Asus W3V with 7200rpm?

I am putting together a spec list for a notebook based on an Asus W3V barebone. Since I want to use it for audio work a fast HDD is important. Anyone using a 7200 rpm HDD and are there any heat/noise issues?

 

don't waste your time...... with everything in the w3, I'll tell you right now that if you use a hitachi 7200rpm, you wll have noise, heat and battery issues......... if you really want a w3 w/ a 7200rpm drive, wait until seagate gets theirs out.

 

Justin,

Thanks for the tip! Guess I`ll stick with the 5400rpm drive for now and rebuild later. I just checked Seagate`s web site but the 7200 Momentus doesn`t seem to be out yet.

"Next year Seagate will extend the advantages of perpendicular recording to Momentus 7200.1, a 7,200-rpm drive designed for mobile workstations and other high-performance notebook computing applications."

 

We've had 50 of the 60/80/100gb 7200rpm seagates both pata and sata on order since April.... they honestly should be out before the end of September.... we were supposed to have them by the end of July but nothing showed up.

 

So based on your reply, does that mean that the Seagate will run quieter and cooler while consuming less power? What makes the Seagate so much better than the Hitachi?

Also, I think I remember reading somewhere that the W3V uses the SATA interface for the HDD. Is this correct? If I wanted to buy another 2.5" drive, what sort of things should I make sure it has in order to ensure compatibility?

 

I think we need a adapter. i can't find where to buy it

 

I dont think the connector is available yet, but if I understand correctly, theres no benefit of using a SATA HD, the adapter just makes it able to connect, but it will function as a regular PATA drive.

 

I thought that the cable in the w3v at the moment is a sata to pata cable so converting to sata is easy and beneficial.

 

No - what we've found is that the proprietary adapater thy've placed on the motherboard of the W3 / Z71v is actually pata and they've made an adapter for both pata and sata so that both will work. However, there is no performance gains using sata on either machine.

The adapter for sata on the w3 is not available yet.

Seagate runs cooler than Hitachi on a whole.... all of their 5400rpm drives run cooler and quieter than Hitachi's...... We're assuming the 7200rpm's will be similiar.... afterall they've been developing them for more than 2 years now. Hitachi makes a great drive, but we beleive that seagate's 7200rpm are going to be nicer. Seagate's whole Momentous line is designed to run cooler and quieter and the 5400rpm line is designed to run with the battery life of a 4200rpm. They claim that the 7200rpm line will run with the life of a 5400rpm..... if so, that'd be a very nice improvement.

 

Don't listen to this guy. He doesn't know what he is talking about. I have a (M2.13)W3V with a Hitachi 7200 RPM which I bought from agearnotebooks.com a couple of months ago. I am not experiencing any heat, battery or noise issues. I use my laptop on a day to day basis for work and for play. This is an amazing machine.

 

There are several issues here, so back to the basics.

The original need was for a fast HDD for audio work. How fast is fast? Sometimes the hardware specifications were written for equipment which was state-of the-art several years back, and well below the performance of anything currently produced.

Reference to the Seagate datasheets from http://www.seagate.com/products/notebook/momentus.html shows that the maximum data transfer rates (which is what matters for streaming audio) are not very much different (and greater than 40MB/s). What the datasheets do not tell you is the average or worst transfer rates. HD Tach measures performance across the whole HDD (and tells me that my Seagate 120MB 5400RPM HDD has a maximum read DTR of about 43MB/s and a minimum of about 26MB/s).

Faster HDDs tend to run hotter, but the technology is improving. See the numbers on the Seagate data sheets. For example readwrite: 5400 = 1.8Amps, 7200 = 2.2Amps (what is interesting is that SATA tends to draw more power, and the 5400 HDD takes less current than the 4200 HDD).

I have observed elsewhere on this forum that whether the W3 HDD appears to be hot depends on the ambient temperature. My formula is that the HDD temperature is 20 to 24C above ambient temperature, depending on disk activity. So in hot conditions (33C or more as I was a month back) the HDD temperature would exceed 55C and the palm rest was noticeably warm. Now I am somewhere cooler (~24C at the moment) and the HDD is at 46C and the palm rest is only slightly warm.

John

 

I'm the biggest proponent for 7200rpm hard drives as not only were we the first to use them, but they make up more than 3/4 of our sales which are mainly graphics professionals..... I'm a huge fan myself as many people know and have used them in my 12" notebooks and right on up.

However, you're off your rocker if 1. you think a 7200rpm hdd doesn't produce more heat, noise and use more battery than the 5400rpm........... and for you to have a 2.13ghz cpu in it as well, I'd question what your motives in this forum, because it's a great advertisement for a maxed out W3, but it's a complete an utter lie and I won't stand for someone trying to get others to believe it either because they're going to be dissatisfied and as a newbie to this forum, you're completely unaccountable for your comments.

 

Guys, not to say that sleus is lying or anything, I'm pretty sure Justin has more experience with HD's in laptops.

Also, a 7200 would spin faster, and, well, common sense tells me things that move faster makes more heat(faster cpu = more heat, person running = more heat, etc. ) - with a few exceptions. A faster fan would actually make it cooler

But remember that the 'heat' is not overwhelmingly high, just a few degrees of seperation!

 

Well, seeing that people are sort of complaining about the heat on the W3v with a 5400RPM drive... a 7200RPM drive surely would cause at least a little more heat.

It's probably too close for comfort... but with the proper environment (if you live in a cold place), it shouldn't be a problem at all.

 

Sort of right.... but the reason that some people are uncomfortable with the W3 is becasue the hard drive sits just 1/32" under your palm... that's how thick the palmrest is and the heat is something you can feel. You really feel it with a 7200rpm, but realistically, as I've grown.... I've realized that the performance on a machine like the W3 is perfect for what it is and if you need more performance, so be it. However you start to put more weight on the performance of the machine and tilt the scales off balance with the heat produced and the battery life........ If you need the performance, you'll live with the issues it creates.. but by no means is it a fault free upgrade....I feel sorry for anyone who wants to believe it is and does it based on those newbies comments. If I didn't say I'd be the one facing the repurcussions because as the responsible one here, it's my duty to call the BS when I see it because some people believe everything they read.

 

I think the thickness of the laptop might have something to do with feeling the heat. I had the 7k60 in my old T41 and it got pretty warm. In my newer T42 which is a 15" which also has the 7k60 and is thicker, I hardly notice it all.

 

You are exactly right...... a system like the M6 (z70 series).. the palmrest is closer to 1/8" thick and the hard drive is spaced further away from the bottom of it..

 

True, the palmrest on my M6 is quite cool ...
however, the bottom of the notebook is a whole other story.

 

Im going to tell you what else it is.. Word of mouth... after one person said it was hoteveryone else started noticing it.Then it turned into a "problem" its Kinda like a domino affect...

 

True... most members of this forum ARE... shall we say... the more picky type.
So when one person says something, another will agree and pass the word on... etc.

In the end, it's really just in our head... we probably wouldn't have noticed anything if no one said anything in the first place; unless it was REALLY bad...

 

I think im in love with my W3v...

 

Glad to hear that you are
It certainly is a beautiful machine.

:asus:

 

The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him. Stanislaw Jerszy Lec (1909)

 

You're a liar and I wouldn't even begin to pretend what you said was true even though it would be the best thing ever said about this system and would sell a lot of custom W3s for everyone. However, I'm not about to play on it to sell computers when it's the furtherest thing from the truth and I would be a fool not to call you on it.

Enjoy the forum... you're another one that I can see won't be here long.

 

As the original thread starter I thought I would let the board members know about what happened. In the end I ordered the W3V with a 5400 rpm main drive since the reseller didn`t offer 7200. Recently, I tried DJing (Ableton Live) with the W3V and while on the whole it performed fine, I did find that occasionally the audio dropped momentarily if I had too many streams going or if the files were quite large. Pre-loading clips into RAM helps but ultimately I decided to add a 2nd HDD and installed an 80GB Travelstar 7k100 in the expansion bay. I ran it through a stress test and was easily able to cue up a dozen tracks while playing through the main outs. I would probably never do this in practice but it`s nice to know that speed and stability is there. The Travelstar is very quiet and produces little heat. I usually use an Antec Notebook Cooler anyway so I am not worried about it getting too hot.

 

<< runs for cover >>

 

We have had plenty order for 7200rpm drives in the w3a (z63a). No heat problems. Yes they do run hotter then wd scorpio but they run just as hot as some of the seagates and 5400 rpm fujis and hitachis. Battery life a little bit lower is granted. It will get up to the 60C mark which is very
"normal". You will se this with alot of nb drives. Your cooler pad is stricktly optional. Your nb should perform just as well without it.

 

Using a 2nd HDD is the best solution in these circumstances. The primary HDD also has to handle system background tasks, some of which may take priority over your DJ software.

John

 

I have an 80 gig 7200 rpm HD.

i get 3 hours battery life

 

I just installed a Hitachi 7k60 into my w3v and i've noticed that the drive keeps on spinning down after 10 - 15 sec when there is no hd activity. i can clearly hear it spinning down/up. is there a way to stop/delay the spinning down of the hd? i know that there was software i could install to fix this (intel application accelerator) but it stopped supporting mobile chipsets after the dothan. so what could be done? anyone else expereince the same issue?

thanks

 

I must also say that I have had no heat/noise/power issues from my Hitachi drives. I have a 7K60 and a 7K100. They are beautiful drives. In fact, when I upgraded my current machine to the 7k100, I got about 15 minutres more battery life over the Fujitsu 5400rpm drive that was in there.

 

Take a look at Feature Tool and Power Booster at http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm.

John

 

wow roguemonk that's quite impressive.

Is it possible that Hitachi has better equipment and parts than fujitsu, thus it will do better in comparing batterylife.

We already know that a faster hard drive has to spin less compared to a 5400rpm, thus saving more power, but could build quality affect batterylife too?

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Thanks John!!

 

Maybe if build quality = efficiency

 

I knoiw that Hitachi was touting its "Femto Slider". This drive head positioner is 30% smaller and wieghs half as much as those in 5400rpm drives. This is supposed to produce more shock resistance and less power consumption by the drive head. My experience says that it works well.

My understanding is that the Sesgate Momentus 7200.1 series has an even better designed positioner that makes it even quieter and cooler. Although everything I have seen suggests it is a bit slower.