Vizio Cn15 A5

Would I be able to fit Amazon.com: SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7PC256B/WW: Computers & Accessories

in a http://store.vizio.com/cn15a5.html?

And would i need to take out the cache drive?

 

I'm curious as well... likely going to pick this up, but I definitely need to bump the drive to an SSD. Havn't found any sites with good howtos for the vizio's yet

 

I am going to say it will fit in this laptop. The model I have is the CN15-A1 which is essentially the same as the CN15-A2 and I assume is the same as this "new" model in terms of build.
My Vizio has a Western Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT 1TB 5400 RPM in the sata slot. Anything with similar dimensions I assume will fit. The WD drive has dimensions of 3.94 x 0.374 x 2.75 inches and the drive you posted has dimensions of 3.9 x 0.3 x 2.8 inches. So this should replace the main HDD with OS on it. The cache drive is simply a mSATA ssd. I personally went that route and added a 120gb mSATA ssd so I could keep the 1TB in there.

The main problem you will run into is the OS. As said in previous threads, there are things installed on the laptop you simply can't get back (easily at least). What I did is use a program to clone the HDD from the WD to my Mushkin SSD and it worked flawlessly.
The only problem I might be having after doing this is the fan seems to kick on randomly and be a little louder than usual. I am not sure if this happens with all Vizio laptops or if it was because I used a ssd instead of the regular hdd so it can't read temps? Hopefully I can fix this eventually.

 

Can anyone with a CN15-A5 confirm if this laptop actually has FOUR memory slots? I ran CPU-Z and Speccy and both display that only two slots are in use with 4GB each while the other two slots are apparently empty.

I have never come across a laptop that has four DIMM slots.

 

If the CN15-A5 is the same as the other CN15 models just with windows 8, which I am very sure it is.. then no. It should only have 2 slots. But confirmed in my CN15-A1 thread by another member, you can put (2) 8gb sticks of ram in the CN15-A1. According to this you should be able to put (2) 8gb sticks into this model as well. Although this is untested.

 

The other two slots being picked up are likely the "on the board" slots where ram could have been soldered.

What I would love to know is does the cn15 a5 have two 4gb modules installed or is one open and what type of memory could be used to upgrade ? Also, it seems there is an msata slot for an ssd but will the bios allow you to make this this the boot drive leaving the 1TB for storage ? also, is the 32gb cache currently used on this model in that msata slot or a hybrid part of the 1TB drive ?

 

I just got my unit and just unscrewed the bottom plate to take a quick look. I only see 2 DIMM slots. There might be more under the motherboard, but I am not looking to tear apart the laptop and void the warranty. (Vizio said its okay to upgrade the RAM / HDD, but that they wouldn't cover any damages you may cause in the process.)

RAM, HDD, and mSATA drive are all accessible as soon as you remove the bottom plate.

The 2 x 8 GB DIMMs I purchased haven't arrived yet, but I'll be able to test that next week.

In the CN15-A5, the 32GB is a mSATA drive and its separate from the 1 TB drive.

 

Can anyone suggest an external Bluray optical drive that would work well with the Vizio CN15-A5?

 

Samsung makes a good one

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG USB 2.0 External Slim Portable Blu-ray Writer Model SE-506AB/TSBD

Or if aesthetics are a non issue just get an internal blueray player and an external hard drive enclosure and that works just as well (might need to take some of the guts out of the enclosure to make everything fit but that's what I have right now since my main pc has no more free Sata ports)

 

I'm going to open the laptop up to investigate some other stuff, but I'm sure the SSD will fit no problem, and the cache would not need to be removed. However, because of secure boot, installing windows 8 might be significantly difficult but to my understanding, if you put the drive in completely empty and insert a windows 8 install flash drive (regular windows 8, NOT windows 8 PRO) it should allow you to install windows... if not i'm not exactly sure how you'd get windows on it