Malibal Lotus P150HM Spec help!!

Hi, I'm thinking of purchasing a Lotus P150HM from Malibal. Its primarily for gaming, and some schoolwork.

My base specs are:

Display: 15.6" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED Backlit Glossy Display
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.0-2.9GHz
Memory: (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 4 SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 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 Home Premium; 64-bit
Wireless: Internal 802.11B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card

now on top of this, I'm wondering if I should add the following upgrades

$185 Swap out the DVD drive for an 80GB SSD
$50 for i7-2670QM 2.2-3.1GHz
$60 for bigfoot killer networks card (or $35 for the intel 6300? sounded like alot of people get this one)

1. Is putting the OS and stuff on the SSD and putting other storage on 750GB HDD a good idea? more importantly, is it worth the $185 price increase?

2. are there ANY differences from the Sager8150 and Lotus P150HM? I noticed my quotes are around $50 cheaper if i buy from malibal.

3. With my current setup, would the IC Diamond cooling paste be a worthy upgrade?

 

For the first one, I know that putting the OS on the SSD would certainly improve start up times. I don't know too much about hard drives.
The Sager8150 & P150HM are the same thing, just different names.
You could buy the paste for 9 bucks on amazon and apply it yourself if price is an issue, but it will decrease just a few degrees. It's very easy to apply yourself from what I've heard.

 

thanks for the reply. how about the network card upgrade?

 

Personally, I'm getting the 6230 intel card. Alot of others also seem to get the 6230 intel one, but you may want some more input on that.

 

With regards to your three potential upgrades:

1) Spend the $15 (or whatever it is now) to get the caddy instead of the DVD drive. Buy a 128GB SSD during Black Friday or Cyber Monday. I personally recommend the Crucial M4, which you should be able to find for around $150 or $160.
2) You should do this if you plan to do processor-intensive tasks like virtualization.
3) The 6230 has been more than sufficient for my needs, plus it eliminates the need for an additional Bluetooth dongle. The Bigfoot cards accomplish through software what you can accomplish by mucking around in your router's settings.

I'd suggest getting a screen upgrade if you have the budget for it. I personally have the 95% glossy and love it. You might also consider the 30-day Dead Pixel guarantee.

1. Putting the OS and frequently-used (or memory-intensive) programs on the SSD is definitely a good choice. You'll be amazed at how fast the boot times are. You can also customize your Windows setup to put your user files (Documents, Music, etc) on the HDD instead of the SSD to save even more space.

2. It's just branding differences. As I understand it, Malibal buys the barebones from Clevo and assembles them themselves, which allows them to set their own price points and customizations. The others (XoticPC, LPC-Digital, etc.) resell from Sager, so they're bound by Sager's restrictions. I personally have nothing but good things to say about Xotic and LPC (I bought my NP8150 from LPC).

3. I wouldn't get the IC Diamond unless you get your laptop and find that you need it to rectify temperature issues.

 

thanks for the suggestions

hmm. so if i get the caddy, I can just hook up the SSD onto it myself? I would have to reinstall the OS afterwards right?

and if I do end up finding the thermal paste necessary, is it a complicated process to apply? can you "mis-apply" it and screw it up perhaps

 

Assuming you get the SSD separately, your laptop will come with the HDD in the main bay, and the empty caddy where the CD drive bay would be. You would need to take out the HDD and replace it with the SSD, install Windows on the SSD, then install the HDD in the caddy. The whole process should take under an hour. There's plenty of guides online.

For the thermal paste, there's also guides to do it online, but if you're uncomfortable you should be able to take it to a techy friend or a tech store and pay them a labor fee to do it for you.

 

If you're interested in doing some of the work yourself, you may want to check out the service manual for this laptop (link provided by NBR member Theriko).

P15xHM_ESM.zip

You should find detailed instructions on repasting and anything else you need to know. Applying the actual paste differs depending on the brand, but here is the info as per IC Diamond:

Application

 

OH HAI

the HDD and SSD swapping seems simple enough. I'll probably need some help with the paste though, especially with that link showing me so many ways how i can screw up lol.

while you are here, would it be possible for you to tell me which shipping option is a good compromise between price and delivery time? theres like 4 options for UPS, and then theres USPS, with no other details to tell from. only thing I know is UPS standard is the one to keep away from. I live in Vancouver, Canada.