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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So right now in early to mid 2018, we're actually seeing
00:08a lot of laptop companies coming out with their 8th generation laptops. So their Coffee
00:13Lake H processors which are really powerful and for like the right user for CPU intensive
00:19applications, they are awesome. So if you're like a streamer or if you do video editing
00:23or if you're doing like 3D stuff, machine learning, 6 cores is excellent. But for a
00:28lot of people, especially gamers, those extra cores aren't all that useful. So you can actually
00:33find some very comparable performance from the previous generation of laptops and just
00:38save a lot of money. So this is kind of like a guide or some kind of like, I don't know,
00:42just a video to kind of guide you in the right direction. So we're going to look at two things,
00:47refurb options and used options. So the first thing is refurb. Refurb devices, like refurbished
00:52devices, there's sometimes a stigma when it comes to like buying refurbished stuff. Like
00:56it's like, oh, it's used, like whatever. But here's the thing. A lot of refurbished
01:00laptops are coming from like corporate devices. So like you have that 45 or 50 year old executive
01:06at a company that like gets new devices every year. That's part of the company perk, right?
01:11And then one year later, they get swapped out for a newer device. And then so that older
01:14device goes back to the laptop manufacturer. They recondition it. Sometimes they'll swap
01:18out the battery and then they resell it at a severely discounted price sometimes, which
01:22is awesome. And so those devices that come from corporate ownership are just, they're
01:26so lightly used that they're basically brand new. And if you can get your hands on some
01:30of those, sometimes it's like really good pricing. So refurbished options are excellent
01:35if, if you buy it from the right brand. So Apple, they have excellent refurbished options.
01:41Like some of the stuff that comes from Apple looks, it's basically brand new. When you
01:45buy a refurbished, he gets all the warranty and everything. But if you're talking about
01:48gaming laptops, the one brand that comes to mind, the one brand that really sticks out
01:51as like being an excellent option for me is Dell. They have what I would consider like
01:56they have a very big corporate market. So they have a ton of consumers out there and
02:00like that whole corporate ownership that I just described, that happens a lot with Dell
02:05devices. The XPS line, like they have tons of them that are just 25, 30% off. It's very
02:10significant. And the same thing goes with their Alienware lineup. If you want something
02:12that's like dedicated for gaming, same thing goes there. So now there are other brands
02:16that have the refurbished thing as well. Um, Acer, Asus, they all do it, but the difference
02:22here is that the discount isn't as substantial. I think a lot of that comes from volume. I
02:26think Dell just has a really big corporate or enterprise market. So they just have a
02:30lot of stuff doing this whole refurb cycle. Um, the other option is buying used. And when
02:35it comes to buying used, your pricing is going to vary wildly. You can get some really sweet
02:39deals here and there, but I'm just going to kind of go through, I don't know, a few pointers
02:44that I think people should kind of keep in mind when it comes to buying used. Um, okay,
02:49first, trying to find a GTX 1050 or a GTX 1060 graphics card. So like the 10 series
02:55graphics card were such a significant jump in performance from the 9 series that you
02:59should try to get one if you can. It was just better performance for lower wattage, which
03:03means less heat. And when you're buying used, less heat is good. Okay, so the second thing
03:07you want to keep in mind is thermal performance. You don't want to buy a used laptop that didn't
03:11have good thermal performance because you never know how these things were treated,
03:15right? If the previous user was constantly running their laptop at full tilt and it had
03:19bad thermal performance, then yeah, you want to avoid devices like that. Now, the last
03:23thing you want to keep in mind is that if you're buying a device locally, like so you
03:27can actually go check this thing out before you actually pay the guy money. You want to
03:30stress test it. Don't just like go there and take a look at it and play some games. You
03:33want to bring a USB key, load it up with AIDA64 or 3D Mark or any kind of benchmarking suite
03:38that you're comfortable with. Bring it there, test it out. Because if there's a problem
03:41with the laptop, it'll probably appear during a stress test, but you might miss it when
03:45you're playing games or something like that. So stress test if you can. I know it feels
03:48dorky to go there and be like, hey man, can I use this USB key and stress test? Like,
03:52just do it. You're giving this guy a lot of money. Just do your due diligence. Make sure
03:56you check it out as thoroughly as you can. Okay, that's basically it. I mean, there's
04:00a lot of really cool devices coming out right now. Six core device that is really powerful,
04:04but for gamers, this is just a really good way to save some money. Okay, hope you guys
04:08enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time.