You're looking for a laptop suitable for college and occasional gaming, with a budget of $2,500 USD.
You're looking for a laptop suitable for college and occasional gaming, with a budget of $2,500 USD.
I'm searching for a college-ready laptop that supports competitive titles such as CS2 and Tarkov, plus singleplayer games like RDR2 or Elden Ring. Medium settings should suffice. It should also run several programs smoothly for schoolwork, which is important given my IT major. I've been considering Framework's Laptop 16 with the setup you mentioned. The build quality seems durable enough for my needs.
I'm also interested in finding another option that offers similar performance at a lower cost, preferably running Windows and meeting a minimum of 144hz. My budget is around $2,500 USD.
If you enjoy doing DIY projects on a laptop, consider purchasing your own memory and storage to save costs. For example, you can find a 64GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM kit for around $130 today.
While I appreciate the Framework experience with a 16-inch model featuring dedicated graphics, it doesn’t offer good value. From other major brands, you’d typically spend between $2000 and $2300 for a laptop with a 5070 Ti processor (desktop version likely has a 5060 Ti), paired with a faster CPU. The only recent first-hand gaming laptop experiences I have are from Asus and Lenovo models. I’ve returned the Asus and have been satisfied with the Lenovo (a 16-inch Legion model) ever after.