Having trouble meeting my budget. Gaming/Editing laptop ~$1100

Khalarag

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Apr 30, 2014
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I recently put together a pretty great laptop at xoticpc.com for about $1400. Now I'm starting to realize that I don't need one quite as insane, but I still have a few things I really want in the laptop. So basically I'm asking if anyone knows of a laptop I can find for around $1100 or cheaper that meets the following criteria:
(even if its a little over let me know)

17 inch 1920 x 1080 resolution

750gb/1 TB 7200 rpm HDD (SATA III)
120/128gb SSD
intel 4700HQ/4810HQ (or comparable processors)
8gb RAM
GTX 850M 2GB or better graphics card
windows operating system preinstalled (Not picky whether its 7 or 8, although mentioning it would be nice)
 
Are you open to the idea of a refurbed laptop? if so, this might work, although you'd have to put in an SSD yourself and swap out the 1tb 5400rpm drive for a 7200rpm drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231333&cm_re=g750-_-34-231-333-_-Product

It has a GTX765m GPU, which came out to a virtual tie in many respects with the GTX850m you mentioned.

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-850M-vs-GeForce-GTX-765M

And you could always overclock it, too, as the G750 has an excellent cooling system.
 

Khalarag

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Apr 30, 2014
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Im open to the idea. Just out of curiosity though, how much do you think it would cost to do that? I've never tried to modify a laptop like that before.
 


About $70USD for a 750GB WD Black HDD 7200RPM
About $80USD for a 120GB Samsung EVO 840 SSD

Very simple to swap drives. I'm sure there are video tutorials on you tube explaining how to do it on the ASUS G750. Takes about 10 minutes, max. I've done it on my ASUS G75 (one model older than the G750), and even replaced the optical drive with a 2TB HDD.

Then you could always sell off the 1TB HDD that you removed for maybe $70 to offset some of the cost of the other upgrades.

There's even a dedicated support forum for ASUS ROG (Republic of Gamers) laptops, and desktop PC components:

http://rog.asus.com/forum/

 

MANOFKRYPTONAK

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Feb 1, 2012
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If you put in a SSD and budget is a problem the Crucial MX100 offers great performance for the money. If you are using this forgaming or college, (I mean like university, grad school) the minimum space you will want is 512gb of space. The MX100 is $225 for a 512gb and a really great deal at that price. Oops its only $210 for a 512gb mx100.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8066/crucial-mx100-256gb-512gb-review/9