Laptop Advice

[Cobweb-Girl]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone would be able to offer me some advice as I'm looking for a laptop after my old one died, that would be able to play the Sims 4 and expansion packs etc. I know nothing about tech so any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm UK based and I can spend around £1000.

Thank you anyone for any help you can give. 

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Cobweb-Girl  Please do NOT just go to a local store with a list of the minimum and recommended requirements.  The specs listed are far below what you'd need to run Sims 4 on ultra settings—they haven't been updated in years and never did take into account the effects of running most or all expansions together.  A sales rep might understand this, or they might try to sell you the least-popular and hardest-to-move £1000 laptop that technically fits the minimum reqs.

If Currys is a convenient store for you, here's an example of a laptop that should run all current and future Sims 4 content on ultra settings with room to spare:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/acer-nitro-5-15.6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-rtx-3050-ti-512-gb-s...

It's actually a little more than what you need, but that's not a problem, 16 GB RAM is nice to have, and £800 is a good price for the hardware.  I'm pretty sure I could find something cheaper and still good enough if price is your first priority; in that case, just ask.

For £900, you could signficantly upgrade the graphics card:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/lenovo-legion-5-15.6-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-rtx-3060-512-gb-ssd...

This model does only have 8 GB RAM, but memory is easy to add after the fact.  It should also run a little cooler and quieter than the Acer.  The Legion is probably the best gaming laptop in the "cheap" (as opposed to "premium") category in terms of build quality, although it's certainly not the only good option.

This Gigabyte is also a good laptop, and it has the same graphics card as the Legion and comes with 16 GB RAM:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/gigabyte-g5-kd-15.6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-rtx-3060-512-gb-ss...

For your budget, you have a lot of choices, so if you have specific preferences, just let me know what you're looking for.

[quarktron]

If you want to play the Sims 4, you need to check the hardware requirements to run the game.

For Windows :

RECOMMENDED SPECS:

• OS: 64 Bit Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10
• PROCESSOR: Intel core i5 or faster, AMD Athlon X4
• VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 650 or better
• MEMORY: 4 GB RAM
• HARD DRIVE: 18 GB of Hard Drive space

For MacOS

RECOMMENDED SPECS:

• OS: Mac OS® X 10.11 or later
• PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5 or better
• VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 650 or better
• MEMORY: 8 GB RAM
• HARD DRIVE: 18 GB of Hard Drive space

[Cobweb-Girl]

Thank you very much for you advice and the information. 

I think I shall look into that. I don't need it to be too portable so I think I will go down the gaming laptop route and will have a look to see what my local stores offer.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Cobweb-Girl  Please do NOT just go to a local store with a list of the minimum and recommended requirements.  The specs listed are far below what you'd need to run Sims 4 on ultra settings—they haven't been updated in years and never did take into account the effects of running most or all expansions together.  A sales rep might understand this, or they might try to sell you the least-popular and hardest-to-move £1000 laptop that technically fits the minimum reqs.

If Currys is a convenient store for you, here's an example of a laptop that should run all current and future Sims 4 content on ultra settings with room to spare:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/acer-nitro-5-15.6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-rtx-3050-ti-512-gb-s...

It's actually a little more than what you need, but that's not a problem, 16 GB RAM is nice to have, and £800 is a good price for the hardware.  I'm pretty sure I could find something cheaper and still good enough if price is your first priority; in that case, just ask.

For £900, you could signficantly upgrade the graphics card:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/lenovo-legion-5-15.6-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-rtx-3060-512-gb-ssd...

This model does only have 8 GB RAM, but memory is easy to add after the fact.  It should also run a little cooler and quieter than the Acer.  The Legion is probably the best gaming laptop in the "cheap" (as opposed to "premium") category in terms of build quality, although it's certainly not the only good option.

This Gigabyte is also a good laptop, and it has the same graphics card as the Legion and comes with 16 GB RAM:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/gigabyte-g5-kd-15.6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-rtx-3060-512-gb-ss...

For your budget, you have a lot of choices, so if you have specific preferences, just let me know what you're looking for.

[Cobweb-Girl]

Thank you very much for your detailed reply and help, I really appreciate it. 

I'm mostly just looking for something to be used mostly just to play the game and the packs etc. Anything that does that to the best of its ability and around the budget is what I'm hoping to find since my last gaming laptop has just died. 

I'm leaning towards the the Legion you have kindly suggested if it is worth paying more for hopefully better cooling and the possibility it will run quieter.  I only have one more question if that's okay, apologies my understanding of tech is minimal. Do you think the 8GB RAM would be okay, if I only intended to use it for sims alone? 

[puzzlezaddict]

@Cobweb-Girl  Yes, 8 GB is enough for Sims 4.  But if you find yourself multitasking heavily and realize you'd like more RAM, it's absolutely the easiest upgrade there is.  Memory is also quite cheap, with another 8 GB stick costing around £40.  Here's a tutorial for upgrading, in case you want to get an idea of how the process would go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoIQqTFFL-M

So you're not locked into having 8 GB RAM at all.  However, the processor and graphics card are not upgradable, which is why the priority is usually to buy the best CPU and GPU you can afford and worry about the other components later.

[Cobweb-Girl]

Thank you very much for your continued advice and help.

I think I'm going to go with the Lenovo option you suggested earlier.