Need help upgrading a prebuilt laptop

[Stg-Flame]

I'm trying to help my friend find a pre built laptop that he can upgrade to run modern games at around medium settings. He's looking to spend 500 dollars on the laptop itself and about another 500 on upgrading into a gaming laptop. Since all my experience is with building gaming desktops I was hoping that I could get some information on buying a pre built laptop and then upgrading it into a gaming laptop. I know it isn't cheap to upgrade a laptop but that's what he wants.

I'm currently at work right now and on location and I probably won't be home for another 14 hours, so if anybody could link some pre built laptops that are easily upgradeable and maybe some hardware (RAM, GPU, etc) that would go along with that laptop, it would be greatly appreciated.

I can browse around the internet a little bit out here on location but since I'm on my phone my access is pretty limited.

Edit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...12438&cm_sp=DailyDeal-_-34-312-438-_-Homepage

I found this as a daily deal on newegg and even for the full purchase price of 1000 dollars this looks far better than anything I've seen thus far when I was like looking for a gaming laptop for myself. Please let me know if this would be a good buy or not and I'll get him the link today.

 

[JWade]

something to also look at is delloutlet. they have some nice refurbished alienware laptops for under $1,000 total. they just recently had a 30% off all alienware that just ended (I know that doesn't help now). I have seen m14x R2's on there for mid $800's.

 

[tuxberg]

I second the outlet recommendation. Also, call the companies you are looking at online. I used to deal with dell, hp, and lenovo at work and I can tell you anything like a published price is more than they're actually aiming for on a sale.

Regardless of what "special," events are going on a decent negotiator who's willing to haggle can chip 10-20% off. Probably more if you're looking at outlet hardware that they really want to get rid of.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Thing about laptops is that in 95% of them, graphics are soldered to the mainboard, including dedicated GPUs and it's memory, the exceptions I know of being Alienware, and some Clevo based lappys, and even then, they're more meant for easy repairs as opposed to being designed for upgrades. I recommend saving some more and buying the best GPU you can in a laptop.

In terms of upgrades, for all intents and purposes, the only things you can generally upgrade are the storage drive(s) and the RAM. Anything beyond that is questionable at best.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Sorry to be replying so late, but my buddy said he wanted a new laptop and not a used or refurbished one and I cannot blame him. I've used several refurbished laptops and you could tell how much use they had gotten before they were turned back to the manufacturer. He is aware he will need to save a bit more, but I was hoping that there would be a decently priced laptop that he would be able to modify a bit to his liking like more RAM (which the Lenovo I linked in the OP is more than capable of swapping out the RAM and with dual GPUs he wouldn't need to look for a different GPU).

Something along the lines of a normal laptop that borders a gaming laptop which can also be modified to be used for more graphic-intensive games. I looked around a lot of places (even the outlet sites) and I think that Lenovo is one of the best I'd seen all day.

 

[Pillowite]

Try msi barebone laptops. On ebay, a gtx 660m one starts at $550. You need to get your own cpu, ram, and hdd. A i7 3630qm will go in the $200 range.

Msi has some cool options on barebones, starting with a gt 650m ($500) and going to a gtx 680mx ($950 barebones, i think). Its something that I looked into for hours.

 

[JWade]

I stopped buying new when I found out about the delloutlet years ago. they come with the same warranty as new ones. I never had a problem with any of the ones I have gotten

 

[Stg-Flame]

He's going to go ahead and save up some money for that Lenovo. We spent a lot of time looking through outlet sites and even pricing out parts for a custom built and it seems like that Lenovo I originally linked is the best for what he's looking for. It should be able to play any recent game on at least medium settings pretty good and I personally like the design as well as the price tag.

I really appreciate all the input everyone gave since I never knew about the outlet sites before.