Building on a Budget: Laptop Upgrades and Gaming

[KiraraCat500]

I do not have as much computer building experience but I am hoping to find enough parts to make a cheap laptop (also needed) work pretty much the same or at least better than decent within (or below?) a $500 range. Probably not going to work perfectly or fit under budget but better than nothing I guess. Got any suggestions?

Preferably windows 7
similar specs to my old laptop: Pavilion dv6 or better
Fast ram and at least 600GB Hard disk space
Not too bulky. 12-15.6 in range screen (smaller preferred. I don't have a lot of room)

Note: Inexperienced so If you can find something better than what I asked for, I will take it.

 

[hang-the-9]

You can't really build a laptop out of parts unless you take a few half-broken systems and combine them into a working system.

The systems that you can buy as shells would run you quite a bit over $500 once you purchase the RAM, CPU, hard drive, operating system and possibly video card.

If it's not for games, you can just buy a $500 laptop that will do just fine. http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232798 http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA9FT3E00482

 

[jaguarskx]

You can't build your own laptop like you could a desktop. All you can do is buy a laptop that meets your requirements within your budget and perhaps upgrade the hard drive and RAM later on. Especially in a $500 laptop. It is very common for the CPU nowadays to be soldered into the motherboard and you cannot install a GPU in a laptop unless it has a MXM port and you buy a MXM format GPU (which is not easy to do). However, only specific models of laptops have MXM ports and they are generally in laptops that costs at least $1,400. Most laptops, even ones costing over $2,000, have GPUs that are soldered into the motherboard.


If you can deal with Windows 10 and you are willing to spend $510 (excluding shipping & tax), then consider the following 15.6" Acer laptop with Core i5-5200u, nVidia 940m and a 1080p screen. It is basically the best graphics performance you can get for the price. However, the 940m is too weak to play most games at 1080p.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315065&cm_re=acer_940m-_-34-315-065-_-Product