Looking for a new gaming laptop

[Sebazy]

Nah, I just don't like people who preach blatant misinformation as if it was gospel. Hi.

If someone buys a Dell/Alienware, they are in for a world of hurt should they break anything on it. Dell is special kind of hell which I won't go into here.

Again you state this as gospel and fact, yet Dell are sat there third in your list. Care to back this up? I'll admit that I'm coming from the angle that I'll likely just repair it myself. The only Dell thing I've ever RMA'd was a high end monitor and they had a new one on my desk before the week was out. I've overhauled and refreshed pretty much every other Alienware from the likes of the M9700 through to M17X R1-3s (and actually have an older M17 going through a burn in as we speak). If you need to replace the motherboard on any high end laptop, it's going to be painful, pretty much all the other moderate risk components are either standard and easily replaced parts, or hard soldered. Other typical subjects like hinges and keyboards are no different to any other comparable laptop. Again, this is not a Dell/Alienware specific issue. You're just as likely to get burned with this with any other machine as well. Hating on one brand for it is stupid. Doing your homework before a purchase is smart.

where you can't do that on anything else presently short of a few older Dell models that had the upgradable GPU boards.

Absolutely false.

Whilst MXM3 is indeed dieing out, Clevo most certainly aren't the only people that still use it. However it's worth noting that relying on buying an older machine to put a new MXM3 GPU isn't particularly great idea, LVDS vs eDP isn't something you want to find out about after you've thrown a ton of money around. Not to mention the eye watering cost and limited availability of new cards with any real warranty.

Don't get me wrong. I agree with you on the Clevo praise, and we are both preaching the same thing when it comes to the importance of good cooling. But calling Alienware junk and Apple a joke frankly marks you as a mindless sheep in my eyes. Alienware's current line up is pretty solid and respectably priced in the UK at least. Apple have absolutely no place being even mentioned in this thread frankly (And I don't mean that as a slight, you just don't buy a MacBook to play games irrespective of your budget).