uberclocka

Stumbled across these forums in my search for a new laptop.....very informative reading....so here is what I am after if anyone has any recommendations. Open to any brand Laptop will be for moderate gaming - mainly GW2 (at 1680 x 1050) Will be running mainly on an external monitor. Battery life really not important. I have a spare SSD lying around, so HDD size/quality not important - however easy upgradability to SSD is a must some sort of i5 CPU seems to fit my budget best Screen resolution not very important - will only be used for mild office work when not used with external monitor. I can cope with 40fps for gaming Budget around $700 Thanks

I really am hoping that this is not true - sort of like an Apple policy of you will do what we want you to because we dominate the market. If AMD could rewind the market several years to the early Athlon years and consistenly provide performance competition to Intel then I don't think they would consider doing this. Anyone else remember those awful PC Chips motherboards with the soldered CPUs....yuck....

Not so much what to check for....but in my experience with laptops, especially anything approaching high end or gaming...dust in fans can cause so many problems that can cause you to waste hours checking other components when actually a 2 minute clean can solve the issues. I also despair when i see badly applied or poor quality thermal paste of a high end cpu or cpu - so I usually check/reapply when i have a go at the fans.