COMPILE, RENDER, AND BREAK YOUR SPINE!
These laptops are huge! Can’t handle it? Might as well wear a chastity belt sissy boy!
17″ Laptops are huge, absolutely huge, I just had a 8760w and loved it, despite it being so big, it was comfy as shit! Probably because I liked using my W700ds and do miss that thing greatly. 17″ machines are comfy, especially since a numberpad doesn’t feel forced on these machines.
LISTING FORMAT (colored text emphasizes whats new)
M6600 – $260 – 550 // 700 ~ 77 v 320 (i7 – MXM 3.0B)
$120 signifies the starting price I see of a laptop that has been sold with an AC adapter, HDD/OS and (hopefully) good battery.
– 260 signifies the max price you should pay for a used fully working machine that has a good battery, OS installed, OEM AC adapter and not banged up.
// 370 signifies the price I’ve seen that should be sold with at least one of the following
- Recognized seller, Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers, Enthusiast, or Original owner w/ original box, manual and/or recovery discs.
- Top spec’d machines: upgraded/new components, modded, comes with a dock, a badass bag, or extra swag like batteries, hard drives, AC adapters, etc.
- Manufacturer refurbished or seller refurbished – Your warranty should start the day you bought it.
- Comes with software that is guaranteed NOT pirated (price can be more if it has $500+ software loaded)
- Overnight shipping, local store/ local owner price (just an educated guess)
- Not gonna lie, I shoot for this price when I list as seller refurbished if I got a damn great machine.
~ 1000 signifies how many laptops are available when I searched for it.
v 2900 signifies how many laptops were sold in the past four months.
- This number is not necessarily true as some of those listings will include parts/incomplete machines, just laptop part not a whole machine, sometimes laptops are miscategorized (think i5 laptop, no brand or wrong model, or dumb macbook sellers) and some are of lots or multiple quantity.
- This is essential information to know if you desire to resell it, want to buy a whole laptop to source one part or extra, or just know whats in demand or not popular.
- If there is a lot listed but not a lot sold for the particular model you want to get, you could nab a good deal w/ a best offer
- Note, I only can source numbers sold in burger land, international results are not included! :S
i7
- Simply put, differentiates from an i5 and an i7
- Most of these laptops have 2 RAM slots if they are built with an i5 in mind
- i7 models should have 4 RAM slots so 32GB RAM should be obtainable, but there is the risk CPU being upgraded from factory and it only has two slots!
– MXM 3.0B
- Some of these computers will have a modular MXM chip instead of the GPU being soldiered on
- You could upgrade your computer to a better GPU this way! But you may need to flash your vBIOS and possibly buy the correct GPU for your computer
- Keyword is could, as you might brick your system if it is done wrong!
GPU section for 17″ Laptops
M6600 – FirePro M8900, Quadro 3000m ($96 -110), Quadro 4000m, Quadro 5010m, FirePro M6000,
- Items in regular text and bold are what came from the factory, bold is the top end GPUs.
- I put the prices for the individual laptop/manufacturer. Some prices will be different from manufacturer due to the parts availability.
- Warning: Some manufacturers whitelist their GPUs, as in your HP Elitebook won’t accept a Dell MXM card, there’s some info inside the vBIOS that identifies what card and what manufacturer it was made for, and they wont work.
- I’d say its best to see if it has a part number matching your manufacturer, message the seller if you are not sure what it was pulled out from, usually they say what laptop manufacturer it came from. (:
- You might have to flash the BIOS for some of these cards to work, I will do some research but I don’t have real world knowledge of it, also some cards may not work because of OS, motherboards, RAM or even AC adapters, check before you dive in! d:
- Items in italic are cards that might work! Research the methods and upgrade at your own risk! These cards definitely need a BIOS mod and are most likely came from a different laptop manufacturer, these most likely will have same prices for all models.
- Remember these are upgrade prices! Don’t buy a system then upgrade when you could of gotten it for the same price or less. eBay, PayPal and shipping fees will take from 10% to 25% of what the card will sell for if you decide to sell it on eBay.
Final notes about buying gaming and i7 laptops
- You might get outbid by a 0 rating or ‘not a registered user’ buyer, they are new scam/fake accounts.
- So many scammer bidders on gaming laptops, they’ll ask for your paypal email instead of paying thru eBay like every other logical buyer.
- I’d wager if you even lost the bidding war, message the buyer if their bidder had paid or started asking weird shit. you might get a second chance offer.
- Second chance means you will pay the highest you bid on that laptop, you never know!
Disclaimer: I did not research much about reliability, build quality, parts prices, reviews or common problems on these laptops! Laptops at the lowest price point may/may not come with an OS, BIOS locks, or AC adapter, so you might need to put some work into them if buying the lower priced units!
17″
Mainstream
M6600 – $250 – 370 // 400 ~ 2 v 30 (i5 model)
xxxx
8760w – $220 – 360 // 400 ~ 8 v 26 (i5 model)
MC725LL/A – $600 – 850 // 1200 ~ 15 v 145 (2.2GHz i7-2720qm, Early 2011, MBP 8,3)
- i5 M6600 and 8760w are posted here because i7 prices may be a bit different.
- Some of these can be bought at or under $200 as BIN machines, good luck!
Workstation
M6600 – $260 – 550 // 700 ~ 77 v 320 (i7 models)
xxxx
8760w – $250 – 530 // 700 ~ 19 v 100 (i7 models)
MD311LL/A – $600 – 1000 // 1300 ~ 17 v 92 (2.4GHz i7-2760qm, Late 2011, MBP 8,3)
- IPS panels are called PrecisionColor and DreamColor, I believe both are LG IPS panels, and from research cannot be upgraded to IPS unless you have the proper motherboard with its special LCD cable connector
- Just got an 8760w from Arrow Direct for $260, perfect condition even though they call it 4 stars, has some scratches but damn nice.
- I just sold that said laptop for $600 after adding RAM to a total of 16GB and adding some programs/drivers 🙂 $230 profit after fees.
- A few “2011 Macbook Pro 17″ sold for under $500… while every ‘Late 2011 Macbook Pro 17” started at $600 and jumped to 800 very quickly.
Graphics Card Upgrades
M6600 – FirePro M8900, Quadro 3000m ($96 -110), 4000m ($145 – 160), 5010m ($270 – 500)
ATI Radeon HD 6970m ($100 – 160), 7970m ($160 – 300), FirePro M6000 ($50 – 100), M6100 ($140 – 260)
Quadro K4000m ($100 – 200), K5000m ($180 – 400), GTX 680m ($220 – 350)
8760w – FirePro M5950, Quadro 3000m($80 – 120), 4000m ($140 – 180), 5010m ($250 – 350),
ATI Radeon HD 6970m ($100 – 160), 7970m ($160 – 300),
Quadro K3000m ($150 – 300), K4000m ($100 – 200), K5000m ($??? – 475), K5100m ($210 – 700)
17″ MBP – Early 2011 CPU/Mobo w/ ATI Radeon HD 6750m ($560 – 600),
Late 2011 CPU/Mobo w/ ATI Radeon HD 6770m ($510 – 750)
- A BUNCH of Dell GPUs, most of the latter are from Alienwares.
- HP has a few odd bunch of cards that the Dell doesn’t, but offers less of an upgrade selection from what I have read on forums.
- Interesting as some of these GPUs are cheaper than others, yet perform better. Good luck from reading notebook review forums on how to do so!
- Before buying a MBP logic board… remember that Apple will repair your GPU affected motherboard for free of charge. But they may be picky if it has been opened up.
- I thought about posting motherboard prices for the M6600 & 8760w but chances are they are fucking expensive as shit and too bothersome to deal with. Let me know if you think otherwise.
Gaming
GT780 – $250 – 420 // 550 ~ 2 v 14 (MSI)
GX780 – $??? – 450 // ??? ~ 0 v 1 (MSI)
G74SX – $330 – 600 // 700 ~ 12 v 60 (Asus)
M17x R3 – $320 – 550 // 750 ~ 4 v 35 (Alienware)
- Some people say the GT780 has a shit mobo… and dies after 2 years. Dunno about MSI quality much, but that person used their laptop like a cuck.
- If you go the G74SX route, you cannot upgrade the graphics card. the 560M is soldiered on
GT/GX780 – nVidia GTX560m ($80 – 250), 570m ($70 – 280), 670m ($130 – 250), 770m ($140 – 300),
ATI HD 7970m ($160 – 300), nVidia 970m ($300 – 550), 980m ($300 – 780)
G74SX Mobo w/ 560m – $170 – 240
M17x R3 – 580m ($160 – 2500), 870m ($190 – 300)…
- The MSI laptop will need a heatsink from a GT60 or GT70… check the forums, good luck,
- Holy fuck the GTX 980m is expensive as shit, jumps to $550 so fast!
Pleb
XPS 17 – $270 – 400 // 480 ~ 1 v 28
DV7 – $170 – 280 // 330 ~ 15 v 100
- Top kek, highest value of 17″ HP craptop is worse than 15″ shit top, yet parts laptop are more abundant and tend to start higher.
And well… thats it. I lost my mojo onto being more descriptive and information searching. A lot of these laptops are cryptic when searching for online prices…. and bring in undesired results/