Looking for suggestions on a gaming laptop

[Jennifer78]

1. What is your budget?
1500-2000 flexible
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
17-18 inch
3. What screen resolution do you want?
preferably 1080
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
yes
5. How much battery life do you need?
not important
6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
yes skyrim,wow,guild wars 2, others not sure, would love to be able to play at high settings with good fps
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
photo, video editing, lots of multi tasking
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
minimum 500 gb
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
i would like it future proof for 2-3 years the easier it is to upgrade the better
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
cd/dvd
12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
I like dell specifically alienware, toshiba and acer dislike, hp I dont do mac,
13. What country do you live in?
US
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I have been looking at different rigs now trying to settle on certain builds wanted to toss this out there to get some other opinions. Right now I am leaning heavily on alienware m17x or m18x but not sure how exactly to build to get the most bang for my buck. I have to be mobile otherwise I would sink it into a desktop gaming rig but at this time that is not possible.

 

[dudewitbow]

Create a heavily modded Sager NP9170 on xoticpc. laptop gpu wise, the 7970m is the best bang for buck(as the 680m is grossly overpriced)(the 680m has better performance, but not 245$ worth of performance)

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np9170-gaming-laptop-clevo-p170em-p-4342.html?wconfigure=yes

 

[Jennifer78]

Looks like a very good suggestion and I hear you on the 7070m compaired to the 680m. I looked into that when
I was looking at alienware. So my question would be why do you suggest this particular brand and how would you spec it out to meet what im wanting? I have no experience with this company. What makes it better than alienware or asus for example? Any other recommendations? Thank you for your thoughts I am new to really digging in and researching each individual componant on a build so I apprieciate all the help I can get

 

[dudewitbow]

the reason why sager over others is essentially because sager(a rebranded clevo laptop) is moderately minimalistic on aesthetics(less flashy lights everywhere etc) so most of its cost is more concentrated on the parts rather then extra stuff. other high end laptops would be like Msi's g70 + series, or alienware m17x/18x but they are significantly more expensive for the same components. though there's one thing that the alienware brand has it going for the 18x is the option to ever sli/crossfire if you really needed that performance, which the others don't have as much.

 

[loveymiller]

yeah, Nice suggestions. peoples who wants to buy new laptops or notebooks should go through above guidelines.