Laptop shopping

[BluJay614]

Okay, I know I've come asking about this before. Unfortunately, my budget isn't looking to be where I wanted it. Rather then $700-800USD, reality came knocking and slapped me in the face with the door. What it's more realistically looking like is $500-550. Unfortunately, that puts a constraint on what the hardware is capable of. No, I haven't looked on eBay, so if you have a suggestion, it would be most appreciated.

Here's what cnet has for the specs for my current run down system. The HDD was swapped for a 480GB HyperX Savage, and is now being used as an external drive. Both drives will be coming with to the new system. 

https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-15-g020dx-15-6-a6-5200-4-gb-ram-1-tb-hdd-us/specs/

Steam library right now:

ASTA Online

Bayonetta 

Dragons and Titans

Elder Scrolls (All the way up to Skyrim Special Edition, and I have a couple dozen mods for Skyrim) 

Elsword

Final Fantasy VII

Mabinogi

Paladins 

Papers, Please

Robocraft

Subnautica

TERA

Undertale

Vindictus 

Warframe

Other games I play:

Diablo III

StarCraft II

Minecraft 

I know that Austin Evens did a review on this Acer Aspire 5, but it only drops to ~$549.99 rarely, and is at the very top of my budget. 

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-i5-8250U-GeForce-A515-51G-515J/dp/B075KCJHMD

Video:

Doing some digging around, I found it to be rather difficult to find one with decent specs at this budget. I have found an older Dell, though it leaves me a bit concerned. It does have a Hazwell based i7 4810MQ 16GB RAM, though the graphics is a Quadro K1100M. I'm hoping to use this to help get a YouTube channel off the ground (my phone is a ZTE Sonata 3 and the best mic on any device I have is on my Kraken Pro v2).

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1TS-000A-02HV3

I know my current system can barely handle gaming, and anything higher then that can easily bring it to its knees. This is not to mention that Cinebench R15 on a single thread test will only score ~32, and multi-core will be in the low 100s.

I don't trust my phone alone to be able to handle what I want to do. Maybe acting as a camera, but not much if anything else. Again, any advise or input is appreciated as long as you're not going to just sit here and bitch or say to get a bigger budget. 

[genexis_x]

Aspire 5 is fine, just be aware of any QC issues (common for laptops in this price range)

[BluJay614]

5 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

Aspire 5 is fine, just be aware of any QC issues (common for laptops in this price range)

The biggest complaint I've seen about it is the screen being god awful. Though you'd say go with the newer hardware when prices drop again? 

[Razerlob]

I would really recommend the GL702VSK. There is a cheaper version of it where I got it for $1,300. I mean it might be out of your price range but it has a GTX 1070 with a 17.3" inch 75 HZ display with G-sync. The only downside is that has kind of a crappy cooling mechanism.

[BluJay614]

4 minutes ago, Razerlob said:

I would really recommend the GL702VSK. There is a cheaper version of it where I got it for $1,300. I mean it might be out of your price range but it has a GTX 1070 with a 17.3" inch 75 HZ display with G-sync. The only downside is that has kind of a crappy cooling mechanism.

For now, that's way out of my price range. 

[genexis_x]

12 minutes ago, BluJay614 said:

The biggest complaint I've seen about it is the screen being god awful. Though you'd say go with the newer hardware when prices drop again? 

Still an entry level IPS not TN. Yes wait for price drop.

[BluJay614]

Just now, ZM Fong said:

Still an entry level IPS not TN. Yes wait for price drop.

Actually, it is TN. Just a really bad one, especially from the looks of the pictures from one of the reviews. Austin actually points out that it's a really bad TN in his video

[genexis_x]

14 minutes ago, BluJay614 said:

Actually, it is TN

It depends on region. From what I know US model gets IPS panel.

[BluJay614]

3 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

It depends on region. From what I know US model gets IPS panel.

The downside there is who knows what you could be getting, thusly it's a wild card that could be less then decent, or straight up bad.