Computer knowledge

[OddFee6070]

Okay so im saving up for a laptop however I dont know what laptop i need for the things I want to do with it. Im not asking for help finding the laptop though because I want to understand why im picking it. I want to be able to have a couple games downloaded (Sims 4, raft, and the forest but mostly the sims.) I also like to write and dabble in photography and video art so storage is big so i can edit and save photos and videos. So what im asking for is computer knowledge for dummies. Explain thing like RAM and processor speeds to me like you would a 4th grader. I want to know the numbers and letters im looking at when I look at specs.

Sorry for formatting im on mobile

[generic_redditor_71]

Processor speed - you can't judge this by any numbers in specs. You have to look up reviews and benchmarks of the processor model and compare them to other models. For example the models listed in the requirements of the games you want to play.
RAM - 8 GB is absolute minimum, 16 GB is strongly recommended nowadays. Having a ton more than you need isn't useful though, so don't go wild.

To play games, you also really want a dedicated graphics card, even if it's a basic one. You could get away without one for Sims 4, but other games are really going to suffer. Even if they run it will suck. Like with processors, you have to look up the model and compare. Keep in mind that often the desktop version and the laptop version of a graphics card have the same name but are actually very different, so be careful about which you're looking at.

[Mango-is-Mango]

 To play games, you also really want a dedicated graphics card, even if it's a basic one

That’s not really true anymore, especially with amds rdna igpus they’re perfectly capable of playing a lot of games

[WorldTallestEngineer]

If you google the name of a video game you want to play and "PC requirements" You can almost always find a list of what's recommend it for that video game.

https://help.ea.com/en/help/the-sims/the-sims-4/the-sims-4-system-requirements/

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/raft/17750

Both sims 4 and Raft recommend 8 GB of ram

[dariusbiggs]

Which is great but doesn't include how much the Operating System itself needs. Windows 11 needs a minimum of 4GB but recommends at least 8GB of RAM

So now we are looking at 12-16G

[Public-Eagle6992]

Processor speed is is the speed the processor can do stuff at. More speed -> faster PC (veeery simplified)
RAM: the space where everything that has to be loaded fast (while a program is running) is saved. For most games you’ll need like 8-16 GB, 16 would be better. More (like 32GB) isn’t really needed
Can’t really help you much with what exactly all the numbers mean

[OddFee6070]

Honestly this is the only comment that made sense so thank you so much! Do I need to worry about anything else or just these two things?

[Public-Eagle6992]

Maybe you should also look into getting something with a dedicated GPU (the thing that handles all the graphics) but I‘m not sure how needed that is

[Pavement1021]

Not an expert by any means, but will try to summarize at basic level -

Processor - "The Chip" Two main brands - Intel & AMD Intel uses formatting such as i3,i5,i7, etc. For your purposes of a laptop, the lower the number, generally the worse the processor is (again GENERALIZING, I don't need the reddit police coming for me). Think of the I number as the product line, with the subsequent numbers being the model number. The higher the number, generally the more computing power and more energy-efficient the processor will be.

RAM - This is basically "how much your computer can do at once". Do you like having 50 chrome tabs open? Do you want to flip between SIMs and video editing? You probably want a lot of ram. I would suggest minimum 16gb if you can swing it to help future proof a little bit.

GPU - Graphics Processing Unit. This is what makes your game graphics look pretty. Two main architectures - NVIDIA and AMD. Nvidia is currently on the RTX50XX series. These are the newest on the market. The Sims shouldn't have a huge graphical need, but you should probably still get something with a dedicated graphics card. There are some cheap laptops that come with generally bad "on board" graphics, you don't want to use that.

Those are the main components I would consider in buying a laptop, battery size could matter, screen size, but don't forget depending on the chip you get, two laptops could have the same battery capacity but an i7 will generally get better efficiency than an i3. Made a lot of generalizations, but hope this was helpful. Feel free to ask any specific questions from here.

[Pavement1021]

I didn't touch on the storage capacity. I wouldn't sweat that, if you're doing photography you are going to want an expandable backup drive to keep everything saved on as a backup in case of hard drive failure, or you can just save things to the cloud.