I received a message on Amazon creating a sort of 5 months payment Plans. Basically On electronics Goods. When I came across this Laptop. Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop, 15.6" Full HD IPS, Intel i7-7700HQ CPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD, GeForce GTX 1060-6GB, VR Ready, Red Backlit KB, Metal Chassis, Windows 10 64-bit, G3-571-77QK https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y4GZS9C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_lv-wBb433ACB4.
This laptop cost $1.049 but as a prime member I have the option of getting it For $209.80 a month(for 5 month) for it. Is this a good laptop to Run UE4 on it? If so from a rating of 1-10 where does it stand?
Which is 2TB. That should be enough. But still your rating of 5 out 10 does worry me. And I can’t findy any other laptop that is stronger then it with the Amazon deal. I may have to go to a desktop route. But if I do it will have to be a AMD Ryzen built. Like you I love the Window 7 OS. I considered it to be the True Successor to Window XP. And like you I’m no fan of Window 10. But unfortunately, Microsoft convince AMD not to make Newer CPU compatible to Win7.
I see. If that the case what is your opinion on this Desktop it $140 a month for 5 month payment plan. Also is there a strong Window 7 UE4 PC build that you recommend?
My bad. Here it is SkyTech ArchAngel GTX 1050 Ti Gaming Computer Desktop PC FX-6300 3.50 GHz 6-Core, GTX 1050 Ti 4GB, 8GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, 24X DVD, Wi-Fi USB, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, White (GTX 1050 Ti Version) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M3UKNVD/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_-QnxBb6161134
The GPU isn’t bad, I’d say if you can upgrade the SSD to 512GB then you’ll be fine, then just use an external drive for storage, the GTX 1060 is pretty good so it would run UE4 just fine.
Thanks for answering my question! But I have one more question. Should I just replace the SSD with a hybrid? Seagate 2TB FireCuda Gaming SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Hard Drive https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IEKG2HM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_HqoxBbB925044
That drive can’t fit in a laptop.
SSD matters a lot, the hybrid drives are not nearly as fast as an SSD. I’d just get a 512GB SSD and then an external drive
The GTX 1060 is more than enough for UE4, you don’t need to upgrade beyond the 1060 unless you simply want more power, most people playing games have something less than the 1060
If you do not absolutely need the mobility … ie that laptop will mostly sit on your desk. You should consider getting a desktop instead, all round better deal. If you must get a laptop make sure it has at least 16GB ram … 24GB would be much better and greatly enhance your laptop’s useful lifetime. Laptop harddrives are considerably slower than desktop equivalents. So an SSD is really nice to have but in practice all it gives you is a quicker boot. You can skimp on the SSD if you have greater than 16GB ram.
You also don’t need more than a 1060GTX that is perfectly adequate for development.
The sdd is small but otherwise it will get the work done no problems. If anything, you are using a median system, thus your projects will be optimized while you are making them yourselves. You wont end in a trap some UE4 delelopers fall into, by having a too powerfull setup and ending the game running poorly on 1060 etc even though those are the median GPUs.
For the SDD size I give it a -1, otherwise specs are fine, HOWEVER; personally I couldnt develop with a 15.6" screen and for this I give -2. If you are used to working with a small screen this might not apply to you, but I couldnt work with a screen smaller than 24" when it comes to graphics, and probably blueprints too.
I bought a pc specialist defiance iii. I had a 1070, an i7, 256 ssd, 1tb hd. 16 gb RAM. It cost me $1200. The company are amazing. They replace a faulty mobo after 6 months for free and are always extremely helpful when I call.
now I’ve upgraded to 32 GB ram and replaced the hd with a 2tb ssd. Id say it’s the perfect portable dev machine with CPU speed being an occasional bottleneck.
I use an old Alienware m14x R1 system Win 10 Pro with an i7 2860qm, 16 GB ram and a Nvidia Geforce GT555M 3GB ram and 500 GB 5200rm hard disk. The model is from 2011 andI have zero issues running Visual Studio and UE4 with Blueprints and particles on middle to high. For most indie dev projects most gaming laptops will do fine. It can even run the elemental demo that is so famous for making most machines lag like hell. Of course I do not run anything on epic as that would be a bit overkill for most of the game play stuff I work on. But even on Epic it can actually stand up on its own. I therefore believe that the machine you mention should be able to do just fine. And with 32 GB ram I thing it is gonna be more than just perfect.
@CupMcCakers Also I find it hard to see how your CPU could be a real bottleneck unless you are doing some rather large projects. I mean your i7 should be at least four cores with eight threads
Oh and for level design I always recommend the biggest screen possible and if possible two dual screens so here I opt for a desktop and not the laptop (even though I also have a 17 inches laptop).
When working with very big blueprints, even semi strong CPU:s cause lag at some point. My top work machine is i7-8800k overclocked, and can laglessly control my biggest level blueprints and compile them without lost of time, but older machine with i7-4770 not overclocked gets like a second of lag every time I copy paste a node for example, and compiling takes few seconds.It works of course, but the choppiness is noticeable.
But… that it what one has to accept when working on laptops. One can also make sure that all not needed processes are shut down. Superfetch service on Windows 10 is one of them and also onedrive does not need to run in the background before you really wish to synch your stuff etc. Trust me it makes a big differences, Even the Windows Update service can be shut off and safe CPU resources if needed. The truth is that Window 10 services really uses a lot of CPU resources from time to time and even disk usage as well. Shut those off while working in UE4 can make a huge difference. Not saying that you will never experience lags as such. I always set the Engine Scalability to medium when working on game play scripting etc. However, no laptop will beat a good desktop built for game development…
I live in a hot weather mostly… I had a notebook with hard drive and got 2 of them going poof, because the overall temperature was too high and usually above the hard disk operation temperature, so HD is a no. The faster the CPU and the graphics card will mean it will be really hot, you will need a set of fans to be placed below it, even if you plan on using SSD.
Desktop is way better since you have more room for cooling and you can always go for a ITX setup (motherboard is 17cm x 17cm) and cases are usually small enough for you to not worry about size. ITX cases are not expensive too, and most of them can handle well sized graphics card. There are great Intel socket 1151 8th generation boards and you can use from i5 to i7 up to 6 cores/12 threads. There is also socket AM4 ITX boards, but then you would really say goodbye to Win7.
Win10 is not bad, but you would soon need to change, because software will likely to stop supporting it anyway.
If you US based you can check on BestBuy for their custom builds assembly, hope that still exist!