Edits ===
I ended up buying a gigabytes P34w v5 for £690 on eBay, it has a I7 6700hq, 970m, 16gb ram, 256gb nvme ssd and 1 tb hdd so I'm happy with the specs.
my brothers had a laptop with the 7 series gpus (for age reference) and it is fine hence I wasn't too worried about dust being a problem and the Dell is good but out of my price range when new if I look at the I7 comparatively to the one I bought.
I guess I'll see when it comes in 2 days!
Original ===
I'm looking to buy a roughly £700 laptop (at a real push £800) to last me throughout a levels and uni. I've been looking for second hand ones on eBay currently.
I use my current computer (which has 12 year old components so no point upgrading it as I may as well buy a new one) for programming, trying to play games from arma 2, dayz, civ 5 and spelunky. I don't play major games currently as they are expensive for 1 game and my quadro fx 5600 is just beyond terrible however I would like to play them in the future. Games like rust are simply unplayable, black mountains, shards, 20 frames a minute. I can't bear an integrated graphics card for fear of suffering the same problems.
I've also started learning to produce music so this is a consideration for specs as well.
Below is a list of ideal specs so recommendations for good laptops of the recent past and maybe amendments to my sights that may be more reasonable to my budget is generally what I'm looking for.
'Ideal' specs
Cpu - I7/I5 (recomendations on which I would need)
Gpu - 960m/965m/970m. I've found 970m to be strangely similar in some pricing to 960m... Is it worth waiting for the 1050ti for laptops or even splashing out on a 1060 which I can't really afford right now.
Ram - 8-16gb (preferably upgradable if 8gb)
Screen - 14"/15" IPS but I wouldn't turn down a 17"
Battery - not a huge concern but If I want to use it at uni it may be more of a concern so 4 hours maybe
Weight - 2-3kg preferably not only because of the obvious benefits but slimmer profiles are preferable really just for aesthetics (not super likely at £700)
The Razer blade ticks all of these boxes but its really expensive, even second hand as well as very limited amounts I'm the UK.
Storage - SSD as large as possible but I don't mind a small one now and upgrading later. SSHD seems smart for budgeting.
*Cheeky note* If there's any Razer blade competitions like the one I didn't win this Christmas by LTT, please suggest them as the new Razer blade is perfect for me (as well as the 970m one).
