Best gaming laptop under $1200?

Hi all! Looking to upgrade my old 2008 macbook to a gaming laptop! (Windows) I have a $1200 budget and I really need some help choosing. It seems like there are so many choices out there.

Having built computers before a lot of the laptops with SSD upgrade options seem lackluster. It's like $150 upgrade and you get a 24gb SSD... that seems so little when I can buy at least a 120gb mSATA SSD for that price. So I have no hesitations with upgrading the laptops SSD myself and reinstalling the OS.

With that said, can anyone suggest a decent laptop that I can buy at $1200 or under that I can either upgrade with a secondary hard drive (SSD) or one that comes with an SSD under that price that has at least a 120gb SSD... (I couldn't find any so I might have to go for the latter option)

Looking forward to your assistance!

Check out this one
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-17-3-L...92078603?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item1c43881f0b

i think if you offer the seller $1050, he will agree to sell the laptop to you.

Looks good but the reason I want to be able to install a 120+GB SSD is for the OS + a game or 2. I don't like that most laptop HDDs are only 5400rpm >_<

Laptop that have 120 or 240gb ssd usually cost north of $1400
the laptop that i pick out have a powerful CPU and GPU, lot of RAM too, you can use the money that you have left to get a 240gb ssd, they're also cost around $140
(forgot to mention that if you sign up for ebay buck, ebay will give you back $5 for every $250 you spend )

Sager, just make what you want

The thing I get nervous about is that I will buy a laptop that doesn't have 2x mSATA slots. (1 for an HDD for data and files and 1 for an SSD for OS + one or two games)

It's hard for me to tell what out there has what. A lot of times mfg. don't post what extra open slots their laptops have. Was hoping some peeps could point me towards a laptop that meets those requirements. (And still has standard gaming attributes like 8gb memory, i7, geforce 860 etc.)

Lenovo Y40

i7-4500u CPU
8GB RAM
R9 270 GPU
256GB SSD
14" 1920 x 1080 screen

http://shop.lenovo.com/ca/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y40/?sb=:000001CA:00005570:

Looks like it only has 1 HDD bay though :/

syypher said:

Hi all! Looking to upgrade my old 2008 macbook to a gaming laptop! (Windows) I have a $1200 budget and I really need some help choosing. It seems like there are so many choices out there.

Having built computers before a lot of the laptops with SSD upgrade options seem lackluster. It's like $150 upgrade and you get a 24gb SSD... that seems so little when I can buy at least a 120gb mSATA SSD for that price. So I have no hesitations with upgrading the laptops SSD myself and reinstalling the OS.

With that said, can anyone suggest a decent laptop that I can buy at $1200 or under that I can either upgrade with a secondary hard drive (SSD) or one that comes with an SSD under that price that has at least a 120gb SSD... (I couldn't find any so I might have to go for the latter option)

Looking forward to your assistance!

Click to expand...

What size screen are you looking for?

What resolution?

What is the purpose of the laptop? (basic computing tasks vs. gaming, etc) EDIT: The title says GAMING... derp

Is battery life important?

Is portability important to you? If so, how heavy do you consider "portable"?

I carry around a 17.3", 10 pound laptop (including A/C adapter) and it doesn't bother me in the least. My wife has a 13.3" Yoga 2 Pro and it weights about 3 pounds. Both are great machines for their respective purposes.

Tokae said:

Lenovo Y40

i7-4500u CPU
8GB RAM
R9 270 GPU
256GB SSD
14" 1920 x 1080 screen

http://shop.lenovo.com/ca/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y40/?sb=:000001CA:00005570:

Looks like it only has 1 HDD bay though :/

Click to expand...

That is a nice machine.

Sagers over at XoticPC.com have a 13.3", 15.6" and 17.3" models with a GTX 860M 2GB (Maxwell) for right at $1200 if you add a 120GB SSD to the 750GB HDD.

This includes AC wireless, DVD drive and Win 8.1 64 Bit.

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7358-clevo-w350ss-eta-july-p-6991.html?wconfigure=yes
This one has 2x mSATA and 1x SATA drive bays

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7378-clevo-w370ss-p-6990.html?wconfigure=yes
This one has 1x mSATA and 2x SATA drive bays

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7338-clevo-w230ss-p-6992.html?wconfigure=yes
This one has 2x mSATA and 1x SATA drive bays


They are all pretty close in price and all have the GTX 860M 2GB Maxwell GPU

Oh Deadsmiley those look great. I'll look more into them.

Sorry about the lack of details guys:
- It's going to be for gaming but also for school but portability isn't too much of an issue. 15.5" max probably though.
-Weight shouldn't matter.
-Battery life of 4 or so hours is more than enough. Not expecting the same time as most laptops that have 6-7+ hours. When I take it to class it will only be for 3-4 hours max increments.
-resolution could be anything widescreen. 16:9 preferably but just nothing horrible or 4:3
-I just really want to make sure it can have a HDD + SSD slot. Good GPU, CPU and Memory for gaming. Kind of want something future proof so I can play future releases. Right now BF4, Diablo3RoS, LoL, WoW, SWtoR, and FF are the main things I play and they run fine on my 2008 macbook pro but all at low settings... I'm sure anything I get will blow it away hahah

The Sager NP7358 is probably your best bet then. They are cost effective and cooling is good. They have a separate heatsink/fan for the GPU and CPU

LPC Digital has a better price. Look around there are lots of Clevo/Sager resellers.

http://www.lpc-digital.com/sager-np7358.html

Here is a good deal from PowerNotebooks. They have an upgrade to a 4810MQ CPU for $35.

https://www.powernotebooks.com/configure.php?special=1764