Gaming laptop that won't melt itself?

I'm in the market for a relatively inexpensive gaming laptop, after having been burned (pun intended) by a $1000 Cyberpower that seemed great when I bought it (in 2008; it had a GeForce 8600 and decent dual core CPU) but that turned out to be poorly designed and could not handle its own heat output with the GPU running in 3D mode.

I don't want to repeat this. So basically I want a laptop that doesn't have to have great specs, just has to be, say, capable of playing Civ 5, and I think it might be preferable if it had a nice roomy case design so I don't wind up with another $1000 brick.

This is not intended to be a desktop replacement; I mainly want it to run 2nd accounts in MMOs and occasionally play games when out of town. Durability/longevity are my main concerns. (Edit: also, I'd prefer a large screen; 1440x900 or greater).

I do remember a guy telling me about one brand in particular that is known for having gaming laptops with giant, thick cases that are excellent for bleeding off heat. However, I can't recall the name of the manufacturer.

Thanks if anyone has a suggestion!

 

ASUS, maybe? I do a lot of my PC gaming recently on an ASUS N61Jq. It was $1200 a year and a half ago, so should be in your budget range by now. It has a Q710 i7 (1.6GHz sales up to2.8GHz with TurboBoost), 4GB RAM, and a HD5730. Dragon Age Origins runs on max settings at 40-60 fps with a Thermaltake laptop cooler under the laptop.

A co-worker of mine does a lot of gaming on an ASUS G73. Newegg has lots of ASUS laptops, so you can probably find a good one within your buget there.

Would not advice gaming on a laptop without an extra cooler, by the way. Though not hot enough to shut down, the GPU was definitely too hot for comfort, and the CPU even more.

 

Doh. Lost my edit button and didn't realize until now that I mis-typed my CPU. It's a Q720, not a Q710.

 

Two things that don't mix. Gaming and inexpensive laptop.

I have a decent Dell XPS m1700, and I keep a cooling pad underneath it while playing online, and I still have heating issues at time with my GPU.

Mine has an nVidia card in it. Took me 2 years of fighting with Dell, but got it replaced as it was one of the ones listed in the Class Action against nVidia.

Even with new GPU, I still sometimes have issues. So I run an nVidia utility that I can set my fan speed to 100% until I am done gaming and I also run GameBooster to turn off uncessary Windows 7 services.

Sorry you feel you got burned before, I believe it to be the nature of laptops and gaming. Everything crammed in there, heat just doesn't have anywhere to go.

Just my advice so you don't set expectations too high, especially if you're buying on price rather than performance.

 

Gah.. what's most annoying is that the GPU that got fried seems to be the same one that was recalled in all those Dell/HP laptops. (It's a GeForce 8600 M). But I'm not aware of any lawsuit covering laptops by Cyberpower that failed because of those chips.. and Cyberpower refuses to even help me find replacement parts.

Worse, the card is apparently soldered on to the motherboard and so it's not possible to replace just the card. They won't even tell me the motherboard part number!