£1000 gaming laptop (plus OS!)

[AndyJ]

So, i have £1000 to spend, plus a few pence change for an OS, for a new gaming laptop. I want something that i will be able to add little more muscle too in 18 months or so to extend its useful lifespan, and a 15.6" screen is plenty enough as i have a 51" tv to plug into if i really want big screen gaming! Aside from that there are no real restrictions.

This is what i was looking at:



Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3740QM (2.70GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD SCORPIO BLUE WD10JPVT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 8MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire
1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 8 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)

any suggestions for improvements are very welcome!

Andy.

 

[keynes]

any suggestions for improvements are very welcome!

I'd suggest a scorpio black as your main drive, you are able to upgrade the gpu in the vortex chassis but that is limited to what may be available in the future and driver support by clevo. Is a desktop an option?

 

[vanthus]

Looks good,you could consider the 750GB Scorpio Black hard disk,it's a bit smaller but would be faster.

 

[AndyJ]

Unfortunately i cant do a desktop- i don't have the space or, more significantly perhaps, a missus willing to watch corrie on a small screen (i should never have introduced her to HD!) so short of buying another big TV and putting the sofa outside, i'll be 'stuck' with laptops for the next few years. Or i'll be single. hmmm....


Will the HDD be significantly faster? with being 25% smaller anyway i may go for a 250gb primary drive and get a 2nd hdd too- the storage space will mainly be used for music/video anyway. or will the space taken by the 2nd HDD take up the potential upgrade space?

thanks for the help!

Andy.

 

[keynes]

With the vortex you can have 2 HDDs but you need to give up the DVD drive, not sure how significant the difference in speed is.

 

[vanthus]

You can have two hard drives plus the optical drive with the 17.3" Vortex but not the 15.6".

 

[AndyJ]

Ok, so i'm thinking 750gb wd black, keep the optical drive, stay at 15.6"

however, ive just been looking at another thread and investigated the Optimus

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4800MQ (2.70GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
320GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD3200BEKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
2nd Hard Disk
1TB WD SCORPIO BLUE WD10JPVT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 8MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

comes in £25 cheaper, better Processor, worse graphics, better HDDs
so i imagine the biggest question would be is the gpu in the optimus upgradable?

thanks


andy.

 

[keynes]

Not in the Optimus.

 

[vanthus]

For gaming I would stick with the Vortex and the 7970M.

 

[AndyJ]

thanks for the knowledge and advice folks, i'm going to go for the vortex with the suggested HDD.

andy.