Considering P151EM for a Canadian Buyer

Hello NBR, first time poster here,

I am thinking of purchasing a laptop primarily for gaming, with a
secondary use for work stuff (e.g. SolidWorks, which does not leverage GPU
other than rendering). While in gaming mode I would almost always be
plugged in, for work I need a bit of mobility and battery life.

Although I have quite a bit of experience with desktop building and
customization, I have not had much experience with laptops personally.
But after a bit of research, I am leaning towards a P151EM for performance
and the better screen without breaking the bank (or not too much!).
Preliminary spec I'm considering is listed below,

- 15.6" 1080p matte display (base model)
- i7-3610QM (opting for IB mostly for additional power saving)
- 8~12 GB DDR3 1333MHz/1600MHz
- GTX 670m
- 128GB Crucial M4 SSD or 120GB Intel 520 SSD
- 8x DVD
- Windows 64bit Home Premium
- 802.11 b/g/n + bluetooth combo

(Current price $1500+ after tax, which is a bit above my budget, but still
seems like a great deal nevertheless.)

Now I have a few questions which I hope more experienced people can help
clarify for me:

1) Does the IC Diamond TIM make a significant difference?
- I can always do some benchmark without it after purchase, and then apply
the TIM myself afterwards, though any insights and experience would be
welcomed and would help me decide.
- Related to this, any first hand experience with the temperature/noise of
this model would be of particular interest to me.

2) SSD v.s. SRT Caching?
- For almost the same price, the option is either 500GB/7200RPM with 40GB
SRT, or a single 120GB SSD. Extra space is welcoming, although I
personally do not need that much disk space especially with a functional
desktop at home. Nevertheless, the SRT option is slightly cheaper, and is
potentially more versatile.
- Alternatively I could buy a small SSD and install it myself afterwards
(either as OS or a mSATA SRT drive). One poster mentioned a vendor was
willing to ship without HDD and reduce the cost of his sytem accordingly,
that could be enticing also.

3) Available Vendors?
- Being in Canada the custom brokerage fees can often be rather excessive
when ordering from the US. However, I've found that both Reflex
Notebook (based in Canada) and Prostar (in CA) supposedly cover
shipping/custom charges. Are there other vendors that would cover
shipping costs or provide competitive pricing in spite of brokerage fees
(or based in Canada)? Any experience dealing with either vendor or others
are welcomed.

4) Battery Life?
- I have not found very clear values on this aspect, the figures I've been
seeing suggest anywhere from 1~4hrs. While I don't expect this system to
run for 8hrs, it would be nice to know what the limit is for basic
workload v.s. gaming mode, just so I can be better informed and know what
to expect, as well as prepare for it for travelling use.

5) Additional upgrades/downgrades, insurance/warranty, or accessories?
- Any insights or comments are welcomed.

Thanks to any poster in advance for any assistance/insights you may offer,

- Phil

 

The recurring tales of excessive brokerage have come mostly from UPS, with people picking UPS Ground.

I've been stung once back in the "free Vista upgrade" days, but in that case was able to revert the charges because some twits had written 100$+ as value on the commercial invoice...

Pick either one of the more expensive UPS options, or better yet, USPS, and brokerage is either going to be free, or much, much cheaper.

You could also clear the goods yourself depending on your location.

Don't forget you still have to pay taxes.

Warranty coverage is another variable to consider, although many resellers offer Canadian coverage in one form or another.

 

2. The SRT falls behind in speed in terms of a regular SSD, and personally if you don't require the extra space its a much better investment to get it instead.

3. Reflex and prostar are definitely some of the vendors that offer free shipping but you should really make the exact same configuration and see which site offers the best price, I went with xotic simply because the configuration was cheaper and there shipping covered brokerage fees.

4. Battery life when off gaming should loom just around the 5 hour mark, with optimus. On intensive graphics, anywhere from an hour to two, maybe two and a half if your lucky.

5. If your planning to use the notebook for a long time you should consider upgrading to a 3720 for that extra power since your work requires less GPU. Also consider buying parts from different locations and installing it yourself, I got a great deal on my ssd (M4 256gb) for $189, and saved a good $50 on RAM as well. I'm also reusing my OS so thats another $90, and if you inquire to each vendor about discounts I'm sure you could save some through that as well.

 

3. Reflexnootebooks was about $80-100 more for my config and they weren't giving free shipping when I checked, but as it was coming from Quebec it wasn't as expensive as coming from the states. I went with Powernotebooks quite simply because they had a $120 for UPS shipping including brokerage fees.

4. Battery life, when your on battery your on the HD4000, so any gaming you are doing is going to be on low-med graphics and looking at 2 hours like City said.

5. If you live near the GTA go to canadacomputers for the upgrade in RAM or SSD. It will save you a fair bit of money (i saved $40 on ram and $100 on the SSD)

*Edit- For the SSD i went with OCZ as the seek and the read/write matched intel at about 500MB/s on both and was cheaper. Going with Intel, your paying for the name brand more than you are the performance. City went with the Crucial M4 which has Read/Write of 415/260 MB/s (Respectively) which wont make a huge difference in gaming (seek time is the big winner there) but if your working with very large solid edge files loading them into RAM will be quicker.

Something to consider when choosing.

 

Not at all true. People buy intel ssds because they are the most reliable ssds in the market and have been for the past couple of years. OCz has been known to brick easily and there failure rate is pretty high, that's why most people stay away from there ssd. Also in terms of performance if you look carefully that's upto 500. In terms of actually up keeping performance constantly top three are Kingston, intel and maybe crucial. Also ssds have minimal affect in games in performance other then load times so it's insignificant which ssd you go with if your trying to raise frame rates or any other programs ingeneral

 

I never said anything about frame rates... SSDs improve load times mainly because of the seek times. HDD have 3s spin up (from idle) and 10ms seek times where SSD has no spin up time and seek times around 0.1ms. Data transfer rates wont play any role in gaming. It may affect his work with any CAD software if he is loading large files/libraries but the difference between 415 and 500 read wont be noticeable; and the benchmarks ive seen for OCZ drives show them hitting read writes right around advertised rates.

As for failure rates... google it and these numbers keep popping up as manufacturer reported failure rates:
Intel 0,59%
Corsair 2,17%
Crucial 2,25%
Kingston 2,39%
OCZ 2,93%

Yes Intel is the best, the rest are all close enough that it wont matter. I've used kingston and ocz and have had no issues with either of them. It comes down to luck of the draw.

My advise for SSD is find the best deal he can.. im not saying OCZ is the best... im saying it saved me $100 from buying the same size Intel SSD that would have come with the laptop had i upgraded it from my reseller.

 

The gaming performance was something I misread so I apologize for that. But to the ocz, the article you used was written before the third one came out, it's reported at nearly 7% and most likely higher, that's why I'm stating intels ssds aren't bought just for brand name but for there quality

 

Hang on, Crucial SSD's are among the top 3 fastest brands?
When you refer to the "third one" are you referring to all OCZ SSD's in general that have "3" in their name or just the vertex 3?

 

Although there biggest failure rates come from the third series ocz agility and it's two series have also been reported by many to have large failures with some people having to swap them out as much as four times. It's a real mess.

As for speeds, currently the top two hands down is intel 520, and Kingston hyperX they're dominating read write speeds along with heavy workload testing. As for third place in my opinion is between samsungs 830 series and crucial m4 surprisingly. Here's spme testing to show I'm not simply blowing smoke: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/...cherryville-brings-reliability-to-sandforce/3

 

No, I like both samsung and crucial too too. I'm just surprised crucial would take any names with it's comparatively low sustained writes.

 

Since no one has mentioned the IC Diamond Thermal Compund, I will It's supposed to lower your temps by an extra 5-10 degrees, which is pretty significant if you will be OCing. I believe they apply it to both the cpu and gpu. Now if you absolutely know what you're doing with the thermal compund I'd say do it yourself because you can get a tube for that price. however, if you put too much on or too little it can really mess things up. Hope that helped!

 

Thanks for all the suggestions and insights, very much appreciated.

It seems my best bet would indeed be to contact the various vendors directly and ask them for quotes and options. I was not aware other vendors may also cover shipping and/or brokerage fees to Canada (not advertised as promotions), and that could potentially open up more options.

Thanks again for all the help

 

Correct, contacting multiple vendors is always the way to go
Remember, we're here 24/7 if you have more questions.

 

I guess there is a post limit before i can use PM? 5 posts?

I was able to contact 6 vendors via email/website to get some basic replies on shipping charges, but for Pro-Star their web submission does not seem to work properly. Anyway, does anyone have a contact email for them?

Thanks in advance,

 

On a related note,

I've only found Tom's review on Ivy memory scaling, and it seems that there really isn't much tangible gain for practical uses between 1333MHz and 1600MHz. While most vendors only offer the latter option, Xotic and Pro-Star dp allow downgrade to 1333 to save $50. Does anyone have hands-on experience (not benchmarks) that shows noticeable differences in practical uses?

 

The 1600 mhz have faster timings or frequencies so it will process information quicker than the 1333 mhz. Looking at an article on RAM with the Sandy processor, it is a 2-3% or higher difference in performance (so I'd imagine it would be probably around the same or a little higher on Ivy). Apparently in the gaming world, RAM is starting to have a bit of an effect on performance for games. I read somewhere that you could get around 5 fps more with the higher frequencies. The 1600 mhz is becoming the norm in terms of standard RAM. However you could always OC the 1333 mhz to a quicker frequency, keeping in mind the voltage change needed.

 

Interesting info MrLost. By the way do you know if the RAM runs at 1.5v or lower voltage? I got the P1xxEM user manual from the other thread, but a quick browse through did not find the RAM operating voltage.

Thanks,

 

Yup, I'm pretty sure 1600mhz runs at 1.5V default, I've been seeing the motherboards of slightly older comps not detecting the 1600mhz but the 1333mhz instead. Now with Ivy it shouldn't be a problem.