Upgrading the P150HM

Hi, I'm planning to get a new laptop soon and I like the Clevo laptops so I'm looking at getting a P150HM with the 485 GPU. Once you start adding extras then the price starts going up so I would like to know about upgrading in the future once I feel I could benefit from more power.

As I live in Australia then I would be looking at getting one from either Affordable Laptops or LogicalBlueOne.

Harddrives: So if I get one with a standard 500 gig 7200 hard drive, can I later buy a SSD drive and use the 500 gig as a secondary drive? The only issue I can see is I have to reinstall the OS and software.

Ram: If I take the 8 gig ram then if I updgrade to 16 gigs later then do I have to buy a new lot of 16 gigs or do I just buy any 8 gig ram? As I have not built pc's etc for sometime I wonder how important is it still to buy ram of the same batch etc like it used to be back 4-5 years ago with a pc?

Also with ram, how good is the 1600 speed ram compared to the 1300?

Are these laptops easy to open and work on and upgrade ram and parts etc?

 

HDD: The P150HM can only hold a single HDD, so if you replace the 500GB with an SSD, you would have to either buy a caddy to hold the 500GB, like this: NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks or buy an HDD enclosure and plug up the 500GB to a USB / eSATA port.

RAM: If you order 2 X 4GB, then you can simply add 2 X 4GB later, giving you a total of 16GB. Upgrading the RAM and HDD is relatively easy. There are instructions in the manual: ftp://sftp.clevo.com.tw/USRMANUAL/P15xHM/EUM.zip - for replacing the HDD and two primary memory modules. And here's instructions for replacing / installing the other two memory modules: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...evo-p151hm1-owners-lounge-28.html#post7080245

 

word of advice, try to purchase the rams all at the same time if possible. in the future when you purchase different ram, the specs might be different and it might cause trouble.

 

Yes I had read some of this. I do use my DVD drive on my current laptop quite a bit plus I also travel a lot so I prefer to keep it there. I'm only worried if a 120 gig ssd drive will be enough to install program files etc on and to last for a few years, anything more than 120 gigs then it gets very expensive down here at least in Oz? I think I'm moving to the idea of going with the SSD drive and having it all going from day one and just add external hard drives as I need them. In fact I have several 2.5" & 3.5" sata drives that I could use in an enclosure so that seems the best option for storage.

thanks for the info & instruction links, they will be book marked.

that is what I'm thinking so I really need to decide what ram I should get as I plan to max it out to 16 gigs as I will be doing a lot of photo editing and other ram hungry processes.

 

you may want to consider a 500gb momentus xt then, pretty cheap in aus now.. $~150

 

hey thanks for that info, yes only $140, about $150 shippped Seagate Momentus XT 500GB - Price Comparison Australia - Buy Cheap not bad for a 500 gig SSD

 

Well it's not fully an ssd its a regular hardrive with 4gp of nand memory on it so its a hybrid drive, but still it is much faster than a standard hdd.

 

ok that's good to know, I need to do some research soon on harddrives....