Secure Your Account With Steam Guard
Security is important. You don’t want a Glengarry Glen Ross disciple breaking his or her way into your Steam account to further a nefarious agenda. To prevent that, you should, of course, use a strong password. But you should supplement the password with an extra layer of security, too.
When Steam Guard is enabled on your account, you’ll need to provide a special access code to verify your account on an unrecognized device. Depending on your Steam Guard settings, you’ll either receive an email with the special code or you’ll get it from the Steam Mobile app on your smartphone. You enable it by visiting Steam > Settings > Account > Manage Steam Guard Account Security.
Display Details Part One: Size And Resolution
You should keep four specs in mind when looking at a given gaming laptop’s display panel: the screen size, the native resolution, the refresh rate, and the panel type.
As we noted earlier, 15.6 inches is the general screen-size rule for most under-$1,000 gaming laptops. This size is a good compromise in ways that extend beyond cost. Sometimes, gaming on the biggest laptop screen possibleâand with a few exotic exceptions, that’s the 17-inch classâis the way to go. But if you’ve ever tried carrying one of these machines, or shopped for a laptop bag that can fit both it and its gigantic power adapter, you may have second thoughts. Many of these notebooks weigh six pounds or more, and the lightest ones tend to be far from the cheapest.
A 15-inch gamer still won’t be an ideal daily traveler, but most are a lot more manageable than their larger kin. Also, today’s 15-inch gaming rigs are better suited for use in true mobile fashionâthat is, off an AC power plugâthan those of past years. We’ve seen a few hit six or more hours of battery life, albeit in everyday productivity use or playing back video gaming will trim that number considerably.
Things To Consider Before You Buy The Best Laptops For Steam Games
Purchasing a laptop for gaming is possibly one of the tough decisions a gamer can make. As they are quite exclusive and its not easy to upgrade them also. Itsquite a big investment and you have to make sure that it should last you a good few years. So, almost all the gamer ask the same question and that is what features to look out for.
But there is no straight answer for this. As there are different types of games, and in which games you are interested, all being crucial considerations in deciding whats most vital for you. But other than these points, there are some basic things about a gaming laptop that is worth knowing.
Portability and Size:
Most people think that the components are more important and not the actual size of the laptop. But its better if you consider it before buying a gaming laptop. The outlook of the laptop tells most things about it. Like the kind of hardware it will be having,and how simple it is for you to carry and fit into mobile gaming scene.
If you are interested in an ultra-portable gaming laptop comprising a 13-inch screen, light weight, and long battery life, then you dont have many options and you will be restricted to lower-end CPUs and GPUs. If possible then do avoid 4K version as you can save some money and battery life by doing it.
Bigger is better:
Display counts a lot:
Refresh rates:
CPUs are vital:
Design:
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Best Cheap 144hz Gaming Laptop
Display: 14 FHD IPS 144Hz | CPU: Intel Core i7-11375H | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 | RAM: 16GB DDR4 | Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD | Weight: 3.75 pounds | Size: 12.7″ x 9″ x 0.70″
Acers Predator Triton 300 SE will get you up to speed. This affordable gaming laptop provides a 144Hz display panel for extra fluid gaming visuals. And, you can take those gaming visuals with you wherever you go. The Predator Triton 300 SE is as portable as it is powerful, coming in at just 3.75 pounds and measuring only 0.7 inches thick. Its design is also understated, giving it more in common with a MacBook Pro than with your usual gaming laptop.
The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE comes running on an Intel Core i7-11375H processor paired with an RTX 3060 graphics processor, making it a potent performer for 1080p gaming. And, with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, youll be able to keep a couple of your favorite games on the system and run them alongside background apps without much fuss.
Don’t Forget The Keyboard: Lighting And Layouts
One of the typical features that sets apart a gaming laptop is a colorful, backlit keyboard. These vary quite a bit from model to model, with more elaborate backlighting going hand-in-hand with higher prices and a higher general level of other components.
Almost all budget gaming laptops will employ single-color backlighting to keep costs down. The next step up is lighting programmable by zone, with three or four blocks of the keyboard independently customizable in different colors, but this is not common in budget machines. Keyboards with per-key, individually programmable lighting are the province of high-end machines only.
Also look at the key layout. Models with an isolated cluster of arrow keys or well-defined WASD keys get bonus points, in our book. Also, because most budget gaming laptops are 15.6-inch models, check for a dedicated number pad to the right of the main key area, if you prefer to have oneâor not, for that matter. Some machines of this screen size will have one, some won’t.
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How We Test Gaming Laptops
When we bring a laptop into our laboratory, our goal is to see how it would work if you brought it into your home or office. While we use a number of industry standard benchmarks such as Geekbench and 3DMark, we focus heavily on real-world tests that we have developed in-house.
To test endurance, the Laptop Mag Battery test surfs the web at 150 nits of brightness until the system runs out of juice. To judge pure processing power, we use a giant spreadsheet macro that matches 65,000 names with their addresses, a video transcoder that converts a 4K video to 1080p and the Geekbench 4 synthetic test. We measure graphics prowess with both 3DMark Ice Storm / Fire Strike and a series of actual game titles.
We use a colorimeter to measure screen brightness and color gamut while other instruments help us determine a laptop’s key travel and ambient heat. See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.
The Witcher : Wild Hunt
More than anything else, it’s the world of The Witcher 3 that fascinates because it’s so large, beautiful, and stuffed with history. The Witcher 3 a lot less clunky than Skyrim, which it often gets compared to, and it shares its adult tone with some of the best high fantasy RPG franchises out there.
Gruff Witcher Geralt will grow on with each crotchety response, and the story paints a delicious, slowly unraveling mystery you will want to see through to the end. There’s a reason this game tops so many best gaming lists.
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Best Laptops For Playing Minecraft 2021
Bestlaptops for playing MinecraftWindows Central2021
The best laptops for playing Minecraft don’t need to be particularly powerful or expensive, which is part of the reason the game is so accessible. It allows players the freedom to experiment in endless blocky worlds, gather resources, build shelters, and eventually create complex automated machines. If you’re looking to upgrade your laptop or start exploring what the game has to offer, we’ve rounded up a bunch of the best Windows laptops for playing Minecraft.
Where To Buy Gaming Laptops
You’ll find plenty of gaming laptops up for grabs at a range of retailers in both the US and UK, though some do specialize in certain price ranges and brands. However, in general, you should be able to find RTX 3060 laptops, RTX 3070 laptops, and RTX 3080 laptops readily available on the shelves.
UK: | Currys | Argos | Overclockers UK | Laptopsdirect
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The Best Gaming Laptops For 2021
Playing your favorite PC games with settings maxed out doesn’t mean you need a big desktop rig. We’ve got a top-rated gaming laptop for every type of user.
Pros
- Sleek, compact, highly portable design
- Very fair price for the component mix
- Greater-than-60fps gaming performance at 1080p with GeForce RTX 3060 GPU
- 144Hz display
- 14-inch screen may be tight for some gamers
- 512GB SSD potentially cramped for large game libraries
Pros
- High-refresh display with support for AMD FreeSync
- Potent Ryzen 4000 series processor
- 16GB of RAM in under-$1000 test configuration
- Good battery life and speakers
- Wi-Fi 6 support
- Single-color keyboard, versus RGB keyboard of the Alpha 15
- CPU runs hot under load
- Can’t quite match gaming frame rates of GeForce GTX 1660 Ti notebooks
Pros
- Good 1080p gaming pep for the price.
- Crisp IPS display.
- No GTX 1060 or SSD options.
- No SD card slot or USB-C ports.
Pros
- RTX 3060 base model is a better value than our tester
- Some sharp chassis corners
Pros
- Stellar performance with Core i9 and GeForce RTX 3080 in our test configuration
- Unique, satisfying Cherry MX mechanical keyboard
- Scads of configuration options, including 360Hz display
- Plenty of ports
- Pricey as configured, in line with field-leading speed
- Poor battery life
Pros
- Same premium, sleek, and light all-metal build
- Top-end performance in our RTX 3070 configuration with 360Hz display
- Superior touchpad, upgraded 1080p webcam
- All models include at least 1TB of storage, a good fit for gaming
Cons
Sid Meier’s Civilization Iii Complete
By Firaxis Games – buy on PC
Civilization fans will tell you to play IV or V in the series for challenge and accessibility respectively. However, if you can’t run either of those, Civilization 3 still lets you easily connect to network games.
That means you can enjoy playing this incredible strategy franchise against your friends, however aged your device is compared to theirs.
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Is Pc Gaming Better With A Controller
This might seem like an utterly offensive question to ask in the annals of PC Gamer, but it remains true that certain PC games are far better played with a controller than with the classic keyboard and mouse combo.
Sports games are the most obvious, as anyone who has tried to play FIFA using the strange keyboard/mouse control scheme can attest to. But there are other titles, specifically those which were primarily designed for consoles whose control schemes are so unwieldy away from a pad that playing them any other way is a pain.
You could play Witcher 2 without a controller, for example, but it actually felt far better using a pad on PC.
Display Size: Do You Need A 17
In terms of display size, a 15-inch screen is the sweet spot for a gaming laptop. You can buy models with larger 17-inch displays, but this will almost certainly jack up the weight to well beyond 5 pounds and put portability in question. In terms of resolution, however, it’s less of a question: A full HD native-resolution screen is the default minimum at this point, whatever the screen size.
Larger displays are capable of giving you higher-than-1080p resolutions, but choose wisely, as a resolution of QHD , QHD+ , or 4K will boost the final cost twice: first for the panel, and second for the higher-quality graphics chip you’ll need to drive it to its full potential. As mentioned, look for increasingly common G-Sync or high-refresh-rate screens if you want smoother visuals.
Because they require the most potent GPUs for smooth gameplay at native resolution, gaming laptops with a 4K screen are still an exception, and still expensive. And keep this in mind: Only the most powerful graphics cards can render complex game animations at playable frame rates across the full screen at 4K, so a 1080p screen may actually be a better use of your money if all you do is play games . Even though the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 can handle 4K gaming much more reasonably than any laptop GPUs before them, we still don’t think it’s worth the cost to seek out 4K gaming in laptops. The screens sure do look nice, though, especially since they’re often paired with OLED technology.
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Check Out This Wired Controller From Razer
Amazon
Priced like a high-end wireless controller, the Razer Wolverine V2 has an uphill battle to prove its worth, but if you want the ultimate PC gaming controller with the lowest latency, deep customization and high-end ergonomics , look no further than this Razer gamepad.
Gorgeous, sleek, and with fantastic build quality, the Wolverine V2 oozes sophistication in its look and feel. It offers thick, rubberized grips and additional negative space in the centre to make this standard-size controller feel bigger.
The “L-shaped” grips make for a more comfortable hold, even helping to encourage you to pull your shoulders back during play. There are also additional buttons on the rear for added functionality in a wide array of games. Plus, you get the option of stopping the triggers short to make them more responsive.
So Wait: Can You Really Game On A Chromebook
While the term “gaming” may call to mind high-powered gaming laptops or Microsoft’s and Sony’s dedicated consoles, the reality is that the gaming world is much larger than the so-called AAA or big-budget titles that major studios release. From retro games to the casual games that make smartphones so entertaining, plenty of gaming opportunities don’t require an expensive GPU or a single decorative LED.
At your disposal today are four main ways to game on Chromebooks, each with unique considerations for what kind of hardware you have:
-
You can rely on browser-based games that need nothing more than visiting a website.
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You can run Android games, giving you all of the best games in the Google Play store.
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You can stream games through Google Stadia or similar streaming services
-
You can install a handful of Linux games directly onto your Chromebook if you’re willing to do some work.
Our How to Play Games on Your Chromebook guide has more detail, but we’ll briefly discuss your options here.
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Buying Advice: How To Choose The Best Gaming Laptop For You
Internal components to screen resolution balance is crucial when choosing a gaming laptop.
What you’re looking for in the best gaming laptop of 2021 is the capability to run the most demanding games of the day graphically intensive games, throwing up all sorts of shading and effects on screen without having to make a ton of settings compromises along the way.
Bad gaming laptops advertise themselves on their gaming credentials but then deliver vastly inferior performance to their desktop counterparts, so it’s absolutely crucial that you avoid these clunkers.
High-resolution screens are a nice added bonus on a gaming laptop as well, but it’s important to keep in mind that high frame rates are far more important when gaming on the go so it’s pretty pointless plumping for a laptop with a 4K screen if it doesn’t have the interior hardware to power games on it.
In other words, a very high quality, Full HD screen can beat a 4K display in some situations, especially when it’s partnered with exceptionally fast internals for a superb portable gaming experience.
Other things to look out for when buying a gaming laptop include weight and portability , battery life , and price.
The Best Gaming Laptops In Australia For 2021
ByJorge Jimenez, Dave James, PC Gamer AUpublished 17 December 21
The best gaming laptops come in all shapes and sizes and we picked out some of our favorites.
Acer
Predator Helios 300
The best gaming laptops don’t come cheap. That’s the somewhat depressing truth of a hardware market in the grips of a silicon shortage. But the positive side of it is that there is almost no compromise when it comes to modern gaming laptops. Whether you’re after many-core CPUs, graphics cards that can ray trace like there’s no tomorrow, or glorious screens with super-high refresh rates the top notebooks of today can offer it all.
And, unlike their desktop cousins, gaming laptop CPUs and GPUs are all pretty well stocked during this era of global shortages for pretty much everything. Honestly, these laptops might be the only way to get an Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series GPU or even the new AMD Ryzen 5000-series processor.
Though they might not quite offer the same raw performance power as one of the best desktop gaming PC, what gaming notebooks do offer are slimmer, quieter, and in some cases, better gaming experiences, especially for the gamer on the go. Brands like Razer, MSI, and Dell offer tons of different configs with high refresh rate displays to ray-tracing powered GPUs
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Put The Gpu First: Graphics Are Key
The main attribute that makes or breaks a gaming laptop is its graphics processing unit . We don’t consider a laptop to be a gaming laptop unless it has a discrete graphics chip from Nvidia or AMD. A quick crash course for the uninitiated: In general, the higher the number in a GPU series, the more powerful it is. For example, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 will produce higher frame rates and higher-quality graphics than an RTX 3070, and so on down the stack.
Nvidia is the dominant player in the field right now, currently producing discrete mobile GPUs based its “Ampere” microarchitecture. Ampere GPUs sell under the GeForce RTX 30-Series name and launched on laptops in early 2021. This platform supplanted the previous “Turing” generation, though you will still find these 20-Series GPUs at online retailers in some laptops that released last year. Unlike prior generations, the top-end Turing and Ampere GPUs available on laptops carry an “RTX” designation rather than “GTX,” a nod to the ray-tracing technology that the platform offers for enhanced in-game visuals .
These remain relevant for the time being despite the new GPUs, especially in the lowest-end gaminglaptops, though the RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti will begin to replace them in many cases. You will also see, for example, the GTX 1650 Ti utilized in small gaming laptops like the Razer Blade Stealth 13, and in non-gaming laptops that can benefit from some graphics oomph, like the Dell XPS 15.