Finally ordered my next laptop (p150em) First things to do when I get it?

I finally got to the point where I'm ready to buy a new laptop. I've been completely without a computer for a few months now, and the frustration of doing everything on my phone and/or my mom's trash laptop(fan starts screaming from 5+ Chrome tabs) is quite high.

I'm switching around and upgrading the parts myself a lot, because I have spare parts myself, and because some options weren't available. (and because I'm poor until I get a laptop to work with again lol)

Config and plan is as follows:
- Default 15,4" FHD Matte monitor (there was no options so I'm buying my own AUO B156HW01 v4 [matte 95%] later)
- i7-3610QM (may upgrade to i7-3820QM later depending on how pleased or not pleased I am with 3610)
- 4GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM (Adding my own 2x2GB 1333MHz, and later replacing them all with 4x8GB 1600MHz or 4x4GB 1866GHz)
- GeForce GTX 680M
- 320 GB Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm (buying my own Samsung 830 SSD)
- 8x Multi DVD Burner (adding my own blu-ray combo, and later a HDD caddy with 1TB HDD)
- Wireless-N 135 + Bluetooth (adding my own Ultimate-N 6300)
- Windows 8 RP and/or some Linux (I want to see if I can properly get used to and live with 8. If not then going back to 7)
- I'm also buying IC Diamond once I need more paste, when upgrading some parts.

Ordered from Notebookguru for 1689€ total incl. shipping.


So anyway, I was wondering. What are the first things I should do besides installing drivers?

So far I've picked up:
- Upgrade vBIOS (and laptop BIOS?)
- Check for and/or fix cooling problems
- Fix possible sound issues
- Do benchmarks to make sure everything is working as supposed to in regards of performance and heat (I haven't looked into this a lot yet, so I'm not sure what to do)
- Have an electrical failure from drool on the laptop
- Somehow get myself a profile for the 95% screen once I get it

 

congrats on your order. i should be getting mine this week as well.

for benchmarks and monitoring tools check the link out in my signature where you will find almost everything you need.

 

I ordered an NP9170 from Sager and I was wondering the same thing. More along the lines of optimization of components. Seems like the conventional wisdom regarding SSDs is DO NOTHING to optimize them. Is there a need to disable win defrag?

Also, do the newer BIOSes offer anything worth risking the flash for?

Back in the day with my current laptop, the best available drivers were tweaked drivers by NGO and they gave me a solid 15%-20% increase in fps up to 2012 in comparison to official Nvidia drivers. Is there no such underground tweak for AMD drivers?

 

What i've did is after installing windows, optmize the ssd with this guide: The SSD Optimization Guide Redesigned - The SSD Review (i'm no expert, but most of the steps sounded really plausible) and if you're using a second hdd move the user folders to that drive: User Profile - Change Default Location - Windows 7 Forums. I didn't want to waste the sdd space with data like movies, music and pictures. I've only installed the os, programs and games on the ssd.

 

all i know as ive never had a ssd myself before is turn off defrag. it can damage ssd's in some way.

 

Thanks! I'll check 'em out.

Myself I don't even know if it improves or helps anything lol. I just have the image that it's good to update the BIOS to a recent one when I buy a new laptop, just in case. There shouldn't be any downsides anyway. (besides failing and bricking your laptop, but that's only if you yourself fail to do it right)

As far as I've understood, it just causes unnecessary wear to the SSD. HDD needs to be defragmented to increase speed, but SSD doesn't have seek limitations so it doesn't need defrag.

 

I used something to move Chrome's cache to the RAM so it wouldn't waste SSD writes/space. I also disabled hibernate to free up space because if I want to move the laptop I might as well shut it down because of how fast it boots up.

 

If you do a clean install of Win 7 on an SSD it will turn off defrag for the SSD. Defrag will do nothing for your SSD, it will just add extra wear to the cells. Kind of like if you put your car up on blocks and kept starting and stopping your wheels wearing down your breaks and not going anywhere.

 

Thanks for this one!

 

How did you do that? RAMdrive?

 

It was called RAMDisk and can be found here. After installing that and using it to make a little drive (like 500 MB) I added an extension on to the code that Chrome uses when it launches. It's very easy, I just googled how to do it and it took maybe five minutes. You can find the guide I used here.