Gaming laptop advice

If you have close to $2k budget, does it have to be a laptop?

Ah ok fair enough. What you linked is good. Has the amount of RAM you’d want and a 5070 is highly capable and you get access to multi frame gen. Oled screen is also a big plus.

Do you live near a microcenter? If so, id definitely try and see if you can find an equivalent machine for cheaper. Also see if you can find reviews about thermal performance because you may want to get a cooling pad to go with it as well.

I have 2 Lenovo Legion Slim 7s and like them both. Nice build quality and the only downsides are just because they are gaming laptops: heavy for a laptop and can get noisy when you put them under heavy load and they won't perform the same as a full-size desktop but for what they are they are good machines. I would buy another if I had to.

A shortened version of a way too long story of dealing with Lenovo support for those with too much time on their hands.

One is the AMD Advantage version (Ryzen 9 6900HX with an AMD Radeon RX 6800S) that I got a good deal on at BestBuy on clearance. One day after a few months it just wouldn't boot. Just a blank screen. Called support and went through the steps and nothing so they sent a box and label to ship it in for service. The box was about 6 inches thick and well padded. They had me ship the power brick (which is huge) back with the laptop.

2-day turnaround and it is back and working but one big problem. The box they shipped it back in was much thinner and the only padding was tube style bubble wrap, and the power supply had dented the lid (Thank God I had taken pictures to prove the laptop was perfect before sending). So, I call and submit my pictures of before and after they have me send it back, this time they email the shipping label, and it is to a different address and say to leave out the power brick.

This time there is a weekend and holidays, so things are taking longer, and the shipping took forever. I check the online repair ticket tracking one day and it says canceled by customer. I call and do the run around and submit my proof of delivery, which they should already have since they generated the shipping label. After a week and a half of back and forth over their investigation and dealing with being bounced around they declare it lost and say they will replace it, but they don't have that model so will replace it with an Intel unit (Intel I9-1300H with GeForce RTX 4070). About a month after the original no boot, I receive the replacement.

About two weeks after the replacement arrived, I come home and there is a box on the doorstep, my original AMD unit with a shiny new lid.

So, Lenovo's support is very good and very bad at the same time.

It has been 2 years now and both laptops have been trouble free other than whatever caused the first no boot (the repair ticket didn't disclose what the problem was.

Remember that mobile 5070 != desktop 5070. It’ll roughly be the performance of a 5060. Whether it lasts 5 years depends on whether you play AAA games and how willing you are to sacrifice settings. DLSS and frame gen should help you along, but you’ll still be making sacrifices before long.

In 2021, I bought a 3080 Lenovo legion 7i. i can still play pretty much anything that I want with mods added in. I cannot run ultra setting on most new games from within the past year. But, with medium-high setting and with Reshade to make the graphics pop, I can still hit 50-60 fps on pretty much any new demanding games. If it isn't a demanding game, I can still hit triple digits with high-ultra settings.

I am missing out on a lot of the DLSS & Ray tracing improvements that started coming out with the 4 Series cards, so if you suffer FOMO that is something you'll have to consider as cards/tech get better.

I do not play multiplayer first person shooters, so can't discuss those. I am strictly single player FWIW. Sports games are always easy to run:
WWE 2k25 maxed settings with a Reshade - 60 FPS (game limits at 60 FPS max)

NBA 2k26 max settings with Reshade - 65+ FPS

F1 25 high-ultra mix settings with Reshade and Lossless Scaling Frame Gen - 70-75 FPS

Others:

Final Fantasy XVI: Med-high mix with Reshade - 50 FPS during the crazy cut scenes. 70+ in less demanding scenes.

Final Fantasy remakes - 70+ Fps on high setting with Reshade

I was hitting 65+ FPS on Cyberpunk with Reshade and 30+ mods added on.

Alan Wake 2 (very demanding): 45-50 FPS on medium setting and Reshade.

Claire Obscur: I believe I was at a high-ultra mix with Reshade and getting 65-75 fps.

No issues with ports: Ghost of Tushima, God of War, Horizon.

I had about 3 years of being able to ultra most games with mods and reshades added in. Now I'm mixing setting between medium-ultra. I'll probably start looking to upgrade when the 6-Series laptops come out.

Edit: wanted to specify that I run reshade on everything and mods on everything if there are mods worth a damn for the game. Those can often lower FPS. So those FPS numbers above include both Reshade and in some cases mods.

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That being said, where do I even start with picking out a desktop (prebuilt) or putting one together myself

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Josh should be around soon when he sees this

Although it's a pretty tough time to build one with RAM prices going bananas.

Before buying, check the Lenovo site. You might find a better deal there. I was able to get a 5070 back in August for $1300. I usually use sites like Slickdeals to catch sales and get an additional dollars back with Rakuten.

I've only had an issue with one of my three Lenovo laptops to which I had to ship back to them for repair. Customer service was great.

That controller looks incredible. I'm on the fence about another "console" like the steam machine though. Seems like it packs a family low punch with no upgrade potential beside maybe ssd.

Have an Xbox series, but the wife has commandeered that and she gets all the play time on. Currently relegated to rog ally/switch 2 (because she also laid claim to my switch oled) lmao.

I like to tinker and mod stuff. I work in a quasi tech related position, but not with hardware. Mostly SaaS config.