CukieL

Planning to toss my Lenovo Y500 for a slim laptop, but have only come across the GS70 and Razer Blade but those are ranging at very high prices. Anyone have any suggestions?

Sony seems like a really reliable brand but is the cost really worth the name or is it just buying the name and same quality as everything else?

I hear lots of bad things about Acers all the time. Normally staying away from them.... but then again there are also some who actually enjoy their Acer.

I agree with this. Dark Souls is a great game though regardless of the difficulty. Even then, most of it is just patience, not entirely difficulty. Dragon Age Origins is amazing.A game I'd suggest is Mirror's Edge. Great running around game.

Considering your budget, any aftermarket CPU coolers would be more beneficial than the stock but IMO not entirely necessary; could just use stock fan to save some $$$ and possibly upgrade something else. You should also try to upgrade the RAM to at least 8GB and the computer will run much smoother.

Personally I used to stick with ATI/AMD, but have switched over to Nvidia due to running into graphical issues and/or crashes in numerous games. Nvidia has never disappointed me this far, except for the prices but that's never really an issue.