicated graphics. Thank you for your suggestion.. I may go with this one

 

[velo3100]

Both those laptops are not very good for cs:go. I would recommend the acer that was previously mentioned.

 

[Guest]

I didn't realize that HP was such low quality. Unfortunately a lot of the refurbished ones I am looking at are HP and seem to be well priced. Another one I am looking at
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Refurbished-HP-Natural-Silver-15.6-Pavilion-15-p114dx-Laptop-PC-with-Intel-Core-i7-4510U-Processor-6GB-Memory-750GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8.1/45656191#about
the graphics card isn't as good as the ASUS, but it seems to have a good processor. And it has enough memory on the graphics card to play the games he wants. I also noticed that the ASUS does not have a dvd burner and thought that we might need that to create a back up and restore..Is this essential?

But I don't want to buy an HP if its a terrible brand. The reviews on the ASUS were semi good. And the pros may outweigh the cons

 

[itmoba]

It's fine if a laptop doesn't have a builtin optical drive. It's more important to have USB drives ready for use, but that's a separate thing entirely. I wouldn't buy at Walmart because they simply aren't trustworthy enough when it comes to returns. It's much safer to go with Amazon or Newegg.

As for HPs, you buy what you get. The last time I remember that HP made a good product was HP-UX (an operating system), though that was in the late 1990's. I can say the same thing about desktop computers in the mid to late 1990's. The rest? It's worthless junky plastic that'll break. The moment your kid gets frustrated and presses a key too hard is the moment it'll break and your wallet will scream. You'd be doing yourself a favor by spending a bit more money on something of a higher quality. Consider it an early birthday and "winter holiday or something" present. If it already is both of those, simply use up their next birthday/"holiday or something" present. Or, you can use this as a lesson for them when it comes to good spending habits by asking them if they're willing to give up their next birthday/"holiday or something" present in exchange for a better laptop -- call it an IOU (i.e., "I (the kid) owe it to you and promise not to nag you about my next birthday/'holiday or something' present because I'm getting something super cool this year").