M11X upgrade and clarification questions

Hello,

I have been reading a lot of information on these forums and there is so much to go through I was hoping to get some clarification. I have an M11X with the SU7300 processor. I was thinking of making some upgrades.

I was looking at this corsair memory Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model CMSX8GX3M2A1600C9. Not sure if it will work on not. I read a lot of stuff about corsair memory not working well with these but a lot of that was due to 1.65v memory and this looks to be 1.5v. If there is a better alternative I would like to know also.

I was also looking at doing a SSD. From what I have read it doens't matter if it is a SATA II or SATA III drive? They should both perform the same with this computer?

I also read about getting a lot better wireless performance upgrading the wireless card. Several Intel cards were suggested as was a bigfoot 1102 card. These cards don't seem to be available anymore except maybe on e-bay. Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

wireless: if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

There isnt any card that someone didn't have trouble with. If however your card is not working or locks up the system etc then I would be in the 1102 camp. As an upgrade its not all that impressive unless you NEED more than what the stock card can provide.

Note: I am not in the US. If I were, it would be less of an issue to "try" alt cards.

 

I have an 1102 card in my r1 right now, it's not really all that impressive. I would save that cash for the memory. I have 8 gb of PNY memory and it works great, I have never had a problem with it. As for an SSD, the main thing is reliability and in that field Samsung and Intel take the cake. And while the r1 only has a SATA II controller I would reccomend getting the SATA III, that way your harddrive controller remains fully saturated. It's a bit more expensive for the SATA 3 tho, about 30 bucks but a SATA 2 will still be just fine.

 

SATA 3 is backwards compatible with SATA 2, meaning that you can use a SATA 3 harddrive but the performance will be SATA 2-ish. If there is no price difference between the two then go for the SATA 3 (you might be able to use the extra performance in a future notebook). otherwise you will not gain anything by choosing a SATA 3 drive over a SATA 2.

Regarding the brand of SSD I can from personal experience recommend Intel. I also have a Kingston 256 GB SSd that I haven't been that happy with.

 

All a lot of great information guys appreciate it. I guess I want to add some more information into the thread and expand it a little. I basically got this computer about 2 years ago due to the amount of travel I do and having a smaller laptop has been great. I spend a lot of time in hotels etc so the quality of the wireless is always hit or miss. I was hoping changing out the wireless card might help alleviate some of this. I have noticed my work laptop with an I7 tends to get better wireless performance.

I have been thinking of upgrading to the M14x after the ivy bridge processors come out. I feel the biggest let down of my M11X is the processor. I have played some processor intensive games in the past and I feel like that is holding back the graphics card. From what I have been reading i have seem some people saying the I7 isn't that big of an upgrade and other say it is a huge difference with no comparison.