Caliban

I'd suggest the Alienware. Yeah, overhyped, overrated, and overpriced, but they have had solid long term support, parts are plentiful and generally compatible across multiple variations without too much work. I have worked on a lot of Alienwares, Sagers, MSI whitebooks, Clevos, and other gaming laptops in the shop I work at. The old Clevos/Sagers to me were clunky and kludgy, lots of weird problems like being unable to start them without a good battery because of initial power draw being so ridiculously high. I've seen some bad design calls in the earlier Alienwares, but the current few generations have seemed really solid, including the m15x r3 that I have. I like the cast metal chassis, easy access to the video card, fans, CPU, and other components under a single hatch. Most importantly to me it's the support... I've found Alienware is easy to work with, even the old ones. Dell still has those drivers up, and there is a ton of 3rd party support for them. I can't say the same for other gaming laptop makes. I've had a nightmare with a customer's MSI GT70 with a simple fried video card. Simple on an Alienware, but not on that MSI/Cyberpower thing because of the lack of official support for the MSI. I won't bash on the internal design of the MSI GT70, I found it had a good layout inside and was physically easy to work on. MSI and Cyperpower's completely braindead support has made it a pain on the software/firmware side of it. Also, like just about anything MSI, it's a cheap plastic machine, it looks cool though, a lot less flashy than the Alienwares. I would never consider an ASUS G series laptop, I work on too many of these, the most common issue being the center leg of the power jack burns through at the point the solder stops on it. It's a metallurgy problem, the gold in the pin's coating reacts with a metal (possibly tin or zinc, but I've been unable to verify the exact solder formula ASUS uses) and the galvanic reaction destroys the pin. Replacement jacks which have gold pins in them also suffer the same fate within a year or so. It's also a real pain replacing the jacks on these because of the p-on LED location, it's almost always destroyed in the process. At my work, we get 1-2 of the G series machines in every week. So far it's been a pretty even split of spill damage and those jacks, to the point when we open up the G series machines for a cleanup, we usually end up having to do the jack too since it's somewhere along the fail process. Given the cost and lack of upgradability of the plastic machines, they really don't seem worth it with the chronic jack issue. Give me a metal chassis and LCD lid any day. My m15x has survived being sat on by a particularly large guest of mine before, totally unharmed. Not many laptops will survive a 300# guy sitting on it. My complaint on the Alienwares so far has been related to the thermal compound used. I've found several that came into the shop with black screen issues and artifacts under load to actually have either voids in the stock thermal compound, or even labels on top of the silicon itself. I've seen this even more in Toshibas, but that's not really relevant here. In general if you like your machine and want it to run the best it can, you need to redo the heatsink compound, and shim as necessary when there's too much of a gap.

I've had a G15 1st gen keyboard since the year it came out. It's never died on me, but over time keys wore off and turned light up blue, and I've replaced the upper part of it with the upper parts and keys from a couple of dead G15's customers recycled at my work. It's still going strong after those 3 rebuilds and a few times through the dishwasher. I can't help but recommend the Logitech gaming keyboards. Looking at their current offerings in the gaming area, they have mechanical keyboards now, I may just have to replace my trusty old G15 with something a little newer, mechanical, and more capable... I love the old mechanical keyboards, like the Keytronic ones from the late 90's, but who uses PS2 anymore? lol

I know it's old, but what about Skyrim? With all the DLCs and 3rd party mods and content to that already huge world, it would seem hard to be bored in that game. Or Civilization...

The preference for big games being released only on console, or console first, has been driving me crazy for years. I have never liked consoles, largely due to the controllers being imprecise and fidgety. (I have some hand eye coordination problems which show up really badly with controllers, but not at all with a keyboard and mouse) The other issue I've had is the poor quality graphics. (compared to a PC on the same game, when that's been a possible comparison... A game on a decent gaming PC to me always looks better than on a console.) I'd really like to see a version of the new Halo, or Destiny, on PC... Given how much hardware marketing is done for PC gaming, I would think these game companies would want to focus on the PC platform...

I've been visiting these forums off and on for advice for years, it was about time I joined, though it really is for getting a couple files I need to repair a customer's MSI whitebook at work... Anyway, Hi I'm Shaun.

It's an oldie but a goodie: ASUS P5K3 Deluxe (with some minor mods, like lapped and polished heatsinks, and custom through-bolt heatsink retainers with aluminum backing plates replacing the plastic clips. All the heatsinks have Gelid extreme on them) XFX black edition Radeon 6970 2gb. Intel QX9650 @ 3.2ghz 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1333 (running stable with 7-7-7-21 @ 1n timings, 1.55v) Corsair H50 watercooler Plextor 128GB SSD WD Black 1TB rotational Corsair AX760 PSU Corsair M90 mouse Logitech speakers Logitech G15 R1 keyboard (rebuilt this thing with parts from dead ones 3 times already, it just won't die!) Apple 23" cinema display 2x Samsung 1080p displays Asus Xonar DX soundcard USB 3.0 addin card DTV/HD tuner and input card Built into an Antec 900 case, with actual neon lights in it rather than fluorescent or LEDs. My other two machines are a Vizio CT15-A1 and an Alienware M15x r3 base model.

Just finished watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I think it was a good sequel to the original, the helicarrier battle was pretty awesome scifi tech eyecandy.