Laptop for college student

[oldikes]

OK my bro has asked me to find him another laptop. I know the hardware well enough but not the brands.
I told him to buy one a little over a year ago, because it had an APU and very casual gaming was a request, but not anymore. Anyway it was an HP pavilion and it has some serious bloody heat problems and it hasent even been abused, which makes me as mad as it makes him.

So, we need a 15.6" laptop with a minimum of 4GB ram and a nicer processor, dual core is minimum and really all thats required. would prefer $450-550, which should be plenty for what this is for- school work and watching netflix/youtube/etc etc.

Most importantly is it needs to LAST. its not going to get thrown around or be running at 100% all the time. so it needs to last years (notice the plural). the fan should NOT be maxing out all the time.

I havent been someone to ask for forum feedback for PC hardware for years, but honestly laptop quality is constantly fluctuating and im tired of spending hours looking into them..
PS. I am NOT buying another HP.

Thanks for your help!

 

[GhostRyder]

I normally avoid HP laptops off and on because of that very issue. Now its not the case with all their models (seems to me that most come from the 17 inch models in my experience). If you want a good laptop for light gaming and schoolwork/youtube and junk, here are my recommendations at that price point:

Lenovo G505s $524
Lenovo has good build quality, down side is they tend to cost a bit more than other brands and this one has a 768p screen.

Asus X550LB Notebook (Open Box Special) $559
Asus is also one of good build quality. This is an open box special of course as the regular price is a bit higher than this but it comes with the normal warranty and would be one of the best choices in terms of performance.

Those are my two best recommendations as far as performance to price is concerned. If you want to go cheaper I would drop to an A8 processor as that will drop the price a bit down. I normally stick with Lenovo, Asus, and MSI when it comes to laptops (Sager as well but they are custom) and thats where I normally run to with laptop needs. HP is fine on the smaller platform for some reason its just the big notebooks that have poor cooling designs (Sounds stupid no matter how I think of it, but my sister has a small new HP notebook with an A10 and 15.6 screen which runs very cool while my friend has a 17inch with an A10 and it runs hot. Wrap your head around that).

 

[oldikes]

Im probably just being paranoid because of my past experience (the HP had an A6, it was 17") but is there anywhere that compares the heat generation or power usage of those chips to competitively priced i5s?

thanks for your input BTW. I might encourage the lenovo if not for anything else but for ive always been curious about build quality.

 

[GhostRyder]

Im probably just being paranoid because of my past experience (the HP had an A6, it was 17") but is there anywhere that compares the heat generation or power usage of those chips to competitively priced i5s?

thanks for your input BTW. I might encourage the lenovo if not for anything else but for ive always been curious about build quality.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7106/...t-1-the-apu-and-radeon-hd-8650g-performance/4

The 5750m is a 35watt APU which does not generate much heat though a comparative Intel processor (In sheer single threaded) will produce in the 20watt range on the TDP charts but with a weaker GPU. As far as heat in general goes, most laptops with these chips still stick with the basic exhaust cooler on the laptop which seems sufficient in keeping any of the chips cool under load.