The gaming industry has surpassed not only the 100 billion dollar mark for game developers, but it’s also a full-time income for many people now. Just take a look at how Michael Grzesiek (popularly known as “Shroud”) has earned millions of dollars from streaming video games online. “Shroud” is just one name; there are many other gaming geeks who have made a handsome amount of money playing video games on their laptops/PC.
Now, after seeing these big players earning millions and building a loyal fan base, hundreds if not thousands of people jump into the gaming category to try out there hands. But before getting into gaming, you need to have a decent laptop or a PC. It’s okay if you want to play games on mobile like PUBG, etc. The article here is for folks who love playing on big screens with that red mechanical RGB keyboard. It adds up more thrill to the environment.
Most of the gaming laptops are quite expensive, and everyone can’t afford to spend around $2000 for just getting started with playing games. We, too, understand this because, after all, it’s your hard-earned cash. Now coming on to the focal point of this article – is gaming possible with a budget laptop?
By budget laptop, we mean something which costs you not more than $500 to $600. So, let’s straight dive in and take a look at if you can play games with a laptop which lies within this price range.
Check out: Top Gaming Laptops under $600
Factors to Consider before Playing Games on a Budget Laptop
1. Graphics Card
Graphics Card or GPU is one of the most crucial elements of any gaming machine. It’s something that renders the images on your display in the form of video. If you have a decent graphics card, then you can for sure, expect smooth gameplay. Now comes to the point, what kind of graphics card can we expect in a budget laptop?
Well, if your budget is around $600, you can expect to have “NVIDIA GeForce GTX1050”. These graphics are present in very limited laptops like this one. Usually, under a $600 price range, we can expect to have MX150 GPU, which is a successor of 940MX.
As far as gaming is concerned, the GTX 1050 can run games like PUBG at around 30 to 40 fps, while games like CS Go and Leagues of Legends can be played easily at 100+ fps. For more, you can refer to this article by UserBenchmark.
2. RAM
RAM (or Random Access Memory) is another essential feature that decides the performance of your gaming laptop. Most budget laptops come with 8GB of RAM, which is pretty sufficient for a newbie gamer.
But, here comes the thing. Most laptops in the market do not have an additional slot for the expansion of the RAM. It becomes quite difficult for you when you need that extra boost by upgrading your RAM.
Tip: Make sure you check whether the laptop you are buying offers you an additional RAM slot or not. Having an extra slot will save your money in the long run.
Read: Best Laptops with MX150 Graphics – 2019 [Top Recommended]
3. Processor
Budget gaming laptops generally comes with Intel Core i3 processor or in some case Intel Core i5. It’s entirely your choice whether you want to go for an Intel Core i3 processor or the one with Core i5.
No doubt, the 8th gen Core i5 is faster than the 8th gen Core i3 processor, but it’s ultimately you who needs to decide while considering your budget. If you can’t spend more than $400 on a gaming laptop, then consider checking out these gaming laptops under $400 on our website. It will give you an idea about what kind of laptops you can get under $400 price range.
4. Storage Type
It is one of the most important factors which decides how smooth your applications or games will load. Usually, there are two types of storage capacity offered on laptops today. The very first and most common is the HDD (or Hard Disk Drive). It is a kind of mechanical drive that has moving parts inside it.
The other popular storage type is the SSD (or Solid State Drive). The SSDs are almost 3X faster than the typical HDDs. They don’t have any moving parts and thus produces no noise while reading and writing data. Laptops that come with SSD tend to load application faster and smooth when compared to the laptops which pack in the HDD storage type.
Now the most significant issue we have with SSDs is that you don’t get enough space for storing your data. SSDs generally lie somewhere around 128GB to 256GB in budget laptops. Although you can get 512GB & 1TB SSD, the price of the laptop will touch the sky. If you ask us, we’ll surely recommend buying a laptop with SSD instead of HDD.
Conclusion
Well, there are the most significant factors that impact the performance of a budget gaming laptop. We would recommend you to follow the guidelines mentioned above in order to get the best value for money laptop. If you are in a hurry and can’t want to find a laptop by yourself, just take a look at the “ASUS TUF Gaming Laptop FX504” if you have a budget around $600 and “Acer Aspire E15” if you can’t invest more than $400 for a gaming laptop.
PS: Good gaming without a dedicated graphics card is impossible. With an integrated graphics card, you can play either online games or some medium level games with very low settings and fps.
We hope that you liked the post and if there’s anything for which we can help, please comment down below. We usually reply within 24 hours and will try our best to solve all your doubts.
