New hard drive for Dell XPS M1530? Advice please.

Hi there,
I've been using this forum a lot to get information on potential laptops, and I finally settled on the Dell XPS M1530. I bought it from eBay a few days ago for $1100 (inc. shipping from US to UK), and it's being shipped at the moment.

The specs are as follows:
2.4GHz T8300 CPU
8600GT DDR3 Graphics
1440x900 LED Screen (GOOD find!)
250GB 5400RPM Hard Drive (unknown brand at the moment)

Now, the specs are pretty good and I'm quite happy with it, but I'm thinking of upgrading the hard drive to a 320GB 7200RPM hard drive from Seagate (the Momentus 7200.3, with perpendicular recording etc).

Do you think that the current hard drive will bottleneck the performance of the laptop? And will there be a noticeable speed increase if I do this upgrade?
I will hopefully be overclocking the graphics card (not massively, just enough to get a better performance out of it without turning it into a furnace), so this won't be as weak as stock settings.

Also, how easy is it to change the hard drives?

If you recommend it, I'll buy the hard drive to put in as soon as I receive the laptop. Saves me having to do a clean install too.

Thanks in advance.

 

It's pretty easy. Just take the bottom pannel off, pull the hard drive with its case out of the notebook chassis, then take the case or sleeve off of the hard drive and put it onto the new one. Then stick the new drive in and put the bottom panel back on. That is assuming you're not asking about the software on the hard drives.

 

Your old drive is 5400k so yea, it will be a performance boost. You just might not appreciate the difference if you swap it right away.

You can go to dell's website and download the manual.

 

Thanks for the quick replies already.

Software shouldn't be an issue - as long as it comes on a disc!

 

To OP bottleneck what? I ask because it depends on what you want to do. If you are asking will it bottleneck gameplay? No not at all. It will at best cost you a couple seconds during game transitions.

OC'ing a DeLL XPS 8600m GT not really a good idea unless you have a warranty as long as you plan on keeping that notebook. The card is defective and it is heat related.

 

You shouldnt think about upgrading until you actually get the system.
The 250gb 5400rpm drives are very powerful, and can perform as well as most 160gb 7200rpm drives
Sure the latest generation 7200rpm drives are faster, but you are comparing 45mb/sec to about 65mb/sec for data transfer.
When you get the system, if you find it is slow, you can upgrade the harddrive, but right now, you will find that even though its a 5400rpm drive, it is still remarkably fast.

Upgrading the harddrive on the XPS1530 is a snap. Just flip the system over, find the harddrive bay, remove the plastic cover, and slide the harddrive out.
Than unscrew the harddrive from the harddrive caddy, and install the caddy on the new harddrive.

Good luck,

K-TRON

 

To OP as far as perpendicular recording goes most have now I believe.

K-T any comment on OC'ing 8600m GT? I ask as you might know something and have comment?

 

Dont overclock your graphics card.
The 8600mGt already has the core leakage issue, which nVidia even claimed was a problem.
Pushing the card further than its limits will slowly kill your graphics card. A lot of people do not understand how overclocking works on the electrical level.
By increase the clock speeds, you are forcing more current through the core of the graphics card. Increasing the current flowing into the core creates more heat, and as we all know, heat is what generally always kills electronics.
All it takes is you pushing more current into the core, and than one transistor will pop from the additional load, and your out of a system.
The XPS1530 does have a decent cooling system, but by no means is it exceptional. Many members here have the 1530 and it will push 70-80C in gaming, which is already really hot to begin with. So dont overclock, unless you want a shiny doorstop.
The performance gain from overclocking is not worth it at all, it will create permanent damage to the core, and eventually killing the gpu. So the 2fps framerate jump you will get from overclocking is surely not worth it in my books.

K-TRON

 

Yea that was the comment I was looking for! To OP look up 8600m GT defective. There are really problems with that card from DeLL beyond the correct things K-T said why it can always be a problem OC'ing. They released a BIOS update. It increased fan speed and I suspect limited card, Your new one likely would already have this update.

 

I heard there were some problems with the card but I've seen a lot of people saying that the 8600GT is good for overclocking? And wouldn't it be more than 2fps... I thought it was around 30% increase? I wouldn't be overclocking it that much anyway, probably only about 10%.

I am planning to undervolt the CPU too so that will reduce some heat.

So don't upgrade the hard drive unless I am noticing the slowness, basically?

Thanks.

 

I was just using 2fps as terminology. You may get 10fps more, but it doesnt matter. Would you rather have 10more fps, or a computer which you can rely on?

Undervolting the cpu is a good idea, cause the 1530 has only one fan to cool the cpu and the gpu. Cutting the cpu temps should help decrease the gpu temperatures.

K-TRON

 

So even with undervolting, you still wouldn't overclock the GPU slightly?

 

You havent even received your system yet, so dont go overclocking it, its really not worth it. The 8600mGt can already handle most games, so dont worry so much.
Its not just the heat which kills the core, its the current going through it. The card will always fail at its weakest connection, which is almost always a transistor blowing from current overload. This can happen even if the system is running cool, whcih is why I dont advise doing it.

K-TRON

 

Alright, I'll keep that in mind. Perhaps just undervolting is the better option with this laptop.

I guess with a more powerful card in a desktop you'd be able to do this more safely, as you can use better cooling systems?

 

Correct. Cooling in notebooks are not as good as desktops. Plus there is basically no "real" aftermarket cooling solutions for notebook as there are for desktops.

 

IMO, before doing anything, I would just wait to see what you've got. Clean the sinks if you can get to them and run a heat monitor if you're worried about it. It's always a good idea to have air circulation under the base, I do it.

If everything looks good and you still want to drop some cash, I think you'd like a faster hard drive. The m1530 has two hd bays, doesn't it? That's a Santa Rosa too, right? Somewhere down the line you could even swap out the CPU if you wanted to.

 

I'll try and keep it cleaned out underneath then. But undervolting should help with the temperature too!

I believe the T8300 CPU is a Penryn, actually. But with the rate of technology now, it might be an idea to swap it in future. I didn't think that was possible in these laptops? Isn't the CPU and GPU molded to the motherboard?

And I think it only has one bay, it's not a 17" laptop and they are usually the only types to have more than one hard drive bay. Still, 17" would have been far too bulky!

Another question - would it be worth getting a decent headset? I'm a little concerned that there would be a hissing noise if I were to use one of the headphone jacks... just something I heard a rumour about.

 

"Santa Rosa" is Intel's code name for a motherboard/chipset combo. Penryn refers to your cpu. Going by memory, you can r/r that cpu from the base. Pretty cool.

Your gpu's a different story. You're stuck with what you've got. But I wouldn't sweat it.