Are these a good upgrade?

Hi guys getting to that time where I might as well put a little more money into the lappy to keep it going as I would like. What do you think of the following:

Is this RAM better or worse than what I already have as standard:

Corsair Memory 4GB Vengeance Performance DDR3 SO-DIMM 1600 MHz 9 Dual Channel Laptop - CMSX4GX3M1A1600C9 - Scan.co.uk

And is this SSD a good choice, I hear its one of the better ones ?

Crucial M4 SSD 7mm, 2.5" SSD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, Read 500Mb/s, Write 175Mb/s - CT128M4SSD1 - Scan.co.uk

And finally anyone got a link to a drive bay for the SSD instead of a optical drive, cant find them anywhere in the UK. Thinking of using it in conjunction with my HDD if additional heat isnt an issue.

Cheers in advance.

 

The RAM is nice. Crucial M4 SSD is an excellent choice from most of the posters I have seen raving about them here in the forums.

For your drive caddy, this is what I found doing a quick Google search. Google

Not sure if the Sager/Clevo takes the same ODD/HDD caddy as all the other laptops but it should. Please be aware if you are getting an SSD, you will get the performance benefits installing it into your primary drive bay.

 

Two things to consider though as you've got an older W860CU/NP8690:

1) The RAM you're looking at is 1600Mhz. The i7-720qm processor you're running only supports 1066/1333Mhz RAM. So from a performance standpoint, you can go with two sticks of that new RAM to up your total to 8GB, but it's going to downclock to 1333Mhz and the performance won't be any better.

2) The SSD is a good choice for speeding up overall performance. However, the w860CU only has SATA II ports, not SATA III, so that drive you picked out won't run at the max rated speeds either. If you want to save some money, you might want to look for a cheaper SATA II drive.

 

Thanks for the replies guys +1. So basically neither will work to its full potential. Would I be better gettin 8GB of 1333 RAM as its supported ? And this is the only decent SSD I can find:

Intel 120GB 320 Series SSD - Solid State Drive - SSDSA2CW120G310 - Scan.co.uk

Can I change my processor to accept faster RAM?

 

If the price is less on the 1333Mhz RAM, that's what I'd go with since it would save you some money and would run the same in the end.

The Intel SSD's are always a good choice for reliability and performance, you can't go wrong there. The only reason you might want to consider a SATA III drive is if you plan to take that drive with you to a new machine down the road where you WILL benefit from the speed.

I can't speak for any non-official upgrades on the CPU, but that model came offered with the i7-720QM, the 820QM, and the 920XM when it was new. All three of those processors were limited to 1333Mhz RAM at the fastest. You're not missing much though, as the bump to 1600Mhz RAM only brings with it about 4-5% improvement in benchmarks.

 

I have the M4 in my w860cu and it is very nice. Remember if you upgrade to a newer system that supports sata-3 later on you can still use your ssd in that system. The fastest sata-2 disk is probably the samsung 470, but any newer ssd will give you good performance.

As for the ram, there is little point in upgrading to faster ram, more ram will be better.

 

Ahh kk thanks again mate for your helpful info. Will my machine recognise 8GB? I think I will upgrade to some of that. And as for the SSD ye good call on thinking ahead. Might do it all the same as its not too expensive.

Cheers mate, think I will get a SATA III and keep it for a while, the M4 nice ?

 

The w860cu will take upto 16gb, 8gb is not a problem.

The M4 is tried and true. Not the fastest out there though. I would either go with the M4, the Samsung 830 or the Intel 520 if I were to get a new one today.

Either way, the jump from a mechanical drive to a ssd is much bigger than the difference between ssd's, so you really can't go wrong with either of these.

 

+1 for the M4 and 830. Have them both in laptops atm. Theyre both solid drives. Great performance at a solid price and really reliable (Samsung is slightly better both in terms of speed and reliability - theyre made entirely by Samsung unlike all the other SSDs, so if you can get them for a similar price id go with the 830).
Id stay away from the Intel 520 as its Sandforce based and seams to be suffering from the same issues the other SF based drives and its expensive compared to the rest.

 

does low latency/"performance" laptop ram actually exist? eg Kingston HyperX, Corsair XMS etc etc?

 

There are options with better timings and higher speeds, but the difference is usually negligible. In most cases, it's not the RAM that's slowing down the performance on a mobile notebook anyway.

 

I have a HyperX 120GB (501 FW) in my D901C without any problems. HyperX is similar with Intel 520 in almost every performance aspect except the 4KB reads.
I don't think there are any instability issues left with these two drives, at least with the latest firmware versions.

 

Cheers for all your help guys! Really appreciate it. Think ill just get a decent SSD (SATA III one) then I can use it again in another machine if needs be.

As for the RAM was only bringing it up because I know how much the previouse gen RAM goes up in price after the new gen is out. And at roughly 40 quid per 8GB stick of RAM thought it was worth it

Maybe get all 16GB for less than 100 and then im sorted until next build.

Cheer guys like I said oyu a great help. +1