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The key gaming part is the GTX 1070. It’s one of the Nvidia’s beefier mobile parts, and there’s no sign of the low-power Max-Q edition here – PC Specialist has used the full-fat chip. That means you get 2,048 stream processors, a 1,442MHz base clock and a mighty 8GB of dedicated memory.
It’s also a step beyond the Asus ROG Strix Scar, which was a more expensive machine that relied on a weaker GTX 1060 chip.
The GTX 1070 sits alongside the familiar Core i7-7700HQ processor. It’s a quad-core chip with Hyper-Threading, so it’s got the chops for multi-tasking, and its 2.8GHz base speed can accelerate to 3.4GHz across all of its cores, or 3.8GHz on one core.
The processor doesn’t use the latest Coffee Lake architecture, but that’s fine – Kaby Lake is still easily good enough for gaming and work tasks. The PC Specialist will never feel slow, and it’s also the same chip that was used in the rival Asus.
The 256GB Samsung PM961 SSD is another familiar component, and it’s bolstered by a 1TB hard disk – so there’s plenty of room for games.
Sadly, though, the memory is a little underwhelming. We have no problem with the 16GB capacity, but the 2,133MHz speed is the bare minimum – and it’s single-channel, which means performance will suffer when compared to more conventional dual-channel arrangements.
It’s especially disappointing, because PC Specialist’s configurator indicates that there’s hardly any price difference between single- and dual-channel memory in this laptop.
Connectivity is conventional. There’s Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth and dual-band 802.11ac wireless, which is fine – but there’s no sign of Killer networking or any of the other beefed-up hardware that we see on other gaming laptops. To get that, you’ll have to pay extra.
The benefit of buying from a firm like PC Specialist is a huge amount of customisation – more than you’d get with any big-brand laptop builder.
It’s possible to save £181 by dropping down to a GTX 1060 graphics chip, which has half as many stream processors as the GTX 1070, and 2GB less dedicated memory.
There are more than a dozen DDR4 memory configurations, from affordable 4GB options to monster 32GB arrays. There are even more storage options: you can kit out this machine with dual SSDs or huge hard disks, or save money here with a smaller, slower drive.
Better networking, beefier power packs, and even better thermal paste are available on this machine.
The machine is covered by PC Specialist’s standard warranty, which is a three-year labour deal with a year of parts coverage. That’s better than the warranties offered with most other notebooks, and it can be upgraded to deals with longer periods of parts coverage and collect-and-return service.
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