What's the best option to go for when building a new Clevo-based machine?

For example, with Alienware, most people keep the basic processor, the basic 4GB of ram and the best GPUs to keep the total costs down, since you can get 16GB of ram for like $80 instead of $200.

Would it be wise to do the same thing with these machines if one were to get it?

Just trying to find the easiest way to max out the next laptop. Figured I'd wait and just upgrade my CPU on this Qosmio for the time being and get another machine next year after I save up a decent bit of cash.

 

All I know is going through all the websites to customize a 17" laptop and becoming more fluent with upgrade pricing, Alienware/Dell has some bad customization options. For example Canada Alienware has the gtx580m price very expensive while the US Alienware is only $80 more than the radeon 6990m. The ram options are rather bad as well with the m17x that I was looking at starting with 4gb 2 dimms and upgradable to 8gb 4dimms lol. They are giving you 2gb rams instead of Clevo's 4gb per ram, which I think for a premium brand was rather startling. After trying my best to struggle with a terrible customization on their site the final price is super ridiculous, oh yah one more thing, their stock 17" screen is at 1600x900. I mean wth.... I don't even see this as an option for the Clevo ones. The base price is also higher than everyone else to begin with.

I kinda really want to try an Alienware to just see how it is like since it is supposedly a premium laptop but I have so many mixed emotions, like you know this is a bad relationship before even going into it.

Used to be a big fan of theirs when I was naive and then I stumbled on this forum and got educated. Don't even know how to explain why their Canada counterpart does not get any discount on the GTX 580m. Saw someone posting saying that they have the discount and Clevo will have it next year so wanted to just check it out, too bad the discount is only in US Alienware.

 

Just realized I was kinda mad on Alienware and went off-topic. Just hate the big companies and their marketing strategy.

I will say for Clevo, ideally I will like my next rig to be P170HM (do not need portability), glossy stock screen (wanted matte for a long time but decided glossy should be better for me since I do not bring my laptop around except when I move between cities), 8gb 1333mhz ram 2dimms should suffice since I only game and do not do hefty graphic designing stuff, GTX 580m (wanted radeon 6990m until I saw that Nvidia is going to cut pricing on 580m), IC diamond paste ( a must), 500gb 7200 rpm HDD (will love primary as intel 120gb sata3 and secondary as 500gb 7200rpm hdd but SSD so expensive atm), bigfoot killer 1103 (they are on backorder on most sites), everything else that I cant think of as stock. Oh crap, forgot something so important lol, CPU as i7 2670QM 2.2ghz (I understand that this run at 1333mhz FSB? Will be enough since I do not think the 1600mhz and above are huge increase in performance).

My dream is to have a 90-95% gamut 17inch display but too bad they dont have it. Extra cash will go to some nice Razor keyboard, mouse, a mouse pad and a nice headset, YEAH!

Then buy Skyrim and enjoy.

 

My personal priority list:

Graphics card always comes first. Then screen quality. Then an SSD. Then processor options.

RAM is always to be lowest on the list.

 

^ You can upgrade all of those.

I am probably one of the few members here who regularly buys laptops without any of those components because I almost always have something compatible laying around (which I got at a much better price).

But if I'm tempting you stop listening now or you'll end up trying to fit a GPU heatsink for 100w TDP into a Gateway with an upgraded 6970m and core 2 quad.

 

you can Pretty much customize it any way you want depending on the reseller/builder, I believe I've read somewhere here that they've bought sager machines with 0 ram and 0 HDD/SSD because they've already got spares to use on the new laptop (or buy somewhere cheaper).

best would be to message or email the reseller/builder and inquire