Ideas for Gaming Laptop

[Doug13]

I'm heading off to college and I want a laptop I can use for both gaming and schoolwork.

List:
Has to be somewhat thin (I don't want to lug around a massive laptop)
15in or larger screen
under 1,500$

Thanks for any ideas!

 

[Mr Kagouris]

Your best option for both gaming and portability would be this.

The GTX 970M isn't very good in raw performance but triple-A games will definitely be more than playable.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Have one custom built to suit your needs by a Clevo distributor. Never heard of Clevo ? It's likely that you never heard of anyone who actually **makes** a laptop. The brands you do know ... other than MSI, their major contribution is providing the logo.

Quanta makes (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC laptops
Compal makes (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq laptops
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) makes to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP laptops
Inventec makes Toshiba, HP, Dell and Lenovo laptops
Pegatron makes Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer laptops
Foxconn makes Asus, Dell, HP and Apple laptops
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) makes HP laptops
Clevo makes laptops for all the boutique Gaming brands such as FalconNorthwest, WidowPC and (prior to Dell's purchase) Alienware

The other advantages of a custom build are:

a) Mass market vendors tend to place only some of the parts in their adds, then cheaping out using no name brands for the rest. Custom builders let you pick the brands, models and thereby the quality of each component
b) Nice touches like G-Sync screens, availability of SSHDs instead of slow HDs
c) Premium non-assemble line TIMs

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-guide-v2-0-faq-and-reseller-info.91510/

CLEVO is a large Taiwanese computer company specializing in laptops. While the Clevo brand name is perhaps not widely known, their products are re-branded and sold by known boutique brand OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)… notably Sager, VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Eurocom, etc. They are also considered (by whoever knows about notebooks) to design and manufacturer the best of the best notebooks in terms of superior build quality and innovative designs.

https://lpc-digital.com/product/sager-np8657-special-clevo-p650re3/

15.6” Full HD (1920 x 1080) Clear LG IPS MATTE w/ G-SYNC™ Technology!
NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 970M with 3GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® Maxwell™
6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz)
IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU - SPECIAL!
Windows® 10 Home 64-Bit Edition Preinstalled, (without Recovery Media)
16GB DDR4 PC4-17000 2133MHz Memory (2x8GB)
Samsung® 850 EVO™ M.2 250GB SSD - (Primary Drive C) - SPECIAL!
1TB Seagate Solid State Hybrid 8GB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Intel® Dual Band Ultra -AC 8260 M.2 AC + Bluetooth 4.2 Combo Card
LIFETIME Limited Labor and 2 Years Premium Parts Warranty
FREE UPS Ground (CONUS Only)

$1529 before discounts