Hi Gurus of Gaming rigs 
Sadly, my old laptop has bitten the dust (the inverter is going and the screen often goes blank). It's getting a bit long in the tooth now, probably about 5 years old. So I'm looking for a new laptop to replace it.
I use my lappy for a combination of work and 'away from home' gaming. I'm a self employed systems engineer, and this takes me all over the world. to be fair, the work use of my laptop is very run of the mill, almost any laptop would do the job. Probably the only thing I'd have any question over in this spec would be what type of battery life I might expect? (sometimes, I have to take the lappy around production plants and use it to configure switches/routers etc in places where I can't plug it it. Would 2 hours be a reasonable expectation? It would mostly be at desktop, or running extremely low power windows apps like putty (a terminal emulator), word (for taking documentation) etc. (I'm assuming that closing the 'lid' is configurable to either turn the screen off, or to put the laptop into sleep mode)
I use my current laptop for playing games in the evening, when I'm stuck in my hotel room. My current, dying laptop will just about play Diablo III, Guildwars 2, but not much beyond that.
The spec I've posted looks like it should eat the games I currently play for breakfast, and for my budget of <£700, it's hard to see how I could come up with better. But I'd be fascinated to see what you think?
Will this run reasonably cool? (I'm currently using an HP HDX16 which gets 'hand burning hot' after 10 mins of Diablo III)
I've specced the standard thermal paste (as the super silver goopy stuff would put me a couple of quid over budget)..would the uber putty make much difference do you think?
I have MSDN versions of Windows 7 & 8 (I'll probably give Windows 8 a go on this), so that should sort me for an OS, will I need to get any drivers pre-install? or will Windows 8 install ok on this and recognise all the hardware, just leaving me to update to the latest nVidia graphics drivers after install?
Cheers
Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-3230M (2.60GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 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
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
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
Battery
Optimus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1.3 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1
Price: £697.00 including VAT and delivery.
Sadly, my old laptop has bitten the dust (the inverter is going and the screen often goes blank). It's getting a bit long in the tooth now, probably about 5 years old. So I'm looking for a new laptop to replace it.
I use my lappy for a combination of work and 'away from home' gaming. I'm a self employed systems engineer, and this takes me all over the world. to be fair, the work use of my laptop is very run of the mill, almost any laptop would do the job. Probably the only thing I'd have any question over in this spec would be what type of battery life I might expect? (sometimes, I have to take the lappy around production plants and use it to configure switches/routers etc in places where I can't plug it it. Would 2 hours be a reasonable expectation? It would mostly be at desktop, or running extremely low power windows apps like putty (a terminal emulator), word (for taking documentation) etc. (I'm assuming that closing the 'lid' is configurable to either turn the screen off, or to put the laptop into sleep mode)
I use my current laptop for playing games in the evening, when I'm stuck in my hotel room. My current, dying laptop will just about play Diablo III, Guildwars 2, but not much beyond that.
The spec I've posted looks like it should eat the games I currently play for breakfast, and for my budget of <£700, it's hard to see how I could come up with better. But I'd be fascinated to see what you think?
Will this run reasonably cool? (I'm currently using an HP HDX16 which gets 'hand burning hot' after 10 mins of Diablo III)
I've specced the standard thermal paste (as the super silver goopy stuff would put me a couple of quid over budget)..would the uber putty make much difference do you think?
I have MSDN versions of Windows 7 & 8 (I'll probably give Windows 8 a go on this), so that should sort me for an OS, will I need to get any drivers pre-install? or will Windows 8 install ok on this and recognise all the hardware, just leaving me to update to the latest nVidia graphics drivers after install?
Cheers
Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-3230M (2.60GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 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
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
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
Battery
Optimus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1.3 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1
Price: £697.00 including VAT and delivery.