Fix laptop or upgrade (gamingish)

Scythica

Morning all,

In 2014 I bought a refurbished Alienware 17 for ~£900. It blew everything out of the water spec wise at the time for the most part, played witcher 3 on Ultra with v few issues blah blah blah.

Sadly with Windows 10 it just marked the beginning of the end. I had to get it repaired a few times and as of 7 months ago it's gone into the "beep beep beep shutdown" (Sorry I've not checked it in a while - memory failure I believe it was).

I know that isn't the best description in the world but I've now got 2 options

- Send it off to get fixed, not sure how much it would cost. Realistically I'd be looking to maybe upgrade the RAM or at least get an SSD in there as well.

- Buy new

If I'm buying a new one I'm either after a budget gaming laptop (read: 6-800 sterling) or given we may be getting a desktop within a year, one which is perhaps a 2-in-1. Preferably at same price point or cheaper.

Only real must haves (bar a gfx card if a gaming variant) is good screen and audio quality, as streaming would probably be the main usage for it.

Does anyone have thoughts or recommendations on the above? Happy to hear of deals in ROI and I'll hunt around for £ variants as currently live in England for all my sins.

Thanks for the assistance.

EDIT: This caught my eye
https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/9S7-16JA11-005-MSI-Prestige-PL60-7RD-005UK_2097419.html
I'm also not against getting clearance / refurbished depending on the grade

sounds like the mainboard is dead. time to go for a new one imo

something like this seems good value for 800 sterling. rare to get an nvidia 1060 at that price. it's 3gb card not 6gb but that doesn't make a difference for 1080p gaming, only 4k and the screen isn't 4k in any case.

high refresh rate screen (120hz)

Nvidia 1060 3gb (which is at or above xbox x - the latest one that is more powerful)

256 ssd

https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/FX50...T_2315679.html


1080p full hd gaming at high performance

review

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-F....289582.0.html

Scythica

Scythica wrote: »

EDIT: This caught my eye
https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/9S7-16JA11-005-MSI-Prestige-PL60-7RD-005UK_2097419.html
I'm also not against getting clearance / refurbished depending on the grade

the cpu in that is pretty weedy and the 1050 gpu is less than half as powerful as the 1060 card

Scythica

Thanks Glasso! Much appreciated.

Ironically posted this made me take apart the laptop last night... Turns out I had fixed whatever the beep problem was previously, and now had the PXE-M0F issues...
So actually I've sat there for 7 months without the main HDD plugged in properly... oops.
In the attempt to save some money I've purchased a 480gb SSD instead and currently backing up the systems into an external HDD before attempting to move the operating system over (just googling how this is done, all new for me).
Laptop is definitely sluggish anyway. I noticed its quite easy to put more ram in (space just after the 1 stick I have - is it just a case of  buying more and plugging in if needed?

ram yes - just add in a stick.
just make sure it's the same type (prob ddr3) and speed as the current stick. you can add in a faster speed but it will run at same speed as current speed.

a fresh install of windows might speed things up (either back up existing programs or just reinstall them).

the ram probably won't change a huge amount in terms of windows speed but may help with the very latest games but most games run fine on 8gb system ram.

but you may get a dual channel memory boost for games also (having 2 sticks instead of one)

fresh windows install and the ssd should help a lot.