EU: Tips on a new budget gaming laptop?

Silver Mitsuki · April 18, 2018

Yellow everybody

=== BORING INTRODUCTION AHEAD ===

So, my 7+ years old laptop (Toshiba, first gen i7 and a shameful 330M, it was a gift) worked pretty well until yesterday, when after a shutdown it decided to not turn on anymore: it used to crash from time to time but also used to work really well (especially for its age), so I thought that maybe a new laptop could have helped me to fill the space it left on my desk.

This wasn't totally out of the blue, but happened in a really bad situation for me: I really need a computer to work and finish my studies and I don't have the economic resources I used to.

My main device on these days is a raspi, so even easy stuffs like googling for people's opinion is quite a challenge for me, reason why I'm bothering you.

=== YOU CAN START READING FROM HERE ===

Here are some key points to keep in mind; I'd like to hear if you have an idea on what/where to buy:

I'm from Italy,
I'd like to not spend more than 1100€,
I don't upgrade my devices often, nor I'm the kind of guy who spends his money on a Razer.
This doesn't mean that I'm looking for a 600€ device, just that I'm not scared to spend 100€ more on a device that will make the next years of my life more pleasant,
CPU Intel i5 at least (don't know which one),
GPU Nvidia 1050Ti or 1060 if possible,
1TB of HDD with the space for a second drive (an SSD I already have) would be perfect, but is not essential.

Don't know what are the AMD equivalents for the CPU/GPU I listed, nor if the couple Intel/Nvidia is preferred over AMD.

I also have some few questions for you, as suggesting "which model" to buy can be pretty time consuming since it involves discounts, availability and so on so I'd really appreciate if you could find the time to give me a hand clearing some doubts I have...

Brand: which one should I go for?
I read a number of good reviews about the DELL laptops, but from what I know they don't have a good customer service, same for Lenovo. If I remember correctly. Asus used to do good motherboards, right? What do you think about MSI?
I'm not familiar with tech support, but I like to know that if needed I can count on them, especially considering that the battery of my devices usually waits for the warranty to expire to start working bad.
Googling for answers, the website "pcspecialist" came out: what is your opinion about these kind of websites, that allows the user to ""build" their laptop?
Considering also the cost of a monitor what is the difference, mainly in terms of price, between a budget gaming laptop and a desktop? SSD and the series 10 GPU (again, talking about Nvidia) helped to fill the gap between the two, so is sacrificing the advantage of the portability offered by a laptop still important as it used to be few years ago?

I surely have more questions to ask, but for now I'll just go with these.

I'm sorry to bother you with this, I thank in advance any user who decided to waste their time to reply to this thread.

Have an amazing day :D