Laptop for ONI (1000 -1400$)

[kolyapedal]

Hi, friends!

I know that memory speed and CPU cache play the key role in performance for Oxygen Not Included. I watched a streamer playing on a 7800X3D and was very impressed—120 fps stable with all the asteroids opened and heavily built out  (Fast Track enabled).
Unfortunately, the price of X3D laptops is comparable to a plane wing 🛫 (7945HX3D, 9955HX3D). Laptops with 64 MB cache are also quite expensive (7845HX, 7945HX, 8940HX/8945HX).
What would you recommend (budget $1000–1400)?

[gigamoi]

Well, you already know what you have to know: ONI is CPU heavy, needs fast access to memory, be it through CPU cache or the RAM itself, and runs very well on a potato GPU. You also know your budget.

I don't think we can help you more than that as far as anything ONI related is concerned as laptop availability is very region specific. You now need to shop for a laptop the best way you can in your area of the world and you will most likely find better advice on hardware related forums/reddits IMO. Just don't forget to specify the aforementioned points you already know.

Aside from that, I would generally advice you to not cheap out on how well your laptop is built as those devices tend experiment quite a bit of mechanical stress in their lifetime and good manufacturing can significantly improve your computer's durability. Even if you find it obsolete at some point yourself, with those specs, it will remain very capable of basic computing tasks such as browsing the web, video watching, or office stuff for a looong time; you may find someone interested in just that; and it can't do that if it is wrecked after a few years of use. Also, don't cheap out on the quality of the display. You don't need anything fancy like oled but cheap TN panels do really look horrible and you can hardly upgrade the display on a laptop. But that's just my two cents.

Edited June 8, 2025 by gigamoi

[cyberwarlord]

46 minutes ago, gigamoi said:

and runs very well on a potato GPU.

Yeahhhh....yeah...

But I love potatoes. 

[kolyapedal]

1 hour ago, gigamoi said:

Well, you already know what you have to know: ONI is CPU heavy, needs fast access to memory, be it through CPU cache or the RAM itself, and runs very well on a potato GPU. You also know your budget.

so far I have this option for 1400$

ASUS ROG Strix G17 G713PV (G713PV-WS94)

17.3'' (2560x1440) IPS 240Hz .Ryzen 9 7845HX processor (L3 64 MB), 4060, 16GB DDR5-4800 RAM, 1TB.

The cheapest I could find with amd L3 64 mb.

[gigamoi]

38 minutes ago, kolyapedal said:

ASUS ROG Strix G17 G713PV (G713PV-WS94)

Seems good on paper. Although sufficient, ram could be faster and larger (CPU states that it can support up to 32Gb@5200Mhz on the two slots available.) but that's somehow, and unfortunately, common for laptops sold these days for their RAM to be underspeced and you can upgrade it yourself for relatively cheap when you have money to spare at a later date. Just check that the ram you buy is compatible (and the timings good) when you do. There is also room for a second M.2 SSD if you need more embedded storage. See this video for instructions on disassembly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJZPhSZuuw8 .

Stability problems were reported when it launched in 2023 but, with updated drivers and firmware, you should be out of the woods by now.

Edited June 8, 2025 by gigamoi

[SamLogan]

On 6/8/2025 at 2:00 AM, kolyapedal said:

Hi, friends!

I know that memory speed and CPU cache play the key role in performance for Oxygen Not Included. I watched a streamer playing on a 7800X3D and was very impressed—120 fps stable with all the asteroids opened and heavily built out  (Fast Track enabled).
Unfortunately, the price of X3D laptops is comparable to a plane wing 🛫 (7945HX3D, 9955HX3D). Laptops with 64 MB cache are also quite expensive (7845HX, 7945HX, 8940HX/8945HX).
What would you recommend (budget $1000–1400)?

Hello, Which streamer is this? I'd like to see this. :)

[kolyapedal]

On 6/16/2025 at 12:41 PM, SamLogan said:

Hello, Which streamer is this? I'd like to see this. :)

HI! 

 

 

[SamLogan]

On 7/10/2025 at 8:36 PM, kolyapedal said:

HI! 

 

 

Wow thanks it's amazing to see the game run at 60-70 FPS at cycle 2000+, mine are at 10-20 FPS even with Fast Track. 

I've : 

- Intel i9 -10850K

- 32 Go Ram

- RTX 3070

- Nvme

 

Do you have is exact configuration?

 

[gigamoi]

12 hours ago, SamLogan said:

- Intel i9 -10850K

- 32 Go Ram

CPU is not too old but I see it supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. What is the memory speed and is it DDR4 or DDR5? ONI is very sensitive to memory bandwidth.

[SamLogan]

On 7/12/2025 at 2:48 PM, gigamoi said:

CPU is not too old but I see it supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. What is the memory speed and is it DDR4 or DDR5? ONI is very sensitive to memory bandwidth.

Thanks for you answer, here's the data : "2667 MHz"

I can increase it to "2933 MHz".

[gigamoi]

14 hours ago, SamLogan said:

Thanks for you answer, here's the data : "2667 MHz"

I can increase it to "2933 MHz".

Yeah. This sounds like DDR4 speeds. With the hardware you currently have, I wouldn't advise you to tinker with ram speed unguided if you are not already familiar with it nor have the time to get familiar with it. That's because it is unusual for a CPU to support two types of RAM. As a result, I'm not confident in the platform's reliability and I suspect you might encounter more stability issues than usual so I wouldn't risk it. This dual support aimed to alleviate the very high price of early DDR5 RAM when this CPU series launched.

So, you are running "a bit better than base specs" five years old tech RAM and would indeed greatly benefit from an upgrade,... buuuuut I see no cheap way to do so. If you are to get DDR5, you will need to upgrade the motherboard because they are RAM type specific and, at that point, you might as well get a better CPU, which mean that you would have replaced all you PC's core components which is expensive (even though it also means that you can switch to an AMD CPU for a better price to performance ratio). Way cheaper than buying a full new PC, but still expensive, so that's up to you and your wallet.

Alternatively, for a small boost, you may buy second hand DDR4 RAM that is good enough to bother tinkering with its speed for cheap. If you do so just make sure it is listed as compatible with your system by either the motherboard's or the RAM's manufacturer and stick to XMP profiles.

[SamLogan]

23 hours ago, gigamoi said:

Yeah. This sounds like DDR4 speeds. With the hardware you currently have, I wouldn't advise you to tinker with ram speed unguided if you are not already familiar with it nor have the time to get familiar with it. That's because it is unusual for a CPU to support two types of RAM. As a result, I'm not confident in the platform's reliability and I suspect you might encounter more stability issues than usual so I wouldn't risk it. This dual support aimed to alleviate the very high price of early DDR5 RAM when this CPU series launched.

So, you are running "a bit better than base specs" five years old tech RAM and would indeed greatly benefit from an upgrade,... buuuuut I see no cheap way to do so. If you are to get DDR5, you will need to upgrade the motherboard because they are RAM type specific and, at that point, you might as well get a better CPU, which mean that you would have replaced all you PC's core components which is expensive (even though it also means that you can switch to an AMD CPU for a better price to performance ratio). Way cheaper than buying a full new PC, but still expensive, so that's up to you and your wallet.

Alternatively, for a small boost, you may buy second hand DDR4 RAM that is good enough to bother tinkering with its speed for cheap. If you do so just make sure it is listed as compatible with your system by either the motherboard's or the RAM's manufacturer and stick to XMP profiles.

Thanks for you advice. 

[gigamoi]

You're welcome.

[kolyapedal]

On 7/12/2025 at 2:56 AM, SamLogan said:

Wow thanks it's amazing to see the game run at 60-70 FPS at cycle 2000+, mine are at 10-20 FPS even with Fast Track. 

I've : 

- Intel i9 -10850K

- 32 Go Ram

- RTX 3070

- Nvme

 

Do you have is exact configuration?

 

It's just the miracle of x3d cache. I also watched a couple different streamers with x3d CPU and they don't even notice issues. 

[SkunkMaster]

Personally i would say if you can't get what you actually want, don't buy anything.

You will just regret it, and chances are you'll be able to buy a X3D based laptop in a few months, either because the prices fell to below your budget limit, or your budget increased. 

[Einherjar]

X3D variants of AMD chips have a much larger cache size but also have slightly lower raw performance compared to the normal variants. ONI is not a 3D game and so for this purpose I would not automatically assume that for example a 7800x3D would provide much better performance than a 7700x, all other components being equal. The price difference between these two chips is currently quite large.

The 7700x in particular does not run hot(with a big cooler), this means you can eek out significant performance gains through overclocking and disabling core boost and throttling features. 

Edited September 18, 2025 by Einherjar

[Orzelek]

1 hour ago, Einherjar said:

X3D variants of AMD chips have a much larger cache size but also have slightly lower raw performance compared to the normal variants. ONI is not a 3D game and so for this purpose I would not automatically assume that for example a 7800x3D would provide much better performance than a 7700x, all other components being equal. The price difference between these two chips is currently quite large.

The 7700x in particular does not run hot(with a big cooler), this means you can eek out significant performance gains through overclocking and disabling core boost and throttling features. 

Performance difference is no longer that visible on 9xxx series of 3D chips due to changed hardware stacking.
As for actual ONI performance difference it can be easily 50%+ with 3D cache or without. It's easily visible on 7900X3D or 9950X3D (or similar - I had 1st one and on 2nd one now). Since those variants have core switching you can easily see game fps drop sharply when you send it to background and it stops preferring the 3D cache equipped cores. Similar thing can be easily observed in Factorio for example. You can also easily test it by using BIOS to force core preferrence and check the fps.

Edited September 18, 2025 by Orzelek

[gigamoi]

13 hours ago, Einherjar said:

ONI is not a 3D game and so for this purpose I would not automatically assume that for example a 7800x3D would provide much better performance than a 7700x, all other components being equal.

The 3D in 7800x3D stands for 3D V-Cache, a tech that allows to cram more cache in the CPU by vertically staking layers of it on top of one another instead of only side by side as was usually done, hence the "3D" term. Although having the extra cache tends to speed up GPU communications which helps with GPU heavy 3D video-games, the tech itself has nothing to do with "games" having 2D or 3D graphics in and of itself and any CPU heavy load with frequent memory access, such as ONI, tends to benefit from it.

[blakemw]

But one interesting thing to note about the X3D cards  is in Factorio benchmarks they provide a much larger relative boost to UPS when the simulation is not bogged down.

For example take the 50k spm base benchmark:

https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=9927606ff6aae3bb0943105e5738a05382d79f36f221ca8ef1c45ba72be8620b&vl=2.0.7&vh=

Here the X3D cpus are barely ahead of the Intel space heaters by only a few percent, and for instance the 5800X3D and 5800X perform identically. There is overall a smaller range between modern CPUs, topping out at about 80 ups with the very best CPUs.

But alternatively, for the 10k spm base:

https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f16d6950f639be1d6f92984f24c0240de6335d3e161705504&vl=2.0.7&vh=

Now the X3D cpus are convincingly far ahead of the intel space heaters, and for instance the 5800X3D gives roughly 70% higher UPS than the 5800X.

Hence there is likely some truth to the concept that these cards are most beneficial for achieving very high FPS, and not for scenarios which require moving a great deal of memory every frame.

How exactly this translates to ONI is more or less unknown, as there has been no serious benchmarking done which could come close to capturing such nuance.

Edited September 21, 2025 by blakemw