Questions and Decisions (P150SM)

Hi all,

You've all been such a great help over the years with the questions I've had and I really appreciate it. I'm currently looking into replacing my Sager NP8660 (Clevo M860TU) of 5 years with another 15'' laptop. I'm currently looking into the P150SM because of the 780m and the advantages it comes with over the 770m that I have read up on from these forums. I intend on buying the laptop for the long haul (5 years) and I just have a couple of questions you all may be able to hep with. Honestly, I thought I knew my way around hardware in computers until I met you guys, so please bear with me.

My main question lies in mSATA drives and the advantage in having an SSD in one of the bays along with a HDD in the primary drive vs. just having one standard primary HDD. I've been reading for the past couple months and it's my understanding most people use the SSD for boot-up and apps while using the HDD just for storage (pics, movies, music). Is this assumption primarily correct? If I were to configure with this option, are there significant advantages to performance? Also, how do I set it up so that the CPU knows where to pull data from? Is it as simple as just installing apps on the SSD and setting the boot up drive as the SSD? (I've only ever had one HDD before so I'm a bit confused ).

Second question has to do with the CPU. I'm planning on going with 16GB of RAM. Would upgrading to the i7-4800 CPU really make a difference in performance? Is there a secret formula to maximize how much ram and CPU speed work best without spending extra cash on very minor improvements?

Also, more philosophically, I've been a bit concerned reading about temps on the 780m in the P150SM. From what I've been reading on here it seems the 780m might run a bit too hot, and even with new thermal paste, it might just be the design of the laptop (vents, etc) that is causing this. I generally take great care of my laptop by cleaning it regularly, always being careful when moving it, and periodically massaging it (not really), but ideally I'd like the video card to last 4-5 years and I'm not convinced it would if it's pushing 88-92C consistently. The other PxxxSM models seem to dissipate the heat better, but do not interest me as much as the P150SM for some reasons. However, my question is: How do you combat the feeling of wanting to wait another year for the next model (that might take care of the heat issues) when you're current laptop is chugging along, albeit not with the ability to play the latest games (BF3 and soon 4)?

Thanks again for any help you can provide!!

 

For your first question you're exactly right. You want to put the OS and all programs on the SSD so you can take advantage of its fast read/write times. Media like pics etc dont really benefit from that faster speed so you put them on the HDD. You dont have to tell the CPU anything special. You would set it up as if the HDD were just another folder. On mine I do set Chrome to download to a folder on that drive and any other programs I use to download I set it to place it on that drive.

Getting a i74800 may increase performance but that depends on what you're doing on the computer. For gaming, you'd be hard pressed to see any difference. If doing CPU intensive software that requires a lot of calculations then a faster CPU will help there. The amount of RAM also depends on what you're doing. If you have 8GB, 16GB. 32GB installed in the system but what you're doing on the computer only requires 4GB, the rest of that RAM does nothing for you, its just waiting to be used. I do like to suggest 16GB so you dont have to worry about adding anymore anytime soon.

88-92C may sound high but these components are designed for that. Having too high of temps is not good and can shorten the lifespan of your computer, but having temps within tolerance of what the parts are designed to handle is fine. Since you're current notebook is 5yrs old i think you'd combated the feeling of waiting long enough .

 

The 4700MQ is a pretty good partner to the 780M and still has a little room for tweaking down the line.

16GB will be good for machines intended for use over the long term though I recommend going for 2x8GB rather than 4x4GB.

 

Thank you so much for the help guys. I really appreciate it! If I were to go with the SSD, do you recommend any brand over the others? I see some resellers only offer Crucial M500 series or Intel 525 series SSD's where some offer Samsung 840. Any recommendations? I know there was a thread with this question earlier, but I couldn't find it. I also assume I could just add one later into the open bay if I got the laptop and not buy from the reseller, would it be more cost effective?

 

i done exactly the same move as you and went from a perfect running 6 year old m860tu to a P150EM (last years model) and wow what a difference. i expected it to be faster but wow is all i can say.

i went for a crucial 512gb as at the time samsung were only selling a 256gb and i didnt want a sata as it was only sataII.
i would of defo gone for the samsung as it has the fastest read/write speeds but all the others are still a lot faster than the old spindle drives.

 

OS on the SSD also means your HDD will spend less time working (especially when using Windows), which is good if you worry about head crashes.

 

My preference in SSD Intel > Samsung > Crucial. Based on reliability and speed.

 

That has been our experience and preferences too.

 

Great, thanks for the help. If the reseller doesn't offer a Samsung SSD, can i just buy one off Samsung's website? Or is it something where I'll have to go through eBay?

Though I'll probably just go with the Intel.

 

I believe you'll need to find a local reseller, or buy from online shops like eBay.

 

You should be able to find them at any online site that sells hard drives and SSD's. I'd skip ebay for anything you could find new somewhere else.

 

Any resellers you would recommend?

 

The P150SM has one 2.5' drive bay and two mSATA slots. To go with a full sized 2.5" SSD and an HDD you'd have to swap out the ODD (DVD) bay and use a caddy. If you go with an mSATA SSD for OS/boot you can use the HDD in the 2.5" bay and keep the DVD.

SSDs, size matters for performance. This generation of drives, 240-256GB or larger would be better. For the Crucial M500 no smaller than the 480GB model. The Intel 530 is just out, so there aren't many reviews yet and not the ones I prefer to see. It should be good though based on the last gen. 520. The Samsung 840 Pro is the benchmark king but it's "steady state" results aren't impressive compared to the M500 (480GB) or the Sandisk Extreme II. No resellers or builders list the Sandisk.

mSATA SSDs will generally have lower performance than the 2.5" SSD in the same model line with data on the drive. Again, 240-256GB or larger and the same holds true for the M500. The newly released but not yet reviewed M500 480GB mSATA could be the best mSATA drive to date. The Intel 525 240GB is good but expensive. The Plextor M5M 256GB is a good performer and cheaper than most mSATA drives. The OEM Samsung PM841 mSATA uses TLC NAND and the only one I would consider is the 512GB for performance.

Reliability: Intel Crucial, Samsung are all considered top shelf. The Plextors and Sandisk Extremes have good reviews as well.

The cheapest way to go SSD is to add it yourself, if you are comfortable doing it. Clevo makes It pretty simple.

In the US, I would recommend the Clevo builders (Mythlogic, Prostar) or Sager resellers (LPC, Powernotebooks, Xotic) that participate here on NBR. They, generally, all seem to have good reviews. Contact them all.

 

Going down one size will hurt your read performance (M500 240GB, 128GB for the rest) but is not going to be too noticeable by end users. Worth getting one larger one than two smaller ones in raid though.

 

When I researched mSATA SSD versus SATA SSD, I found no difference in performance. In fact the model mattered more than the connector. In fact I provided a link showing benchmarks in a different thread. But assuming they are both SATA III, then it is just a connector difference not a interface difference. Here is the mSATA vs SATA performance link http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/msata-ssd-review,3286-8.html

But you mention with data on the drive. Do you have a source showing that mSATA is slower?

 

Some models use less channels so can perform worse where as the better ones (intel, M500) will perform as well as their brothers.

 

If you bought the laptop with just an HDD then wanted to install an mSATA SSD later all you would need to do is:

1. Wipe the HDD to take the OS off of it (what's a good software to do this? All the times I've reformatted, I've used the Windows install disk to wipe)
2. Physically install SSD
3. Boot up from the Windows 7 DVD
4. Install the OS onto the SSD when it asks

Correct?

 

When moving to a new primary OS drive I like to have only that drive installed, that means the boot partition is correctly put on that drive. You can then format any other drives you put in from disk manager.

 

I would also format the drive after you install Windows. Actually, I would keep my Windows on the HDD, as a backup in case the other drive fails or the boot image is damaged or a virus, etc. You just need to make sure the SSD is primary.

Eitherway, you don't have to format the drive. But if you want to, you can move any data over the the SSD first before formatting.

 

Meaker is correct. In most, not all, mSATA controllers only four of the eight channels are used. This leads to less interleaving and parallelism. Interleaving in SSDs is similar to double data rate(DDR) in RAM. A couple links and some quotes from the reviews of the Plextor M5M, one of the top mSATA SSDs.

A little about interleaving
Crucial M500 240GB SSD Review | TweakTown

As an example, the Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA and the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme 256GB SSD both use the Marvel 88SS9187 controller and Toshiba 19nm NAND. The Marvel is an 8 channel controller with interleaving. The M5M only uses 4 controller channels while the Xtreme uses all 8.

To give the quotes context, the M5M received a "Best Performance Award" in the same TweakTown review.

TweakTown review
Plextor PX-M5M mSATA 256GB SSD Review - Specifications, Pricing and Availability | TweakTown

AnandTech review
AnandTech | Plextor M5M (256GB) mSATA Review

Any performance differences between mSATA and SATA SSD's? Might use mSATA on Z87 mobo

 

Well, I tried to find the source for that quote. It just seems to be the one guy saying that, as I could not find it on tweaktown.

I think things are changing. Now you can find laptops with SATA III mSATA. Drives are coming out with 8 channel. Either way, 8 channel doesn't mean you get better performance. I think it is best just to look at individual model performance. It is easy to find mSATA that outperforms most SATA, and vice versa.

This quote from Tom's hardware might be interesting.

" You'll notice that the XPG SX300s (all three of them, at 64, 128, and 256 GB) host four BGA memory packages, each of which connects to the controller via two channels. Thus, all three mSATA-based SSDs communicate over eight available channels. Adata tells us that it's using 25 nm synchronous flash from IMFT, which should enable impressive performance.

Why is there so much difference between the three versions in our 4 KB random read test, then? At the low queue depths you'd expect to encounter on an Ultrabook or mainstream desktop, the drives are actually fairly close together. It's only at queue depths of eight and more that the 256 GB model really takes off. This is a result of the interleaving that takes place as more NAND devices are involved in a given operation. At high queue depths, the larger SSD is able to better-utilize the interface between SandForce's controller and the attached flash."

 

Yes because there are more dies per channel.

 

Yes, you can easily find mSATA drives that will outperform 2.5" SSDs. A Plextor M5M 256GB versus any asynchronous NAND 240-256GB 2.5" SSD. I'll take the M5M Plus the M5M is one of the least expensive mSATAs making it a very good value.

To see the difference you have to compare mSATA and 2.5" SSD as close as possible, same brand, same controller same NAND size. The implementation is what's different and it's caused by the form factor, number of NAND, number of die on NAND DRAM buffer or not, size of DRAM. mSATA can't have 16 NAND packages.

Comparing the M500 2.5' SSDs All use the Marvel Controller, all use a DRAM buffer, all use 20nm NAND,
120GB 8 NAND 1 die each 128MB DRAM,
240GB 16 NAND 1 die each, 128MB DRAM,
480GB 16 NAND, 2 dies each 512MB DRAM,
960GB 16 NAND, 4 dies each 1GB DRAM
The 480 and 960 have the same performance specs, which are higher than the 240. which is higher than the 120.

From the [H]ardOCP M500 480GB Specifications:

HARDOCP - Specifications - Crucial M500 480GB SSD Review

I don't recommend 120GB and 240GB M500 in 2.5" or mSATA because of the necessary architectural changes which dramatically lowered performance in these capacities. There are better performing drives for comparable or lower prices.

Tom's Hardware could easily test drives with data on them but they don't. TweakTown tells their readers how they do it and how the reader can do the same, if they wish. [H]ardOCP uses SNIA guidelines for their "Steady State" tests. Most reviews use PCMark Vantage for "real world" results but most reviews do this on an empty drive. Not very "real world" conditions as I don't know anyone that will leave their drive empty. TweakTown does the empty Vantage and a "Drives With Data Testing" Vantage. [H]ardOCP does the empty Vantage and a "Steady State" Vantage. I prefer reviews that, at least, attempt to give the reader an idea how a drive might perform for them. All SSDs lose performance with data on the drive. A review of an empty drive is unrealistic for what a consumer can expect.

High queue depths have no relevance to consumer usage, SSDs are too fast to let requests stack up. A consumer HDD or a SSD used in Enterprise/server environments will see higher queue depths.

 

With the m500 you get the same grade of performance as others of half the capacity.