Which do I buy?

For the wifi thing you can buy a wireless usb adaptor for cheap on amazon and not have to worry about drilling holes in the wall.

If this system is for gaming, then I would focus on the GPU more than the CPU. A mobile GPU is generally going to be less powerful then the desktop part. I couldn't find a direct comparison of these two GPUs, since they are focused on different markets.

The 860M is, most likely, a Maxwell part (there are two GPUs being sold as "860M"), Maxwell is the newest core from Nvidia. While the 770 is a Kepler is the core used in the 700 series other than the 750 Ti. Looking at the numbers it looks like the 770 is going to be the faster of the GPUs, but with different generation cores, it is hard to tell for sure. The 860M also supports DirectX 11.2 versus 11.0 for the 770.

Also, comparing the model numbers for the desktop CPUs to the Mobile ones isn't the best direct comparison. The primary benefit you get with the i7 in this case is the inclusion of Hyper-Threading, running two threads per core. Unlike the GPUs these are both of the Haswell generation. The 4590's base clock is 3.3GHz vs the 4820QM's 2.8GHz. The 4820QM's turbo clock is 3.8GHz vs the 4590's 3.7GHz. But, with the more limited cooling in a laptop versus a desktop, I expect the 4590, will be able to maintain its turbo clock longer.

If it were me, I would go with the Vanquish. Mostly because I wouldn't have to worry about cooling issues of a laptop. Of course, the laptop will draw less power both under load and at idle. Also, the benefit of a desktop is you can swap out parts, which is much harder with a laptop.

I hope I didn't confuse you more. One thing to do is compare benchmarks if you can find some for both builds. Maybe DS could get you something.

Edited by danjw1 - 14 Jul 2014 at 7:02am