Approximate life on a gaming laptop?

[zexanima]

I'm considering ordering a custom built Sager laptop. I would build a desktop, but I go places quiet a bit and have online college work to do. Anyone know life expectancy on one of these? Considering I take proper care of it and there are no defects. I want to know since I'm investing $2000 in it. I don't way to pay this much and end up having to replace it in 2-3 years.

 

[Karenas]

Take care of your laptop and It will run 10+ years for you. If you're paying that much get a long term warranty incase.

 

[Lutfij]

If its college work via Office suite and some Adobe products sans the CS, I'd suggest moving onto a mainstream laptop with non-discrete GPU. If you're interested in gaming then you could build yourself a gaming SFF system.

The SFF system would likely last you about 3-4 years depending on your needs/usage and the laptop is yet hanging around for light work. Like all technology laptops are prone t being obsolete the moment newer ranges come out however there is one aspect that tends to weigh laptops down is the strict measures you need to take to swap out components.

In fact if you buy a pre-assembled laptop you'd either need to take it them for upgrades meaning more costs or wait out until your warranty expires(since it'd be voided if you opened it up yourself)

My 2 cents though.

 

[mc962]

It also depends on what you use it for. If you play games that push the hardware a fair bit and often have high temperatures (due to usage) then that will likely decreases the lifetime. Proper maintenance is also helpful as stuff gets clogged with dust after a while. You could probably get 4 years without too much issue if you take care of your laptop. More could be gotten depending on how well you take care of your computer, but keep in mind that after 4 years hardware will start to get a bit dated, especially for gaming and especially for laptops which generally can't be upgraded past memory options.

 

[zexanima]

I'm not worried about my hardware being dated. I'm talking about before it just craps out on me and no longer runs.

 

[jaguarskx]

I would say that gaming laptops generally do not last longer than "average" laptops because they generally need to deal with a lot of heat coming from both CPU and GPU. Having said that it is very difficult to guess-timate how long it will last you before it fails (like from lots of heat). If you are going to spend that much money on a laptop and you want to use it for a long time, then you should consider buying an extended warranty.

My "gaming" laptop is a Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 and it is about 31 months old. I paid for a 2 year warranty and unfortunately, the nVidia GT 550m crapped out at around 27 or 28 months. I know it is the GT 550m that is the problem 'cause when I install the nVidia drivers (old, new, it doesn't matter) the Y470 would BSOD (blue screen of death) within 1 hour, many times it BSOD immediately after logging into Windows.

With the nVidia drivers uninstalled the GT 550m is basically deactivated and I am now using the Intel HD 3000 graphics core. I have not experienced a single crash even when I was encoding video for around 40 hours straight.

I have been looking at buying a new laptop anyway since 1366x768 resolution is simply too low for productivity and I kinda stopped playing games on the Y470 before it crapped out. So I am not too upset I suppose. Not sure if I will buy another gaming laptop. I may simply buy a 15.6" average laptop or a business laptop with a 1080p screen.

 

[jaguarskx]

I could fix the problem with my Y470, by purchasing a replacement motherboard from China (ebay) since the GT 550m is embedded into the motherboard, but that costs around $180 - $190.

 

[Lutfij]

^ +1 The tradeoffs to mobility are far worse when you just offload work onto a small well built system from a nettop/laptop.