Topic: PC Gaming

Hi, got a question. On every boot-up (every time I turn it on) my Chromebook will give me a firmware updating message even though it is up to date, it's only a minor-ish annoyance just wondering if there is a fix for it or if I should just wait for the next update for one.

@Owl1 That's... Odd...
Does it say reverting update or anything like that? I'm not quite sure otherwise why it would be doing that...

@Professor_Plumber nope... From everything there is online (and there's not much) the best thing is just wait for the next update in 3-4 weeks.

@Owl1 Huh that's really odd then, is your computer up to date?

In any case, good luck and hopefully it fixes itself before then!

Been awhile since I fired up my gaming laptop, so I decided to download something from my Steam library to give it some exercise.

The game in question being Blue Reflection. Not too far in yet, as I only just beat the first boss (and man, did it's design go HARD), but it's looking like it'll be a cute little JRPG.

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded to an AM5 chipset. I'm shocked at the performance gains. I still have the 3080ti from my older Z370 chipset. My performance has nearly doubled which is insane. I can actually play games with full ray-tracing above 60FPS and with some games I don't even need DLSS. It's crazy. I never knew a CPU upgrade could give this much performance. The DDR5 RAM also increases load speed.

I’m going to try out the demo of Layers of Fear later today. I’m sure it’ll work well on my RTX 3050 laptop due to Unreal Engine 5 having better optimisation than Unreal Engine 4 on most recent games.

Would an Acer Aspire 5 work for gaming?Nothing to big, just Minecraft and the occasional indie game.

@blindsquarel It depends, what could does it use?

@blindsquarel

The Acer Aspire 5 is a middling laptop for gaming. Our model has a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce MX350 GPU, but it isn't enough to get playable framerates in most modern AAA games at "High" settings.

I’m not sure what you mean, but it’s going to be something I use for school so that is also a factor.

@Owl1
I don’t even know how to take the whole frame rate thing. Some Reddit threads I found mentioned 50 fps as unplayable, which is nowhere near accurate.

@blindsquarel I guess I should ask, is it a 11th Gen Intel or higher? (I.e., 1135g7, 1240p, etc), or a lower generation? AMDs are generally pretty good, no issues there...

@Professor_Plumber
It says it’s an 11th gen on the Amazon page.

@blindsquarel Okay yeah, that should generally be enough to run Minecraft and Indies decently!

@Professor_Plumber
I’ll definitely put in more research, but it seems better than dropping a fortune on a MacBook.( not that a mac would be good for games, but they seem to be the most popular laptop.)

@blindsquarel Eh yeah lol, Macbooks are "good" (supposedly, I have never used one myself...), but yeah I'm more of a windows guy myself...

@blindsquarel
Whatever you do, do not get a MacBook of any kind. Not only they're terrible for gaming, but they also overpriced trash. The only reason why they're expensive is for the branding since they know their fanboys will buy anything with an Apple logo on it.

@Link-Hero
That’s what I figured. My sisters each have one and they don’t seem anywhere worth the price.

Is it a bad idea to by a used or refurbished laptop. I’m thinking the Acer Nitro 5 might be the way to go, but it is a bit out of my price range if I buy a new one.

Also any suggestions for laptops are welcome, with a price range of 400$ - 600$.

@blindsquarel it's a pretty good gamble with both. But it is an option.

Lenovo Gaming Laptop IdeaPad 3i is the only other one I can think of but that might even be a bit out of the question.