Building a gaming laptop for college

[The Sloth]

I'm thinking about building a new gaming laptop for college, hopefully for under 500$, what do you guys think are the best parts for that total , and do you have any tips?

 

[GBear]

I don't think you can build laptops anymore. You could probably buy a backbone laptop and put stuff in there.

Also, for $500, it's hard to get a good "gaming" laptop. You could probably just find a decent low end laptop at a computer store.

 

[The Sloth]

hmm , then i should probably think about building a gaming desktop, its probably cheaper too

 

[PewPewBangBang]

hmm , then i should probably think about building a gaming desktop, its probably cheaper too

haha you can build a laptop, you need to buy a barebone laptop first then buy the CPU etc.... the barebone laptop comes with the mobo,GPU,and battery/screen/dvd drive i believe. All you need to get is the CPU,RAM,Hard drive and thats pretty much it. But yea, you won't get a good gaming laptop for $500, you can only afford a barebone with a good/decent GPU for that price. Laptop barebones are also harder to find.

Build a desktop gaming PC and then just buy a cheap laptop for web surfing and all that. You will need more than $500 to get a good gaming setup though....$500 will get you a somewhat bad gaming PC

 

[shadows5631]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4775468&CatId=17

Good performance for a decent price.

I've personally used the ATI 3200 (my old mobo's onboard) and it's actually one of the best onboard GPUs around, so Source engine wouldn't be much of a problem.

 

[Vader]

A good gaming laptop your not going to be able to get for $500. The only thing you could find is something with ATI HD 3200 or similar or Nvidia 9300 or similar. Just make sure you don't get any Intel graphics.

You have to spend at least 700 to 800 to get something with a real dedicated GPU.
Try www.iBuyPower.com

 

[The Sloth]

well the laptop i have now is a Compaq with an intell integrated graphics card, it was about $800 but it really stinks for gaming, so thats why i wanted to build something for gaming

 

[Furiosity]

$500 gets you a bad gaming PC? That is FALSE.

Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151175

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811208027

Board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130254

HD 5750: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102859

500W Power: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153113

Phenom II X2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103694

2GB DDR3:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104136

Subtotal: $485.93

You could change a few things and even get a triple core and use DDR2 RAM. You could change anything here really depending on your tastes and lower the price even more to get something better of another part.

Search for combos and lower it even more.

Edit: Also seeing as it is AMD, you don't have to worry about upgradability(CPU). You can upgrade the RAM later on(I use 2GB and I find it to be perfectly fine for everything I run at the moment(Bioshock,TF2,L4D2).

 

[Frank Booth]

Just customize a laptop from HP. But i wouldn't recommend building a laptop. Since everything is crammed in a small space you run into issues with the heat generated by the components. They need to be matched and spaced correctly to radiate enough heat at the right rate so it wont overheat. Things break down faster with higher temperature.

I'm thinking about building a new gaming laptop for college, hopefully for under 500$, what do you guys think are the best parts for that total , and do you have any tips?