Thoughts on P150EM build?

Hey guys, just discovered a reseller called computerupgradeking, they have the 150/170 for by far the cheapest price I've seen. Let me know what you think of this:

1080p glossy
GTX675MX
No cpu (will buy separately)
No ram (will buy 4gb separately + pull 4gb out of current laptop)
No HDD (have own SSD)
No ODD (no need?)
No wireless card (pull from current laptop)

Total: $933

Gonna buy an i7 3610QM off ebay for $200 and 4gb of ram for ~$30. I already have 4gb ram, SSD and wireless card from my current laptop that I plan on putting in the P150EM. Total comes out to ~$1163, saving around $200-$250 by going barebones. Thoughts on this build?

 

That's IMHO a usual price and not especially cheap.

 

Really? The only other place I found that sells barebones from the US is RJtech, and their price starts at $1004 for the config I listed above. Any config from a complete system reseller would be well over $1300 with the gtx675mx

 

PM the resellers, they will likely be able to provide a barebones. Check with LPC-Digital.com I know they will likely do barebones if you email them.

 

Also you might want to consider going with a reseller in case you have issues. Ebay is not easy to work with when something goes wrong.

Resellers will give you at least a 1 year warranty and Sager gives a 2 year I believe.

I'm all for saving money, but I believe for a purchase like this it's best to pay a little bit more for peace of mind and security.

Edit: I know XoticPC will be able to remove the HDD for your own and credit you back the cost. I'm sure they'll also do the same for the wifi card.

 

totally agree. when your spending over $1000 buying bits here and there it would be the warranty side of things that would scare the crap out of me, for example, your lappy goes wrong but you dont know what is causing the problem then you would need to send each part back to each ebay supplier to get it checked. buy from someone like xotic/prostar/lpc/powernotebooks etc and the whole lappy is covered in one place for longer.

saving 200-250 is it really worth it?

i havnt had a chance to read through this thread but take a look here http://forum.notebookreview.com/reseller-feedback-forum/675025-computer-upgrade-king.html

 

Especially when it comes to laptops nowadays...there is a lot that can go wrong with putting together a machine yourself.
The one thing I love most about MySN is that they test your system before shipping it out to you.

Putting it together on your own has its good sides too - you have direct control over how much thermal paste you put under the heatsinks.
Its a lot of fun digging inside the guts of your lappy. Brings some experience as a reward too.

Your choice!

 

If you google 'computerupgradeking reviews' you will see at least one really bad review. Lots of good reviews but they seem phoney to me.

 

the price is almost exactly the sort of prices I've been getting in the last few weeks after converting USD to GBP, my barebones quotes float about the £630 ($980) for a P150EM with 7970m and £605 for the 675mx, - these are from a couple of suppliers over the phone, and pwnpcs do them for about £750 online for the same spec, but they are openly selling them as barebones so this is probably where the premium comes from.

The reason is of course, the P150SM is coming out very, very soon....... so stock is probably been sold off to make space or raise cash for the new range stock

 

We'd be able to remove the RAM, HDD, ODD, and Wifi card (Wifi and ODD wouldn't result in any price credit being a generic card/drive) but Sager will refuse to ship a machine without CPU. If you absolutely don't want a CPU for you to purchase on your own you're going to be limited to the system builders instead of the Sager resellers.

 

Not exactly true. I've done it a couple times through Sager.

 

Thanks for the input everyone -

Regarding warranty, yes that's an issue I'm definitely taking a risk on. But given that I'm only ebaying the CPU, which should be new/OEM, and given that CPUs rarely are DOA or crap out in general, I think this should be fairly low risk. All the other components I'm gonna pull from my current laptop and show no signs of failure any time soon. So really for warranty issues I'm only taking a gamble on the CPU, which is definitely one of the more uncommon parts to fail.

On another note, how picky are Clevo systems when it comes to ram which may not be certified by Clevo/Sager?

 

I'd say it's a little more common than you think for the CPU to arrive DOA, I don't trust Ebay sellers personally as often times there isn't a clear idea who it is behind the scenes. Make sure that you ask specifically how they'll handle a DOA item upon delivery.

They may have made special exceptions for you being you, but current policies are that they won't

 

You're taking a bit of a risk on the used components as well, especially if/when they're outside of their respective manufacturer's warranty. Just be careful when handling them.

Which RAM did you want to go with?