Some W701 questions (and some general ones)

Couple of questions (some may be very dumb so I apologize in advance ):

1) HDD Drive Bay Adapter: I bought one for my W701 and was wondering whether the transfer speed of the drive in the adapter will be less than the one for the regular drives (since it uses the DVD interface).

2) I bought an Intel SATA II SSD as my main drive. However I noticed that Crucial makes some SATA III SSDs. Would they work with a W701 (at their max speed)?

3) For RAM you have slots 1 & 2 (under keyboard) and 3&4 (under a panel on the back). I read on thinkpads forum that to enable dual channel RAM you should install the sticks in slot 1 & 3 or 2&4. I bought a 2 x 4GB kit from Newegg and put it in 1&2 and now just ordered another set. However I noticed on the newegg page that the package is called dual channel kit. So does this mean that I should use the DIMMS from a package in the paired slots or it does not matter as long as they are all the same?

P.S. I did not see may threads about W701 on this forum. Does this mean everyone is busy using theirs or just not that much of a seller?

 

1) they all uses sata II standards, the transfer speed is the same.

2) not at the max speed no, only works in sata II mode.

3) you would have to use the ram in the correct pairing slot to achieve dual channel speed. 1&3 and 2&4 as such.

W701 is quite a professional product (price, performance and weight factors), not a lot of people apart from professionals will buy this product (or people whom are cashed up and is willing to splurge on a high end product). Usually these people are far too busy to post articles, unless they have an interest in such things or have problems that they can't resolve on their own.

If W701 was priced at T410 level, then you would find more people owning them and discussing them at length on various forums.

 

Hi lead,

I will end up having 4 x 4 GB DIMMS all of the exact same product ID (1333 - 10600). So does it really matter if the DIMMs come from same "dual channel kit" or as long as I put the other 2 in then it will activate the dual channel speed?

I would rather not open it up again all the way to the keyboard unless I had to.

P.S. BTW how can I tell when dual channel is enabled?

 

Here is the main thread - http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/504045-thinkpad-w701-owners-lounge.html

But lead_org is correct, W701 is high end enterprise laptop, so don't expect many people having it and even less of them being forum posters.

 

if you have same ram setup for all 4 slots then it doesn't matter, what i am saying is only applicable for people filling 2 slots, or 4 slots with 2 pair of different rams, i.e. 1066 mhz and 1333 mhz.

 

Thanks lead. Now just watching the status update from NewEgg on my RAM