Purchasing a new Sager

Hello there all, I recently discovered that I accidentally fried my trooper of a laptop, my pride and joy, my Sager NP8150. So I'm in the market for a new laptop. I'm on a bit of a strict budget but I'm looking for advice here since the last time I looked for a laptop was 2011.

I like gaming performance on a budget, I used a 485m in my last lappy for example even thought they had just released the 560m. I like having the option to bump up the amount of RAM I have. And I'm wondering, what are the impressions so far of Sager/Clevo integrating their CPU/GPUs? I really liked being able to replace my GPU/CPU as an option on my 8150. I'm not so sure about not being able to do that now, is there a model out there where that is still possible?

Also, I really like Sager because of the professional look of their machines, I love how inconspicuous they look and I was able to take my 8150 to work and school without any issue.

So I'd like to hear your thoughts. What is out there now? Things have come so far since I was in the game.

 

Well, the majority of newer laptops have BGA CPUs + GPUs, as does Clevo machines. However, Clevo offers several upper-end products that have desktop CPUs (so socketed) and MXM GPUs.

P770/750
P775
P870

Those are what you're looking for if you want to maintain that ease-of-upgrade down the line. However the P775 and P870 aren't exactly subtle - they're monsters (in a good way). Huge, with a desktop CPU and a desktop GPU (980) if you so desire.

The P750/770 are (relatively) thin and light compared to those, yet still house a desktop CPU.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...owner´s-lounge-welcome-to-the-batcave.767105/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...gtx-980m-64gb-ram-review-by-htwingnut.783411/

Other alternatives are the P670/650 models, which are cheaper, thinner and lighter, but also have BGA components.

 

Did you ever end up actually upgrading the CPU/GPU on the NP8150 that you have?

Most people do not, with the BGA ones like the P650/P670 they are thinner and powerhouses for the performance that you get out of them so gaming on a budget these are really ideal.

 

The P6xx series do maintain all of the excellent storage options, with a 970M you should still get a decent while of very good gaming out of it.

 

I was planning to since I had my laptop apart for a couple of weeks (spilled some water on it). However, when I reassembled it, I just got a black screen with no further boot up so I believe I shorted out the mobo.

To answer your question, no, I didn't. But I was planning on going up to a 680m so that way I could keep it relatively up to date for another couple of years.

I like to keep my laptops for 6 to 8 years and I figured the 485m had about 4 years of competitiveness.

 

So are there any longevity concerns with buying a new laptop with an integrated GPU? I'm not too concerned with the integrated CPU, the Skylake architecture seems pretty amazing. I am just concerned with say for example, burning out a GPU or having it fail on me and being forced to replace the entire board. That seems expensive and I'm looking for a longterm investment here.