Laptop Guidance plz ♥

[Squirrel]

HI basically my old laptop just crapped out so I'm having to get a new one tomorrow and I'm stuck between a few choices; can anyone help me out? I use my laptop for gaming (primarily Runescape 07 and League of Legends), videos (YouTube and DvDs) and uni work, and have a budget of around £400. I've searched through some options and come up with these (click names for links to the store I'm visiting tomorrow):

1. LENOVO G500 15.6" Laptop i3 (2.4 GHz) 4 GB 500 GB £299.99
2. ACER Aspire E5-571 15.6" Laptop i3 (1.8 GHz) 6 GB 1 TB £369.99
3. ACER E1-572 15.6" Laptop i3 (1.7 GHz) 8 GB 1 TB £379.99
4. HP Pavilion 15-p078sa 15.6" Laptop i3 (1.9 GHz) 8 GB 1 TB £399.99
5. ACER V5-573 15.6" Laptop i5 (2.6 GHz) 4 GB 1 TB £399.99

Would any/all of these be suitable for what I need? I'm currently favouring the ACER with the i5 processor just because it sounds faster, but I honestly don't have much of a clue as to how big a difference that makes so help would be very much appreciated. Also as a side note, can anyone explain what "1.6 GHz with TurboBoost" means in reference to the i5 processor? Thanks a lot for the help!

 

[Tsutarja]

If there's one thing that would turn me away from the Acer with the i5, it'd be the RAM amount; 4GB with League of Legends doesn't sound that great, but i5 processors are definitely more preferred (from my experience) than i3s.

 

[obZen]

Turbo boost is when the processor needs more power, it'll overclock to a certain speed. That processor is normally maxed out at 1.6 ghz, but can overclock to 2.6
See here

My choice would be either:
ACER Aspire E5-571 15.6" Laptop i3 (1.8 GHz) 6 GB 1 TB £369.99
or
ACER V5-573 15.6" Laptop i5 (2.6 GHz) 4 GB 1 TB £399.99
For gaming, I'm not sure if 4gb is sufficient enough anymore, unless you're just gonna game and have a couple of programs open.
Someone else may hafta give input
Both have 1TB HHDs, which is great; that'll suit all of your needs
Both have good battery life
The differences are the turbo boost processor paired with 4gb of ram vs. the lesser processor with 6gb of ram
At those low clock speeds, I'm gonna lean towards ACER V5-573 15.6" Laptop i5 (2.6 GHz) 4 GB 1 TB £399.99 because turbo boost may be the bigger difference.

Ask if 4gb of ram is enough. If it is, then that's your choice

 

[HereFishyFishy]

I despise Acer for the sheer volume of crapware that comes pre-installed on their systems. First boot takes an hour while it installs it all against your will, then you spend a few more hours removing everything. I only buy their stuff when I plan on not running the pre-installed OS.

That said it may be worth finding out if the V5 has open RAM slots. If so, you could always add another stick later on when you've saved some cash.

Personally I'd choose the Lenovo just for being Lenovo, but I don't play those games so I don't know how well they'd be handled on it.

 

[Belldandy]

I've had hardware issues within days of owning Acer products. As for HP, I've always had issues with their website not supplying drivers, and the Interwebs not locating the relevant drivers either (for older software).

RAM can always be upgraded. These processors at face-value should be 64bit, indicating a 16gb capability for RAM. 4GB should be sufficient to run those games at lower/medium quality; however, I'm failing to see the notion of a graphics card in the entire description of the Lenovo, and since graphic cards are pretty much impossible to replace or upgrade, if it turns out to be insufficient you're SOL.

I'd go with the Lenovo due to my experiences with the other brands and it has the current capabilities (and future opportunities) to be better-suited, if needed. I'd poke around to see what that graphics card is like and use notebookcheck website to make sure it's going to be good for those games in particular.

 

[Squirrel]

Thanks for the advice guys - I've actually decided to go for another of the laptop I currently have (/had!) as it's an i7 quad core with 6 GB ram, all for £370 on the Argos eBay account. Not confident that it'll remain working as this one clearly hasn't, but it comes with a year warranty and those specs for such a cheap price seems worth the risk... I think? But yeah, thanks a lot for the help everyone, I've learnt a lot for the future :D

 

[Banz]

Check out if it has any heating issues first of all. I bought an Acer Aspire V3-571G last year. It has decent specs which would allow me to play most games at moderate settings. But within a month of buying it, the overheating problems started. It used to crash after a few minutes of gaming. Some manufacturers like Dell, HP and Acer are known to have over heating issues.

 

[Banz]

I have a V5-571P myself, and it's a really nice machine, but it doesn't have a lot of vram (Only 128MB) so I can't run most games without issues. I did have an overheating issue, but I recently cleaned it out and it already runs much better and faster.

Mine has 4 GB of RAM, Intel i3 3310M and Nvidia GeForce 630M with 2 GB of VRAM. Nothing stellar but good enough to run most of the games at medium settings. I prefer playing 4 year old games anyways. During the first month or so there was no problem and I even finished a couple of games - Burnout Paradise and Bioshock. But then this heating problem started and my laptop started crashing during some heavy gaming. Then it got even worse and it overheated even when using simple emulator games or browser games. Speedfan shows that the GPU and CPU cross 90°C at times.
It's not even a problem of dust blocking the air vents... The fan just doesn't seem to work. It works when I'm booting it or during normal usage but when I do something graphics intensive it just seems to stop.