Best laptop for 600$?

[zeyuanfu]

Hi,
My parents have recently offered to purchase a laptop for my studies. They gave me a 600$ USD budget (excluding shipping and applicable taxes) which can be stretched a bit, but at my own expense. I would like it to have at least an i5 and a dedicated GPU for some occasional gaming, video editing and Photoshop. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Thanks in advance!

 

[jaguarskx]

Acer Aspire V3-572G-54S6 for $550.
- Core i5-4210u
- nVidia GT 840m
- 4GB of RAM

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314535

 

[zeyuanfu]

That would effectively be the only one available in my price range. I guess I'll upgrade the RAM to 16 GB, then. Thanks!

 

[orlbuckeye]

Adding 16 gb of ram to that would not see a lot of performance increase. Here is a better machine for around 650.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6R42C50443

 

[zeyuanfu]

That doesn't have a dedicated GPU. The 840M would be much better than the integrated graphics.

 

[jaguarskx]

16GB of RAM won't really improve performance that much and it's rather excessive for a laptop for games. I would simply upgrade to a total of 8GB; it does not increase performance much but some games may give you low memory errors with only 4GB of RAM. Does not happen often but it can happen depending on the game.

 

[zeyuanfu]

I would still consider 16 GB as it will definitely help with Photoshop and video editing. Plus, an 8 GB G.SKILL stick is going for 59.99$: http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231704&ignorebbr=1
I can't really go wrong with that, can I? Thanks anyways, though.

 

[jaguarskx]

I didn't realize I made a typo in my 1st post.

The laptops does come with 8GB RAM, not 4GB as I originally stated. Looking further into the specs the laptop has two 4GB sticks of RAM installed because the specs states there are two RAM slots but no free RAM slots available. That means if you want 16GB of RAM installed for Photoshop, then you need to buy two sticks of 8GB RAM for a total of 16GB.

 

[zeyuanfu]

Hmm, now that I think about it, 12 GB would totally be fine I could take a 4 GB stick out and put it in my old laptop which currently has only 4 GB of RAM.