I eventually caved in and bought a new HP Omen 17. My old MSI laptop is barely hanging on (literally) by one hinge, no battery (long since dead) and just old age in general.

The Omen has a i-7 11800H coupled with a full power (140w) RTX 3070 with 8gb dedicated mem, 16gb main memory,1tb NVMe, a 17.3 inch QHD display and audio by Bang & Olufsen. Thunderbolt 4 is also a nice thing to have.

I got a free 3 year care package and a student discount (I'm not a student) after a bit of bartering on the phone.

Can't wait for friday! Now I can play some of my more demanding games that got put on the back burner after selling my desktop last year. Will it run Star Citizen? I hope so.

I look forward to your findings.

Congrats and I have to ask, why a laptop? Will you be doing gaming while on trips? I assume you will be connecting the laptop to external monitors as well as an external keyboard and mouse or do you have a docking station?

I just decided that I no longer wanted to dedicate the real estate to a full desktop gaming setup and as I quit flight sims last year I sold everything inc monitor/joystick etc.

I will connect an external keyboard for gaming (I don't like gaming on a laptop keyboard) and of course a mouse but that's it. I have a laptop stand on a table but if I'm watching videos or on here/browsing I'm happy having it on my lap. It will go on travels but not very often. I've just got used to it Panzer over the last 6 months or so. I doubt I will ever own a desktop again.

Your reply makes sense to me Chucky. As for me, I still do racing sims and flight sims so the desktop will remain my gaming preference for a long time. I've considered buying a laptop as well but I already spent way too much money on the Alienware desktop.

Setting up a new laptop is a pain. Updates galore and then there is the need to remove all the junk. Unfortunately it came with Win 11 which I dislike so I guess I need to get used to it.

Only had chance to install one game so far (World of Warships). Running it @ 2k res with graphics and sound maxed out and it's giving 165+FPS.

So far so good although the sound system isn't as good as on my 10 year old MSI which was disappointing.