What to do with my m14x?

Hello,

I've had my m14x since around August and have been really impressed with it. I'm a uni student and was torn between building a rig or just buying a laptop with ample statistics so that I could game as well as take my laptop to class and such. Now that my first year of uni is pretty close to being over, I've realized how seldom that I actually carry my laptop to class or out and about in general (although it's nice to be able to play whilst in a friends room or a lounge so that I feel at least a little more sociable than sitting in my room like I would with a nice desktop.)

Anyway, I'm looking into an apartment next year and a desktop seems to be a viable option. With that being said the main question I am trying to present is whether I should upgrade my processor and RAM in my m14x (I went with the i5 2430m because at the time my parents were helping me pay for the computer and they can be pretty frugal which is totally fine), sell my m14x and upgrade to a new laptop all together (although I don't like thinking of parting with the aesthetics of the Alienware), or sell my m14x and put together a rig.

I guess I'm mainly looking for what I could get out of a rig for say $1000 (given that I could get that for a bare minimum m14x to begin with)
and benefits of each option?

Thank you

 

If you don't plan on bringing your pc with you. Desktop is always the better option. you'll have better value for your money in terms of performance. Even if you upgrade your processor and ram you will still be stuck with the gt 555m. If it were me I'll get a good desktop and a notebook with good battery life to bring with me.

 

I wanted to build a rig after I bought my m14x as well. But since you can build a rig for fairly cheap, if you have the peripherals already, I would say keep your m14x and maybe save for a rig if you can? You can get like a 2500k core i5 gtx 560 ti, p67 mobo, some cheap ram, and score a hard drive for cheap, as well as a psu, you'd be set. All for around 800ish or less. Oh and any case you want.

If you wanna sell your m14x though, now is the time. The replacement gpu for the gt555m are already out, and dell just has to implement them in. Idk when though, maybe an r2 version when ivy comes out?

EDIT: Another option i could add is sell your m14x, get an awesome rig, kind of like the one i listed, can't go wrong with the gtc 560ti and 2500k, and get a cheap netbook to take around for a few hundred.