Sony Vaio S 13 inch Customization

Hello,

I am quite new as a member to the forum, but as a guest I found the information and discussions quite reliable/intuitive/helpful. After the passing of my late Dell Inspiron 1545 I am looking for a "serious" 13 inch laptop for school and light gaming. I found the Vaio S series quite appealing, and I'm thinking about purchasing it soon, but at the cheapest possible, and doing the upgrades myself, (like a barebones laptop, but there are very few of those.) I want a mid size SSD, preferably RAID 0, but directly from Sony it is WAY too expensive for my taste, so naturally I think it would be best to get 3rd party SSDs (OCT Vertex 4?) and install them myself. But, to my dismay, there is only one hard drive port. How could I overcome/ work around this without losing the optical drive? A little guidance would be REALLY appreciated along with some other recommended performance upgrades.

Note: I have not purchased anything yet and have a $2000 budget, give or take $200

 

Be aware that the low/standard models are occasionally excluded from some deals, for one. For me, it was actually a better deal to get the enhanced model.

Also note that some people have mentioned recently that Sony ships a slightly different motherboard with SSD packages. NOTE: I cannot confirm this myself. Look around. SATAIII is only possible with those models unless the optical drive is enabled. So far there is no other work around.

Look into the possibility of getting the lowest spec SSD's if you're really serious about doing it yourself. I'm not sure if they're soldered on in that case or not. Check that yourself. RAM is obviously easily increased.

Most people say the 2GB Nvidia drive is unnecessary, though it's only $50. That's your choice.

Lastly, note that starting with the low end S Series means you get a lower end screen(there's no option for 900p).

Personally, my recommendation is start with the premium model, keep the RAM low and upgrade later, you can always get more, get the cheapest SSD option assuming you can change it later, and leave the NVidia 1GB unless you're doing compute tasks with higher RAM requirements. Games don't usually get close to 1GB yet.

As for the RAID 0. If you get a SATAIII enabled laptop, you can presumably get the higher speed drives as they inevitably show up in a few years and install them yourself. No RAID 0 necessary when the drive runs 800MB alone.

 

Sony SSDs used in these laptops are not standard sized, and require a special ribbon cable.

In additon, the RAID SSD setup is two custom Sony SSDs put into a single 2.5" HDD/SSD bay, with a custom ribbon connector to both (utilizes chipset/software RAID).

If you want to upgrade the storage system yourself, the easiest route is simply to order the normal HDD version, which comes with a normal SATA connector ribbon, instead of the custom units the Sony SSD setups utilize.

 

Thank you for that. I guess there's no way for SATAIII speeds with the ODD enabled unless you buy Sony's version of SSD's. For now, at least.

Is the custom ribbon impossible to remove? Just wondering. I'm betting that's the "modification" to the motherboard that was referenced today anyways, so it doesn't matter as the input would be SATAII.

 

if you have a 2k budget you could get the sony S13p with the sony raid 0 128gb SSD for around $1400. and thats not including the 10% student discount. so it would actually be around $1260. add on another 8gb stick of ram (around $45) and your just breaking $1305 for the S13P with 128gb raid ssd and 12 gigs of ram.

You could even bump up the CPU/GPU (although they wont make much of a real world difference) and still be well under 2k.

 

In my opinion it will be better and more future proof to take the S with HDD. You can replace the HDD with any 2,5 inch drives you choice.
The Raid 0 SSDs are not so easy replaceable!

In Germany you get the S13p with I5, 4GB Ram, HDD fpr 1170 Euro!

Go for an aftermarket 250 GB SSD (around 200 Euro) and another 4GB Ram kit (50 Euro) you are in you price range!

 

Thank you all very much for the quick responses, I really appreciate the input.

I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade the S's speaker system (apparently there were some issues withe original quality)? Are there any other hardware upgrades possible, other than RAM and the HDD?

P.S.-Valmar- Ill have to get back to you on those prices, me being American and such I'm not that familiar with Euro conversions, however, can a consumer benefit at all from a laptop's monetary value being cheaper in a foreign country?

 

As prices go, it would be interesting for us europeans to purchase the laptop in the US.
However, we have to pay customs duty resulting in a similar price in the end.
Additionally, there may be issues with warranty.

 

While the conversion rates can and will change, € × 1.25 = $ has been a good base rule for the past few months.

The main problem with ordering in the U.S. for European customers is the keyboard. Most European countries use a different layout or extra keys fit for that specific language.

 

Any thoughts on Haswell? Should I wait until 2013?

 

Any thoughts on Haswell? Should I wait until 2013?

 

well if you need a laptop now get it now... if you dont then you can wait. There is no point in playing the waiting game with computer tech unless the new stuff is just a couple weeks away. if you wait till haswell you will be asking if you should wait for the next gen once haswell comes out.

the only reason to get a sony raid SSD is because of their insane speeds (nearly twice what the best aftermarket SSDs get) but you do pay nearly twice as much for the sony raid 0s.

speaker hardware is rarely replaceable. your best bet is to pick up some nice external speakers if you don't want to use earphones.

 

Thank you, I was just browsing and found quite a lot of buzz about Haswell, but I guess that computer technology is always changing, so fast its almost annoying. But if anyone has any other tips, please post and I will respond ASAP.