Advice needed on what components to use in a gaming laptop (budget ~£1500)

[SuperADJ]

Hi guys,

I currently have a Dell XPS (L502X) laptop which was my very first foray into PC gaming. I'm now hooked and want to get something a little more serious.

In essence I want as much bang for my buck as possible, and this machine will be purely for gaming. I don't want or need it to do anything else. As such I am hoping to get the best GPU I can, as well as a 17" screen. But at this point I get a bit confused!

Please can someone help me to understand how best to prioritise the other components? For example, would I bet better spending £200 on an upgraded CPU or more/faster RAM? Or an SSD? Aside from the GPU, what else influences the gaming experience?

I may consider a desktop, but I feel that at the moment the fact I can take it with me outweighs the performance loss. Battery life is irrelevant as it will always be plugged in; I would only use it at work or at home.

I hope that's enough information to prove useful...thanks to anyone who can help point me in the right direction. I've had a look around for buyer's guides etc but not found quite what I was looking for.

Finally, I've been using the configurator tool on the PC Specialist site to get a feel for what my money would get me...is this a good place to do this kind of research or should I be looking at particular brands (such as Alienware, MSI etc) first?

Thanks!

Adrian

 

[Ry4n]

I would suggest,
CPU: Intel Quad-Core i5 2500k
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance

EDIT: Also you could try and self-build if your going towards a Desktop build. And some people would suggest to stay away from Alienware as they're over pricing their products and you could get a cheaper build and make it yourself.

 

[Indefatigable]

Desktops are the best options for gaming in most cases. Consider building one. Laptops have a few unpleasant compromises.

I think the screen is the most important part of a high-end laptop, followed by the warranty, GPU, CPU, hard drives, and RAM.

Alienwares are the sturdiest gaming laptops and have best-in-class warranties and cooling that only ASUS can match or surpass, but they are expensive and suffer from Dell's problems; Clevos are the second-cheapest, come with good customer service through resellers, and decent cooling and chassis sturdiness; MSIs offer lots of features for a high price, some useless and some not, but the MSI barebones offer more performance-for-the-price than even Clevo does; the ASUS G750's cooling and ergonomics are second-to-none, but you cannot upgrade its CPU or GPU, and its cooling system is hard to access and maintain.

I don't trust Dell EMEA, which services the UK, so I would buy the ASUS G750 for seemingly higher quality or an MSI barebones for a lower price.