Mustachian Laptop Recommendations?

[LifestyleDeflation]

Hi all- I might be purchasing a laptop soon and could use some advice. I'm looking for the best value with a modern processor and decent gpu, with preferably 16gb ram, and a good enough build quality to be banged on by kids on a regular basis. The most intensive use this laptop will see will be playing Minecraft with mods. I'm thinking 16gb ram should be more than enough for now, and good for the longer term since I imagine mods will only getting more cpu intensive.

[Lookie Loo]

No laptop will last if kids are going to bang on it, on a regular basis.  I think all HP, Dell, Toshiba are cheap junk and they will break down in 2-4 years.  Asus are good laptops.  The best windows laptop would be Lenovo (formally IBM thinkpad), these are sturdy and will last.  I would probably buy a used Mac Pro laptop on craigslist, they have great processors, ram, last a long time but are more expensive

[RWD]

The Lenovo laptops are quite sturdy. That's probably as good as you can get for durability without going for a dedicated rugged laptop like a Panasonic Toughbook.

[N]

there was a thread like this not too long ago, that I found by searching.
It led me to buy a Lenovo refurbished laptop, I think I found a T410 for about 350$ locally.
My research led me to conclude that I needed something with 64bit, (for the MC and similar games), i5 or later processor, Lenovo brand refurb.

Im pretty pleased with it so far. My kid uses it for MC and youtube mostly :)

[ketchup]

I'd agree with all the Thinkpad recommendations.  My girlfriend just got a T410 and it looks brand new despite being a 2010 machine.  They are solid and built like tanks.  The Volvo station wagon of laptops.

[Thegoblinchief]

The RAM seems overkill. Have you alt-tabbed and checked system usage when running the modded Minecraft build? Is it really hitting that much RAM?

Does it have to be a laptop? A smartly designed desktop build will last far, far longer and be upgrade able.

Otherwise, yes +1 to ThinkPads if you can find what you need at a good price.

[Daley]

Definitely Thinkpad W series if you're wanting a non-integrated GPU (T series otherwise), but seriously... 16GB of RAM just to run Minecraft? I haven't touched the game since beta, but the joke used to be that you could get Minecraft to run on anything, including a toaster oven. They've gone up a smidge, but system specs have gotten that bad since.

US Micro has good prices on refurbed Lenovos.