Buying P170HM, not waiting for P170EM

Hey guys,

Been following the forums for a while now and its finally time. My dilemma is that I have $2500 and need to spend it . Now I know some people will say to wait for the new-gens, but alot of this is still in speculation and waiting is no longer the option it seems for me anymore so here is the specs. on what I'll be getting unless you guys think I should make some changes:

Malibal - Satori P170HM (Est. Price = 2,473.00)


Customizations:

Promotions: $100 OFF Configurations Over $1500
Promotions: $135 OFF Any Configuration
Display: 17.3" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit 120Hz 3D 72% NTSC Matte Display
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2760QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.4-3.5GHz
Memory: (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M 2GB GDDR5
Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
Optical Drive Bay: 6X Blu-ray Reader 8X DVD+/-R DL Super-Multi Drive
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional; 64-bit
Wireless: Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 802.11A/B/G/N LAN Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
Keyboard: English: US & Canada
Power Cord: US & Canada
Branding: MALIBAL
Build Time: 5-7 Business Days (Estimated Time)
Warranty: LIFETIME Ltd. Labor and 3 Year Parts Warranty with 24/7 Support (USA)
Extras: Standard Black Carrying Case



I'll be using this laptop for everything, from school to gaming, so I'll most likely be purchasing an extra battery pack, along with upgrading some parts like the RAM and HD in the future.

Please give me as much criticism as possible so I can try and hopefully stop thinking about this decision so damn much and finally purchase something. Thanks all, really like the forum, you've guys been a real awesome community.

 

Looks like a pretty solid configuration to me. You hit the sweet spot on most of the components. With the 6990m not being available, the 580m is at least equivalent in power.

The only suggestion I'd make is that you might want to consider a hybrid drive or SSD in the primary bay if you want to get significantly better day-to-day real world performance. It would make your typical experience much snappier and not just during games.

 

Thanks for the info. How would you compare 1 sata III SSD vs. 2 7200 rpm HD's? I've never used RAID before so I was kinda curious

 

Agree, considering that this machine has the option to have 2 drives (3 w/o the ODD) you might as well as put a SSD as the main drive and a slightly smaller HDD as the "slave" drive

 

What are exclusive deal for NBR members?

 

The i7-2760QM is absolutely a waste of $160, unless you absolutely need it for the VT-d support. An increase of 10% is not worth $160 with CPUs or GPUs, and you'll never notice a single difference over the 2670QM.

Spend that money on something which will reap major benefits, like an SSD.

 

I agree difference between 2670qm and the i7 2670 is minimal, getting a ssd with a slave would be one of yhe biggest upgrades for you right now . Switch and spend the rest on a ssd with a reg slave hdd, I'm glad I did.

 

Having multiple drives would be nice to have, and going with a 120g SSD + 500g slave HDD seems like an option

I have read mixed reviews on RAID but do you guys think I should bite the bullet and spend $140 more and get 2 120g SSDs?

 

Why go with 2x 120GB SSD? RAID won't really benefit you very much as you would be losing TRIM support. Also, the SSD is plenty fast and you really won't be gaining a significant speed advantage. You could take advantage of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology though if you mount your secondary drive to a folder in your SSD. To figure out how to do that you can check out at this website SSD Unlimited Storage Tutorial - Trubritar Forums - Absolutely Phenomenal!
Just ignore the SSD in RAID configuration setup, you can find the mounting part near the bottom of the posting.

Also, is there a reason you want the Bigfoot Killer N-1103? 450Mbps is quite impressive but you can't utilize that sort of speed outside of your network. Internally, it may help for transferring data between computers but aside from that, I may recommend you scale back on your NIC a little.

 

Thanks for the article! Was a real good read. I will in all likelihood be going with 1 sata III SSD and mounting a second HDD to a folder in my SSD. Thanks again, you just saved me some money

 

Just for the fun of it I thought I would post the other option I was looking at. I keep trying to convince myself of the following system, but this just seems to be to insane of a system to convince the wife that I'll be using the laptop for school and not just trying to game all the time




Malibal - Nine P270WM (P270WM) (Est. Price = $2,974.00)


Customizations:

Promotions: $100 OFF Configurations Over $1500
Display: 17.3" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit Glossy Display
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-3930K, 12MB L3 Cache, 3.2-3.8GHz 6 Core (Desktop CPU)
Memory: (16GB) 16384MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 4 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M 2GB GDDR5
Hard Drive: 750GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional; 64-bit
Wireless: Intel® 6300 Ultimate-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU
Keyboard: English: US & Canada
Power Cord: US & Canada
Branding: Black Edition
Build Time: 5-7 Business Days (Estimated Time)
Warranty: LIFETIME Ltd. Labor and 1 Year Parts Warranty with 24/7 Support (USA)


obviously with the price tag, I would have to wait a little before trying to upgrade to max this thing out to its full potential

 

The P270WM, being a desktop replacement, is something you don't want to carry around on a daily basis.
Also battery life is like non existent and just like the EMs it will only be released in April with the 3D version coming later.