g_christopher
My SC17 order with XOTIC PC just hit the processed stage! I purchased there because they offered the option to replace the 1TB HD with a 2TB model, as well as Win 10 Pro. (Being able to remote into the machine is a requirement.)
This will be a desktop-replacement laptop used for development and occasional gaming. It's replacing a much older WUXGA laptop. Stepping down to FHD and losing screen real-estate was a hard thing to accept and so I was waiting for higher-resolution screens to finally appear in 17" laptops. (It's been quite a few years of waiting on that criteria!)
The top factors for the purchase were:
- Screen resolution to display a lot of text clearly.
- High-end processor and memory, good enough graphics that it'll play most games on an external monitor.
- Ideally without silly juvenile glowing logos all over it.
The SC17 was the first 4K 17" laptop to hit the market with 4K, the 6820HK processor, and not making an unjustifiable cost-saving tradeoff (competitors deployed graphics cards with only 3G memory ??). An extra $400-$500 for the GTX 980 MXM card didn't seem quite worth the price bump. Manufacturer reputation was a big factor. MSI and ASUS would both have been fine, but MSI isn't selling a 4K laptop with these spec options yet, and ASUS retracted their announced 4K offerings entirely. Early reviews of the SC17 build quality and EVGA's work on other hardware were enough for me to trust to buying a first laptop offering.
Thanks for making a laptop in the class I've been hoping to purchase for a couple years now. Can't wait to get it!
"The SC17 was the first 4K 17" laptop to hit the market with 4K, the 6820HK processor"
That statement right there is 100% incorrect. Alienware has had that option in their top end 17.3" Laptop since last year, the 17 R3 to be exact Plus 8gb vram, Though I think the 8gb vram was sometime this year they did that part, but still before EVGA. Really, other than maybe size this laptop is damn near identical to the Alienware 17 R3 that has been around since last year sometime. Main differences between the 2 would be the Alienware has Thunderbolt 3, and if you where so inclined has the ability to purchase the graphics Amp and upgrade your GPU, granted your losing maybe 5% performance on the GPU you do put in there but still it is an upgrade path that is not at all available to this laptop let alone the price tags are more or less identical as well. So with one you can either get the Alienware Graphics Amp or even a Thunderbolt 3 Graphics Amp for the ability to upgrade the GPU, with the other you do not have that path to even think about, Just smaller package. Plus there are a bunch of other options out there that have the 6820HK processor, though you may be sacrificing 4K on most of them, but most of the others also do have Thunderbolt 3.
I really don't understand EVGA not including Thunderbolt 3 in this Laptop, I mean it is meant to be an enthusiasts laptop right? Last I checked most enthusiast's are looking forward to Thunderbolt 3 and the GPU Upgradability to Desktop performance GPU's because of it, even with a few percentage decay in performance it still offers a forward path that is really quite lacking in this machine.