The best laptop (or Desktop PC) to develop games

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1

Hi!

I’m going to start developing games with Unreal 4.27 and Unreal 5. I will also use Maya.

I’m looking for some recommendation about which laptop is the best to use it to develop games. I want to buy one that I can use for more than 4 years. Which one do you recommend me?

Razer Blade 17 could be a good choice.

Or maybe it is better to use a desktop computer.

Thanks!

2

Best laptop to develop games on unreal 5 is DESKTOP PC.

Unless you REALLY REALLY REALLY need to be mobile, like developing your game right where action is or something. Or you already have desktop PC and laptop is for summer house or somewhere you pretend to develop game while you move some blueprint nodes from left to right, sip 18yo whisky smoke cigar and pretend to be cool dude in fedora hat.

"sarcasm off"

Thing is that for same price as great gaming laptop you can get even better desktop PC. So unless you already have desktop pc and have thousands of $$$ to burn, you should get desktop. Your back, your eyes, wrists all that will thank you later for choosing more ergonomic setup.

So good PC (desktop or laptop) for developing games based on unreal must have:

  • 64GB ram (or more)
  • dedicated (not mobile version) of 3080 (or 2080TI) card with at least 12GB ram.
  • multicore CPU (16 or more)
  • at least 2 SSD (for best experience: at least single and big SSD (for storage), and two m.2 SSDs for system and unreal)
  • output for connecting 3 monitors (1 4k and two may be lower res)
  • no thermal throttling while running unreal for hours

If you find such LAPTOP, post here

3

Thanks a lot!

But I haven’t found a multicore CPU with more than 16 cores.

4

That razer laptop would be fine, if:

  • it does not thermal throttle after some time, and does not collect dusts so it slowns down after a year or two due to dust and throttling
  • make sure that 3080TI is full version not some mobile card (do not rely on that name, make sure chip and speed of it is exactly same as in full card)
  • it has at least TWO slots for SSDs, 3 if you plan to use that new streaming of content from ssd to gpu card.
  • and you do not care about your wrists, neck, back eyes problems later on from all those hours working on tiny laptop.

There are threadripper cpus, and before xmass amd will probably release new ones on curent gen architecture (if they did not already). I am not watching current hardware releases, i was lucky to get all new stuff for 2020 xmass.

Yes i am repeating same stuff again and agian. :wink:

And something not repeated yet:
for price of new (great i admint razer laptop) you could get desktop with same specs, more ram, more slots for ssd. And then good quality monitor, good keyboard and mice.
Now i repeat something again:
always get really good keyboard, mice and monitors it is matter of your health in some years. It will pay you back (in low or no healthcare costs) after 20 or 30years.

5

Thanks. Yes, I want a desktop PC.

I looking for one with the i9-12900K processor. Or I’ll probably assemble it. The only problem with that is to assemble the water cooling system.

6

Oh don’t start me on water cooling. :smiley:

If you want we can have long talk here about it, learned what to do and what not to do while assembling last desktop PC. I lost/overspent some $$$ on learning which parts work for water cooled loop and which dont. So if You are interested i can share my mistakes (mostly) here.

7

OK.

Teach me: what do I have to do?

8

This is true.

That being said, if you absolutely need a laptop, the Razer Blade 17 is among the better laptops. I’ve had good success with Razers in the past.

For multi-core CPUs, the AMD Threadrippers will let you get up to 64 cores, but anything beyond 32 cores starts compromising too much on CPU frequency, so the sweet spot is probably the 3775-Pro based workstations, soon to be upgraded to 5775-Pro. Unless you want to go EPYC or Xeon multi-chip systems, which ends up being quite expensive.

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9

I can only share my mistakes:

  • For 3070 and amd 16 cores single 3 fans radiator is enough. Not sure for 3080 or 3090. Probably there is room for 3080, as mine keep CPU and GPU at 37C.
  • first pick case that has space for 2 big radiators (one on top one at front of case), you want space for two, because future cards may have much higher TDP.
  • get flexible pipes first, dont go for hard pipes it is easy to make it ugly, and hard to make it look better than flexible piping.
  • look for some nice CPU cooling set with big radiator (3 big fans), pump, water reservoir etc.
  • now important thing: LEDs. pick brand that you can get additional LED steering modules. Decide on brand, this will impact price of whole cooling. I went for corsair and ended with 3 different systems to drive my LEDs. It is a mess. PC case (corsair) has LED driven from buttons on front panel, CPU and some fans are driven by some dongle connected to usb, and remaining fans are driven from LED driver on motherboard. Corsair has really nice fans with great LED options, but they charge extra for controlling modules, and use weird plugs (if you want extend connections you need more plugs. And I could not buy single or 10max plugs to connect those modules, only option available was bag with 1000 plug for 200$, or buying extra module for about 200$ ).
  • last thing: you got brand of cooling kit, and diameter of flexible pipes, now you need to plan water loop and buy extra pipes and extra connectors for those pipes. Don’t buy for eg. starter kit with radiator some pipes and cpu block and hope you can get more parts, sometimes it is really hard to get more parts with right diameter.

PS.
Some great extra hack to get later on:

  • rapsberry pi with small screen to display some stuff
  • AIDA 64 application, that can generate that extra stuff for rapsberri pi to display
  • you can use aida to make HTML page with current temp on CPU GPU and anything, then display it on rapsberry pi (that you can put inside PC case and put its small display in any place it fits).

Great way to make customizable small display for your PC.

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10

After reading your post I’m thinking to buy a prebuild PC. A lot of things to consider.

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11

Prebuilds are worse. :smiley:

Just get normal air cooled one. Water cooling is for fun when you enjoy tinkering, or you absolutely must have silent pc.

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12

1750W desktop or portable screen with buttons ? the choice seems obvious to me

dual CPU moterbord wit BBQ CPUs on a 8 ram slot moterbord good GPU

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