markr54632

I'm using a nitro 5 i5 1050 as my daily driver. Other than the plasticky construction I have been very happy. Thermals have been excellent, however higher spec models do have issues with cooling however.
 
Take a look into the 2018 omen line. Should be around the same budget and are remarkably nice for the money. Avoid the 2017 and older models.

Our school leaves the serial connections attached because the connectors are fragile and the hwic-2t cards are high priced. Not to mention that in the ccna1-4 and security classes all use the same serial layout in every lab.
 
At home I use t1 cables that I made with an inch or so of slack for pretty cable management.

This has been covered before. Manufacturers put it in there to tick a box. A higher quality camera is not really a selling feature for most users. Personally I disable the camera in any system I have with one.

Notebook check has a pretty in depth review of the 15" i5 1050 model. Under stress tests it throttled down to 1.5 ghz. 
 
Although by all means read owners comments and get one in your own hands. Most shops should have a demo unit.
 
I would argue that any laptop that throttles under load has inadequate cooling, but that would cover the overwhelming majority of laptops put out this generation and it seems to only be getting worse.

If you want white buy white or rgbw led strips. Rgb strips dont produce a true white.

Literally everything except for the ram and ssd is soldered to the board. So if you have already ruled out ram the ssd wouldnt cause a no post condition. You are left with it needing a full motherboard. 600 is pretty reasonable for main board replacement.
 
I mean if you wanted to fix it yourself you could always buy a board off of ebay, but your better off either buying new or having asus repair it.

Rgb is akin to a honda civic with a fart can and huge spoiler. It has no tact, no elegance, and takes no skill to install. It also tends to appeal to a younger audience. It just makes your build look "cheap".

Rgb is akin to a honda civic with a fart can and huge spoiler. It has no tact, no elegance, and takes no skill to install. It also tends to appeal to a younger audience. It just makes your build look "cheap".

Go used/refurb - business laptops with MQ / QM CPU

Are you just spamming this around? The new xps is certainly not sweet unless you mean it is a toaster that can cook sweet things.

So diagnose the crash and add some led strips?

Reading the post it sounds like op is hoping to get a monitor, keyboard, and mouse as well.
 
If that's the case he may be able to get an old laptop that may play some old indie titles.
 
Or cruise craigslist for an old pc someone is getting rid of cheap locally with an old monitor.

Do not judge by brand name! Wait until the model you want has been out for a few months and reviewed thoroughly before buying.
 
As for customer service alienware/dell isnt the worst, but they aren't good by any stretch.

WTF?

Go used

I dont get it. Seems pretty much the same as the rest.

If you have a microcenter locally look into their house brand Powerspec prebuilts. They use standard off the shelf components and are pretty fair priced. They also have a warrantee.

That's a tough call. Both of them are pretty solid choices.

Sorry, you're right. IDE ribbon cables are 40-pin. I haven't touched one in years so memory's a bit foggy.

Incorrect. That connector is a proprietary front io connector.

The only feature I would like to see is for laptop manufacturers to make a thick chassis that doesnt overheat again.
 
 
They used to have media laptops with tv tuners and video inputs built in. They didnt work well granted the hardware at the time wasnt up to the task. It would be cool to have a modern media center laptop.

For some reason it is recommended alot on this forum, but has bad thermals and poor quality control.

Honestly there isn't a great or even good model to reccomend for you. You need to make up a list of wants and a list of things you can compromise on and realize that all of them are going to have significant compromises.
 
If you want portability you are either going to compromise power or thermals.
 
If you want power you are going to compromise on portability or thermals.
 
If you want thermals you are going to compromise on portability or power.

I will elaborate. I tried to make a pentium, 4 gb of ddr4, and 256gb ssd Lenovo flex work for school assignments ONLY. It literally only needed to run visual studio for simple programming and word. It is not good enough. The cursor frequently would lag 5-6 words behind. I upgraded to 8gb of ram and it made it through 1 semester.
 
Honestly if you are using one of those machines for anything more than a first pc, and you can type more than 1 word per minute both of those are a waste of money and you will end up replacing them within a month or two.

It's a TongFang laptop, not made by Walmart
It's a good model (GK5CN5Z/6Z), though you should rely on other vendors like Eluktronics for firmware/BIOS updates and aftersales support