Help me choose new gaming laptop

[Palmz]

Looking at pro's and con's for both systems.

(1) OpticPC Force - System specs $1,850

- 4th Generation Intel® Haswell Core™ i7-4700MQ (2.4GHz - 3.4GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache)
- IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
- NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 780M (4.0GB) GDDR5 PCI-Express DX11 w/ Optimus™ Technology
- 8GB DDR3 1600MHz [SKU-424PK] (Kingston HyperX CL9 Dual Channel Memory (2x4GB SODIMMS))
- 1TB 7200RPM (SATA III - 6GB/s)
- No Secondy Hard Drive
- 8x Super Multi DVDRW/CDRW Combo Drive (Dual Layer w/ Software) (SKU - ODD001)
- Intel® Dual Band Advanced-N 6235 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module + Bluetooth 4.0 + vHS Combo Card | Up to 300Mbps (2x2)
- 2 Mega Pixel Integrated Digital Video Camera
- Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio

Pros- Nvidia Geforce 780M GPU
free thermal compound

Cons-
NO SSD
Doesn't come with Windows 7 or 8




(2) IBuyPower Valkryie - System specs $1,750

Valkyrie CZ-27 Gaming Laptop [2]
1 x Processor ( Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ Mobile Processor (4x 2.4GHz/6MB L3 Cache) )
1 x Memory ( 16GB [8GB x 2] 1600MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM Laptop Memory - Hyper KingstonX )
1 x Video Card ( NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M 3GB GDDR5 Video w/ NVIDIA Optimus [CZ-27] )
1 x Primary Hard Drive ( 240 GB Corsair Force GS SSD - Single Drive )
1 x Data Hard Drive ( 500 GB 5400rpm Serial-ATA Super Slim Laptop Hard Drive - Single Drive )
1 x Optical Drive ( 6x Blu-Ray-R/8x Dual Format DVD±R/±RW + 24x CD-R/RW Combo Drive [CZ-27] )
1 x Sound Card ( THX HD Audio with Creative Soundblaster Cinema )
1 x Network Card ( Killer E2200 Gaming Networking )
1 x Internal Wireless Network Adapter ( 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Combo [CZ-27] )
1 x Operating System ( Windows 7 - 64-bit )
1 x Video Camera ( Built-in 2.0 Mega Pixels Digital Web Video Camera )



Pros-
16 GB RAM
SSD 240 Corsair, 500GB secondary drive
Blu-Ray optical drive (yay i guess?)
comes with windows 7

Cons- 770M video card



Basically it's a trade off between graphics and performance. Plus saving money on an OS.

[tielknight]

The 780M is quite a bit better than the 770M, but it should still be able to handle most games out there. The plus of the SSD is very tempting.

Just curious, what is your budget and would you be open to other alternatives if we can find one that might work for you?

[Palmz]

I would put the GPU at the top of my list in priorities honestly. SSDs' are glorious but if all it's going to do is save me a couple seconds on load times and 15 seconds on copy, pasting 2 gbs of files for 200 more dollars, I'd rather have the GTX 780.

For now I'm going to order 8gb of RAM, but whether I should go with 1x8 or 2x4, I can't decide. The CPU has dual (2) channel memory w/ up to 32GB, but I don't know whether or not the mobo has 4 or 2 RAM slots. The CPU can certainly handle 4 RAM slots but there is no listing of a motherboard under the parts list with the OpticPC. Actually, every business that offers a laptop customization never lists the motherboard in their system specs. Why is that?

http://www.xoticpc.com/force-msi-176...wconfigure=yes

I would be open to other alternatives. Around $1,800 is my budget.