My recent laptop is starting to show its age, most especially with the adapters that keep breaking apart. Since I've bought my first replacement, they've all had problems within a few months and I'm thinking I'm just better off getting a new one at this point. The GTX 1650 is also outdated as hell at this point.

Anyways, I'm looking at an MSI model (GF66)

CPU: i5 11400H

GPU: RTX 3060 (6 GB)

Storage: 512 GB SSD

Costs 1099 CAD, so better than what I can find out there for the most part, though the CPU is a bit weak. Strong GPU however. What y'all think? One thing I'm concerned about is that I've heard that MSI laptops have issues with cooling. I could go for an Asus model that is similar but costs 200 dollars more. 

All of the laptop manufacturers are really just assemblers of third party parts. And in many cases, they are really just marketers, they're not even assembling machines. Everybody works with multiple suppliers for parts.  In some cases, even within the same model, parts suppliers can vary. So I can buy a Dell model XXX machine and it will have different brand parts than your Dell model XXX machine. There are some laptops that are better than others, but you can't determine that by the brand name on the case.

Are you actually going to use it on the go regularly? If so, then battery life and portability are important. If not, then go with one of those big, thick, barely qualifies as a laptop units that almost universally have better cooling than the thin, lighter weight laptops.  You can still take it with you when you travel, if what you really need is just occasional portability like that, but primarily will use it at home. 

Beyond that, I'd just look at specs and price tag. Unless you're going to buy a couple of them, take them home to disassemble and inspect, then return the one (s) you don't want, I don't think there's really a good way to determine if one is higher quality than another.

I'm using an Acer Predator laptop, 1060 GPU. It does the job, ran FS2020 quite decently, but one USB port has failed and several keys on the keyboard don't work anymore so I'm using an external keyboard with it :/ Gaming laptops get hot, the number keys can burn my fingers while flying... The 144hz screen is awesome though, wish it had a more durable keyboard.

Prices have gone up as well, a new model with 3060 card now casts CAD 2,300, then add memory upgrade. (I guess I can re-use the memory sticks from my current one and put the old 16GB back in this one). All custom decked out models are over CAD 4,000


Btw is a Intel Core i7-12700H actually better than the i7-8750H? As a gaming laptop I have to disable turbo to prevent thermal throttling and the thing going up to 95c. So I'm pretty much CPU limited in most cases. My current CPU runs at 2.2ghz, so going to 2.3ghz seems like a waste of money... But maybe the i7-12700H runs much cooler and will survive with boost on?

Personally I opted for an Acer Nitro 5 last year... For about $850 AUD. - Intel i5 11400H, RTX 3060, 8GB of Ram, 512GB SSD, 1080P IPS 144hz panel... So I dropped in 32GB of DDR4 3200mhz Ram and a 2TB nVME SSD and called it a day.

And like you alluded to... The 11400H is hot garbage, only 6 CPU cores, 2.5-4.5Ghz CPU clock... But it does have a 35-45w TDP, which does help maintain higher clocks than say... 10-15W CPU's would. Bonus. At the expense of battery life. - Roughly comparable in performance to the Ryzen 5600H.
But it also doesn't have a P and E core setup, which means compatibility wise, it does have an edge over the 12th and 13th gen chips... Which was my argument for opting for this class of notebook. - That and AMD still doesn't seem to get many design wins with competent GPU's at a decent price point, which is a bizarre turn of fate when Intel+nVidia offer better value.

But that is the point of this system and systems in this class, cutbacks to DRAM and CPU to sell us a better GPU and Display, which arguably have the biggest impacts to gaming... With the cost burden of RAM shifted to the consumer.

In terms of GPU, you will probably see roughly a doubling in terms of overall performance compared to the GTX 1650, some games will be 50% faster, some 125% faster depending on game and where the bottleneck lays. (CPU or GPU.)

You could do a ton worst in regards to hardware.

Remember though, this class of devices are primarily plastic construction, they aren't super durable, rugged machines... And they *are* using older CPU's... nVidia should also be ready to release their 40 series of mobile RTX GPU's as well soon which should offer 50% more performance at the same price points.

I wouldn't use one as a daily driver... I have my desktop for that, but as a secondary machine for when you aren't at your Desktop, you could do a ton worse.

But it also *really* depends on what games/software you intend to play, if you are running say... Civilization, I would even argue dropping down to an RTX 3050 and getting a system with a better CPU and more RAM for the same price will likely be more impactful.

If you want durability out of your device, I suggest taking a look towards Lenovo, I don't use my notebook enough to care about durability, I'd just replace it, hence the Acer, but it might be more of a selling point if you are using it constantly... Rather than once every 6 months like I would.

Keep in mind that your old system may be using older, higher latency and/or slower memory sticks.

My old Ryzen 2700u notebook had DDR4 2400mhz and my Ryzen 4700u notebook had DDR4 3000mhz memory for instance.
So it was better to just get DDR4 3200mhz memory sticks to drop into my 11400H. - No point holding back CPU performance with DDR4 2400mhz/3200Mhz, especially when you are already held back by the CPU.

And yes, the 12700H is vastly superior to the 8750H... It's a more efficient architecture in general.
Plus in heavily threaded workloads, it can leverage all 14 cores/20 threads verses the 6 cores/12 threads on the 8750H.

Then you have the 9MB vs 24MB of cache, 4.7Ghz vs 4.1Ghz boost clockspeeds and more.

I wouldn't be surprised if you had anywhere between 50% to a doubling in single threaded performance... And much more in heavily threaded.

I wouldn't bother turning boost off, unless I was running with integrated graphics that shared TDP.

I'm using an Acer Predator laptop, 1060 GPU. It does the job, ran FS2020 quite decently, but one USB port has failed and several keys on the keyboard don't work anymore so I'm using an external keyboard with it :/ Gaming laptops get hot, the number keys can burn my fingers while flying... The 144hz screen is awesome though, wish it had a more durable keyboard.

Prices have gone up as well, a new model with 3060 card now casts CAD 2,300, then add memory upgrade. (I guess I can re-use the memory sticks from my current one and put the old 16GB back in this one). All custom decked out models are over CAD 4,000


Btw is a Intel Core i7-12700H actually better than the i7-8750H? As a gaming laptop I have to disable turbo to prevent thermal throttling and the thing going up to 95c. So I'm pretty much CPU limited in most cases. My current CPU runs at 2.2ghz, so going to 2.3ghz seems like a waste of money... But maybe the i7-12700H runs much cooler and will survive with boost on?

I just bought my first gaming laptop a Razer 14  Ryzen 9 6900 HX 3070 Ti 1tb SSD QHD 165hz screen for aud $2,700, for those of you in NA $1840usd I got sick of the last few laptops I have owned that can be summed up as plastic crap that breaks, its not perfect my complaints are no expansion SSD slot and 16GB DDR5 non upgradable ram but  since it's just for gaming and some internet stuff  the 16GB DDR5 ram size shouldn't be a real problem, sure it cost but since it dropped from around AU 4 grand  to $2990 and because I had ordered parts from scorptec  when I used to build my own desktops I haggled them for a further $290 discount so I felt it wasn't to bad a price for all that beautiful aluminium.

Ahh good point. The faster memory wasn't available in 2021 so I settled for 32GB of 2667 mhz DDR4.

The problem is, most games, FS2020 included, are bottle necked by a single core doing most of the work. So it comes down to single core speed rather than more efficient multi threading. Boost makes a big difference in fps, yet then it gets throttled every minute to twice a minute and the fps crashes down. Turning off boost keeps this one under 88c, no throttling, more steady performance. Boost heats up the cpu real fast.

Anyway 50% or more boost in single threaded performance would be worth upgrading for if I can find it on sale. I rather double my performance between upgrades yet CPUs just don't really get faster anymore. I do spend most of my gaming time on my laptop nowadays so might as well focus my expenditure there. But I'll hold off until after PSVR2 :) Less than 1/3rd the price of a new gaming laptop, kinda easy choice!

More efficient multi-threading might get me back into video editing. Constantly having to stop waiting for previews to render with a lot of tracks overlapping kinda killed that for me.