Official Sony VAIO F Series i5/i7 owners thread *part 4*

You like yours a lot? Do you really notice a huge difference especially with our system?

Can you send me a pic of your sony to see how it looks on top of it?

 

NZXT Cryo LX Black laptop cooler for the F

I would easily make the purchase again. Powered by both USB or AC. Gives you 5 extra USB ports. Adjustable fan speed- there are three fans. Gives the laptop an approx 15% angle which improves usage. Laptop sits perfectly on top with about a 1/2 inch extra on each side- the cooler not the laptop. Cons: not portable (although it folds in two) and the pointed ends are a little sharp.

 

Just did a clean install using Joe Bleau's guide on my new F12. It did work perfectly! One suggestion. When the vaio care application came up I almost didn't think to hit ctl-alt-delete because I wasn't aware I was already in Windows. Thus, putting in a note indicating that you can open task manager even though it doesn't appear to be in Windows would be great!

After getting everything done it was just as J. Bleau indicated. None of the bloatware on the computer and everything working perfectly! Thanks!!

 

what do you think about the one i was thinking on buying? he link is on the page before this.

 

Thanks for the feedback, glad it worked for you.

Yes, that's the point: after Windows is installed, you interrupt the following cr@pware installation step with Task Manager as you are in Windows. Will try to make it more explicit in the Vaio_F Series Custom OEM clean install guide. Edit: Done! Added your observation to the guide, thanks.

Was there any Value Added Software (Webcam Companion, WinDVD, etc) missing in the Vaio_Care software reinstall options like Jef & Gandalf reported in previous pages with fix feedback here? Is yours a US_F12?

 

The Thermaltake Notebook cooler Model CLN0008 was in the running when I was shopping.

 

I was looking at this hard drive for the sony but I am not sure if this will fit. How can a company make a 2.5 HDD and not use the standard size.

Can someone let me know if this will fit please. Thanks

Also what hard drive does the vaio f12 ship with. I just want a huge drive thats good and not crap.

 

+1 I have used a laptop cooler on the three different laptops that I've owned before buying my F12. I went through three of them before because I didn't like the first two for one reason or another. However I couldn't use my old cooler for the F12 because it was too small. I researched this to death before settling on the same NZXT that you have, Fishon, and I am very happy with it. I especially like the easily adjustable fan speed and the fact that it is very quiet. It also seems very well made and looks very nice too. Since my F12 is a desktop replacement, portability is a non-issue for me.

 

If I may offer my personal opinion, the cooler you're looking at might be overkill. The VAIO's cool fantastically. Both Willscary and I have the CoolerMaster Notepal U2 and love it.

@Fishon: That is a sexy sexy cooler you've got. I might have been convinced to get that one if I didn't have my mind set on the CoolerMaster (it's considerably portable, which suits my needs well).

@John_Wa: Where in/around Olympia are you? I was raised in Lacey.

 

Will the F12 fit on it or stick out?

 

The F12 is about an inch narrower than the cooler so the cooler sticks out around 1/2 inch on each side.

 

Mine sticks out .75" on either side. I don't really consider that to be sticking out. I'd understand if you do.

 

Does using an external cooler reduce the noise the F12 makes overall? (taking into account the noise made by the external cooler!)

 

OH MY GOD MANGO!! how do you do that man!! ive been playing sc2 since the beta and the highest i could play it on was high at 1080p but i would lag and spike a lot was i now play it on medium.
whats your exact settings on sc2? im thinking its because i dont got my gpu overclocked yet but does it really make that big of a difference?

 

for your cooler unit question i would not that get cooler. i bought a zalman nc3000 which had a 220m fan a HUGE fan and it did absolutely nothing. for our notebook we need to get a cooler that has multiple fans that push massive amount of air at high speeds. one thing to consider is that our vents and intake is on the very bottom of our notebook.

i was looking into the cryo lx but the thing is that the fans are placed on the very top of the cooler so i really dont know if it would help decrease temperature at all well thats until i get actually benchmarks with people who have them.

as of right now i would consider getting the notepal u3 which is what im planning to get

Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Notebook Cooler Model NotePal U3 R9-NBC-8PCK-GP

 

I have the U3 now, but my F hasn't shown up at my door yet. Hopefully in 2 more days, I believe.

 

OCing makes a bit of difference (on general I think ~5 fps). These are screens taken with no overclock.

Here are my settings:


I usually get ~35-40


Dips into the 20s when there are a lot of units on the map:


And into the single digits when there are a ridiculous number of units on screen:

 

Does the F's rubber feet fit on the cooler? @ .75" out, seems it would be thight.

Willscary reported that his F fan runs 660 rpm less w/ vs w/o the U2 & the F flat on a wood desk. He also posted some photos here.

 

The front rubber feet are only partly on the cooler, whereas the back rubber feet (the ones that are more important to keep it from sliding down) do fit.

 

So the front center one, just right of the touchpad must help.

Waiting for a report about the larger U3.

 

just purchased the notepal u3 on newegg. will be doing a benchmark on it soon once i receive it. hopefully it ends up doing a lot better than the zalman nc3000 i returned...

 

Any input on this?

I was looking at this hard drive for the sony but I am not sure if this will fit. How can a company make a 2.5 HDD and not use the standard size.

Can someone let me know if this will fit please. Thanks

Also what hard drive does the vaio f12 ship with. I just want a huge drive thats good and not crap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152242

 

I decided on this hard drive.

What do you all think?

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint M7E HM641JI 640GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

I'm typing this from my phone, so this will be short. I prefer 7200rpm. There's a noticeable speed difference. Also, check to see if your vaio can handle drives larger than 500gb apiece.

 

I have the F12. Sony sells the 640GB and an option

 

Take a 7200rpm drive, and if 640GB is avaible in your country then take it. If you want to buy the drive separate choose between:
Seagete momentus ST9500420ASG ()
Seagate Momentus XT
An SSD of your choice

other options is welcome.

 

If this is going to be your boot drive, I highly recommend you get a 7200 rpm at least or a Momentus XT. I went SSD and never looked back. If you're going to be using this drive you linked as a secondary drive that's fine.

 

It is nothing special...
If you want the best performance you can buy according to Leaderboard - Best Hard Drives & SSDs | StorageReview.com
1 SSD: Crucial RealSSD C300, OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, Corsair Force F120, Intel X25-M
2 Hybrid Hard Drive: Seagate Momentus XT (7200rpm 500GB)
3 Regular Hard Drive: Western Digital Scorpio Black (7200rpm 500GB)

 

I have that samsung in my external eSATA case (I had benchmarks for it a while back somehwere...).

And tbh the speed benefits of a 7200rpm drive stop becoming as apparent after you get above 500gb. The drive density is so high that the disk actually doesn't have to move as fast in order to read/write data. I mean, there will be a tiny speed boost, but I doubt it will be worth the extra cost. If you want speed, I would spend the extra $$$ and get an SSD (or a velociraptor, but they don't make them for laptops ). Samsung makes really reliable high capacity drives, so you're good in terms of drive reliability.

EDIT: The drive should fit. The main thing about 2.5" drives (laptop HDD's) over 500gb is that some are thicker than others. As long as the height (thickness) of the drive doesn't exceed 9.5mm, you should be fine.

EDIT2: HDTune Benchmark for the drive (in an external StarTech eSATA enclosure)

 

should I pay for the extended warranty from new egg on hard drives?

 

chowder did you get the pm I sent you amigo?

 

Been keeping up with the thread and glad to see certain areas of progress .
Just ordered the EU F12S1E which comes in the normal finish but premium screen, i7-740, 6GB ram and 500GB 7200rpm HDD. Will have it by Friday so will give some info on my experiences with clean install, and everything else plus my general opinion of the unit. I decided not to wait and see about the F13 due to reading about the intel mobile roadmap and I don't see any F series refresh being worthwhile until the new intel chips in Q1 2011. That's just my opinion but I think the refresh cycles may stick and if not I won't miss anything. Happy to join the owners here in a couple days.

 

One is for an internal notebook HDD and the other is from an external western digital elements 2TB HDD

 

Why PhysX sucks on the CPU. Because Nvidia wants it to suck.

'The sole purpose of PhysX is a competitive differentiation to make Nvidia’s hardware look good and sell more GPUs. Part of that is making sure that Nvidia GPUs looks a lot better than the CPU, since that is what they claim in their marketing. Using x87 definitely makes the GPU look better, since the CPU will perform worse than if the code were properly generated to use packed SSE instructions.'

Real World Technologies - PhysX87: Software Deficiency

 

Google uses a lot of hard drives and they did a well known study. Here are their findings in PDF:

http://static.googleusercontent.com...abs.google.com/en/us/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Basically, there is a high infant mortality rate and then failures increase in year three and beyond by a rate of 8% each year, so failure will eventually meet yours too. Since manufacturer has a one year, I personally would not get extended warranty.,

Experts: No cure in sight for unpredictable hard drive loss

 

I'm not sure I would get a C300 or Scorpio Black after seeing this: SSD vs Hard Drives: Performance Tests and Conclusion.





Everything is relative.

I would get an XT like yours.

 

I've been experiencing a problem with my F12 when watching Flash videos since I took it out the box a month ago. When I play a something on Youtube, for instance, the video appears to lose horizontal sync every few seconds. I kind of looks like the video is tearing. It is much more noticeable on full screen videos but it does occur in windowed videos too.

I opened a case with Sony using their chat function and was told they have had no other reports of this problem so I am left thinking that this laptop has a hardware problem.

Are any of you F12 owners seeing this problem?

 

Before blaming hardware try this search: "windows 7" 64-bit youtube problem.

Go to Adobe.com & update your Flash player & plugins.

Also try an other browser. Which one are you using BTW?

To rule out your internet connection/slow streaming problem: pause video & once it's fully downloaded (red bar) then play it.

 

Joe, I take it you do not see this problem on your system. Do you have the same hardware?

 

im having a problem with my camera not working with windows live messenger. i will only work for a split second then it doenst work. it works fine when i take a vid or pic of my self with web comanion software though.

i also tried downloading msn again but everytime i get an error and i cant download it. any help?

 

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/3d-sony-vaio-landing-next-year-we-preview-the-prototype/

VAIO F13? Or a new series altogether? Either way, I'm still happy I bought my F12 now instead of waiting for anything new. (It should be here tomorrow!) If I decide to jump on the 3D bandwagon at some point, it'd probably be via a new HDTV rather than on my laptop. Not to mention I'll probably just wait til glasses are no longer needed.

 

Will glasses ever not be necessary? What will they use to separate left/right images for our eyes?

 

I don't have this issue. The tearing is a result of the framerate of the flash video not syncing with the refresh rate of your screen. What specs does your computer have (processor, memory, video card, etc)?

There could be a number of reasons as to why your video is out of sync. It could be a hardware issue (either the computer is rendering the video at 61fps or 57fps or something like that, causing the frames to be out of sync). My old Vaio Z1 does this with youtube videos, but that's because it is old. But more likely, it is a software issue (Flash is telling your computer to render at an incorrect speed, something like this). If it were a hardware issue, you would probably be seeing lots of other issues as well (your OS/Other programs would be running very slowly, or your whole screen would tear, even when not watching a flash video).

I doubt it's a hardware issue. What browser/flash version are you using? I would recommend upgrading to at least Flash 10.1, which adds support for gpu-accelerated flash. Does the tearing only happen for youtube videos, or does it tear when running other flash media (like this Sony website: http://discover.sonystyle.com/innovations/). Also, what is the refresh rate of your screen currently? It should be 59hz (see the photo below).

 

A polarizing filter on the screen probably. There was a german company that made a filter that allowed for 3d to be experienced from up to 32 different angles

Plus the nintendo 3ds coming out sometime in the next year should allow for glasses-free 3d

 

When a car's engine is not running well, one checks tune-up & other stuff before looking for an other engine.

I don't need the same hardware as you do to suggest troubleshooting steps. If you clicked on the link I posted you may have noticed that the Youtube playing problem is cross brand/models so one may think that many software/settings could be the culprits before checking the hardware in this case.

Good luck.

 

Hi there guys, I am interested in purchasing a F127 in the next few weeks and have a few questions.. I will be replacing the supplied hard drive with a 7200, but havent decided on the make or model yet.. Also, I wasnt sure if the BD drive supplied is a reader and writer or reader only? As for the hard drive that is supplied, I would like to use it as a external after replacing it, does anyone have a recommended enclosure that I should look at?

I have done some searching, but I am not to familiar with computers in general, so wasnt really sure what I was reading..

 

Parallax barrier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

My gawd... we're IN the future! Can you believe it?

 

Power over eSATA enclosures are still pretty hard to come by. I wasn't interested in running an eSATA cable AND USB for power, so I ordered this from Amazon:
Amazon.com: 2.5IN Power Esata Sata HDD Enclosure with Otb: Electronics

And this eSATAp cable from ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290400109976&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

In my posting history somewhere I've got benchmarks of my enclosure. It gave no interference to read/write speeds. Both my SSD and 2 HDD's tested to their maximum potential.

The Blu Ray player should specify if it's read only or a writer. Both options are offered, to my knowledge.

Personally, I'm biased against the Seagate 7200.4 that came in my F11. Both I and lundstrom.emil have some performance issues and it's not able to reach max read speeds on the outer half of the disk. Others here have OEM Seagates that work just fine. I swapped mine out for a Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM and love it. The speed difference is noticeable when moving files back and forth with the Seagate.

 

Is it not crazy $37 for an empty enclosure w/ the cable when compared to a 750gb external hard drive 2.5 for $80? I know, it's only USB 2.0.

"...Both I and lundstrom.emil have some performance issues" - Again: but not in Safe Mode!

So, I would like to see an HD Tune benchmark w/ your Hitachi in the ODD bay vs. my Seagate 7200.4.