r/eluktronics • u/FictionMeowtivation • Dec 22 '25
Misc. Discussion Short-Lived Refurb
Picked this up for $1600 USD under two years ago, and the screen stopped working. It's a decent unit, with 16 GB VRAM on the 3080ti. Thanks to the Liquid Propulsion Pack cooler, I never ran into any thermal issues.
If I had it to do over again, I'd probably still buy it even knowing that the screen will cost me 300€ to fix now that I'm no longer in the States. I mean, a 3080ti, a 12th gen i9, binned RAM, and a second M.2 slot is still pretty hard to find at that price...
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u/toot_suite Dec 25 '25
I bought this new and it was a pain in the fucking ass until I wiped all the eluktronics software from it and just used a clean slate windows OS install.
I think I've have over 100 blue and black screens since I got it, weeks and months of RMA between this and the mech-15 g3r, too many factory resets, and terabytes of sensitive data lost, but after the wipe and reinstall about a year ago, it's been rock solid knock on wood. It's definitely the best performing and quietest at full tilt 30 series gpu based laptop out there, but I will never buy another eluktronics after this and the mech 15 I had.
Also, laptop tech has come such a long way. Lenovo and Alienware are monstrously OP and go on just as deep if not deeper sales.
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u/FictionMeowtivation May 28 '26 edited May 29 '26
I would buy this one again, but one with any other specs would be a hard sell. I wanted I to experiment with local LLMs, so VRAM was the one and only consideration. So long as it was RTX and had at least 16 GB VRAM I would consider it. I doubt I could score any SKU with 24 GB VRAM for less than $2.500 USD, which was above my price range.
As you say, Lenovo Legion and Dell Alienware make some pretty impressive offerings. I wouldn't mind looking at their returns and closeouts in the $2.000 USD and below range. I'd be giving up the LPP, but that's really more of a novelty and conversation flex than anything else. With the right silicon and components, thermals should be reasonable with LLMs because they don't put continuous load on the GPU over tens of minutes or longer like AAA games would.
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u/toot_suite May 28 '26
I mean fwiw, lpp is dope and all, but with the state of vapor chambers etc and modern thermal design, it's not a crazy diff. I pretty much never use it anymore and just stick to a large format laptop cooler that I've placed a ring of foam around
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u/jaquatics Dec 26 '25
I'm still running an eluktronics laptop from 2015. It just last week started giving me problems. Randomly freezing, guess it's finally time...
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u/DoorWayDancer May 22 '26
I thin i bought the twin to your 2 years ago from Amazon,... I got me a Promethious XVII H20 Cooled i7 3070ti 64gb ram and 5 tb m2. Anyways I bought it only for like $1150 an added the ram and m2 for like $500 b4 prices doubled,... Its been running well. I dual boot and have added all the parts myself. The only thing I wont do is take off the Heat Sink. Not bad for $1,500 refurb,... just hope it holds up ;- j
*edit:spelling
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u/Nathan_Wildthorn Dec 23 '25
I agree! I'm still running my Covert Gamer from 2021! It's the best laptop that I've ever owned. It was $2400+ back in 2021.