Laptop cheaper then $4,000?

[FearXI]

I've never seen more than 64GB on a desktop. Notebooks tend to run lower simply because of space.

I think the real question here is why the OP "must" have all these components? Is he looking to go above and beyond on system specs for the next 5 years, cause you can run most games on maximum settings for a notebook priced under $1500.

This pretty much I want the thing to last me for as long as it can and not have to wonder "Can my laptop play this?".

[Jounichi1983]

Regardless of what you buy now, you'll need to replace it within 3 years if you want to stay competative. That's the typical shelf-life of any computer. The $800 desktop I bought 2.5 years ago is inferior to the $500 notebook my wife bought for herself last month.

[Maruka]

I would definitely get an asus laptop if you want just ease of convienience buying one. else id maybe look into sager

[booradlly]

- Ram and harddrives in 99% of laptops are the easiest thing to upgrade yourself.
- Ram and harddrives in 99% of laptop companies are the most inflated price wise

With these two facts you can shave off a ton of money by getting an ultimate laptop with the cheapest ram and hdd they allow you to get. Then go to newegg and buy the parts there and upgrade at home. A laptop I'm looking at costs 1k with the shitty hdd and the shitty ram. To upgrade the ram and hdd through the company it would be another 1.2k in addition bringing the total to 2.2k. Upgrading through newegg only adds $400, bringing the total too 1.4k, huge difference, the ram from newegg was $80, from the company $500.

[FearXI]

- Ram and harddrives in 99% of laptops are the easiest thing to upgrade yourself.
- Ram and harddrives in 99% of laptop companies are the most inflated price wise

With these two facts you can shave off a ton of money by getting an ultimate laptop with the cheapest ram and hdd they allow you to get. Then go to newegg and buy the parts there and upgrade at home. A laptop I'm looking at costs 1k with the shitty hdd and the shitty ram. To upgrade the ram and hdd through the company it would be another 1.2k in addition bringing the total to 2.2k. Upgrading through newegg only adds $400, bringing the total too 1.4k, huge difference, the ram from newegg was $80, from the company $500.

With that (be nice to shave more cash off) is it difficult to replace in a laptop? Specifically Alienware?
I've only had experience with desktops.

I'll also be honest I know Alienware is costly but besides a few parts I love the laptop look.
The few that I do like don't offer certain things I.E GPU or screen size ect...

---------- Post added 2012-05-27 at 08:21 PM ----------

I would definitely get an asus laptop if you want just ease of convienience buying one. else id maybe look into sager

I like Acer laptops but I couldn't find anywhere to be able to customize them at all.

[Ðareak]

Personally I wouldn't even consider an Alienware machine, You definitely pay for the name with them. Maybe try a configurator site, I got my PC from a config site recently and they had some nice prices on laptops but as far as I'm aware it was a UK only site

[tekk88]

Try out powernotebooks(dot)com My gf ordered a Sager from there a few years back and its still running strong.

[FearXI]

Personally I wouldn't even consider an Alienware machine, You definitely pay for the name with them. Maybe try a configurator site, I got my PC from a config site recently and they had some nice prices on laptops but as far as I'm aware it was a UK only site

This is my biggest problem finding a site that I can trust and decent looking laptops and customization options.

Let me say as for the looks of the laptop I'm not fond of the big black box look.
Unless Sager has other um.. cases I don't like em. I like style and whats in it.

[Flappy]

By all means buy alienware. If you are REALLY insisting upon throwing away gobs of money for logos, I would suggest taking a look at Apple as well. You can actually pay up to $4,000 more than what the computer is worth with them!

But if you are sensible and would like to actually pay for what you are getting and just can't bear to not have customization cyberpowerpc.com and ibuypower.com also sell laptops.

[windfish]

Go with an Asus G75, only 1250$ and can run any game on max. No need to buy an overpriced Alienware that will fall apart in 3-6 months.

[Deleted]

If you want your money to last you as long as possible you are better off just spending 2k~ now and then another 2k~ when you feel the need to replace it.

Your attitude in this thread seems to be that you are willing to shell out whatever it takes to get the best of the best NOW, in order to make it last, when in practice that just doesn't make sense. Once you go over a certain level, you end up paying stupid amounts of money for minimal upgrades that actually don't have any impact on performance now or in the future.

You claim things like,'none of these have the options I want'.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.p...el_name=NP9170

This has every one of your 'must haves' + the 7970M, which you claim to have not seen in any of the posts (did you even read them?) and is $2300~


Seems like you've already made up your mind before even beginning this thread. Seems like for each 'viable' option, you re just adding more things to the list to rule it out, like it needs this, oh and it needs to look good too. Sure, it's your money and you can do what you like with it, but when you make a thread asking for peoples help, and they give you lots of good suggestions, but you just ignore it anyway, what's the point? It's just a waste of everybody's time.

[FearXI]

If you want your money to last you as long as possible you are better off just spending 2k~ now and then another 2k~ when you feel the need to replace it.

Your attitude in this thread seems to be that you are willing to shell out whatever it takes to get the best of the best NOW, in order to make it last, when in practice that just doesn't make sense. Once you go over a certain level, you end up paying stupid amounts of money for minimal upgrades that actually don't have any impact on performance now or in the future.

You claim things like,'none of these have the options I want'.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.p...el_name=NP9170

This has every one of your 'must haves' + the 7970M, which you claim to have not seen in any of the posts (did you even read them?) and is $2300~


Seems like you've already made up your mind before even beginning this thread. Seems like for each 'viable' option, you re just adding more things to the list to rule it out, like it needs this, oh and it needs to look good too. Sure, it's your money and you can do what you like with it, but when you make a thread asking for peoples help, and they give you lots of good suggestions, but you just ignore it anyway, what's the point? It's just a waste of everybody's time.

Actually I saw Sager and I also commented how I disliked there looks.
Looks are one thing but cost I think is a little more important.
And I still have the page up debating if I'll go with them.
I'm still keeping my options open and learning quite a bit from posts here.

My mind hasn't been made up hence this forum post about it.

Also i was about to make a post asking a question I came across while spec'ing on Sager, maybe you can help me with it.
One of the options is "mSATA SSD Drive with Intel Smart Response Technology (SRT) Preconfigured and enabled for max performance" something I'll need or want?
I have a SSD set as primary HDD.

Should also mention I've changed to AMD Radeon HD 7970M GPU with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory because of a post here so saying I'm ignoring everyone's posts is completely wrong, I don't have to post every thought that I come up with here if I agree or not.
And every site people have suggested I've looked them up and I've said many times I'm looking for customization if I can't the site doesn't help me much.

Lol I keep having to edit. When I said I didn't see it I was saying to the poster that i didn't see it on the list and that I didn't know it was better. (7970M)

[Pan Pan]

I'd personally go for an Asus laptop, Alienware used to be an awesome brand, now it's just overpriced Dell laptops...

I've never agreed with any sentiment as much as I do with this one. Go Asus, OP.

[tekk88]

SRT is SSD caching. If you already use a SSD as the primary drive you won't see any performance gain as the SRT uses a secondary SSD paired with your main HDD to give you SSD like performance. It's like cheap SSD performance in a nut shell, correct me if I'm wrong.

[FearXI]

SRT is SSD caching. If you already use a SSD as the primary drive you won't see any performance gain as the SRT uses a secondary SSD paired with your main HDD to give you SSD like performance. It's like cheap SSD performance in a nut shell, correct me if I'm wrong.

Ah ok thanks.
ATM I'm leaning Sager mostly due to price and I can actually do a bit more customizing with them than Alienware oddly enough.

---------- Post added 2012-05-27 at 09:08 PM ----------

I've never agreed with any sentiment as much as I do with this one. Go Asus, OP.

I do like Asus I've worked on them before just not exactly what I'm looking for right now it looks like Sager.

[Mythricia]

I've seen a brand new Alienware spend over 1 minute attempting to boot. My 9 year old Packard Bell boots in 13 seconds on a clean but software populated OS, and that's with a 5400o/min HDD. That says enough as far as I'm concerned.

Alienware always was and is even more so now, all about the brand, the cases, and NOTHING else. The only reason they are in business at all is because of 1.) custom cases and 2.) gullible customers.

Anyway, check out http://www.falcon-nw.com/ - they allow some hardware customization, and if you're looking for style, Falcon Northwest know what they're doing with their custom paints, they do not kid about... However it will cost you. So if you must really spend an absurd 4'000$ on a laptop, at least spend most of it on a kick-ass hand painted look. A baseline config DRX with custom paint will cost you almost exactly 4k. Comes with previous-generation i7, which is not a downside at all, Nehalems are great CPU's.


Also, no matter what you buy, no matter how much money you spend, you will not last a long time with a laptop, or any computer. 2 years is enough for, say, Intel to make a complete tick-tock roundabout, meaning they'll do both a die shrink and a new architecture, and thus probably a new socket, which means new motherboards, perhaps new chipsets, and thusly the entire market has moved ahead with new technology and trends. So, all it takes is, essentially, 2 years for your computer to not be top-of-the-line anymore. No matter what you buy. The technology doesn't even exist yet. It will exist in 2 years. And it's like that no matter at what point you want to buy new stuff.

So, just get what you can comfortably afford and what can run the stuff you're interested in at this moment in time, the money saved by avoiding uber-high-end stuff will help you with your future upgrade purchases instead. And frankly, nobody needs the top-end stuff. Especially not for gaming, or for anything most people do. Unless you work with hardcore 3D animation (in which case you don't want a traditional video card anyway, nor do you want AMD) or some really special shit, 8GB RAM is more than you can utilize, nevermind 16. Any modern CPU will work great for games and other things. GPU is your only worry then. And frankly I have a single GTX 570 and never have any problems with new games, what so ever, and a 570 never was top-end to begin with.. And is now a generation old, and still kicks a lot of ass.

Oh, and make sure to get an SSD. It's the most noticeable performance increase for general usage that you can possibly get for a computer, no doubt what so ever.

[FearXI]

I've seen a brand new Alienware spend over 1 minute attempting to boot. My 9 year old Packard Bell boots in 13 seconds on a clean but software populated OS, and that's with a 5400o/min HDD. That says enough as far as I'm concerned.

Alienware always was and is even more so now, all about the brand, the cases, and NOTHING else. The only reason they are in business at all is because of 1.) custom cases and 2.) gullible customers.

Anyway, check out http://www.falcon-nw.com/ - they allow some hardware customization, and if you're looking for style, Falcon Northwest know what they're doing with their custom paints, they do not kid about... However it will cost you. So if you must really spend an absurd 4'000$ on a laptop, at least spend most of it on a kick-ass hand painted look.


Also, no matter what you buy, no matter how much money you spend, you will not last a long time with a laptop, or any computer. 2 years is enough for, say, Intel to make a complete tick-tock roundabout, meaning they'll do both a die shrink and a new architecture, and thus probably a new socket, which means new motherboards, perhaps new chipsets, and thusly the entire market has moved ahead with new technology and trends. So, all it takes is, essentially, 2 years for your computer to not be top-of-the-line anymore. No matter what you buy. The technology doesn't even exist yet. It will exist in 2 years. And it's like that no matter at what point you want to buy new stuff.

So, just get what you can comfortably afford and what can run the stuff you're interested in at this moment in time, the money saved by avoiding uber-high-end stuff will help you with your future upgrade purchases instead. And frankly, nobody needs the top-end stuff. Especially not for gaming, or for anything most people do. Unless you work with hardcore 3D animation (in which case you don't want a traditional video card anyway, nor do you want AMD) or some really special shit, 8GB RAM is more than you can utilize, nevermind 16. Any modern CPU will work great for games and other things. GPU is your only worry then. And frankly I have a single GTX 570 and never have any problems with new games, what so ever, and a 570 never was top-end to begin with.. And is now a generation old, and still kicks a lot of ass.

Oh, and make sure to get an SSD. It's the most noticeable performance increase for general usage that you can possibly get for a computer, no doubt what so ever.

I feel I'm going to be getting a Sager, from the posts and suggestions this is what I came up with and nearly 2k less then what I would have paid.

Display 17.3" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080)
Video & Graphics Card AMD Radeon HD 7970M GPU with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory
CPU Processor 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3720QM Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.60GHz)
Thermal Compound IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU (Looked this up and seems like a good idea comments welcome)
Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
Memory 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 3 X 4GB
Primary Hard Disk Drive 240GB Intel 520 Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive
2nd Hard Disk Drive 500GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Secondary Hard Disk Drive
Optical Drive Bay — Optical Drive or Hard Disk Drive in Optical Drive Bay with Caddy case 6X Blu-ray Reader/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
Wireless Network Card Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Combo Module

[tekk88]

Don't waste money on IC Diamond. It's good, but buy it and apply it yourself. hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-February-2012/1490/5 See for yourself. Don't use Arctic silver 5 for conduction reasons, it's old outdated junk. I would swap the hdd and ssd around, using the hdd as your main and ssd as a cache. That is, unless you don't plan to write to your ssd much. Go ahead and do some searching on it. Just my 2 cents.

[FearXI]

Don't waste money on IC Diamond. It's good, but buy it and apply it yourself. hardwaresecrets.com/article/Thermal-Compound-Roundup-February-2012/1490/5 See for yourself. Don't use Arctic silver 5 for conduction reasons, it's old outdated junk. I would swap the hdd and ssd around, using the hdd as your main and ssd as a cache. That is, unless you don't plan to write to your ssd much. Go ahead and do some searching on it. Just my 2 cents.

I was planning on using SSD for game and OS and a few smallish programs and boot music and other crap to the HDD.
And with my limited knowledge of laptops I honestly feel safer letting them do it. I could probably do it but for the couple extra buck I figure why not.

I'll check out that article anyway and we'll see.

[Mythricia]

I feel I'm going to be getting a Sager, from the posts and suggestions this is what I came up with and nearly 2k less then what I would have paid.

Display 17.3" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080)
Video & Graphics Card AMD Radeon HD 7970M GPU with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory
CPU Processor 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3720QM Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.60GHz)
Thermal Compound IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU (Looked this up and seems like a good idea comments welcome)
Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
Memory 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 3 X 4GB
Primary Hard Disk Drive 240GB Intel 520 Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive
2nd Hard Disk Drive 500GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Secondary Hard Disk Drive
Optical Drive Bay — Optical Drive or Hard Disk Drive in Optical Drive Bay with Caddy case 6X Blu-ray Reader/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
Wireless Network Card Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Combo Module

Looks great. Although yeah like said above, it's probably better to buy the thermal compound yourself and apply it - if you're used to desktops, it's the same deal. As long as you can safely get inside the laptop without trouble, at least... I hate mucking about with those things, too many damn screws!

Anyway personally I'd try the temps with the normal thermal paste first - if the temps are fine, there's no reason to tamper with it.

Edit

I was planning on using SSD for game and OS and a few smallish programs and boot music and other crap to the HDD.

That is going to give you a lot more performance than using an SSD for cache. SSD caching is a lesser solution. I use a 60Gb SSD for Windows + programs, a 128Gb SSD for games, and HDD's for all storage (I don't even use the "My Documents" folder personally, but Windows allows you to relocate that folder to a different drive, if you so wish).

This way you always have SSD performance, pretty much no matter what you're doing. SSD caching will always fail to predict certain things you're trying to do and leave you waiting. The only time I have storage issues on my main drive is when I forget to clean up my desktop from downloads and large files I left there temporarily.