the problem is, i'll be a college so i'm just trying to save as much space as possible
Living in the dorms in college me and my roommate had room for 4 desktops 1 server and 3 laptops, as well as a 52" TV and a 25" TV... and we had one of the smallest dorms I've seen. Our carpet was made out of interwoven wires from all the electronics tho, we were both techies though we had wires running everywhere, XBOX360s, PS3s, computers, servers, TVs, speakers, sound systems, PLCs (that he was programming), all kinds of stuff. Guess we didn't move around much though, had 2 chairs for computers and 3 chairs for XBOX/TV (2 comfy and 1 for Rock Band drums).
Unless you were referring to room in your car packing to drive there/home
In which case, yeah both of us were very tight on room in our cars!
On topic, I can't really help much with laptops, not my specialty, however if you throw some options I can tell you which you'll need, if its too much, not worth the money, etc.
Also, did you say 15" monitor? that seems quite small for a gaming laptop. I think mine was 19" and he had a 21" (not exactly a portable laptop though) and a 17".
