Purchased Nagamaki (Arima W840 DI) -- Check out the hard drives!

I purchased this a couple weeks ago, but just upgraded the hard drives to KillerNotebooks.com's latest offerings. Here's the specs. Check out the hard drive setup:

Processor: X9100 @ 3.3Ghz
Graphics: Dual ATI 3870 Crossfire
Memory: 4GB DDR3, 1333Mhz; 4GB Turbo Memory Module
Display: WUXGA 1920x1200
HDD 1: 300GB, 10,000rpm (RAID 0)
HDD 2: 300GB, 10,000rpm (RAID 0)
Wireless: Draft N, Bluetooth V2.1
OS: Vista Ultimate
Keyboard: Backlit
Security: Fingerprint reader

 

D@mn. I bet that thing flies. I feel sorry for your battery tho.

 

what do you think of the backlit keyboard?

 

WoW...10K drives on notebook!BTW,do you have your notebook already or you are waiting for it?

 

Sorry, I should have specified. I don't have this laptop yet. These laptops will begin shipping around the middle of next week.

As for the keyboard, Mark (owner of KillerNotebooks), said the keyboard is one of the best-feeling notebook keyboards he's run across. The backlighting for the production models will be awesome. The individual numbers and symbols of the keyboard will be either red, green or blue, and can be changed through the "function" keys.

 

I might be ordering a similar system, except only RAID 150GB 10,000 rpm HDDs but with a QX9300 or a Q9200

 

also, when you get it Silicon, could ya post some pictures of the keyboard backlit?

 

Yeah, definitely.

 

how can they put 10K rpm drives in that laptop, it will surely overheat. Plus the SATA port cant source enough current on the 12v line to operate a velociraptor.

That is very confusing. It would take a hell of a mod to make one velociraptor work in their let alone two.

K-TRON

 

Mark is going to receive the drives on Tuesday. We'll know for sure then. He believes he'll be able to mod them to work.

If not, then I'll settle for 2x 320GB 7,200rpm drives until Samsung's 256GB SSD's come out near the end of the year. Then I'll have 2x 256GB SSD's in RAID 0. Individually, they read at 200MB/s and write at 160MB/s. I can't imagine how they'll perform in RAID 0.

 

See, I was thinking the exact same thing, but kept my mouth shut as I don't know the Arima
oem product line that well. I really think heat is going to play a BIG factor, not to mention the voltage requirements and/or vdrop. But I'm DEFINITELY interested in the outcome! Hopefully he can pull a rabbit out of his hat and get em working.

 

vdrop pencil mod on a laptop?

Qaz? you going the way of the whitebook now?

 

I only asked cause I tried running a SAS 15,000rpm drive off my laptop, (when it worked) and I found the internal SATA ports 12volt line can only output 12v at 0.5Amps which is not even enough for the velociraptor let along the 1.2amps (on 12v) my Hitachi Ultrastar needs to operate.

My Hitachi Ultrastars even get warm with active cooling. I have four of them cooled by two 176mm EBM Papst's fans. Without active cooling the drives can reach temps of 200F within a few minutes, so watch out for your system melting.

K-TRON

 

maybe. **** tempting though

Actually, i was one the first to "go on the way of the Whitebook". Then interest died out but now its back, with the possibilties of RAID VelociRaptors, Green Backlit Keyboard and a QX9300 OC'd to 3.28ghz under 4.3k! Take that m1730.

 

I also think putting two 10k rpm HDs in a laptop is just .. well dangerous, let alone thinking about battery life. If you want performance at any cost just get an Intel X25-M, will use almost no power, have equal or better performance than those two drives and will cost you about the same price. And to make up for the lack of space you can get a 1TB esata external drive for storage or something.


I just Ordered one of these babies, but im going for a more portable friendly setup. Went with the P9500 CPU and two WD scorpio black HDs in Raid 0 for low heat noise.

I will probably upgrade for a decent SSD when the price have gone down some more, and a mobile quad cpu. For now i just think both of those prices are completely out of control.

 

The thread where he went through his thought process on offering these drives has thermal imaging of the drive for the heat argument and also addresses the power issues. Ultimately it looks like it came down to a slight size discrepancy that is keeping it from happening. I have to agree with dit_xi

I went with this crew before I comprehended how far they are pushing the limits on a daily basis. If there's nothing they haven't seen or tried then I feel pretty confident in their experience level. The "vanilla" system I bought is just a walk in the park for them.

Barry Bonds
Batting average .298
Home runs 762
Runs batted in 1,996
Hits 2,935

Keep swinging Killer.

 

Well, that's too bad. Looks like it comes down to size.

The evaluation model of the Nagamaki (Arima W840 DI) was able to fit the VelociRapters with some modding of the HDD cage. Unfortunately, the production model only allows for 12.7mm of space, which isn't enough to fit the 15mm thick VR hard drives.

Looks like it's 320GB 7200rpm hdd's in RAID 0 until Samsung releases their blistering 256GB MLC SSD's at the end of the year.

 

are you kidding, they are using the size as a coverup.
they couldnt get the drive to work in the system because of its 12volt line. That is the real reason why it is not working properly. No laptop on the market can output more than 0.5amperes on the 12volt line because of the lack of space for real PVM chips. That is why it does no work in the system, not the height. I can almost guarantee it without even readng their website.
I tried this on many systems and always the same occurs. the current on the 12volt line is never enough to support any of these drives.

anyways, having ssd's or the latest gen 7200rpm drives is going to be awesome.
I loved the dual 7K320's in my laptop before Gophn destroyed my system

K-TRON

 

Read the article before jumping the gun. This guy knows what he's doing when it comes to laptops, which is more than I can say for most resellers.

EDIT: And there's no reason to cover anything up, especially to say it's size rather than blame it on power. There's no reason to pick one reason over the other.

 

I guess I am assuming too much
Well I know from personal tests, the velociraptor does not work in the Clevo D900T, D900K, D901C, XPS1710, XPS1730, or the ASUS G70.
I would think that this one would be the same.
I did get a 15k scsi drive to spin up in my laptop, but it required an additional power source from an old AT power supply.
Otherwise it would work
The only way this guy could make it work without an external power source is either to build a dc to dc converter circuit which takes power off the backlight inverter or the main power jack in order to convert say 20V or whatever the system uses to a clean and stable 12v output for the drive.
This would be very time consuming and impractical especially for mass production, which is why I shot the idea down.
If KN does it, that would be amazing, but it may be more touble than its worth ( in getting it to work)

K-TRON

 

Wow, who produces those drives?? I ve never heard anything bout 10.000 in 2'5 Sata. But 3 of those in RAID0 would be nice

 

15K drive? That would be awesome. WD needs to step it up and release a laptop friendly version of the VelociRaptor. Better yet, release a 15K version.

I doubt it would be very beneficial for them to do so, however, with the lower-cost SSD's coming to market by the end of the year. The performance on both the Intel and Samsung SSD's is incredible. They both read at 200MB/s, but Samsung beats out Intel on the Write process. They get 160MB/s, and I believe Intel gets around 70 or 80MB/s.

 

They are the 300GB VelociRapters. The VR was already in a 2.5" form factor, but was set in a heat sink which turned it into a 3.5" form factor. Now Western Digital has pulled the 2.5" drives free from the heat sink for operation in Blade Servers.

Mark at KillerNotebooks.com was going to sell these drives in the Nagamaki after some small modifications to the hard drive cage. But the production units don't have the extra space in the hard drive slots that the pre-release evaluation model had.

 

K-Tron, what did Gophn do to your Envy?

I might save some cash and get the 320GB 7200rpm Drives. But having HDDs that are double my friends Hdd's capacity AND RPMs sounds awesome.

 

i rather wait for ssd then 10k rpm, 128gb is now only $300 by next year 256gb will be at $300 kinda like flash drive timeline

 

the only reason the 10k drives do not work because 5volt stepper motors peak at 8400rpm.
To get to 10k rpm or 15k rpm you need a stepper motor wth 5v and 12volt lines.
This is why they do not work in laptops.

A guy in the hardware secton bought one of those new supertalent SSD drives, and I think it is supposed to be the best SSD at the moment. (It doesnt have that awkward hanging which almost every other SSD has)

K-TRON

 

you guys must have alot of $ to spend on a laptop lol

 

Once 256 GB SSDs like the SuperTalent one K-Tron mentioned come out, I'm snagging up 2...or should I wait for 512gb ones...

 

When your going to by something, buy something your gonna like. money should never be a hindrance.

 

Amen to that.

 

i know one thing though,
the more you spend, the greater it hurts when the system fails.
Oh I am feeling it real bad. I have a $10k system sitting on my desk broken.
It hurts, it really does.

K-TRON

 

fix it, surly you can do it yourself.

 

He's tried. The current BIOS running on his machine is the wrong one and although it boots, most everything else, including the USB interface and the CD drives are whacked. Either of which are needed to restore the BIOS.

 

And what did Gophn do to it?

Im thinking of sacrificing some components for K|N to do a full $400 gunmetal paint job

 

How'd it get that way?

Just came across a webpage describing one way of recovering from a blown BIOS. The BIOS Features and Components page of the [url="http://www.pcguide.com"[/url] describes a special "boot block" that some motherboards contain that will still allow booting from a "special floppy" in the event that a corrupted BIOS is detected. Anyone checked to see if the Clevo notebook systems incorporate such a boot block?

 

gosh the crossfire is soooo darn tempting..

 

It sure is. The only thing thats stopping me from getting a Nagamaki is pictures of the backlit keyboard (un-photoshopped) in a dim room AND an in-depth review from one of the many NBR users who are going to be purchasing this laptop. That matte black finish is very unappealing imo

 

It's actually a glossy piano black finish, not matte black. Of course, KillerNotebooks.com offers painting custimization (so do others, of course). So I guess any color is possible if you're wanting a specific kind.

 

i asked how much a glossy gunmetal silver colour paint job would be, he said it would cost $400. Tad too much

 

Yeah, I saw your post. Dude, you should ditch the gunmetal gray and go for the tiger stripes on the Lotus in the background of that picture you posted. Sweeeeeet....

 

well, if you got a budget, you definitely can't have the best of both worlds- performance vs looks.

if you're gonna do lots of presentation or gonna make yr lappy a showpiece, then go for the gunmetal..

if u just want performance, then its what's INSIDE that counts..

if you have money, everything would be sweet.

(well if anyone had money.. ..)

 

Sounds like it will boot to the hard drives.

> Install DOS on the main HD by plugging the notebook drive into your desktop SATA controller.
> Put your BIOS files on the regular HD.
> Start the system and at the prompt bring up your BIOS flash files and it's done.


More Instructions to install DOS:
> Format HD, using the other PCs options or use a W98SE bootfloppy ( www.bootdisk.com has the files to make one) or any other FreeDOS type system. Pretty sure it has to be FAT16 for DOS.
> Use FDISK from that floppy, to partition the HD.
> Set the partition to Active.
> From the A:\> prompt type in format x: /s /u where x = the first partition.
> Put your BIOS flash files on the drive.
> Put the HD back in the laptop.
> It will boot to the C:\> prompt.
> Run your BIOS files.

Rep me if this helps...

 

Hmm. Good idea. Im sure he'll see this once he logs back in. Ill rep you for trying to help. Thanks!

 

Thanks Dook, it should work. If it does I hope he changes his signature to, " which GOPHN Destroyed and Running Gunner resurrected muhahahahahaaaaaaaa"

 

hehe imagine a real tiger fur skin on that beast!

 

qaz i think you're going mad on the 'customization' part.. you're gonna make mark go hunting to get a tiger? haha..

but on the other hand tho, i would just like K|N to be splashed out big on the front, as it :
1.is simple
2.helps mark in the advertising process (nothing beats a satisfied customer)
3.tells everyone what's inside the notebook that counts.. and that their butts are gonna get kicked.

 

no, i want a whole redesigned chassis made of aliminium! No, of carbon fibre! No, of Titanium! And i want it laced with 24 carat gold! And i want the laptop to be able to time travel!! And to cure cancer!!! I also want endangered red panda fur laced on the logo! And a case made out of Blue Whale skin!!!!!!! Ahahahahaha!!!! Nothing can stop me!

*realizes he has $4200 to spend*

Craaaaaashes down back to Earth

 

hahahaha..

well, for 4.2k MAYBE you could get .. umm lets see..

the carbon fibre,
the titanium,
maybe panda's eyeballs,
and just a picture of the whale,
all on your notebook chasis!

of course, this means that its only a 'chasis', with no actual parts inside.. that way, it'll be lighter too! LOADS lighter..

tho when you open it up you'll just see right through where the screen is supposed to be. LOL

okay lets get back to earth

 

on second thought, i might not get this. I might end up getting avery chic laptop now and getting a Nehalam Desktop next year. Now, Sony FW or Acer 8930 or MacBook Pro?

Agh my mind is so changable! You should see the timeline of laptops i considered in these couple of months!

 

i don't know about you, but the only thing's tempting now is that Nagamaki! that and ONLY that. from K|N, of course.