Choose The One That Is Portable
After choosing the hardware specifications for your laptop, there are other elements that you cant ignore, such as design, size, weight and the display size. If you are going to carry your laptop daily to college and back, look for a lightweight laptop. If you stay in a hostel, and its a full-time machine youre using, a larger screen size might be recommended. Its also useful for watching movies, playing games with your friends, reading notes and creating presentations. A larger screen size also means a wider keyboard, which is more ergonomic.
Amd X370 B350 A320 Chipset Motherboards
High data rates are a pipe dream for most users of the 300-Series AMD chipsets, and thats mostly because of some major variation in the memory-controller stability of Ryzen 1000 Series CPUs. Some motherboard and CPU combos were good past DDR4-3466, while others couldnt make it over DDR4-2400. Failures in trying to boost frequencies were more likely to occur as the number of ranks increased .
Given this variation, wed personally recommend DDR4-2933 that has a DDR4-2666 secondary XMP and DDR4-2400 SPD, such as Kingstons HX429C15PB3A series. A set that this writer tested functioned properly on every older platform tried and blew past DDR4-4000 on newer platforms. So manual overclocking remains viable to those who find their CPUs exceeding our justified low expectations here.
How Do I Tell If My Cpu Clock Speed Is Good
Good question. Again, the cliff-notes version is that higher numbers are usually better. However, due to thermal restrictions, processors with more cores tend to operate at a lower clock speed. This is why having a PC with more cores might not always offer you the best level of performance.
So, whats a good clock speed look like?
Well, this is going to depends what youre doing with your PC. Some applications run single-threads, others are designed to utilize multiple. For uses where the latter is the case like video rendering and some gaming experiences, having more cores is going to offer up an enormous improvement over having faster ones.
That said, for more everyday things like web browsing, an i5 processor with a higher clock speed is probably going to offer more bang for your buck than a beefier i7.
In a hypothetical world where everyone could afford it, maybe wed all own PCs with the best Intel Core CPU available. However, in the world we actually live in, not everyone needs that high-end performance and not everyone can afford it. For most people, opting for a higher clock-speed over a higher core-count will do just fine as an alternative.
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How To Choose A Computer
This article was co-authored by Gonzalo Martinez. Gonzalo Martinez is the President of CleverTech, a tech repair business in San Jose, California founded in 2014. CleverTech LLC specializes in repairing Apple products. CleverTech pursues environmental responsibility by recycling aluminum, display assemblies, and the micro components on motherboards to reuse for future repairs. On average, they save 2 lbs – 3 lbs more electronic waste daily than the average computer repair store.wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 12 testimonials and 100% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 258,739 times.
Getting a new computer is an exciting experience. The promise of brand new technology is hard to stifle. Unfortunately, that excitement can quickly wane if you find you didnt get the computer you need. The vast number of choices can be daunting, but this guide can help steer you towards technical bliss.
Let’s Get Granular Our Platform
Weve come up with an, ahem, short list of what you can use with specific desktop platforms, attempting to place these in rough chronological order . For custom desktop PC builds, we recommend treating the statements of motherboard manufacturers regarding their memory support as theoretical limits and reading reviews to determine practical limits. Additionally, firmware limits set by system manufacturers usually cannot be exceeded, regardless of whether the machine is a notebook or desktop.
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How To Choose A Laptop
wikiHow is a wiki, similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 45 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time.wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 26 testimonials and 84% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 249,020 times.Learn more…
Looking to invest in a new laptop? There are so many options out there that trying to find the right one can get confusing fast. With a little planning and consideration of your needs, you can quickly eliminate the vast majority of laptops from your search and focus on finding the one that suits your habits and budget perfectly.
General Considerations For Buying A Laptop
There are several universally important things to consider when buying any laptop:
1.;Monitor Size: Unlike a desktop, you cant buy a new monitor for a laptop. If youre looking to game, watch movies, do graphic design, or any task that requires ample screen real estate on-the-go, youd want to consider a 15+ monitor. Keep in mind, however, a bigger screen means a more power-hungry laptop, thereby increasing weight and overall size and decreasing battery life.
2.;Weight: If you know youre going to be lugging your laptop bag with you all day, you may want to consider giving your shoulder or back a break. Many laptop manufacturers offer lightweight devices exactly for this reason, with laptops under 3 pounds, slimmer components and smaller screens. These laptops tend to be easier to carry and have excellent battery life, with the tradeoff being generally less horsepower due to smaller and lighter components.
3.;Battery Life: Nothings worse than being in the middle of your work and the dreaded battery low alert flashes on your screen. Fortunately, it isnt unheard of to find laptops with 15+ battery life and is increasingly commonplace. If you plan on being on-the-go with your device often and dont like always having to be outlet hunting, you should consider a laptop with up to 6-8 hours battery life at a minimum.
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Laptop Procurement And Configuration
Are you a purchaser for a university looking to provide students with discounted laptops? Or a buyer looking to procure laptops for your business? The CDW Discount Purchasing Program gives your students your volume discount for their personal purchases. On top of that, you get the assurance of purchasing from a legitimate vendor at a good price, and free tech support from CDW in case anything goes awry.
CDW Client Device Provisioning Services can help preconfigure student devices with the specific hardware and software your institution requires. As we discussed, not all majors need the same specs so you could purchase devices preconfigured with additional RAM, powerful video cards and SSD space for instance, plus have all the software they need for their studies right out of the box.
Our Provisioning Services also include the following:
- Windows Imaging
What You Need To Know About Hardware
As with any computer, hardware determines what a laptop can do. Better components will naturally be more expensive, so it is important to consider the laptops primary role and choose hardware suitable for that purpose. A laptop purchased to browse the internet or write documents, for example, doesnt need a high-end processor or video card.
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Best Hp Laptop For University Students
HP 15″ Laptop
The right laptop for a college student depends greatly on your major, especially if youre going for a graphic design or programming degree. A student who uses their computer primarily for writing papers needs some essential functions, such as space for programs you may need to download and use in the classroom.
You can find all that in an HP 15″ Laptop, one of the best laptops for college students. And if you go for a slightly upgraded version, it comes equipped with up to 8GB of memory, Windows 10, and up to Intel® Core i5 processor.
Do You Want A Touchpad
The same is true of a laptops touchpad. This is one of the foremost ways in which you interact with your laptop, so it needs to work well. Unfortunately, many laptop touchpads are awful. Theres a trend for making the buttons part of the main touchpad, which, when implemented poorly, can mean your cursor jumps all over the place when you perform a click. The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 has an excellent Precision Touchpad
Plenty of touchpads dont respond accurately to finger movement, or have squishy buttons that make it difficult to determine whether youve registered a click. Most modern touchpads support gestures, where you can use two fingers to scroll or to pinch-to-zoom but, again, how easy these gestures are to use varies widely between laptops.
Nowadays, many laptops come with Microsoft-approved Precision Touchpads, putting an end to years of mediocre Windows laptop touchpads that were massively outclassed by those found on Apples MacBooks. If you do pick up a laptop with a poor touchpad, theres always the option of carrying a USB travel mouse in your bag, which brings us to
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Best Budget Hp Laptop
HP 14″ Laptop and HP Chromebook
If you have a smaller budget, we do have several good laptop options such as the HP Essential 14″ laptops, as well as the HP Chromebook.
While they won’t be as powerful as a high-end or gaming laptop, these entry-level laptops will still get the job done for you. They are great for home use and students who just need a laptop for basic day-to-day activities like browsing the internet, working with Microsoft Office applications, and enjoying music, videos and movies.
Amd X470 And B450 Chipset Motherboards
Support for high RAM data rates across various motherboard models under these chipsets is mixed. Some easily exceed DDR4-3600; others barely go above DDR4-2933 when paired with a Ryzen 2000 Series CPU. The closest thing weve seen to consensus has been DDR4-3466, but again, weve had boards that topped out at far less.
The good news is a resurgence of AMD-compatible DDR4-2933 memory modules on the market following Intels addition of this speed to its 2020 desktop processor guidelines. Those who think that DDR4-2933 is unacceptably slow should dig a little deeper to find out what other people are running with the same motherboard and processor. Imitation can be far more than the greatest form of flatteryit can save you a heap of time and trouble!
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How To Calculate Your Laptop Requirements
The best computer for video editing will depend on what you want to edit, and how you plan to edit it. For example, if youre creating feature-length videos at 8K resolution, then youll need the highest level of professional gear.
However, for most of us, a less powerful laptop will suffice. Most video editing PCs can work with 16-32GB of RAM. That should be enough memory to handle videos up to 4K, with a few pieces of editing software.
Heres a good rule of thumb: you should always choose the laptop which is just slightly above your everyday requirements. You dont want a computer which is inadequate, nor one which is needlessly expensive. Its often cheaper to skip the high-end laptop and invest in cloud storage and lightweight software instead.
In the next section, well look at how to choose the right video editing software for PC.
What Laptop Should I Get Top 12 Things To Consider
What laptop should I get? How should I decide? Use our helpful guide to find out.
Which laptop should I get?
With so many laptops to choose from, selecting the best one to fit your budget can be like navigating a minefield. Even making sense of the ever-changing list of product specifications is no easy feat. Laptops vary greatly by CPU speed, graphics capability, size, drive storage, and RAM, among other things. Whats more, your laptop needs may be completely different to someone elses, only adding to the confusion.
For some, a flashy 4K screen may be important. Others may want a high-performing CPU, like AMDs new Ryzen 5000 processors, to give them a competitive edge in games. Getting value for money can be tricky too, since newer technologies dont always mean better performance. For example, older-generation CPUs can sometimes outperform newer products in benchmark tests. For these reasons it pays to do your homework before you purchase a laptop.;
;To simplify the process for you weve put together a list of 12 criteria that you can use as a guide for what to look for. It may seem laborious delving into each category, but there are a lot of things to consider. At the end of the day, taking time to research your new device will mean you avoid making a costly mistake and get a laptop thats just right for you.;
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Laptop Buying Guide: What To Look For In 2021
Need a new laptop? Heres what to look for when buying a laptop for school, business, gaming, programming, audio production and more in 2021.
Laptop Procurement and Configuration
Need to procure or configure multiple laptops for your university or business? Here’s what you need to know…
Theres a lot of different laptops out there these days that can handle much of the same tasks such as word processing, web surfing and the like. If youre buying a laptop, the important consideration is, what are you trying to do with the laptop? You probably have a specific intention in mind for what youd like to get done with your laptop, or maybe a few things, like gaming, collaboration, or video and audio editing.
Wed like to get down to what you really need in a laptop and what you should consider in your laptop and laptop accessory buying decision, whether youre looking for yourself or for your business or institution.
Already know what you need? Shop top of the line laptops from CDW. Shop Laptops
What Kind Of Connectivity Do I Need
If you plan to use your laptops touchpad, touch screen, and keyboard as the primary means of control, most of the time you may never need to plug in anything other than the power cord. In this case, youll rely on the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections that most every laptop offers.
The latest Wi-Fi standard is 802.11ax , and is a good feature to look for in a premium machine to ensure the fastest Wi-Fi connectivity in the future. The older 802.11ac, though, is just fine for mainstream and budget systems. Steer clear of the older 802.11b/g/n standards that are still available on some budget machines, if you can, as those can result in lower throughput speeds and less reliable connections.;
Serious gamers might want to opt for a machine with a Killer Networks setup. It will allow for more granular control over giving wired or wireless gaming traffic priority on your internet connection. Business users and gamers may also want a dedicated Ethernet jack. Most gaming machines will have one, and some gamers insist wired Ethernet is still the only way to go for competitive online gaming. Some laptops implement Ethernet as a full-size or fold-out jack; others may come with an adapter in the box that routes Ethernet through a USB port. And still others come with neither, leaving wired Ethernet up to you to add via a dongle if you want it.
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Choose The Graphics Card
There are two types of graphics solutions found on laptops integrated and discrete. The integrated ones are typically slower while the discrete ones are more geared towards performance. If you are going to use your laptop for playing basic games or just for browsing, watching movies, a laptop with an integrated graphics card is perfectly fine.Discrete graphic card solutions on laptops are typically powered by AMD or NVIDIA. AMD calls their cards Radeon, while NVIDIA calls their solutions GeForce.
These GPUs come with dedicated graphics memory which lets them handle graphic intensive software and games. If you are studying a 3D or computer graphics course, a discrete graphics card is essential.Of course, the other benefit is being able to play high-end games on your laptop. NVIDIAs entry-level graphics solutions are labelled as GeForce 930M, 940M, whereas the mid-range offering start with the GTX 950M and above. AMDs low-end graphics solutions start from the Radeon R5 going up to the R9 series of GPUs.
Laptop Battery Life: Manufacturer Claims Vs Reality
In short: Manufacturer battery claims arent useful unless youre only comparing models from the same brand. Use our reviews to get the full picture.
Manufacturers often make heady claims about how long their laptops’ batteries last. Our tests ignore the manufacturer claims and involve multiple battery rundowns while simulating web browsing and watching videos. If you’re buying a portable laptop that you intend to use when travelling or on your commute, make sure the battery life is at least six hours based on our reviews. We’ve tested some models that last for more than 15 hours before they need recharging.
Battery stamina on large, desktop-replacement models won’t be as crucial, as they’ll almost always be near a power socket, but we still mark them down if they run out of juice in under four hours.
Our 2018 investigation into laptop battery claims versus reality found that HPs claims differed most to our lab findings, with the company claiming 10 hours of battery life on average, while our tests found 6.3 hours was closer to the mark.;
Our in-depth battery tests give you the real picture when it comes to battery life on a laptop. Now that you have a better idea of which laptop to buy,browse all our laptop reviewsto find a great model that will last.
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