Xoticpc?

[slicedtoad]

I'm helping a friend look for a gaming laptop in the $1600 range.

I've looked around and the best I can find is from xoticpc, though I hadn't heard of them before. This laptop with an i5-2430M, gtx-580M, a 640gb hdd and no OS comes to $1382. Add a 120GB mushkin drive from newegg for 124.99 and i'm around $1500 before s/h which is perfect.

That laptop should perform like a desktop 6870 matched with a down clocked i5. Feels kinda painful to spend ~1500 on that kind of performance but i can't find anything better. Anyone else see anything? I've looked at cyberpower, ibuypower and eurocom but none of them give the same performance per price.

It needs to be 17" and ship to canada btw.

 

[WR2]

laptop should perform like a desktop 6870 matched with a down clocked i5. Feels kinda painful to spend ~1500 on that kind of performance but i can't find anything better.

That's the brutal reality of gaming on notebooks. You 'really' got to pay to play.

Had you considered the GTX 570M option? (roughly Radeon HD 5770 desktop performance). That's a $367 savings.

 

[slicedtoad]

It's a 1080x1920 screen and he plays games like bf3 so i think the 580m will be more suitable. But yeah $367 more than a 470m hurts.

The nice thing about eurocom is their 6990m option is like 40 bucks more than the 570m... and it performs almost as well as the 580m. But they add on costs somewhere else.

Another thing i've been wondering is if people build there own laptops? That exist?

 

[mickey21]

That is essentially as good as it gets for building your own laptops, something barely heard of in the last couple of years. I would say that is on the lower end of the MSI 1761 pricing, so looks good to me. Just note that many of the lower end cpu's listed there are listed as backorder of course. But yeah, I would call them and possibly pull the trigger. If you havent dealt with them before, it is a good idea to contact them and see how easy it is to get a hold of them and ask them a few questions. A good internet search would also be in order to see if anyone is having trouble with them. Some of the more notebook specific forums would be the best place to start and see if there are any complaints on them. But hardware specs wise, looks very good to me.

 

[blikbladae]

if he want's to save what he needs to do is buy the laptop without the cpu, and buy that and install it himself (barebones config) you can check out rjtech for that, or other dealers. pctorque.com is great, as are sager's. Also look at some of the asus models. Xotic pc is highly regarded as well. Check out notbookcheck for gpu rankings, and read the boards over at notebookforums.com or whatever. I had a gaming laptop back in the day, e.g 6 years +, ati mobility 9700!!!

that thing is fried now, imho tell your friend not to buy a mobile potato cooker, there is no reason he needs to game on the go. Tell him to build a small atx form factor if he really needs to carry it around with him in his car or whatever. Other than that he is going to have to be plugged into power anyway as all good gaming laptops get tops 2 hours battery life with everything downclocked (not gaming.)

 

[slicedtoad]

okay he's bought the msi 1761 w/ a 580m (also had to upgrade the cpu a bit since they are out i5s, and the two lower end i7s). Anyway, thanks for the help guys.

@blik
the idea of a tiny desktop computer inside some kind of enclosure that makes it easy to carry (along with the monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc) has crossed my mind many times and might be a future project of mine. Maybe lc it too.
Not what my friend wants though. He just wants a computer that will fit in his backpack and that he can carry from house to house since he's somewhat nomadic atm.

 

[slicedtoad]

double post... i don't know if its my internet connection here at work or toms, but this site is acting fugly

 

[slicedtoad]

Best answer selected by slicedtoad.

 

[chudddds]

double post... i don't know if its my internet connection here at work or toms, but this site is acting fugly

one of those