need advice for Lotus P150EM SE build

Hello everyone. This is my first post here, and I was wondering if you all could give me advice/critique to best suit my needs for a laptop. I've done mild research of my own, but I'm definitely NOT computer savvy in anyway, so your advice will be GREATLY appreciated. I decided on the Lotus P150EM SE from Malibal (heard good things about it) because I prefer the size, but everything else is pretty much subject to change. So here's my basic criteria of what I want:

Goal/Primary use: High-end gaming, college, military life style
Expectations: I'd like to be able to play most of all the high end games today on the highest possible settings, hopefully lasting 3-4 years. (ex. WoW, Diablo 3, SC2, Skyrim, whatever etc.) As well as basic video editing like Sony Vegas and what have you.
Budget: I'm willing to pay a pretty penny. I've never had a good dedicated gaming machine before in my life, so I don't really a problem paying a decent amount.

Here's what I came up with:

Lotus P150EM SE

• Display: 15.6" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED AUO B156HW01 V.7 95% NTSC Glossy Display
• Display Upgrades: Spyder 3 Elite Professional Color Calibration w/ Profile Disc
• Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-3610QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.3-3.3GHz
• Memory: (12GB) 12288MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 3 SO-DIMM
• Graphics Card: AMD® Radeon HD 7970M 2GB GDDR5
• Hard Drive: 750GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
• mSATA SSD Drive: 80GB Intel® (310) mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive
• Optical Drive Bay: 256GB Crucial® (M4) mSATA SSD
• Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium; 64-bit
• Wireless: Intel® 6300 Ultimate-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN Card
• Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
• Keyboard: English: US & Canada
• Power Cord: US & Canada
• AC Adapter: Full Range AC-in 100~240V, 50~60Hz, 180W, DC output 19V, 9.47A

Explanations/Decisions/Questions:
Display: Decided on the glossy being that I'll probably be playing indoors all the time, but would you recommend the Matte in the situation of hardcore window glare?
Processor: I don't know much about processors. I wouldn't mind going a little bit higher to 3.6, but everyone tells me 3.3 is good enough for what I want. Advice?
Memory: Your advice/opinion please.
Graphics Card: Simply because it's the newest, most top of the line/powerful thing out right now. I was told to wait for it to come out, but I hear it has overheating issues? This is a big concern for me. Would it be wise to wait and let things get figured out or get something less powerful?
Hard Drive: I figure 750GB is enough for general space.
mSATA SSD Drive: Speed
Optical Drive Bay: Don't need a disk drive. More and faster space.
Wireless: What do you recommend? Is the bigfoot really what it's cracked up to be?
Cooling: Best thing offered.
Keyboard: blah

 

Well you asked for our opinion, I'd never get a glossy screen if you move your laptop around, even moving it around to different places indoors.

Sounds fine

 

I would drop the msata
buy an SSD from newegg/amazon or another vendor and put that in place of the 750GB HD and put the 750GB hd in the cd rom caddy-

The reason for doing this is only the primary hard drive bay is sata 3 and only that will take true advantage of most SSD speeds. The msata drive is only sata 2 and the cost per GB is too high to be worth (unless you kept the cd rom and wanted two solid states)

 

Glossy screens drive my crazy too. I'd go Matte. Go with the 72% Matte if you want nice screen + no ridiculous glare.

2 things to note about Malibal

1. they charge for shipping (so that nice $50 off configurations over $1,500 will get eaten up)
2. they offer a discount for subscribing and posting on their forums.

I'd go with Powernotebooks.com or Xoticpc.com, but I'm biased.

Don't get the color calibration. It's a waste of money unless you're like a photo professional.

Memory - go for either 8 gb or 16 gb to get the Dual Channel Option. It's a pretty nice / important set up which just so happens to be incompatible with 12 gb RAM configurations.

Hard Drive - buy the SSD yourself and install it yourself. You'll save a good chunk of money. I found a 120 gb SSD for $90. Much better deal than the arm and a leg resellers will charge you. It's in my sig.

Wireless - Really no need to upgrade your wireless card from the stock version unless you are receiving better than 150 mb/s speeds from your provider. The stock offers bandwidth up to 150 mb / s, the better cards just up how much bandwidth they can handle (and throw in a bell or whistle here or there), but if you aren't receiving internet signal faster than 150 then you're wasting your money. (Just for reference I have cable and get 54 mb / s when on wifi, a little more when plugged in to ethernet).

my 2 cents

 

if your gaming requires a low ping you definitely need to upgrade the stock card... killer provides best latency

 

Never had issues with gaming on stock WiFi card personally.

 

Killer Wireless-N 1103 Review: Can Qualcomm Take On Centrino? : Killer Wireless: Is It Able To Usurp Intel's Centrino?

I would consider the stock card likely to be lower than all of these benchmarks

 

I'd at least go with the Intel 6235 because I trust Intel more than whoever the stock is and the upgrade price of $25 isn't bad considering you also get Bluetooth (for mice). The killer card is overkill though.

 

I'd go with matte. Your processor will be fine. 12 GB RAM is a lot, but it can't hurt.

 

Thanks for all your advice. I'm probably going to go with the Matte.

I had no idea that the harddrive slot was special lol. So stick the harddrive in the caddy and switch with the sata to benefit the most from it? that sounds good.

- I plan on taking advantage of their military, money transfer, and forum discounts if I can

- Taking out color calibration

- Will stick with 8gb memory unless 16 is something I should really look at. I'm thinking 8 will be fine though.

Anything else?

 

There are some advantages to doing the ic7 thermal paste yourself if you're comfortable opening the laptop. 1. You'll prolly save 15-20 bucks, 2. you'll have leftovers to do the cpu or just save, 3. you can be sure it's done correctly.

Awesome looking build.

 

That's what I did. I find Intel to be dependable, not a fan of Atheros and as great as the reviews are for Killer WiFi, I know it's owned by Atheros, or now Qualcomm. Me no likey.

 

With sagers, it is a lot less complicated to repaste the laptop yourself. I had to repast my g73...that was the biggest pain in the neck I have ever had to do on my laptop, I would make sure I have a good cpu, because you can upgrade your gpu later, and if you have money left over, then go for a matte screen, I would prefer to have a 95% gamut matte rather than glossy, there have been complaints about the 95% gamut matte with "extreme" reds, if you pay to have your screen calibrated, that wont happen.