How would you spend ~£1600 on a gaming laptop?

[ruscar]

I just ordered this...

Slightly over my £1600 budget for a gaming laptop. What if anything would you do differently any why without increasing the cost any further?


Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3740QM (2.70GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M - 4.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BC-5550H 4x BLURAY COMBO DRIVE & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
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 Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 220W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE 60 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 2010 Professional Edition
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Notebook 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)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 11 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,685.00 including VAT and delivery.

 

[Portland]

Think you've hit the sweet spot there, diminishing returns on cost vs improvement kicks in if you go for a meatier CPU or look at SLI/Crossfire. Same for boot drive. Couple of things to consider:

- do you need a Blu Ray drive, or will a DVD do the do?

- perhaps the slightly slower TB drive if you have a lot of vids, music, pics and other non SSD files.

- if you really need to save a couple of quid, you could drop to the 7970. Very similar performance, but (without starting a huge bunfight) perhaps not as good from the point of view of drivers and smooth interchange between built in graphics for standard browsing and pukka GPU for hard use.

Perhaps I'm biased, I have a shiny new machine of very similar spec that I picked up last night

 

[ryafre496]

if you have the money then good spec. for me id go for 7970m. intel ssd and smaller 2nd hdd. 2.4 cpu and blu ray wouldnt really bother me. id switch to the regular wifi card. mine has been suitable and no problems since i brought my laptop.
what i would spend money on is the arctic x compound.
if you are not bothered about spending that much then go for it.

 

[eruditionfish]

As people have been saying, the Radeon 7970m has similar performance for about £200 less, but may not switch as smoothly back and forth to integrated graphics. Also, since you're using an SSD for your system, you would likely not see much difference if you went for a 5400 rpm Scorpio Blue as your 2nd HDD.