Is msi gt60 upgradeable?

Im considering buying a msi gt60 from prostar. The specs are; intel core i7-3740qm. 16G 4x4 ram, nvidia gefore GTX 675m with 2GB DDR5. 750gb/7200rpm sata-300, 120gb intel 520 series ssd. Additional copper heatsink and ic diamond thermal compound on cpu and gpu. Now the only questions i have are; is the gtx 675m upgradable to 680 considering i have very little experience with computer internals. I was considering this because it is the only option and the other places i checked are much more expensive for the same build. Also would it be beneficial to remove the blu ray optical drive and replace it with another 750g/7200 rpm hard drive and run the two in raid 0 formation and use the ssd for startup? Sorry if this isnt worded very well im on my phone. The computer would cost about $2100 before shipping. If any other
Information is needed i can provide it

 

Checked what you looked at, it looks like you prioritised CPU other than GPU, whereas depending on what you use the laptop for, unless something work related requires the additional power from the CPU, a GPU upgrade is always more preferable than a small leap from the 3630qm to 3720qm, the performance increase from the 675m to 680m is roughly 50-70%(similar improvement ingame as well) whereas the base clock leap from 3630qm to 3740qm is 300mhz, roughly 15% increase in performance(and no in game improvement). IMO the upgrade price is very expensive and thus upgrade parts such as SSD and RAM should be purchased from seperate vendors. To answer your question yes the GPU is upgradeable to 680m but IMO it is not worth buying a GPU from aftermarket since they tend to be marked up a lot, and the spare one does not go on ebay with a good price, whereas a CPU which is compatible to most laptops without upgradeable GPU goes on aftermarket at better price, it is adviced to go on the best GPU and then upgrade the CPU, if needed, in the future.

Given your price estimate of $2100 I would go for the GT60 ONE, the one with the gtx680m, and go for the $50 off upgrade purchase,16Gb ram, additional copper heatsink, IC Diamond, downgrade to 8X Max. DVD±R/RW, and everything else as stock config, cash total $1865, then with the saved up $235 go find a good 240Gb+ SSD (samsung, crucial, intel, ocz vector(!), plextor). For raid setup i've just had a bad sector on my 1 year old hdd (non raid) which caused my partition to disappear, and fixed, it will not be so lucky if this happens on a raid 0 setup (most likely complete data loss), so no, don't setup raid 0 especially when its a data drive. Note that data storage drive is more important than OS storage drive, OS storage drive can be fully recovered by reinstallation of OS and drivers (half a day) whereas data storage consists of hundreds of Gbs of downloaded stuff and work related documents(emm, weeks for the download and god knows how long to do the work documents again)

Raid 0 is not beneficial unless it is for OS installation, with a scheduled image backup. But optical drive with another 750G hdd is beneficial since the dvd/rw is only for recovery CD(can make bootable USB) and driver disk(download from msi website), it is just expensive to replace IMO unless you think a 120Gb SSD is enough for your needs (well, I went for a 256Gb, then went for another one because its not enough for my gaming needs and dual boot)

Should have covered all your questions, most important part though, is the gtx680m and SSD, do what you like with other *upgrades* but those are the must haves IMO

 

you need to check with supplier as its been reported on here that opening a msi will void its warranty.
this all depends on supplier and i have no idea on prostar but xoticpc have confirmed with them its covered as long as no seals are broken but one owner was told by their supplier even removing the base to clean the fans will void the full warranty.

 

I've never had such warranty issue (barebones) and also I thought the GT70 is bound to international warranty provided by MSI, which stated that internal component upgrades will not void the manufacturer warranty as long as no damage are made to other components, but the replaced or new components in the notebook will not be warranted by MSI. Also I THINK even if a component is damaged it will only void the warranty of that specific component (if you break the usb port pcb it will void the warranty of that PCB, but not the unit as a whole), just think though, if anyone else can state otherwise

 

read this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...od-battery-life-light-gaming-best-option.html

 

Glad I'm using a barebones lol, just looking forward to nvidia's top end revision so I can get the 680m at a lower price, btw do you think the 780m is just a rebrand of the 680mx for apple..... with a lower tdp

 

over 1300 more score in 3dmark11 http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...-cards/717463-3dmark11-upcoming-gtx-780m.html

 

time to save up for it......