NP8157/P650HS - Need help choosing storage drives and installing OS

Hi guys,

I hope this is the right place to ask the many questions I have! I'm planning on getting a NP8157 from PCSpecialist to replace my trusty w860cu, but unsure which storage options to choose and have a couple of other related questions.

Drive Choices

1) 512gb PM961 NVME + 2tb seagate firecuda SSHD
2) 1tb PM961 NVME + 1tb seagate SSHD

I'm planning to use the nvme drives for the OS and programs/games, and the other drive to store films/pics etc. What would people suggest? Or is there another configuration with roughly the same amount of storage and space that would work better? I don't mind getting 2ssd's if the price is similar

Which Driver?

I've seen reports of some people using the MS nvme drive and some using the Samsung one. Which is the one to use?

Installing the OS

I'm choosing the option to install windows 10 myself, and plan to use the media creation tool to create a bootable flash drive. When I get my laptop, do I need to do anything special in the bios or remove the 2nd hdd to install win 10 on the SSD? Or it it just a case of plugging in the USB and setting that as the first boot option and go from there?

It's just I've read conflicting reports about installing windows 10 on an NVME SSD, and things relating to UEFI/fastboot/MBR partitions, and having 2 drives present that I don't fully understand.

Sorry for all the questions!!

 

A SSHD is pointless as a storage drive. Get a standard spinning disk for things that won't benefit from being on a SSD. Aside from a somewhat small decrease in boot times, unless you're going to be doing a lot of heavy duty reading/writing, there's not a lot of point in having a NVMe drive either, at least not enough to justify the cost. If you want to go all SSD, using standard SATA units should suit you just fine.

I used the standard MS driver when I had my Samsung SM951. No issues that I noticed.

It is recommended to install Windows with only 1 hard drive in your machine. With the Prema BIOS, you have the option to disable individual SATA ports so you can leave your drives connected whenever you need to reinstall the OS. The BIOS mod is only available from Prema partner resellers. I don't know if PCSpecialist is one of them.

Even with the stock BIOS, you need to run in UEFI mode in order to use a NVMe drive. When you have that parameter set, the Windows 10 installer routine will know how to format it - it will be just like using a standard SATA drive.

 

I agree, I would definitely go with a SATA ssd and a Western Digital HDD. The hard drive will be more reliable and SATA ssds are way way better value than pcie. You may even just be able to get a huge ssd or a couple large ssds with your budget going sata.

PCSpecialist is not a Prema partner, it's a hard bios to get over there. Obsidian PC is probably the closest and it's kinda far.

 

Thanks for the reply. Out of the configurable options, the 1tb 850 evo, PM961, WDBlue, Intel x400 are all roughly the same amount which is why I just decided on the fastest out of the lot.

Still not sure if i should go for the smaller SSD + Large HDD option, or the 1tb SSD + 1tb HDD option. I'm unable to find a 2x1tb SSD config for the same price as it just gets too expensive. I'm not even sure if it matters if all I'm storing on the secondary is media, documents, and android backups.

 

If that's all you have, then a spinning drive will be fine.

 

Right. Usually small files like those would open up quickly anyways, so I would think getting a large SSD might be overkill.

 

We live for overkill.

 

True, true. That's half the fun of building computers.

 

HAHA so true

+rep!