Review spec Optimus V 13.3" vs custom

[maxbor]

I've been hovering over the buy button with this one for the past 4 days. You save £84 buying it as a review model over configuring it yourself (£749 instead of £833), but I have concerns regarding the i7-4710MQ and the 1TB Seagate SSHD. I'd also quite like the 802.11ac wifi card for future proofing it but could easily replace this in the future so not so important.

A few reviews mention the CPU running quite hot and, as I have been plagued with this on my Dell Studio 1557 for the past 5 years, I'm not sure if I'd rather choose the i5-4340M instead. I will likely run Solidworks on it occasionally so understand that I would lose a bit of speed compared to the 4710MQ but if the 4340M runs significantly cooler this change will have been worth it. Plus a small increase in battery life could probably be expected, right?

I don't really need the space that that the SSHD offers and could easily make do with 500Gb Seagate SSHD

If these are the only two changes I make the price becomes £827 so £78 more than the review spec for a smaller hard drive and dual core processor.

In your eyes is the extra £78 worth spending?

Thanks!

Max

 

[mantadog]

You are at least partially right to be concerned about higher than average temps in the 13.3 inch chassis. This will obviously mean noisier fans but I would take that trade-off if you use the i7 for prolonged periods of time. if it would only occasionally push the CPu to the limit then perhaps the tradeoff for longer render times with an i5 would be more beneficial in terms of temps/noise.

At the end of the day the review model is a nice deal, but you are buying a custom made machine so you would be better buying it exactly as you want it rather than regretting a choice later.

All you reasons are valid, you just need to pick one side of the argument really.

 

[maxbor]

Thanks for the reply mantadog. Couldn't stomach the increased price for the lower spec laptop so have pushed the button on the review model Hopefully not too long a wait as my Dell is definitely on its last legs. I think hitting the temp threshold so often has damaged the CPU.

Have bought a cooler pad for optimus for gaming or using solidworks and hopefully this will help somewhat.

 

[mantadog]

The paste dell use (from my experience) tends to dry out over time and reduce its effectiveness dramatically. My theory is that it's deliberate so people buy another dell when the first one packs in... But that's another story. The CPU probably isn't damaged, its probably just reducing its speed to stop damage, a new coating of thermal compound and a fresh installation of the OS would probably work wonders.

The paste PCS use as standard is much better, does the review model have the upgraded paste? if so then it will be fine for even longer. The cooling pad may help a fraction too.

 

[maxbor]

You are totally right regarding the thermal paste and I ended up cleaning the old stuff off and replacing it with arctic 5 silver paste a couple of years ago and in the last month or so I cleaned it up and replaced it again and this time added some copper shims to the gpu and video ram (a mod a few people have done) and it seems to have helped a fair bit with overall temperature (approx. 5-10degC reduction). I added an SSD and reinstalled windows 7 on to that sometime last year and that added some speed but it still seems to hang when scrolling in a browser or pdf which it never used to. When I run prime95 or furmark the gpu no longer goes above 85 whereas it used to hit the high 90s very quickly. The CPU will still climb up to 95-98degC when running prime95 but no longer gets high enough to switch itself off.

The Dell had the i7-720qm and apparently this has a lower TDP than the i7-4710MQ but I just don't think the cooling was sufficient on the Dell so I am confident the Optimus will perform better despite the CPU TDP increase. Also the ability to switch to the onboard graphics for less demanding games and programs will be really useful I think.

 

[mantadog]

Since your committed to ordering now it cant hurt to try a new OS installation on it anyhow, unless your planning on moving parts or anything. Hanging randomly seems like an OS problem rather than anything else.

 

[maxbor]

Well that's my evening ruined then, thanks mantadog... ;-) I kept the old drive and it now sits in a DVD caddy (don't need a DVD drive) so I can easily backup everything and will reinstall the OS on the ssd tonight. If nothing else it will get it ready to sell/give away as can simply swap the HDD out for the DVD drive when the new laptop arrives and put the HDD in an external hd drive.