As I'll be off to uni next year it doesn't seem cost effective to upgrade my current PC to play Skyrim when I'll be switching to a laptop anyway, so I'm looking for a decently built mid-size mid-range gaming laptop. Current specs are:

19" 5:4 1280x1024 monitor
9600GT 512MB
Intel E5200 2.5GHz Dual Core
2GB DDR2 RAM
Asus P5KC

I had a look at pcspecialist.co.uk and used their custom build thingy to get this:

15.6" Matte 1366x768
Intel i5-2430M 2.4GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
GT 540M 2GB
3 year warranty
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/enigmaIII-540/

£483 including delivery + VAT.

I have a couple of questions:

According to Passmark the CPU is more than 2x as fast as mine, but the GPU is about 20% less powerful. I can play most games fine on medium settings on my current hardware. Is this good enough for gaming for the next couple of years? My plans for it are mainly TF2 and Skyrim. Most gaming will likely be on my PS3.

Anyone ordered from pcspecialist before? Any potentially better places out there?

And what kind of tradeoff is there between a 5400 and 7200RPM hard drive in terms of speed and battery life?

Thanks

Considering you want a gaming laptop, the common bottleneck of the system is the hard drive speed. According to http://www.silentpcreview.com/article909-page2.html, HDDs have a little power consumption, so the battery life tradeoff (which imo is just a matter of minutes at best) is in my opinion totally worth the increased speed.

If you can get your hands on SSD, go for it (The price is higher by a fair amount, but the speed is totally worth it. ). Then you should consider buying a second HDD for storage and not-so-much-important files and programs.

Thanks Nemko

Sadly I can't really justify the extra expense for an SSD. I have started looking at a slightly better model which I'll post the specs for in a bit.

Almost ready to order. Here's what I've chosen:

Optimus II: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-2430M (2.40GHz) 3MB
4GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 2GB)
nVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M - 2GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
ARCTIC COOLING MX-3 HIGH THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Optimus Series 6 Cell Lithium-ION Battery - 48.85WH
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W Adaptor
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON MULTITOUCH TOUCHPAD MOUSE
INTEGRATED 1.3 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft


Price: £725.00 including VAT and delivery.

Wow, thanks Minty!

Definitely a tough decision between that and the pcspecialist. The one I was looking at is a quite a bit more expensive with slightly inferior specs but it does have more stringent 3 year warranty + dead pixel guarantee from the looks of things.

edit: with the 2 year warranty on the novatech and next day delivery it comes to £745. Not bad at all really. Wish I could look at them side by side...

After a lot more thought I've decided to go with pcspecialist, although a slightly different model. I went back to PCS mainly because of the screen, 1920x1080 rather than 1366x768 which I could see being a problem with the limited vertical space. PCS seem to have a lot more custom options like better thermal paste or dead pixel warranty.

So the specs I'll probably be ordering with:

17" 1080p Glossy Display
i7 Quad Core 2670QM (2.20GHz)
4GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
nVIDIA GT 555M - 2GB
500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
ARCTIC COOLING MX-3 HIGH THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON MULTITOUCH TOUCHPAD
INTEGRATED 1.3 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
30 Day Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft

Price: £756.00 including VAT and delivery.

This has pretty much turned into a blog now, so when it all arrives I'll post an extensive review of the laptop + any extra accessories I get with it, with photos, and jump back into TF2

All I can say is I have just bought a gaming laptop from pcspecialist (17" vortex II).

Couldn't be happier.

Pcspecialist were brilliant....it says 5-7 days for a laptop, mine was delivered to work on day 6. Got e-mails informing me at every stage of it's build.

It's not a flash laptop with lights and everything, but it's sleek

(and you get a proper Windows 7 disk, not one of these recovery disk efforts)

Yeah that kinda put me off Novatech, even though I'm not getting Windows with it. Seeing that PCS would include the full disc made it look like they 'get it'

Dell inspiron n5110 is quite awesome:

Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM Processor (2.9GHz, 6MB Cache, Quad Core)
15.6" Widescreen (1366x768) Wide LED
Integrated Camera
8GB DDR3 Memory(2x4GB) 1333Mhz
500GB Hard Drive
8X DVD+/-RW Optical Drive
6-cell 48W/HR LI-ION Battery
1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT525M Graphics Card
Intel Wireless 1702 (802.11g/n)
Bluetooth v3.0

EDIT: nevermind xD


also the price is quite decent (around 600 pounds).

Thanks, but that GPU's about half the performance of the GT 555M

My laptop's coming on Saturday, will run benchmarks and post a full review with pics when it arrives.