W520 Configuration Recommendations

(I'm a newbie to this forum ... also not a strong tech person. But I do have questions for which answers would be very helpful ! Thanks.)

I am intent on ordering a w520. Two uses: Photoshop (10 to 20 meg images), and extra-large Excel spreadsheets. Speed and capacity is the objective. I work by myself so have no access to a good tech person, and I probably wouldn't fool with the innards. So reliability is paramount.

Questions:

1. I'd like an SSD for quick startup. The order site offers the 120 Lenovo and the 160 Intel. Which for me ?

2. I'd like the 7200 RPM HD in the ultrabay for data. Sound OK as a plan ?

3. 8G good enough for memory ?

4. Would I see a difference in speed (see above uses) depending on CPU if I went to the fastest offered ?

Thanks !

Bob B

 

I'm not sure about the SSD or ultrabay options, but I think that you must get RAID if you don't order a caddy separately. Though the plan sounds fine. You might want to just upgrade later by yourself, it is pretty simple. I believe that for the workload, something like my configuration will work fine. Bump it up to a 2720QM if you need a quad core. Wouldn't really recommend going beyond that. 8GB should be enough for your purposes, but I'd recommend upgrading yourself instead of ordering straight from Lenovo.

 

Might be a good idea to get the 7200rpm HD in the unit and buy an aftermarket SSD, and then move the HDD into the ultrabay. That's more or less what most people do.

8GB should be enough unless you need to run lots of virtual machines and stuff. Make sure you get 2x4G so you can easily upgrade to 4x4G.

It's generally the consensus that upgrading the CPU beyond the 720QM is not worth the money.

 

Based on your comments(not wanting to crack open the box, fool w/upgrades, etc.), I'd suggest the following:

* Get a quadcore cpu, as W520 with those cpus(only) have -four- slots for memory sticks. Lesser cpu models have just two memory slots.

* If you're really, really tight on money, get a lower end quadcore cpu; otherwise, consider maybe one (or two?) notches down from the highest end cpu. You won't give up much, and probably won't notice any diff. 2720QM mentioned above is a good starting point. Check current price differences above this and if cheap, maybe go a bit higher. Intel is proud of their pricing as you get really close to the top, and the performance diff is often unnoticeable.

* Memory - you didn't provide enough info...8G minimum, but I'd recommend 4x4G = 16G. 4G memory sticks are cheap and 16G total will certainly do the trick. You may even find that down the road you have enough extra memory to setup a ramdrive for some temp disk type usage. Ramdrives are scary fast, but you have to know how and where to use 'em; otherwise you can get into trouble.

* Correct on SSD/HD combo - while there -can- be marginally better performance on a larger SSD, I'd go with the smaller, as the performance diff is not likely to matter much unless you're going to really slam the drive with lots of I/O. So, SSD for boot drive, 7200rpm drive in the ultrabay slot(remember to order the ultrabay hard drive caddy, too!). The really big performance diff is in going from a conventional HD to an SSD. Nitpicking SSD differences is 'majoring in the minor things', unless you are sure you'll be doing major, major I/O. I use the stock Samsung 120G SSD in my W700 quadcore and a cheapie 32G SSD in an old Z61p and find that -both- work great. All that said, if you have some $money$ to work with, the larger SSD would be fine, and by the time you actually order/spec a box, the price diff might be minor.

* Forget buying a boot HD, then replacing it with an SSD. You didn't want to crack open the box, and most of the guys on this forum are of the "I'll save $10 and waste an hour/day upgrading" mentality. Great for hobbyist, terrible for someone who wants best bang for the buck functionality vs. time involvement. Check the number of threads from people who got stuck doing an upgrade if you're in doubt about this. Just buy the SSD boot drive from Lenovo and be done with it. That's actually what 'most people' do, not counting hobbyists on this forum.

* Likewise, skip any thoughts of RAID; you don't need it and you can really hose things up if you don't know the ins/outs of this.

Doing the above will result in your having a very fast boot/opsys drive, lots of data storage in the ultrabay, gobs of memory and plenty of horsepower to drive it all.

If you're new to SSD, it'll be so fast you won't believe it. Blink and you miss it kinda stuff.