Laptop (under 500$ or under 1000$)

B3RS3RK

Estimable
Dec 9, 2015
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Hello everyone and thank you very much in advance for spending your precious time for answering or just reading my question.

I find myself in a difficult dilemma, I don't want to spend many money for a gaming laptop since I already build a gaming desktop this summer but I don't even want to end up buying a laptop that struggles to run swiftly a browser with 6 tabs open, Windows Media Player playing music and maybe other programs running.

My friend bought a laptop from HP for 450$ and it couldn't handle 2 simple programms running together and my GF's Asus was around 350$ and it struggles already when 3 tabs are open on a browser...

I looked around and found for example for 850$ a MSI GP70 Leopard-490 which is already way more powerful than my actual MSI laptop (you'll find the specs under).

Well, I can spend one of those cheap laptops under 500$ hoping it will run swiftly some "soft multitasking" or invest a little bit more for a laptop already under the "gaming" category giving me the chance to play something when I'm not home or at my friend's house if I want to show them some games.

My opinion is that the 2nd choice is better even if I already have a really great gaming desktop and I have the feeling that investing 300/400$ more will have a quality/price ratio 2 or 3 times more than the first choice, but as I said this is what I think and I'm more willing for it.

So I wanted to ask you fellow gamers and PC enthusiast, if you had the same dilemma (probably most of us did :D)? What was your solution? Did you find a good compromise? What was your experience?

I understand everyone has different tastes, needs and budget, but I'll make good use of your feedback and answers in order to decide what to do, everything will be valuable, from advised laptops to personal experience and so on.

Once again thank you very much in advance for your precious time and help.

Actual laptop specs:
MSI GT780DX-406US 17.3"
CPU: i7 2670QM 2.2GHz (2nd Gen)
GPU: GTX570M 1.5GB GDDR5
RAM: 12GB DDR3 SDRAM
HDD: 1TB 7200rpm


If you still have some time to spend you can read the background story that brought me here to ask your precious help.

Background story:
Recently I had an issue with my MSI GT780DX-406US, the laptop worked perfectly for almost 4 years and it withstood very few but strong hits in its lifespan. Once it fell from my desk and another time I had to do an emergency stop while driving and my backpack struck the back of my seat really hard, furtunately I think the backpack absorbed much of the hit. Anyway I had no hardware issues after I had this "accidents", but after 2 years I had to send it to a company to re-solder the A/C power jack on the motherboard. Right now one fuse on the mobo died and the ac adapter cannot power it, but if I plug the battery it still works perfectly (unfortunately we still don't have batteries as durable as the one used by T-800 from Terminator :D). Since the battery right now it's depleted my laptop is unusable even if everything else works. Until now I found 2 solutions:
- finding a company able change the fuse for under 300$
- buy a new laptop
For the 1st solution I already contacted the company that re-solder it back in 2013 (for free even if it was out of warranty)on the other hand the 2nd solution feels like wasting 1'400$ (price of purchase in 2011) for a component that costs about 20$ (exaggerating).
I already disassembled the laptop twice since I had this issue and when I assembled it back and powered it on it worked fine but still changing the fuse it's something I don't know how to do or I don't even have the necessary tools.
Somebody already had a problem with the mobo's fuse? Did you manage solve the issue and how?

UPDATE
The company contacted MSI and asket for replacement parts but unfortunately it's already too old and they cannot repair it, so I need to buy a new one or try to fix it myself...


I also apologize for any errors because english is not my main language and I hope everything is understandable :).