Recommendation for gaming on the go

[PFCWintergreen]

So, I just took a job where I'll be spending about 50% of my work week in a city four hours north of where I live. Given that I'll be living in a hotel for 2-3 nights a week for about 18-24 months, I figure it's time to look at some kind of mobile gaming rig (SFF or laptop). I'll be driving to the location, so no planes to deal with.

I'm mainly looking at playing something like Diablo 3 or League of Legends while I'm up there, so I don't need anything that's ridiculously powerful. What I've been trying to decide between is whether or not to get a laptop or a SFF PC, and whether to get a discrete GPU or go with an integrated solution.

My thought is that the laptop would be more portable, but more expensive (especially when you add in warranty / service cost). The SFF PC would be more akin to what I'm used to - I've built PCs for years. With the SFF PC I'd have the option to start with a CPU that has a integrated GPU and then could buy a discrete card if I wanted better performance. That wouldn't be an option on a laptop.

So I guess I'm wondering if people have thoughts on this? If I went the route of a CPU/GPU combo, I'd wait for Trinity to come out to gauge its performance. For budget, I'd prefer to keep it sub $800 or so, but I'm pretty flexible.

 

[Skott]

Which do you prefer? Ease of portability or expansion/upgrade ease? If you build a matx or itx SFF unit you can reuse the box and maybe some of the other components and do it cheaper. If you go laptop you will have to buy a whole new unit every two or three years and it is more expensive. I guess if it were me and I was financially well to do I'd go 17+ inch laptop and have a great warranty on it(about $2k maybe a bit more). Poor me would just build a nice budget ($1k-$1200, peripherals included) SFF and carry everything around.

 

[mfenn]

With an actual PC, the most PITA part is going to be the monitor, not the box. If you're going to have to be checking in and out of the hotel, you really don't want to be setting up and disassembling the thing every few days. For your needs, you don't need a ridiculously expensive gaming laptop. This $1050 Toshiba Qosmio for example has an i5, 6GB of RAM, GTX 560M, and nice, big screen. You won't want to use it on your lap or unplugged, but it is infinitely more transportable than a PC and monitor.

 

[ElFenix]

carrying around a monitor and assembling/disassembling is a giant pain in the rear.

 

[JTDSR]

I own a Qosmio that I bought for cheap from my Micro Center employment days. Plays BF3, SWTOR without a hitch, graphics on high. As a previous poster mentioned however, keep it plugged in...Gaming chews the juice fast.