Appraisal: i7 920 build + suggestions for laptop for college!

[robrusleg]

So the consensus was my desktop was worth very little, so this thread is more on which laptop would be right for me. As stated in the title, I'm looking for a good laptop for college. It will mostly be used for essays, browsing, and YouTube.

Here's what I'm looking for:
- Lightweight
- Reliability/sturdy
- Good battery life
- Resolution of 1600x900 or better
- Preferably 13" screen size
- Quiet (my last laptop was a nightmare)


Things that do not necessarily matter to me:
- Gaming capabilities
- Touch screen
- Optical drive

[vesseblah]

Your current desktop isn't worth much at all. Would recommend piecing it so that you try to sell the computer with just the 500GB drive for something like $300 and the 1TB HDD and SSD as separate. Having legit Windows installed in the computer will increase it's resale value, you didn't list any above. Maybe even get external USB dock that allows you to use those better drives with the laptop as extra storage space if you feel like you need it, or get a laptop with HDD and replace it with your current SSD.

With 13" laptops you'll almost always get low 1366x768 resolution. Dunno if you meant big resolution or good colors with "decent display" but that will be hard thing to find in laptops.

[Deleted]

Why not update your gpu and buy a cheap, even used, laptop for college work?

[shells]

My suggestions based on your specifications:

Lenovo T430S
ASUS VivoBook V500CA-DB51T


As said above your desktop doesn't hold much value since it was a budget build to begin with. May as well just keep it for when you come home.

[vesseblah]

As said above your desktop doesn't hold much value since it was a budget build to begin with.

Nowhere near budget build as new, i7-920 compares pretty well to i7-3820 of today. More expensive motherboard and more expensive processor with very little gain over top of the line quad cores brought up the price but very little performance to show for it. Unfortunately for the OP performance computers is what lose their value fastest since there's no more performance left after four years.

[junky]

The Macbook air 11 is excellent in terms of battery, but you can find very good ultraportable laptops like the Lenovo Yoga 13 or the XPS 12 for $850-$900 and I don't think it is worth it to spend more. The XPS is really excellent. The Yoga is very good too.

[robrusleg]

Alright guys! Thanks for the input! I'll either keep it or sell it to a friend and keep the SSD for my future laptop!

I also looked at the laptops you guys listed, but I'm not quite sold yet. I've editted what I'm looking for in a laptop

[Deleted]

The i7-920 is still a capable CPU with some overclock.

[vesseblah]

The i7-920 is still a capable CPU with some overclock.

It's still four years old and today's i5-4670K runs twice as fast.

i7-920 is not worthless, especially overclocked, but it has nearly zero resale value unless somebody is looking for spare parts (CPU or motherboard).

[Deleted]

Yes, the resale value is abysmal, which is why I suggested a GPU upgrade and a cheap laptop as an option above.

[llDemonll]

Look at the 13" Macbook Air and the Dell XPS 13. The screen on the Mac is going to be nicer but they're both what you're looking for. So is the HP Envy 13