17,3" OCTANE VI - Showoff maybe some tips

Chassis & Display Octane Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) + G-Sync
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor i7-8700 (3.2GHz) 12MB Cache
Memory (RAM) 32GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Storage Drive 480GB KINGSTON UV500 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 500MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive 256GB INTEL® 760p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (upto 3210MB/sR | 1315MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Thermal Paste COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ WIRELESS-AC 1550 M.2 GAMING 802.11AC + BLUETOOTH 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options 4 x USB 3.0 Ports + 2 x USB 3.1 Type C Ports
Anti-Virus BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode


Hello!

Any got some tips to tell me the best ways to take care of this (gaming) laptop, for as long as possible?
Like, is it worth it to buy a cooling pad. How often should I clean it, and can you find instructions on this forum for that. How often should you make a clean wipe and new OS installation. And any other tips to take care of both hardware and software.

Much appreciated if someone would use their time to answer a semi IT noob (I do learn fast though). Or maybe give me some other information on where to look for answers and to learn/read more about PC’s :scooter:

Welcome to the fora!

What will you be using the laptop for? You mention gaming, but which games?

32GB is a waste, unless you have some seriously memory hungry applications. I realise you want to 'future-proof' but long before you have applications that need that amount of RAM your CPU/GPU and even motherboard will be dated and the main limiting factors. You say you don't care, but you should, it's just a waste of your money which would be better spent elsewhere.

You don't have a huge amount of storage there, the M.2 SSD, where Windows and programs will be installed, is a wise choice, but a 480GB basic SSD for user data is pretty small these days. You'd do better to reduce the RAM to 16GB and spend what you save on a bigger data SSD.

Battery life will be maximised by keeping the battery cool. A cooling pad will help with this. I wouldn't pay too much attention to the complex charging regimes you'll hear about (not charging above 80% and not discharging below 20%) because IMO any additional life they buy you is minimal and not worth the effort.

Definitely buy a fan assisted cooling pad. Heat is the enemy of electronics and you want it to run as cool as you can.

How often to clean depends really on how dusty your environment. At least once a year, possibly more often. When you do clean it pay particular attention to the finned heat exchanger(s) next to the fan(s) because that's where the cooling is done and you ned a good airflow trough there. If you need help cleaning it just ask on here.

A new version of Windows 10 is released every six months and in my experience it is much better to clean install each new version rather than do an upgrade-in-place. You get a more stable and reliable system that way and there is no need to do a wipe and install any more often than that.

Regarding other tips; avoid all tune-up tools and all registry cleaners - they are both largely snake oil and can both do way more damage than any marginal help they might provide. Do install all Microsoft updates that become available (though you have little choice these days) but if you can avoid updating drivers unless you are having problems. Similarly don't update your BIOS unless you have a good reason to do so, and even then contact PCS before you do it. Do establish a regular back regime, especially for your user data. Unless you are a particularly adventurous and experimental user the Windows firewall and Defender will provide all the Internet security you need.

Others will have more/better advice.

New here also so greetings friend!

Firstly absolutely awesome set up, I've set an order for more or less the same spec but in the Recoil II chasis! Just half the ram. My last laptop was a gtx 960m which is now 4 years old so I'm extremely excited to be able to finally be capable of VR and every game on the market at ultra settings 60+ fps! I've been scratching my head for almost 2 years so it's overdue and I think I've made the right choice for me.

I do however write this with somewhat urgency - if your laptop is still being built I would highly advise you change the storage set up... The drives themselves are perfect performance wise but in terms of capacity 736 GB is simply not enough for modern gaming! I've come from a little more than that and it barely fits 6 modern games, I'm constantly deleting and re-installing which has been the bane of my gaming experience. A headache beyond belie. Games are only growing in capacity too, RDR2 was 120gb download and I expect up and coming games to be similar at least.

I'm not doom-saying, your set up is awesome just giving you my first hand experience with laptop gaming! Otherwise you should have smooth sailing for as long as the laptop's running! Truly excited for my RTX 2070 laptop, just keeping everything crossed for the running temps!

As above, the storage is sub optimal. You're wasting limited storage slots with small drives that are slower than the competition - and not cheap enough to be worth the saving.

Need to know what exactly you intend to do with the laptop. CPU choice is a big question mark from me.

32gb RAM is a waste. You'll get no benefit now, and in the future no benefit either because the rest of the system will be the bottleneck by then. Better to spend the cash on the storage and maybe CPU.

And also as above with the comment regarding the Recoil - is the Octane really worth the price premium versus the other chassis. It may be, but worth really asking the question.

Also, what's the budget?

You could actually squeeze an RTX 2080 in there for little more than your current price if you changed CPU, RAM, and storage. Or there are other tweaks to buff performance in other ways

In short, you can get a lot better for your money.

Hey, first off thanks alot for your replies! Very much appreciated and I'm taking notes.

And welcome to you too G0975, awesome you seem as hyped as me . My current laptop is with gtx 7xx, so yeah is gonna be more than great to get upgraded now.


Regarding CPU as you mention Oussebon, I'm getting abit afraid now hehe. Do you mean big question marks regarding CPU as in I should upgrade it?? Or as it's overkill too?

Regarding RAM, I understand that it's overkill and maybe abit waste of money. However I can always use the extra 16gb RAM block (2x16) in another PC, my friend have a laptop where he needs to upgrade his RAM. Maybe a noob question, but I do suppose these RAM blocks can be used in another PC? But first I will check how much I use myself. Is mainly for gaming, but I do use some programmes that can eat up alot of RAM (amateur video editing hobby). And when I study/work I sometimes don't wanna close a lot of programmes and tabs down.

Regarding the chassis from Recoil and Octane, the reason was that by Recoil (which also looks amazing) it was mentioned that it had Narrow Bezel Design. Since this is a gaming laptop with some fine specs, my biggest concern is heat problems. So I just thought the Octane might be a tad better in this regard?
And yeah noted that I should invest in a cooling pad than.

Regarding storage, I kinda regret I didn't order the 500GB M.2 SSD Drive, since I too know all about the problems of storage. But I do have an extern harddisk for storage, so on my PC it will be mainly programmes and games. All other data will go to extern.
So I thought 256GB + 480GB was enough for OS + games/programmes.
You're wasting limited storage slots with small drives that are slower than the competition -> Which products should I aim for instead than?

My budget could go abit up, but will await to see what you say to this. Especially regarding CPU! I hope I haven't made a mistake here and should have gone with a better CPU

You can remove the RAM and use it an another system. But that'd be crazy for 2 reasons 1) just why? buy 16gb for the Octane and buy your friend 16gb cheaper elsewhere if you want to make him a present 2) if you bought 2x16gb and removed one stick you'd be running the RAM in single channel (1 stick rather than 2) and this could hurt gaming and video editing performance.

You can run games and a sheldload of Chrome tabs or whatever on 16gb RAM fine.

Video editing might benefit from more than 16gb RAM - might.

Others can explain better than I can, but when you do check your RAM usage, just looking at the number in Task Manager doesn't tell you what you need to know.

You should definitely investigate though. It's possible to amend orders after placing them, and no sense spending money on X if it gives no benefit when you could spend it on Y and get some better performance

Regarding the chassis from Recoil and Octane, the reason was that by Recoil (which also looks amazing) it was mentioned that it had Narrow Bezel Design.

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This just means that the screen doesn't have big (some people say ugly) borders around it. It's not a problem.

The Octane has desktop (S series) CPUs, versus the Recoil which like almost all gaming laptops has mobile (H series) CPUs. The Octane's CPUs are therefore more powerful. This can be an asset to gaming (a bit, depends on the title) and could be useful for video encoding. It's just a question of whether it's several hundred £ of useful. Also the Recoil has a Max-Q GPU (lower power, therefore not quite as good - though still powerful) and the screen isn't Gsync. But it's a lot lighter and more portable, by the standards of 17.3" laptops. They're quite different systems.

Regarding storage, I kinda regret I didn't order the 500GB M.2 SSD Drive, since I too know all about the problems of storage. But I do have an extern harddisk for storage, so on my PC it will be mainly programmes and games. All other data will go to extern.So I thought 256GB + 480GB was enough for OS + games/programmes.
You're wasting limited storage slots with small drives that are slower than the competition -> Which products should I aim for instead than?

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Depends what you want to spend ofc, but I'd say maybe a 500gb WD Black / 970 Evo would be very nice, with a 1/2TB HDD for internal storage. Using the external drive to back up data rather than having it as the main storage.

My budget could go abit up, but will await to see what you say to this. Especially regarding CPU! I hope I haven't made a mistake here and should have gone with a better CPU

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Depends how casual your video editing is. If it's pretty casual, then you could switch the CPU to an i5 8600k or 8500 and together with savings from the RAM go for an RTX 2080. Or just pocket the difference. You could also go for the 9700k which has faster boost frequencies and more physical cores and should generally provide better performance than the 8700 even in video editing, and certainly in gaming. The 8700 is still an okay choice for a split of both gaming and video editing. The ? was that for straight gaming it probably wasn't best for performance or value. For both there's a value argument to be made for it.

Just to add, you can use the DDR4 ram in this build in another laptop but it won't work on a DDR3 system.

Cheers!

I will investigate further with the provided information. Probably will change storage, seems like that's the really must do here.
Will also look into which programmes to use for checking your RAM usage, programmes for controlling FPS/Heat/Power etc. etc. There is alot, but I really wanna learn IT abit better. Is a jungle without the knowledge and experience.

Thanks for your help and watch out if any of you are competetive gamers. I'm gonna be no. 1 in all PvP games with this setup with a breeze.