HamsterBurglar

I would want the new Razer Blade, since I am an engineering student who uses a lot of 3D modeling applications that would make good use of the Blade's i7 and GTX 1060.

On 5/25/2016 at 5:34 PM, Enderman said:

so i highly recommend the 15

especially the version with the 84Wh battery

As someone who owns the XPS 15, I agree. The new XPS 15 is really great, and the battery life is incredible. My only complaint is the trackpad, which they have not totally fixed from previous models. In previous models it tended to get very mushy and somewhat unresponsive after about six months of solid use.

22 minutes ago, cdsboy2000 said:

How do these two compare? They look nearly identical

They are the same computer. The only difference is that one is a dark color, while the other one is white. 

9 minutes ago, Yorgos said:

I would really love to go to a GTX 970 but it costs 100 euros more.

Oops, my bad. I meant 960. Typo!

I would go for the EVGA 970, and I wouldn't consider the Galax card. The 4GB of VRAM will really help with running newer games. EVGA also has really great customer service/support should something go wrong(I've never had any issues with their cards). 

I don't know if MSI gives you one, but I know that for my EVGA 970 it came with a DVI to VGA adapter. It should be inside the box your GPU came in.

The MSI GTX 970 has one DisplayPort (also one HDMI and two DVI) on it, and you should connect it to that. As previously stated, your motherboard most likely disables the iGPU, so plugging a cable into the motherboard will not display anything. 

Mushkin and Silicon Power are decent SSD's for what you pay for, and they have SSD's in the $30 range. I believe Mushkin's is a 60GB and SP is a 120GB, but don't quote me on those capacities. If you're going to do that, I would recommend mushkin of SP, but they're both there for you to choose from.

I too am going to college in the fall for engineering, and have been looking at similar choices, so I'll share what I've found with you. The first option I found was getting a Blade Stealth. It has an i7, long battery life, and is ultra portable. Along with that I have considered getting a Razer Core so that I could do things like game do 3D modeling with no problem whatsoever(the i7 will handle most 3D modeling applications with no problems at all). There are other options, like an XPS 15 with the 960m, which is a great laptop, although it runs a little hot. The P40 is a good laptop, but is pretty expensive for the hardware included.

BitFenix Spectre fans(non-LED) are all white and are pretty quiet. I don't know if they're quiet enough for you though. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835345046

I wouldn't recommend a dual core for hosting any kind of server. It'll be interesting, but it should be OK to host a server for a few people.

I saw a computer very similar on sale near me, except it had an 8350, but it sold for about $470, and it was in good condition. You could probably get something around that for yours.

I'd recommend putting a fan controller on it or something, because otherwise it will just spin at full power, and even Noctua fans can get a little noisy at full power.

Good luck on your adventure and please share your results. I'm curious as to how it turns out.

I have a similar PC to yours and upgraded recently. I'd say either another 8 gb kit of the ram you have, a larger monitor or higher resolution monitor(potentially 1440p?), or an m.2 for your boot drive.