What router to buy or build my own

[saratj1]

Hello newbie here.

I am trying to decide between the netgear r7000 or the asus rt68u or turning an old alienware laptop into a router.
here are my usage needs. I use the internet as my sole entertainment source.
I torrent heavily probably around 200gb/month dl/ul. I watch Netflix on two tvs. I fileshare and stream movies blu rays from one part of the house to the other using plex media server. And also play call of duty on ps4 from time to time. there are three people in my house but only two tvs so usually only one bandwidth intensive thing is going on, but there is often two or three, for example, downloading torrents while watching youtube, and wife in the other room is watching Netflix.
I have two iphones and an ipad on wireless along with the occasional laptop.
My current router (dlink dgl4500) is on its way out. Has lasted a good while though. Im having to reset it almost daily, when I never used to reset at all.
Most of my connections are wired except phones and laptop.
The TV's one via desktop computer, the other via roku3 are wired with cat5. The ps4 is wired also.
I just want the fastest I can get without being super expensive. I'd like to spend around $200 maybe a little more or less.
Im also interested in converting a still pretty powerful quadcore laptop into a router. or if theres not much to gain from a quad core , I also have a netbook I could use as a router as well.

I know im kinda all over the place but any insight is appreciated.

 

[fistv]

Turning a pc into a router is more an exercise than an efficient project, on your existing router have you tried a factory reset yet ? If it is dusty have you vacuumed it out, if it is full of dust it can cause things to run warmer than normal, worth a shot.
I bought a wrt1900ac that so far I am happy with, just picked up a netgear wnr3500L-100nas, have not unboxed it yet so I can't comment on it. Picked it up for a friend who thought she was having problems with hers after she dropped DSL and went with a cable modem, the tech said the router was bad, reality was it was set for dsl/login and he had no clue how to set it for dhcp. At any rate I now have it to play with and plan on some open source firmware, it was right around $50 delivered from newegg.

 

[saratj1]

Thanks for the reply, I will get a can of air and try blowing it out. I just put a little fan on it to help with heat. I figure heat is the only thing that can really go wrong with these due to no moving parts.

 

[fistv]

Thanks for the reply, I will get a can of air and try blowing it out. I just put a little fan on it to help with heat. I figure heat is the only thing that can really go wrong with these due to no moving parts.

Just carefully open it up and blow it out that way or put a vacuum cleaner on one set of vents and blow the air from another set of vents if there are any. My son used our big air compressor, 50 gallon, to blow out his T43, he literally blew the fan blades off the cpu fan instead of taking 5 min to remove 5 screws and then the keyboard and clean it out that way. In my experience when processors get hot their firmware cuts their speed in half in an effort to reduce heat.