Acer M5-481TG-6814 - 14", i5-3317u, Nvidia GT 640LE - $655 shipped

That is not normal for a GPU to go up to 80C. Probably the laptop cover starts throwing out smoke at that rate.

Thinking about this. Is it bulky for an ultrabook? I only ask because it still has a DVD drive which most ultrabooks seem to have ditched.

Recently bought this and was actually surprised by how light it was -- thin too. The alum not covering the bottom is the only thing I am down on.

question for somebody who bought this, online it says the max memory configuration is 6gb, is this true ? is 2gb soldered on the motherboard, and 1 slot ?

The max is actually 10GB. I own this laptop myself & it's amazing for the price. You are correct, the 2GB is soldered to the motherboard & it has 1 open slot. I've played SC2 & other games with decent graphics options & it runs them no problem, I highly recommend it. Take care.

Do you have an 8GB stick in there with full compatibility?

I got the laptop a few days ago. With a few tricks I overclocked the 640M LE to 1000MHz (from 500MHz stock) on the core and 1340MHz on the memory. GPU stays about 80C when gaming, and never goes above. With a laptop cooler (to prevent throttling), CPU stays at about 80C too when gaming.

With the GDDR5 VRAM this 640M LE is not to be trifled with. The GPU gets cooled first, so the concern for anyone using this to game would be CPU overheating. I replaced the HDD with Samsung 840 and also replaced the RAM with Patriot 1.35V 8GB ram, and the machine boots in about 10s.

How hard is it to install an SSD or more ram?

From the pictures, it doesn't seem like there are any panels you can easily remove. Do you have to take off the whole bottom?