Anyone know any laptops under 500$ that can run league well at best/medium graphics?

On the contrary, it costs more to buy the individual pieces than buying the complete computer.

As someone that has built computers for 20+ years, this is a misinformed and completely false statement.

Last year I built my most recent computer, it cost around $1,400---a machine with even close to the same performance was around $1,700 at BestBuy and even more at a few other retailers. Not to mention, if you go to a store they will inevitably try to upsell you on just about everything, they have warranties and such but these are largely scams.

Of course, you can get EXACTLY what you want when you custom build as well. Store bought machines are packaged and I find that many of them have a lot of the features I'd like but are always missing one or two things that are either "must have" or "nice-to-have" types of additions. Plus, I chose the parts that I want and know are superior to other parts. A store bought computer usually has stock/proprietary components for that company... no thank you.

who ever told you this lied.

You do whatever you want, but since you mentioned best buy by name... I actually used them for a baseline build I was going to use for a friend. They wouldn't be horrible if they just used out dated storage drives they recycle or bottom of the barrel PSU's/motherboards. But they come with spamware that Bestbuy collects money for and requires a fresh windows install to get rid of.

Not to mention I received the completely wrong CPU... with a small difference in price of $120, I'm guessing they never expected anyone to check since they refused to admit a mistake and we just took a refund over fixing it. In the end I guess they are a business but damn are they a shady one.

And as for their price to performance here is a $1500 sale (1700 originally) they have atm:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerpc-desktop-intel-core-i7-7700k-32gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-3tb-hard-drive-256gb-nvme-pcie-ssd-black-red/5712943.p?skuId=5712943

I can build that with new parts (Not recycled) for myself at a $1480 price tag with no bloatware and guarantee my parts are what I want (One of the guys in a review literally says they took his CPU cooler fan and put a noisier one on xD). If I get leeway to build a same power build I can drop my price to 1200 for all new parts while getting a PSU I won't worry about burning down my house. But hey who am I to tell you where to throw your money?

Side note, desktop building is extremely simple and basic to me. I work on cars as a hobby.

Depends, if you are just buying pieces and putting them it then yeah its pretty simple. There are plenty of optional things that enthusiasts do, just like people do with their vehicles that's why they are both hobbies.