Laptop build for £800

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samhorsley

Member
Could anyone offer me any advice on this laptop build before purchase?


I want it to cope with daily video/audio editing plus regular gaming, needs to be a laptop and my budget needs to be as close to £800 as possible. Below is priced at £827.



Chassis & Display
Enigma IV: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED 16:9 Widescreen (1920x1080) (£49)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3630QM (2.40GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 650M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING

Sound Card
SRS 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Bluetooth & Wireless
ENIGMA SERIES GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 3.0
 
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nhornby51743

Gold Level Poster
Hi, I've been looking at building a laptop on a similar budget and would recommend this spec;

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH


Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Its £831 inc VAT, but the spec is considerably better in regards to the graphics card and the CPU although you would be compromising A SSD, the WD Scorpio 750gb hard drive is a suitable replacement as it is still fast and when working on a budget it is always better to have a decent CPU/GPU over a SSD. Hope this has helped :)
 
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samhorsley

Member
Thanks for the reply, yeah I can see what you mean with sacrificing the SSD, think I may consider that haha. Could you by any chance tell me why the upgrade in thermal paste is worth the £9? Lots of people seem to include it in their builds and it's the one thing I've not really googled/thought about.
 
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nhornby51743

Gold Level Poster
Hi, the thermal paste is placed to keep the CPU cool, the Arctic thermal paste is essentially just a better paste which will help keep it cooler. It's a little pricey at £9, especially when you can buy it independently for less than £5 but it's not worth the hassle applying it yourself for the sake of paying £4 less. Another thing worth mentioning is perhaps upgrading the 1333mhz RAM to 1600mhz, if you can afford another £20. It's not really noticable but again, it offers some future proofing if overclocking isn't your thing:)
 
Yamikotai

Yamikotai

Expert
nhornby51743 said:
Hi, the thermal paste is placed to keep the CPU cool, the Arctic thermal paste is essentially just a better paste which will help keep it cooler. It's a little pricey at £9, especially when you can buy it independently for less than £5 but it's not worth the hassle applying it yourself for the sake of paying £4 less.
Click to expand...
+1, I'd say it's worth it.

Another thing worth mentioning is perhaps upgrading the 1333mhz RAM to 1600mhz, if you can afford another £20.
Click to expand...
This is worth it anyway, since video editing can make good use of extra memory performance.
 
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samhorsley

Member
Okay, so this is my improved build which comes in at £822 (I really don't want to go much higher).

As you can see I've left out the £9 Arctic Thermal Paste and gone for a 320GB HDD as opposed to a 750GB to try save more money (I can always store things externally so a HDD will only be needed to store games, applications, etc). With the money saved I've improved the RAM to 1600mhz. Should I consider this to be my final build or would you suggest anything otherwise?

Thank you to you both for your advice so far.

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
320GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD3200BEKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING



P.S. Could someone please inform me why hardly anyone includes the Seagate Hybrid SSHD into their builds? They seem a great idea at first glance, plus they're not too pricey!
 
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nhornby51743

Gold Level Poster
Your spec looks great, the only thing that I recommend is that you might want to substitute the 320gb hard drive for a larger one. If the WD Scorpio 750gb is overkill for you then go for the 500gb version, it's less than £5 more than the 320gb version and means you have a lot more space. Even for a casual gamer/user a 320gb harddrive would get used up fairly quick on game installation files and videos.

In regards to why people refrain from using Hybrid's, I think it's down to the fact that the RPM is low which may put people off and the fact that many believe that it doesn't offer much increase in performance, so Hybrids currently appear to be in some sort of purgatory with enthusiasts going for SSD's whereas regular Joe's on a budget just go for a regular HDD.
 
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samhorsley

Member
You do have a fantastic point, I guess £5 now will save me down the line, I'm going to investigate SSHDs vs HDDs a little more before I make any decision though. Going for a SSHD may be a great idea, I just don't know enough about them compared to other drives/never used one.

Thank you to everyone for your help again and if there's any information you could give me regarding HDDs vs SSHDs it would be much appreciated :)
 
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nhornby51743

Gold Level Poster
Keep in touch on here so we can see your final build. I've got to wait till the end of the month to make my £800 rig or if I can wait till October I'll have £1200 to put towards a rig, I'm just not that patient though lol
 
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