Thinkpad Edge E420 owners.

Anyone have the "regular" Thinkpad Edge E420 and want to start a thread on it. I picked up my E420 on Sunday, June 26th at Office Depot for 579.
It has the core i5, 4gb ram, 2gb in two sticks, 500gb 7,200 hdd, bluetooth, webcam, and fingerprint reader, and matte screen.

I was looking to but a decent gaming laptop and so was waiting for the E420S to offer the AMD graphics card. But i got tired of waiting and decided i didn't need to play Civ 5 that much. Plus if u customize the E420 with all of the upgrades like the i5 and fingerprint reader, it goes for $830 or so after tax, so i bought this for 630 with tax, I thought it was a steal.

Having it now for over a week i can say that it is a good basic laptop, for 630 dollars i was not expecting anything crazy, but for the price this laptop delivers. First though, the weaknesses, the screen is not very bright, it does not work that well in direct sunlight, then again no laptop i have used worked that well in direct sunlight, but my girlfriends 13.3 inch macbook pro does work better than this Thinkpad in direct sun situations.
That being said, at night or at home i think the matte screen looks better than most glossy screens, it just feels better to my eyes, the accuracy of the image seems greater than a glossy screen.

Another weakness would be speed on startup and shutdown. I timed the system and I have to use the fingerprint reader to log in, from off to start up and fully logged in takes about 1 minute and 20 second, my gf macbook does it in 45, and my brothers 8 month old asus K does it in a minute 5.
Also on shutdown, my Thinkpad takes 24 seconds, my gf macbook takes 10, and my brothers Asus takes 18 And my gf has the old core 2 duo macbook.

The only other negatives would be some wonky issues this laptop has, like when i come back from sleep the system needs minute to work right, the function keys don't seem to work, maybe this is my fault and I need to give the system more than one second to wake up, but my gf macbook works as soon as you open the lid.

Ok positives. The keyboard is awesome, it is my favorite keyboard ever. The trackpad is large to me, and while it doesn't seem to work 100% (that's part of the wonky issues) it works enough to not be a problem. The trackpoint is fun to play with i use it often and am sure to get better at it the more I use it.

The laptop stays cool, I mean freaky cool, I am playing three rounds of League of Legends for about 2 hours and the thing never got that hot. The ability of the laptop to dissapate heat is amazing.

The laptop feels really durable, the hinges are metal.

The battery life is ok, I customized the battery settings, I have the screen dim every after 1 minute and have the hdd shut off after 1 minute etc. and I got nearly 6 hours out of it. No wifi, nothing fancy just word document and looking at picture, the brightness was around ten but i turned it up and down often. But I dont sit around not using wifi much, so realistically I get 4 hours out of the battery, I keep the screen brightness on 14 or 15 and i made a moderate battery setting to keep the CPU and GPU adaptive.
I have not done any real test and have not tried to measure the battery life that well, as I am in school for 6 hours at a time I will be able to get a better battery life reading, and I will undoubtedly run some good tests at work when I am on my 11 hour shift on Friday.

Ok in summary, the machine is good, i would give it a 9. It did not blow my mind, but I don't do much on the laptop, I am a light user, I wish my laptop was this God-like machine that turned on in 5 seconds and off in 2, so if you are looking for a power machine look elsewhere. But the battery life is good and once it is up and running it is fast.

About the GPU, my brother has the Asus K with the old core i3 and the integrated graphics, he has to run League of Legends on low settings and barely gets 30 fps, I run League on Medium and get 80 FPS, and I can run the game on High with shadows and get 30 fps. And Civ Plays on medium also. Intel HD3000 is impressive for integrated graphics especially compared to the last gen integrated.

 

Great to confirm that the hinge are metal, I remember reading somewhere that say the hinge are plastic or some kind questionable material. How was the screen on the laptop, how does it compare to the mac in term of color. Does the color look wash out?

 

It seems like something is wrong with OS on your E420. My desktop is six years old with AMD Athlon64 3000+ processor, nvidia GeForce FX5200, 1.5 GB DDR ram and 7200 rpm SATA HDD. Still Windows 7 on it boots in 45 seconds to fully usable desktop. And it shuts down in 10 seconds.

I am planning to buy this E420 for my Masters course. The only things that I am worried about are the keyboard and the battery run time. I am attracted towards T420 because of these two things. T420 is going to be launched here in India very soon. If the price difference isn't much ( which it seems like here ), I will be tempted to buy T420. Otherwise I have my eyes fixed on E420.

 

If the price difference is not that much, I would recommend you get the T420. T420 have are tougher, a thinklight, and an option for a higher resolution screen. The keyboard on the E420 is excellent I put it on par with the traditional thinkpad keyboard, the only complaint I have on the new keyboard is it is not a 7-row keyboard.

The difference in boot spend could be the software that Lenovo bundle with and Window 7. If you are concern with bootspeed, I recommend track down the suspect that is slowing it down by follow the direction in this link.

 

I saw the pics on net. I didn't like the top row (fn keys), the arrow keys and the page up/down keys. They seem to be way too small.

 

At first the screen seems really poor and washed out, but once you use it for awhile it looks great, next to the macbook the colors look similar, the accuracy of the colors are the same, its just that the macbook pops a little more because of the glossy screen.

 

The keyboard is the best I have ever used. The normal battery life is going to be 4 to 5 hours, closer to 4 hours. I bought this Thinkpad for school also, start MBA in January. The T420 might be amazing, but I don't like buyying things i can't see in person.

 

I am happy to hear this. Most probably, I will go for this one and save some money.

 

First off, thank you very much for taking your time with the review.

I'm going to comment mainly on battery life. 4 ~ 5 hours on battery sounds slightly disappointing. That means that with the 9 cell battery it is going to be 6 ~ 7.5 hrs (roughly). Especially considering that my W520 can last me around 8.5hrs surfing the web (no Flash) using the WLAN on 9/15 brightness and a Balanced profile, and that normal desktop use (a mix of YouTube, 720p local videos, 1080p local videos, WLAN surfing, and some other minor things like word processing and music) nets around 7hrs.

May I ask you what you do on battery? My friend wants a near ThinkPad quality laptop without paying the ThinkPad premium (around maybe $700) and would like to have a long battery life, so I was considering recommending the Edge series to him.

 

I wouldn't take my battery life figures too literally. Right now I am not in school so I have no reason to try and get good battery life. I would say that at about half brightness and having the battery settings at "Max Battery" and surfing the net, that is with flash and with a little youtube, you can, and I have gotten 6 hours battery. But i custom my max battery settings, I have it blank the screen after one minute of no use, I stop the HDD after 30 seconds of no use.

The 6 cell battery is 48whr, the 9 cell is 96 or so, so that is double that actual capacity, so it should in theory get double the battery life, but it never does, I think if I get the 9 cell battery, I can easily get 9 hours out of it. Now if you have the battery settings on max performance, and are on the net with the screen at full brightness, I have been getting a little more than 4 hours. I set the system to balanced and I get almost 5.

But again, I have not been trying that hard to monitor exact times, or to get an accurate reading, so this is all approximate. One day soon I will run some real tests, making sure to note down actual times.

 

I see, thank you very much. That sounds like it should be enough for school with a 9 cell. There aren't any power outlets available for student use in the lecture halls at the university that my friend and I will attend, so we need like 6 ~ 7hrs at least on battery for safe measure + playing around during breaks (and to think that we are in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department... kind of ironic that we don't get outlets).

 

Thomas,

I have basically the same machine except for the fingerprint reader. Mine is the new i5 processor... not sure on yours.

Your startup time seems odd. I haven't timed it, but mine starts pretty quickly-- I would guess 30-45 seconds. Wake from sleep at about 10-15 seconds.

By the way, I second your thoughts on the screen. It is a little washed out and not bright, but I got used to it.

I am in the process of putting an SSD into it. That is the reason I opted for the cheaper edge instead of a T. Since I got my first SSD, I swore I would never use a platter drive again.

 

My 90 second start-up time is like this,

The laptop is completely off, I press the power button, I log in with the finger print reader and I look at the taskbar and do not stop the clock until I see that the computer has loaded some programs, like the autolock, and AVG, and that the battery bar has loaded.

I do have the i5, if i were to just stop the watch when the desktop pops up, then it would about 70 second start-up.

 

Hey guys, looking at getting an E420 myself. A few questions:

1) thomasw333, you got a heck of a deal! Did you have any coupons or other discounts to get it so cheap? The 11419BU is the only i5 version of the E420 listed pre-built, but I can't find it under $750.

2) Assuming I can't get the i5 version at a reasonable price, I'll likely get the 114157U (all the bells and whistles with an i3). How easy would it be to upgrade the processor to the i5 later on if I just bought the CPU off newegg or similar? Is it easy to access the socket?

3) You mention metal hinges, but a previous poster in another thread was explicitly annoyed that his E420 came with plastic hinges. I'm wondering if this is a new thing only on the i5 model. Odd question, but are your hinges silver or black? I've seen both in the promo pictures on lenovo's site, and I think only the silver ones are metal.

Thanks guys!

 

I got my Thinkpad at Office Depot, I walked in on Sunday two weeks ago, they had just gotten two in that week, one was on display, I bought the other one. It was on sale there for 579, I didn't have any coupons or discounts that was just the price.

I have taken off the access cover to see the ram and HDD, to fully take apart the laptop seems difficult, I cannot see the mobo from the access cover, I would not try to upgrade the processor, I would just bite the bullet and get the i5 from day one, it seems to me to be a much better processor than the i5.

The hinges are black, or should i say they are silver and painted black, i know because my laptop had one imperfection, on the left hinge, there is a little knick in the paint and you can see the silver underneath. These hinges are metal, if they are not then why do they stay cold like metal, and why are they so hard like metal and have no flex like plastic.

 

Thanks for the reply. I found the deal at Office Depot and it does indeed look appealing. It's model 1141A24, which isn't on Lenovo's spec sheets. Essentially the difference between it and the 114157U is the primer has an i5 2410 as opposed to an i3 2310 but no bluetooth, and win 7 home premium instead of win 7 pro. Both are the same price.

I think I can deal without bluetooth, but I definitely need the win 7 pro. I guess that's easier to upgrade than the processor.

Edit: Just placed my online order, $578 with with tax ain't bad, plus shop discover nets 5% ($28.90) cash-back, woohoo. Thanks for the tip man, glad I checked your post!

Edit 2: BTW, is the 500GB drive 5400 or 7200 RPM? And is the wireless Intel Centrino 1000 Wireless-N or Thinkpad bgn? The specs at Office Depot don't say, and Lenovo clearly doesn't list this model.

 

My hdd is 7200 rpm, the wireless is intel

 

Nice, thx Thomas. I got 8GB (4GBx2) of GSkill ram off of Newegg, I'll report back after the install.

 

Well, it sucks to like 14 inch laptops, 15.6 just come with so much better options. My brother just picked up today (I mean I picked it for him) an HP dv6 with the new AMD A8, and the combo 6620 an d 6750 graphics card for 700 at Best buy, its at least dbl the power of the HD3000. And the AMD switching software seems to work fine to me, he is playing League of Legends on Very High with 30 fps

 

Here is something that doesn't make sense, the screen brightness goes from 0 to 15. But 2 is the darkest setting, then it gets brighter until 15 which is the brightest. But 1 is brighter than 2, and 0 is brighter than 1. Anyone know why?

 

Is i5-2410m really that fast in comparison to i3-2310m as much as the price difference ? In India the cost difference is US $79 (converted to US currency), which is slightly more than 10% of total cost. I need it for mechatronics engineering ( Masters course ). I want to save that money if the speed gain won't be that much. That will also help battery run-time, battery life and system would run cooler.

 

I really wanted the i5, because i have not had a nice computer in years, so for me it was important plus the price was cheap here in the USA.
The core i3, runs at 2.1 ghz and does not turbo boost.
The core i5, runs at 2.3 ghz but has turbo boost and can run at 2.9 ghz.
I don't know any exact specifications, but i do know that the i5 has hyper threading so it acts like a quad core. Also with the battery settings on moderate or max performance, you can see the cpu boosting all of the time.

I feel that the i5 is the processor Intel designs, and then they make it weaker by tweaking the settings to make the i3, and then they push the limits to make the i7, so i didn't want a dumbed down i5. But it should be true that the i3 gets better battery life, so there is a trade off.

 

Even i3 has the hyper-threading. I just want to know how much difference would we see in things like video encoding, compiling softwares, running simulations. I won't be actually doing these things all the time, but yes, I don't want to feel the system too slow when I need to do them. So,if the difference is like 10-15%, then I don't think it is worth that money. But if the gain is like 30-35%, then yes.

What I see from the CPU benchmarks, the difference is around 25-30%. Will it really be reflected in the processes what I mentioned ?

Also, does turbo-boost really affect the speed that much? I heard that it causes CPU to heat up to 95-98 C. So what i feel is that, it won't really be that effective. How much do you people feel ?

 

Thomas, I noticed the same thing about the screen brightness. Quite odd, I leave mine at 0, which is two stops brighter than "2", go figure.

Right now I'm trying to create the backup and restore disks...it's taking forever. The lenovo software seems pretty daft, I think I'm going to reformat it and put a fresh install on after this recovery disk thing completes.

It's a shame the laptop didn't come with a Win 7 CD, I wonder if MS provides a download? I found the CD key under the battery.

 

You can make your own: http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/428068-legal-windows-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

If you do a fresh install, make sure you copy the drivers folder(If there is one.) so you can install the drivers more quickly. This way you don't have to download each and every driver one by one from the support site.

 

Thanks! I also found this great guide by Hearst: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7463333-post65.html

I think it should work fairly perfectly for the E420 as well. What do you guys think? Is the Lenovo package OK, or is doing a clean install worth it?

Thanks!

 

The more I use the laptop the less I feel the need to clean install. I uninstalled the nasty Norton bloatware and installed AVG and Comodo firewall in its place. Everything else looks like quality software. The only Lenovo tool I don't like is the auto-lock facial recognition feature, but mostly because I can't get the icon out of the taskbar.

BTW, I installed a 8GB (2x4GB) set of GSkill DDR 1333 PC 10600 with no problems, boot time seems considerably faster, but that may just be to Windows Updates having finished.

BTW 2: Newegg is selling the home premium to professional anytime update for $59. I'm definitely giving it a shot!

 

Ok it is good to hear that someone else has the same "quirk," 0 is two steps brighter then 2. I deleted the autolock program since i will not be using it. I think that all of the software that Lenovo provides is excellent. I like the battery access connections being dedicated on the taskbar, I pull up the thinkvantage toolbox often to check the system and updates. I burned 4 dvds from the hdd Lenovo Recovery Q, partition it took a little while but it did not seem too long to me.

I called Lenovo tech support about my screen, I got a Tech 1, who didn't seem to know much, he downloaded some things and said he couldn't do anything, he told me to call back to talk to a tech 2, or request to have it sent in for service, I don't want to deal with all that, seeing as I leave the screen between 10 and 15 brightness.

I didn't do a clean install, but last night I ran a full system restore, by pressing Enter on start-up and following the normal prompts. The machine seems the same as before.

Also, if you go to your C drive, and go into the folder SWTOOLS, all of the programs that come installed on the laptop are there, so if you delete the autolock but want it later, it is right there to be reinstalled.

 

Ok i called Lenovo tech support just to see if they had heard of this screen brightness issue. One technician told me to send it in, i didn't like that guy because he didn't seem to understand what I was saying. So I called back, and the new technician told me it would be pointless to send it back because it was a software issue, and to wait around for an update to correct it. I also asked that if I were to send it in, would they replace my left hinge because it has a gash on it, the black paint is gone, it looks like a sharp metal object scrapped off the paint. He then told me to call sales and ask for a replacement because of "cosmetic damage." This all seems funny to me since I am getting a lot of "options." I guess I will call tomorrow or monday, whenever sales is around, and ask for a replacement, because of software and cosmetic issues.

 

I found the source of the screen brightness problem. Its related to the intel hd graphics drivers. I uninstalled Lenovo's version of the drivers and installed the latest set from Intel, brightness problem fixed! Note that you have to uninstall the existing drivers via Device Manager first, otherwise the new drivers will complain that the computer manufacturer hasn't verified the drivers.

On another note, looks like the Corel DVD software that ships with the Lenovo Win7 package can cause issues with other programs. For instance, Morrowind would not run on my laptop without freezing on startup. Turns out I had to unregister an AX file in that Corel suite to get it to work. Here's the link on how to fix it: http://support.bethsoft.com/asp/res...8&pos=Windows+XP&top=Error+Messages&rid=15528

 

Awesome find, do you have a link to the intel drivers?

Can you just uninstall the whole Corel DVD software? this will solve the problem too right?

 

I can do one better, turns out Lenovo put out a sanctioned driver that fixes the problem. You can get the driver here: Intel HD Graphics (Integrated) Driver for Windows 7 (64-bit), Vista (64-bit) - ThinkPad

Here's the changelog:

CHANGES IN THIS RELEASE
Version 8.15.10.2372

[Important updates]
Nothing.

[New functions or enhancements]
Nothing.

[Problem fixes]
- Fixed an issue where there was an abnormal brightness.
- Fixed an issue where DVD overlay disappeared when changing Smart Stretch
setting.

As for the Corel bug, I imagine that would fix it and unregister the offending file, but I can't be sure, I'm still new to this fan-dangled Windows 7, I'd been using XP until this week.

 

Awesome! Thanks for finding this. I updated and my screen brightness control works correctly. Funny how three Lenovo techs couldn't figure this out and they wanted me to send my laptop in. Now I actually like my laptop more, the thought of the laptop having any problems really bugged me. Now if I could just get it to boot faster. Well It will boot faster eventually, when I upgrade the ram to 8gbs and get a combo ssd/hdd.

 

Hi Guys,so glad to see a thread for the e420. I just ordered one from Office Depot for $550,great deal,even better deal if you're a student..I saw a few of you also got yours from there.If you are students,they have a $100 visa card rebate you can get. Check the Office depot site for the rules,but I believe you have till mid Aug to send the form it to get the visa rebate. Wish I was student !!!! I'm not a super techie,can you guys tell how I do the copy of the hard drive or give a link on how do this? Do I do the restore disk before I add anything to the new computer,or do I do it after I put on my anti virus etc ??? One more question...is the screen on the Office Depot version matte or gloss,specs didnt say. Cant wait to play !!!!

 

Can you give us a link or more info on this 100$ visa.

I don't really do any hard drive restore or make back-ups of anything. Just burn the 4 dvds in the Lenovo Recovery Q Drive. Just click on it and it will walk you through it, then you can reclaim your hdd space. Also if you have an issue you can do a full system restore by pressing enter when you first turn the laptop on, again just follow the steps. Also the Q drive has nothing to do with doing a full system restore from the HDD, that Q drive is seperate, so reclaim your space after you burn the dvds.


Windows has a back-up system built in, as does Lenovo, open your Thinkvantage toolbox, click on back-up.

The screen is matte, and the longer I use it, the more I like it. Especially when it is dark, the matte screen makes the images on the screen look real, like you can touch them, as opposed to my brother's HP DV6, which has the glossy-ist screen I have ever seen at night it is too shiny to enjoy. All personal opinions obviously.

 

Thanks Thomas,I will do that when it comes.Glad to hear the screen is matte.I have a glossy one now and its a pain to see anything during the day or if theres a light on. Looking forward to seeing the screen better.

I just found the visa rebate link but it turns out you have to have purchased 7-17 to 7-23 to get the rebate. Heres the link,maybe theres a earlier version if you look around some http://forms.young-america.com/122596_OD1003142-2011-07-14.pdf

 

if you go in store, they will give you $100 visa or amex gift card (you have to be sure to ask about it because a lot of managers didnt know what to do) - be adamant. you need to bring your student ID.

 

I recently picked up my very own thinkpad e420 after playing around with it at the store. A couple thoughts:

-The battery while it is in the slot and locked in seems a little bit wobbly
-I have uninstalled a lot of the bloatware like Norton but it still seems sluggish
-The touchpad is huge! I've never seen something this big before and the fingerprint reader is handy cause I'm lazy and can swipe my finger faster than typing the password.
-Can someone tell me what Fn + Spacebar does? is that the icon for the thinklight? I don't think that feature is in the edge is it?

Besides the sluggishness after uninstalling alot of the bloatware it still seems slow to me, any ideas? Other than that the rest of the laptop is pretty awesome.

 

I'd like to know what bloat to get rid of also,Mine is coming this week. I have not even touched or seen one other than veiwing online..cant wait ! Does Lenovo include any manuals telling you the shortcut codes for its touchpad?

 

I have bought the one at office depot but even though there is software installed for the bluetooth on here, bluetooth doesn't seem to be on this laptop. I should see an icon in the control panel called bluetooth, nope not there, guess this doesn't have it. Then I would assume it is safe to uninstall all the bluetooth software that lenovo put on here.

 

When I hit F9 and click on my inndividual control, i can turn on and off my bluetooth, I don't use Bluetooth anything though...

The battery does wobble all well...

Uninstall what you can it isn't the fastest machine ever...but its fast enough for me, I would say if you like the laptop, upgrade the RAM to 8gb, and get an SSD, or a combo HDD/SSD.

The touchpad can be tweaked to a crazy degree, I forget how too find it, but when I did I clicked so that the shortcut would be in my taskbar, by my battery and wifi indicator.

This laptop is good, it is quiet and stays cool, but it is not amazing or astonishingly fast, but it was only $600. I was at best buy, and even there basic core i3's cost $600 to $700, so this laptop is a great deal.

Maybe one day someone will swap in a 6630m, that would be cool, and if someone figures out how to do it, I would do it on mine, you would most likely need a different motherboard, I don't know if the E420S uses the same mobo as this laptop, but if it does it should be easy to swap in that mobo with the 6630, of course your have to find someone overseas to sell you one as you couldn't get it from Lenovo in the USA.

I wish I had an Envy 14, but then again i see people on the forum saying they keep getting them with problems. Also the cost...

 

The E420s uses the same keyboard, hence the thinklight icon on the spacebar, it does nothing on our basic E420.

 

thomasw333 the laptop apparently does have bluetooth but it was disabled by default to save battery life and I can turn it on by pressing the F9 key. Thanks for the tip. I'm glad I found this deal at office depot because at lenovo.com even the baseline i3 was approx ~$600.

I'm going to be putting in an SSD and upgrading the ram to 8gb. I figure I was going to save myself the time and just image my regular hard drive to the ssd since the bios by default is already set to AHCI mode. Just have to remember to turn off prefetching, write caching, page file, and the auto defrag in the scheduler.

 

Holy cow, the office depot 1141a24 is such a good deal, it doesnt even say bluetooth in the specs! Thanks for pointing out a feature i didn't know existed!

 

FYI, I just installed the Windows Anytime Upgrade from Home Premium to Professional. Easy as pie, took about ten minutes. Newegg has a good sale on the upgrade for $59, that's $30 off the Microsoft price.

The biggest win for professional imo is network backups and backward compatibility tools.

 

This laptop was playing Civ 5 pretty well, but I am into turn 400 on the largest map possible, and the wait inbetween turns is a good minute, I don't know if this is an issue with the GPU, or if the CPU can't handle the massive amount of calculations it has to do, to keep every civilization running.

Either way the laptop stays cool, the fan will run at its highest when I play, but even so the air coming out of the vents us not very hot, my brothers hp dv6 blows out air at least twice as hot, I am going to get a core temperature program and see what temps i get, I will post some temp readings soon.

 

Alright I downloaded All Cpu Meter for Windows Sidebar, and the Core Temp.

I played the game for about half an hour and kept going back to monitor what was going on.

The ram stayed at 78%
Total Cpu Usage (Both cores and threads) maxed out at 50%, but generally stayed around 35%
Cpu Cores stayed around 70C.

For some reason, core Number 1 is used the most, it jumped up to around 70% at one point.

When the laptop is just on the net like right now, Ram usage is at 43%
CPU usage is around 2 percent. It goes down to zero, and up to 3, but it stays at 2 most of the time.
CPU temp is at 45C, but when I first installed the program it was sitting at 42.

And right now I have the battery settings at max performance and the laptop is plugged in, I will see later, what the system looks like on battery, and with max battery settings.

 

How did the 8gb work, did you use the laptop a lot with 4gb then upgrade, if so how big of a difference is there. I am playing Civ 5 a lot and the farther I get into the game, the slower it goes, I am wondering if I should upgrade to hopefully see less lag between turns.

 

It worked great, very easy to install. I noticed slightly faster boot times, and a bit better responsiveness. I haven't gamed much on it yet, but I could see that if your using 80% ram already, you've probably started hitting performance limitations. Unfortunately I can't guarentee upgrading will solve your problem. Perhaps asking on a Civ 5 forum you could see if others had that problem and what they did to solve it.

In general I think its a good idea to upgrade, its so cheap now, and if you wait that RAM may no longer be available (or more expensive due to scarcity). My 2c

 

can you link your RAM deal on newegg?