M6600 Owners Thread

my setup is:

Primary bay = 128GB Kingston SATA3 SSD (OS Disk)
Secondary bay = 480GB Kingston SATA3 SSD (VMs, Data, etc)
Optical bay = 750GB Dell Stock SATA2 7.2k (General crap so my precious SSD space isn't wasted on .mp3, .avi, Warcraft, etc)

Tbh the speed of the single SSDs will be faster than the RAID0 or RAID5 spindles.... I paid £450 for my 480GB SSD and imo it was an essential purchase, VMs just "fly".

Spend the extra, you won't regret it.

 

A quick question, out of curiosity:

Apart from missing TRIM, why didn't you go with RAID on primary and secondary? RAID version would be x2 on sequential (more or less) reads/writes, so you'd just have to partition it appropriately.

Well, there is also reliability, of course. But, doubled ultimate throughput may outweigh chances of single controller failure.

Regards

 

basically because I didn't want to blow another £450 on a second 480GB SSD A single SSD is plenty fast enough and having two in a RAID0 while being awesome, is just for bragging rights tbh.

Maybe at some point in the future if I have "cash ont hip" (Yorkshire ftw) then I might get another 480GB SSD and raid them, but there just isn't any need atm.

 

Anyone know the exact screw size/spec that holds the keyboard on?

I can probably get the screws I need here...
Laptop Hard Drive Screws

 

Metric 2X3

Just for clarity, that is Width x Length, in mm.

 

Thanks for the info

 

Cool! Just curious, why did you have a separate SSD drive for OS?

What do you use to host your VM? Are you running Windows Server?

 

Is TRIM needed when it's in RAID array?

Actually I do not know what's the RAID controller being used in M6600. Anybody knows?

 

yes trim is needed for garbage disposal even in raid on the contrary i find it essential in raid and only reason i was not thinking about raid 0 till now was unavailbility of TRIM with raid



i believe dell m6600 comes with intel raid controller, its driver was supposed to get updated in amrch and as written by Aaron44126 it may be already out, i hope some confirms this

 

firstly as many more must have commented, your review was simply the best review i have read in it with respect to photos, research, impartial comparisions. the colour comparision was interesting, amusing and detailed , I was like Wow, after looking at pics.


regarding GPU, i have finalized 4000m as the upgrade cost for 5010m is too much and i preferred to use that money towards 2960xm.

thanks a lot for detailed info regarding 5010m and 4000m, it made the decision process easy for me.

can we overclock 4000m safely and from where?


also i am stuck between deciding 128gb msata and 128gb 2.5 sata.

In my knowledge 2.5 being sata 3 and assuming dell will naturally ship sata 3 ssd for it and msata being sata 2, i should go for sata 3 2.5 form factor am i correct, what are other considerations other then speed in this decision?

also since i have one more dell supplied samsung pma800 ssd, which i beleieve is sata 2, which i bought for m6500, i will put it as second hdd and keep photoshop scratch disk and windows page file on it.

My question is will this boost the performance of windows, photoshop?

also if instead of this i put one 320 7200 rpm dell hdd as second hdd and again put scratch disk and windows page file what will be performance penalty?


thirdly if i just make a raid 0 assumung trim is now provided in raid o, of sata 3 ssd and sata 2 ssd, sata 3 being primary and sata 2 being secondary will it be same as having msata as primary and again sata 2 ssd as secondary.


are any of these combinations in raid 0 performance mode slower then non raid ssd;s like i mentioned before where i put scratch disk and windows page file on second sata 2 ssd?


how will be battery life for xm, quadro 4000m, 1600mhx 8gb ram with ips display, i get the feeling its quite a power hungry combination and unfortunately optimus cant work. i have chosen 87w/hour 3 years warranty battery.

does m6600 comes only in gunmetal grey? i used to love orange colour of covet edition but that time i was not able to afford it and did not read good reviews about non matt display, i.e being too reflective but definately loved the colout and edge to edge bezel like my alienwares.

does m6600 has any remote control option, could not find it in configuration page.

sorry for so many questions, i am just about to finalize config and could not find answers to these anywhere.