So, I'm not exactly building a PC, but I wasn't sure what other forum to post this thread under.
Someone offered to buy me a laptop under $1000 as I head off to college, and after much research, I think I've decided upon the Lenovo y510p. There's a bunch of different models that fall under this name, so to clarify, the one I'm looking at has an Intel Core i7-4700MQ, 1TB 5400 rpm+24GB SS drive, 8GB RAM, and 1 (Not SLI) GT 755M graphics card, meaning the ultrabay would have a disk drive in it. Right now, the price for this is $899.
The only downsides I can find about this computer are that the trackpad was made by satan and the battery has no stamina (Lenovo claims up to 5 hours, but other places are saying it's more like 2). However, I almost exclusively use a mouse, and will probably almost always have my computer plugged in, so I'm not too worried about these things.
Does anyone here have this computer? If so, what kind of power does it have? I want to be able to play BF4 on highish settings, will this be possible? (Also looking forward to playing Battlefront 3 on this)
The question is, is this a good buy, or is there something better out there for about the same price? Now, $1000 is the total limit, but this person would rather not even spend over $900, so unless there's something phenomenally better in that small window, keep it under $900.
I'm not a laptop expert. I understand that laptops are going to be a strong consideration for someone who is heading off to college.
However, for $1000 you could build a pretty awesome mITX (small) PC solution. That would be the route to follow if you want value for money, and that's something that I could advise on. You would get much more performance per dollar, or a chance to save some cash. it's probably going to be less problematic, and it's still going to be suitably portable.
You won't be able to take a mini ITX rig to classes or to labs, though. May I suggest buying a dirt cheap Chromebook to take to college and a mini ITX rig for lan parties and such? The Chromebooks are awesome, they have amazing battery life (up to 10 hours for the new generation), and you can install linux without any problems on most of them.
I think that you would still get better performance this way than buying a laptop.
Well, my problem is that I'm going to be going to university in Japan, but am American, so I plan on making trips between the countries, and I need something I can game with with my buddies while I'm in the states and don't currently want to deal with hauling a desktop through airports. I have a rugged build in mind for when I have more money down the road, but right now I've decided my best option is to get the laptop. My university also wants me to have something with at least a decent amount of power.
Also...the someone is my dad and he doesn't really understand my need for gaming power, so I'm lucky he's even looking at the Lenovo. He'd never go for the desktop/pc combo idea (much as I actually like it, I've done a lot of research into the Bitfenix Prodigy case and think I could get a good thing going with that.) He was originally trying to get me a tablet for the same price...
Although, I would be interested in knowing more about what all a chromebook can do. Someplace I can look?
The main thing you want from a Chromebook is to be Coreboot compatible and to be able to install a bleeding edge distro on it, like Arch linux. Chromebooks are awesome because they are entirely open source, even the BIOS.
Arch linux wiki has a page about installing it on an Acer 720, if you want to see what it's about: