W520 what RAM and SSD have you chosen?

Hi everybody,

In many differnet threads regarding the W520 questions about what Ram to buy or what SSD would make sense.

I think here could ve a place just to discuss that.

So in my case:

I have just bought a new W520 and I would like to equipe it with 16GB Ram and a SSD for the OS and the most important programs (where I need speed).
My budget is arround 400USD for both.

What would you suggest me?

Thanks.

 

RAM is RAM is RAM. Just find the cheapest 8 GB kit and buy 2.

For the SSD recommendation, what do you primarily do with your laptop? What do you value the most? Speed? Reliability?

 

Ram is Ram? Hmmmm, dont know if that is something I can take like that..
;-) ;-) ;-)

Well Speed is of course an important thing for me! But how likely is it that SSDs do have a problem? What is the best combination between speed and reliability? I would like to go with a 100-150gb version if possible...

Thx for the help!

 

Personally I have used the 8 GB DDR3 1333 kit from Crucial, no hiccups in my now returned Dell Latitude E6410. Corsair, Kingston or GSKILL would suffice as well.

Honestly unless you are copying data 24/7, I would go with the newest Intel 320 series SSDs. They offer the best GB/dollar ratios yet for a newly released product, and Intel has a proven track record for reliability.

You could look at the C300 series but there are known stuttering issues.

SandForce tends to be the one of the more problematic SSDs, thankfully my Agility 2 and Vertex 2 don't have issues yet.

 

Upgrades:

I bought the W520 with ONE single 4GB dimm and the 500GB HDD.

I ordered three more 4GB dimms from Newegg: G.Skill 10600. You can order these individually as you only need 1, 2 or 3 dimms (for a total of 8, 12, or 16GB in your W520) and they're very cost effective:

Newegg.ca - G.SKILL 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9S-4GBSQ

For SSDs: I originally ordered an Intel 80GB 310 mSATA SSD also from Newegg. This arrived a couple of weeks ago and I have it waiting here for my W520 which should arrive some time this week.

I also decided that I wanted more SSD space, so I also ordered an Intel 510 120GB SSD. My plan is that I'll use the 510 for boot and my key applications / files, then use the 310 for fun stuff (probably games mostly, possibly user files, etc...). I'm keeping the 500GB 7200rmp HDD that comes with the computer and going to be using that for mass storage. If I'd been smarter, I probably would have just ordered a 250 GB Intel 510 right off the bat (or perhaps the 300GB Intel 320, which will probably still be more than fast enough).

I'll let you know how it all works out once I get my machine...

If I had ~$400 to spend, then I would get at least an additional 4GB ram (for a total of 8GB) and then spend the rest on an SSD (I'm assuming that you're starting off with 4GB ram and no SSD). That should allow for $300+ for the SSD (i.e. Intel 510 120GB or Intel 320 160GB or Crucial C300, etc...), shipping, and any taxes if required. You might even be able to squeeze in a slightly larger SSD or an extra 4GB or so of Ram.

Edit: Sorry - just realized that you want to have 16GB of ram, so I'd go with the G.SKill - it will cost you about $120 incl shipping for the remaining 12GB. That leaves you the rest (about $280) for the SSD - from Newegg, the Intel 320 160GB (SATA II) is $299, the Crucial C300 128GB (SATA III) is $254 and the Crucial M4 128GB is $260. I've also seen the Intel 510 120GB SSDs on sale for around $280-290 (Newegg has it at about $315).

 

What do you think about the following:

SSD:

Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD

- Newegg.com - Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Or


Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW120G3K5 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

- Newegg.com - Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW120G3K5 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Other recommendations?

How much faster are these solutions in comparisson to my 500GB 7200um?



Ram:

Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 Laptop Memory Model KVR1333D3SOK2/8GR
Newegg.com - Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 Laptop Memory Model KVR1333D3SOK2/8GR

I have 2x2 GB ram (standard from Lenovo) preinstalled. Could I use them with the additional Ram or do I need to replace them completly?

Thx guys for your great help!!

 

You can use your existing RAM. Although I did order a 4GB single stick and put 3 more in. For the price you might as well get the 4 sticks and go for it...16GB.

I use a C300 120 GB SSD with the 500GB Hitachi in the Ultrabay. So you also need an Ultrabay Caddy 3.

Perry

 

Well if this works and there r no performance losses i will keep the 2x2 GB and add 2x4GB and have then 12gb. This should be enough for the next years.

Why do i need a ultrabay caddy? What is that?

 

There's really no comparison. Seek times and IOPS are so much slower on HDDs than SSDs. BTW, the 320 series has a 160GB drive for $310, around the same price as the 510 series 120GB.

Where else would you fit the HDD and SSD? The ultrabay caddy is a 2.5" drive sled that replaces the optical drive.

 

Ah, so that means I have to get rid of my DvD?????

How can others put the 2 drives in their laptop.

Hm,
Hats actually a bit dissapointing.

 

I went with the Intel 310 mSATA 80GB SSD and 16GB of Kingston 1866Mhz RAM. My laptop came with RAID0 HDDs which I'll keep for a while. I'll upgrade to the 320 or 510 series once the kinds are worked out.

 

I have the 310 installed with 2x510s running in RAID 0 with zero problems whatsoever (SDDs are recognized and no warm boot issues). I originally planned to run the HDDs in RAID for a while too. I planned on doing a clean install until I dropped my USB HDD which had all my files so then I just used the recovery disks and everything worked perfectly. The installation was aligned and some SDD tweaks such as prefetch/superfetch were automatically disabled.

My only concern is over time, the RAID array will start to run slower without TRIM so I try to make sure I read from the RAID array most of the time.

 

drunckenmonkee:

Do you have dual 120GB or 250GB Intel 510 SSDs?

What drive are you booting from?

Thanks!

 

I am booting from the 310 (i know, it's slower) and I have 2x120gb in the RAID 0 array. I initially was planning to use the factory HDD for RAID but decided to go SSD in RAID after I installed the 310. And I'm slightly concerned about the lack of TRIM so I'm trying to minimize the number of writes to my RAID array so I figured it's better to keep the OS on the 310 which can be TRIM'd.

 

How often do you actually use a DVD drive?

Regardless, the mSATA 310 series SSD can be placed in a WAN(miniPCIe, whatever it's called) slot instead of taking up one of the drive bays. That's how people can have a storage drive, an SSD, and an ODD.

 

Ah, that sounds good. What are the disadvantages of such cards?

 

I was under the impression the intel chips supported trim over raid:
Intel release TRIM for RAID | bit-tech.net

 

I went with 4x4GB of GSkill DDR3-1333 RAM (haven't seen a bad stick from them yet - can't say the same for Crucial and Corsair) and an Intel 310 SSD in the mSATA slot. That way I can keep the included 500 GB HD for storage and still have the optical drive as well.

I am hard-pressed to notice a real-world performance difference between the 310 and faster SSDs. Sure, sequential writes are relatively slow, but that matters in very few use cases.

 

Ok, I did some digging on this and it is what I suspected. From Intel:

It will support TRIM with SSDs in an AHCI configuration, or with the RAID controller enabled and the SSD is used as a pass through device. An example of this use case is for users that want to use the SSD as a boot drive but still be able to RAID multiple HDDs together to allow for large protect data storage – a great use for the home theater PC. TRIM support for SSDs in a RAID configuration is under investigation and is not included in Intel® RST 9.6.

So all this really does is pass TRIM through to non-array drives with a RAID enabled chipset.

 

The Intel 510 SSDs use the Marvel controller and have GC ("Garbage Collection").
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1563/3/

Quote: "The RAID 0 performance was just awesome... . We haven't had the opportunity to try out the RAID performance on the new SandForce drives yet so we don't have a comparison. With the 34nm NAND, the theoretical life expectancy is longer than that of the 25nm drives and Intel backs their drives up with a 3 year warranty for good measure. The Marvell controller does support TRIM and idle garbage collection which seems to work very well. After hammering on the drive for hours, the drive performance was nearly back to full form after a few hours of idle time."
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1563/8/

I have a Sony Vaio Z11 which has 3 SSDs in RAID 0 and no TRIM. The controllers GC takes care of it. There has been no slowdown over the last year.

 

Ok, that is good to know. I guess I've been reading too many forums which discourage using SSDs in RAID and the pitfalls of not having TRIM. I knew GC would still work but I had read that it wasn't nearly as effective as TRIM.

Thanks for the info.

 

The disadvantage of the 310 are that they are relatively small (40gb or 80gb) so they are recommended to hold your OS and other commonly used programs, high cost relative to HDDs, and mSATA run at 3gb/s instead of the 6gb/s of the newer SSDs.

The advantage is that it allows you to make use of both your drive bays and still benefit from the huge performance boost of SSDs.