Budget 71-90K Buy from India now or few months later from the US?

Z

zish18

Recruit
My current laptop, the lenovo yoga 520 which runs a 7th gen i5 and 8gb RAM is definitely on it's last legs. One hinge has broken which in turn has absolutely wrecked the back-plastic board and some screws have been stripped. I had upgraded the memory from 4gb to 8gb in 2019 and my most recent upgrade was adding an m.2 512gig SSD (solid kioxia/toshiba deal for 3.3k) in 2022. I currently run linux (arch) as windows is just horrible on this system but I still have a dualboot. I'm looking to upgrade my system now. My budget is about 70k-80k max. My usecase is college (i'll carry power) and some games like F1, NFS, GTA etc.

I'm currently in 12th, college starts next year so I have the option to either:
1. Go with the LTT route of buying an old thinkstation/optiplex pc and slapping on some storage and a good gpu to use as a cheapskate gaming build
2. Buy a laptop in the indian market (horrible prices).
3. Wait for a bit and buy a laptop from the US (same price - better specs) where my sibling resides and hopefully we meet sooner or later.

I'd need a laptop for college as I'm hoping to pursure CS but a PC sounds like a much better deal on paper. What do you think?

Also, is there any way to communicate in classifieds while being a recruit? I know the 25 posts rule and the patron option but I'm not really comfortable going for the patron before I've even spoken to the seller.
 
OMEGA44-XT said:
Remember, there might be warranty issues for laptop bought in US.

You can buy something with RTX 3050, like this, get an additional 8GB RAM, 1TB SSD & extended warranty, all for under 80k easy.
Click to expand...
For 80k , you can get a far better laptop from usa. Check with dell regarding transfer of warranty, I bought one dell inspiron from usa around 5 6 years back, it's still running fine, I remember inquiring reg warranty , it is possible. Please call dell usa and ask.
 
If you are going to college and staying in hostel, definitely buy a laptop. So, option 1 is off the table.
If you are staying at home, then option 1 is ok. But i recommend building a pc. Idk what is the advantage of buying "an old thinkstation/optiplex pc". Dont have much knowledge of it. Dont know how you expect to play F1, NFS, GTA on those machines since they will have shit graphics card. You can build a good gaming pc for 80k.
An example build. You can get much better parts and go cheaper if you buy used parts like a used GPU.

If you are going the laptop route, I recommend buying from USA if you get a chance.
www.microcenter.com

HP OMEN 17-ck1020nr 17.3" Gaming Laptop Computer - Black; Intel Core i7 12th Gen 12700H 1.7GHz Processor; NVIDIA - Micro Center

Get it now! Powerful gaming anywhere.
www.microcenter.com www.microcenter.com
Options like these are very nice. It costs 91k in USA. same model costs 1.76 Lakh in amazon India.
You can get much better deals from US. Thing is warranty might be an issue. The laptop will say international warranty. But the warranty will only be available in India if that same exact model (OMEN 17-ck1020nr in this case) is sold in india. You have to confirm that by calling them. Else you can just decide to live without warranty since you are already getting a good price.
.
Pc is a much better deal most of the time in terms of raw power. Laptop is only for mobility, example you are in hostel, taking laptop to class etc.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
check these if you want to find some laptops or parts on good sale in US.

You can also find good laptop deals on amazon sales etc. (not as good as US prices). Keep an eye out for them, ppl will post links on Flipkart and amazon deals thread in here.
 
Last edited:
OMEGA44-XT said:
Remember, there might be warranty issues for laptop bought in US.

You can buy something with RTX 3050, like this, get an additional 8GB RAM, 1TB SSD & extended warranty, all for under 80k easy.
Click to expand...
Buying a 50 series GPU doesn't really make sense

TheGoldenHorde said:
If you are going to college and staying in hostel, definitely buy a laptop. So, option 1 is off the table.
If you are staying at home, then option 1 is ok. But i recommend building a pc. Idk what is the advantage of buying "an old thinkstation/optiplex pc". Dont have much knowledge of it. Dont know how you expect to play F1, NFS, GTA on those machines since they will have shit graphics card. You can build a good gaming pc for 80k.
An example build. You can get much better parts and go cheaper if you buy used parts like a used GPU.

If you are going the laptop route, I recommend buying from USA if you get a chance.
www.microcenter.com

HP OMEN 17-ck1020nr 17.3" Gaming Laptop Computer - Black; Intel Core i7 12th Gen 12700H 1.7GHz Processor; NVIDIA - Micro Center

Get it now! Powerful gaming anywhere.
www.microcenter.com www.microcenter.com
Options like these are very nice. It costs 91k in USA. same model costs 1.76 Lakh in amazon India.
You can get much better deals from US. Thing is warranty might be an issue. The laptop will say international warranty. But the warranty will only be available in India if that same exact model (OMEN 17-ck1020nr in this case) is sold in india. You have to confirm that by calling them. Else you can just decide to live without warranty since you are already getting a good price.
.
Pc is a much better deal most of the time in terms of raw power. Laptop is only for mobility, example you are in hostel, taking laptop to class etc.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
check these if you want to find some laptops or parts on good sale in US.

You can also find good laptop deals on amazon sales etc. (not as good as US prices). Keep an eye out for them, ppl will post links on Flipkart and amazon deals thread in here.
Click to expand...
Thanks so much for the detailed reply, games like GTA/NFS/F1 don't require godly graphics to run them, any higher-end 20 series or lower end 30 series will do the trick if we're speaking Nvidia, but generally AMD GPUs tend to be more bang for the buck + my main intention with 1 wasn't the end product but the fun of taking apart and old pc, cleaning and upgrading it and working in a restricted environment rather than a new build which is open to all possibilities - imo a challenge feels better. Though I agree with you option 1 isn't very future proof. I'd probably lean towards a laptop.

That omen deal is pretty solid, I was also looking at Gigabyte's GF series as they provide a good GPU with a mid i5 and some solid ram for a good price. The legion series in the US go under sales often too so I'll look out for that. I love the Omen's keyboard deck though. I think I'll wait for the US option to play through, I don't know when that'll happen but hopefully soon.

For laptop/pc deals in the US, I used to use the Zach Tech Turf's discord server, they had a channel dedicated to verified deals (like 10 in a day) which are almost always massive discounts - will recommend.
 
chetansha said:
For 80k , you can get a far better laptop from usa. Check with dell regarding transfer of warranty, I bought one dell inspiron from usa around 5 6 years back, it's still running fine, I remember inquiring reg warranty , it is possible. Please call dell usa and ask.
Click to expand...
Warranty transfer doesn't work as you expect it to (tried it myself for my Alienware m15 R1). So you need to buy premium plus warranty (top tier one) & transfer warranty to make it work. Those premium plus warranty costs a lot, so will bring up the cost to Indian levels. Asus mentions international warranty, but better to talk to their support to get a clear picture. Acer & MSI for sure doesn't allow international warranty for products purchased in USA. Not sure of Lenovo & HP.

To put things in perspective, my sub $1500 AW m15 R1 required a $350+ premium plus subscription for a total of 3 years of premium plus, from what I remember.
TheGoldenHorde said:
If you are going to college and staying in hostel, definitely buy a laptop. So, option 1 is off the table.
If you are staying at home, then option 1 is ok. But i recommend building a pc. Idk what is the advantage of buying "an old thinkstation/optiplex pc". Dont have much knowledge of it. Dont know how you expect to play F1, NFS, GTA on those machines since they will have shit graphics card. You can build a good gaming pc for 80k.
An example build. You can get much better parts and go cheaper if you buy used parts like a used GPU.

If you are going the laptop route, I recommend buying from USA if you get a chance.
www.microcenter.com

HP OMEN 17-ck1020nr 17.3" Gaming Laptop Computer - Black; Intel Core i7 12th Gen 12700H 1.7GHz Processor; NVIDIA - Micro Center

Get it now! Powerful gaming anywhere.
www.microcenter.com www.microcenter.com
Options like these are very nice. It costs 91k in USA. same model costs 1.76 Lakh in amazon India.
You can get much better deals from US. Thing is warranty might be an issue. The laptop will say international warranty. But the warranty will only be available in India if that same exact model (OMEN 17-ck1020nr in this case) is sold in india. You have to confirm that by calling them. Else you can just decide to live without warranty since you are already getting a good price.
.
Pc is a much better deal most of the time in terms of raw power. Laptop is only for mobility, example you are in hostel, taking laptop to class etc.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
check these if you want to find some laptops or parts on good sale in US.

You can also find good laptop deals on amazon sales etc. (not as good as US prices). Keep an eye out for them, ppl will post links on Flipkart and amazon deals thread in here.
Click to expand...
Damn, that Omen is a solid deal. IMO @zish18, you should talk to HP support US & India & check about international warranty for HP & extra costs if any to get it. Even if you play FIFA & NFS, those games will get resource intensive with time.

My AW m15 with i7 8750H + 2060 gets 70-80fps on 1080p low on FIFA 23. They increased the system req for FIFA with last game & now its much more intensive.
 
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