Will This Computer Play The Sims 3?
This is for my friend who wants to buy a laptop to play The Sims 3 at medium-high settings. Will it run? https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-thinkpad-2-in-1-14-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-...
Forum Discussion
@riccardouga I don't think you're doing anything wrong by wanting an SSD. I don't have an HDD myself, but the few times I've used one recently for other purposes (installing stuff for my parents, borrowing my brother's laptop for *testing*), I've been quite frustrated by how slow everything feels. I will say that TS4 runs the same off an HDD as an SSD; I'm not sure about TS2. TS3 is definitely faster on an SSD though, and it's not particularly close if you have all the packs and/or a lot of custom content.
I can narrow my search pretty easily to look for a larger SSD. One question I have is, if you had a single 512 GB drive, would you be comfortable installing a larger HDD yourself when you needed it? I looked up specs on an Asus a couple of days ago (not a model you'd want), and the manual showed that installing a second drive was extremely easy. But if you'd rather not, I'll cross that off the list.
The other question is, what graphics card do you want? Or, if you prefer, what's the minimum you want? Now that I know what to look for, it shouldn't be too difficult to find the best options.
Edit: I looked around more, both on Amazon.it and on a few other Italian sites, and I still think that if you really want the combination of a 512 GB SSD and 1 TB HDD (or something to that effect), you're best off ordering a custom built laptop. Yes, there are other models on sale at various stores that meet have what you want. But some of the stores clearly do their own upgrades, or else they list laptops from third parties that have done their own upgrades; either way, this would break the manufacturer's warranty, and for repairs you'd need to go through that outside company. The models that are not upgraded are much more expensive, sometimes ridiculously so. I don't think you should have to pay an extra €300 just to upgrade a 256 GB SSD to the 512 GB version.
I know I must sound like a broken record by now, and if you truly don't want to order a custom build you can tell me, and I won't mention it again. But this is what I would order for myself if I were in your situation (putting aside for the moment that I'm a Mac person). Not only would you have a 2 year warranty, just like any other upstanding company, but you could pick your graphics card and exactly the combination of storage that you wanted. You could even pay a few euro extra for a better brand of SSD instead of being stuck with the cheap variety. I know it's not just about saving money, but this is a lot of money, and the quality would almost certainly be higher than if you bought an Asus or MSI that had been upgraded by someone else.
Anyway, that's just my opinion. If you're not interested, let me know whether or not you're okay adding a second drive yourself, and either way I'll have some options for you tomorrow.
I can narrow my search pretty easily to look for a larger SSD. One question I have is, if you had a single 512 GB drive, would you be comfortable installing a larger HDD yourself when you needed it? I looked up specs on an Asus a couple of days ago (not a model you'd want), and the manual showed that installing a second drive was extremely easy. But if you'd rather not, I'll cross that off the list.
The other question is, what graphics card do you want? Or, if you prefer, what's the minimum you want? Now that I know what to look for, it shouldn't be too difficult to find the best options.
Edit: I looked around more, both on Amazon.it and on a few other Italian sites, and I still think that if you really want the combination of a 512 GB SSD and 1 TB HDD (or something to that effect), you're best off ordering a custom built laptop. Yes, there are other models on sale at various stores that meet have what you want. But some of the stores clearly do their own upgrades, or else they list laptops from third parties that have done their own upgrades; either way, this would break the manufacturer's warranty, and for repairs you'd need to go through that outside company. The models that are not upgraded are much more expensive, sometimes ridiculously so. I don't think you should have to pay an extra €300 just to upgrade a 256 GB SSD to the 512 GB version.
I know I must sound like a broken record by now, and if you truly don't want to order a custom build you can tell me, and I won't mention it again. But this is what I would order for myself if I were in your situation (putting aside for the moment that I'm a Mac person). Not only would you have a 2 year warranty, just like any other upstanding company, but you could pick your graphics card and exactly the combination of storage that you wanted. You could even pay a few euro extra for a better brand of SSD instead of being stuck with the cheap variety. I know it's not just about saving money, but this is a lot of money, and the quality would almost certainly be higher than if you bought an Asus or MSI that had been upgraded by someone else.
Anyway, that's just my opinion. If you're not interested, let me know whether or not you're okay adding a second drive yourself, and either way I'll have some options for you tomorrow.
