Sony Vaio Z - Self Customize/Modding?

Has anyone self customized their Vaio Z.

What i mean by this is buying a stock low model Z (kind of like a barebone), then modifying each component by themselves. I'm looking into buying a Z690 or z790 and possibly adding my own T9900 3.06ghz intel chip and DDR3 with self selected SSD harddrive.

What do you feel about this idea?
Do you think it's worth the time in doing this? would I actually be saving money or would it be more of a hassle?

Now with this in mind, I'm able to get a pretty high end Z series in Taiwan.
VGN-Z48TD
Platform Intel ® Core ™ 2 Duo processor P9700 (2.80 GHz)
6gb Ram
320gb HDD
$2,276 USD


By getting that model, all i have to do is upgrade to a SSD with something better.

 

I bought my Z690 with minimal HD config to install WD Blue 500 GB. During the second disassembly (much harder as I had to get to the Wi-Fi card area) I replaced Intel 5100 Wi-Fi card with 5300 and added 3rd antenna. Getting to CPU would be even harder. I, personally, don't plan to touch CPU at all.
Opening up Z and replacing HD was hard the first time. The second time, getting to the same disassembly stage is easier. Still, Z is not designed for upgrades (except, perhaps, RAM).

I would not recommend putting T9900 there - its thermal design (35W) is higher than Z is made for.

 

You can buy Z with T9900 in Japan. It has a slightly different heat sink assembly. You don't want to upgrade your Z that comes with a 25W CPU and heat sink assembly designed for 25W to a 35W CPU, unless you are ready to undervolting it all the time -- which kind of defeat the purpose of upgrading to a higher power CPU.

 

ok, thanks for pointing out about the heatsink and the difference.

do you know much about the standard SSD that sony uses? i know sony chooses Samsung for their SSD, but what kind of read or write speed does it get?

since both of you said it was a hassle to upgrade the cpu, i'd probably get a 2.8ghz model w/ 6gb ram and 320gb hdd. i will upgrade to SSD myself.

 

For your information:

Z4 with 2 x 128G = 256G raid 0 SSD (samsung MLC) can easily achieve over 300MB/s read and 250MB/s write.

A single Intel X25-E 64G can only achieve 250MB/s read and 170MB/s write at maximum. It only outperforms slightly on 4k random access.

To beat the Samsung raid 0, you'll have to buy 2 x Intel X18-M 160G = 320G, which can theoretically achieve 500MB/s read and 140MB/s write, but I strongly doubt it will do that well, as the raid controller is nothing more than ICH9M.

Thus, I don't think there is any way to beat the stock SSD raid 0 by any means of current technology.

Edit: I have no idea about the upcoming X25-E 128G. You may wait and see.

 

do you have any proof or screenshot for the samsung read/write bench?

also, if i decide to get the 2x128gb ssd version, when i repartition and reformat for a clean install of vista, do i need to realign the SSD? I know that SSDs like OCZ needs to do alignment so that it would improve the performance and minimize the stuttering

 

here is a thread in Chinese:

http://benyouhui.it168.com/thread-966076-1-1.html

i'm not sure if google translate works on this.

if you are a Taiwanese, definitely check out this thread:

http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=258&t=1105103&last=12845749

 

i have no idea about the decrease of performance over time for MLC SSDs. try to do some research with google whether it supports TRIM or not. anyway, samsung is the only other SSD brand i trust beside Intel.

 

Just to add a thought to that... with I 13.1 inch, 1.5kg notebook you really have to wonder about the purpose of a 3Ghz CPU running in this system...
Anything is easily achieved with a 2.5Ghz CPU and I doubt that 0.5Ghz make any difference besides CPU intensive tasks...
But what would those be while using a notebook like this? I could only imagine those if you heavily rely on a docking station with a desktop setup.

 

i totally agree with you. imo there is no point to use T series 35W CPU on Z at all. The temperature of T9800 converges to 95 degrees centigrade at 100% load, while the temperature of P9600 converges to only 75 degrees centigrade at 100% load.

 

honestly, i'm getting the laptop to replace my netbook. i realized that ever since i got a netbook (asus 1000he), i found that having a portable light weight laptop was very important. i stopped using my desktop because it was so easy to just move my laptop from one place to another. i can slip it in my bag when i need to carry it around and open it when i need to use it. because of that, i found that i might need a better notebook, instead of a netbook. i would like to do some photo editing, some high process cpu intensive stuff. the asus 1000he would limit me in doing so because the atom processor can barely handle photoshop/web browsing/music playing at the same time.

the only thing i fear right now is depreciation. technology advance so fast that price drops instantly like buying a car. i would like this thing to last me 2/3 years. but with window 7 coming around the corner, i'm thinking that sony would revamp their whole lineup to be more suited for this new OS.

 

T9900 is only 5%~10% faster than P9700. I think P series will certainly fit your needs.