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RAM or SSD ?

Jim Gardner

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I am looking to upgrade my current laptop (i5 6GB RAM Windows 7 64 bit). I need a fairly large HD eg >500GB because of an extensive music collection and lots of digital pictures and would like to upgrade to an Intel i7 processor but I am having difficulty deciding on whether to go for either a) hybrid SSD, (a) plain HD or (c) SSD only. The three laptops I am considering all have the same processor and graphics but have the following differences (a) 1TB HD, 8GB RAM and 8GB SSD (b) 1TB HD and 16GB RAM (c) No HD 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD.

Obviously if I went for (c) I would need to think about offloading a lot of files to external HD as my current HD uses 450GB of storage (I have over 110GB in Music files and also lots of Digital pictures etc so offloading to external HD may be an issue - I dont know if iTunes will work ok from external HD for example)

So the main question may be between (a) and (b) ie 8GB RAM/8GB SSD vs 16GB RAM ? I appreciate that SSD will provide faster bootup however once my laptop has booted will the 16GB RAM be a better option? I should say that the main use of my laptop is NOT gaming - I use it for surfing, Email, MS Office and to a lesser extent picture/video editing.

I have assumed up to now that RAM wins out over SSD in terms of performance so are we really talking about the initial load times of , say, Excel/Word etc?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
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An SSD turns an average laptop into a dream. 8GB of RAM is a good standard to have. I'd go for a normal laptop without an SSD, and buy one separately afterwards. The SSD most laptops come with are total junk in most cases. The MX100 is pretty much the most ideal consumer drive, and you can get an MX100 512GB for an extremely attractive price on Amazon.

If you're not gaming or rendering scenes with 3D applications, or using photoshop, 16GB of RAM is totally irrelevant for you.

SSD's not only affect boot time and transfer speeds, but the IOPS severely decrease software response times.

EDIT: I notice you're UK based. Ebuyer have a daily deal on TODAY for the MX100 512GB.
 

Jim Gardner

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Many thanks for the response. The idea of going for one without SSD but purchasing separately sounds a good idea, however how easy is it to fit an SSD to a laptop and do I have to ensure taht the laptop I buy would allow me (if I could!) to insert one? Although I am familiar with replacing components in a desktop PC I have no experience of upgrading a laptop. I notice that the MX100 you refer to is on Amazon and states it is a 512GB SSD 2.5in 7mm SSD with 9.5mm adapter (cost £140). Not sure what the adapter part means though - is it easy to fit and would it invalidate my warranty if I opened the laptop?
 
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Super easy to replace the laptop HDD with an SSD. Most laptops have one specific compartment for the HDD. Open it, take the HDD out, remove the bracket the HDD is on, and put the SSD in the bracket in its place. I've never had to use the 9.5mm adapter, and I've installed over 300 SSD's at my workplace in both desktops and laptops.

It shouldn't invalidate your warranty, but you will need to reinstall the OS. MX100's come with Acronis TrueImage however, so if you plug the old HDD into a computer with the SSD plugged in too, you can clone the old HDD image over to the SSD, removing the need to reinstall the OS on the laptop.
 
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my view: you only need more then 8gb ram in a laptop if you're running things like autocad or specific very mem hungry software, so forget about that. You will not notice a performance difference at all. Video editing depends more on cpu and at the lower end gpu will have an impact too.

If you plan on getting 17 inch or bigger, and do a bit of research you'll find one that has 2 harddrive slots, don't be fooled though, there are plenty of laptops that still are horrible to replace the hdd on, so make sure you buy one that doesn't have to be taken apart. That being said, go for one with a 1tb harddrive and a free slot, and buy an ssd of ~256GB yourself for the other slot. They can be found easily under 100 pound. Laptop makers always charge an extreme premium for ssd's for some silly reason.

If you're lucky the laptop you're picking will have been reviewed on notebookcheck, where there's always a section on how hard it is to build in stuff.

To finish it off, only people who've not owned an ssd system even could have doubts about which upgrade to pick, ssd makes everything on a computer feel 10x snappier. You'll only know how brilliant it is after using it for a couple of weeks and then trying your hands on a system without one.

PS, make sure you get a quadcore i7, there's some dualcores about and those are fastly inferior for your purposes.
 
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Benchmark Scores Faster than yours... I'd bet on it. :)
There are dual core I7? Not in the past couple generations. Those Re I3 or Pentium man. I5/I7 are quad or hex.
 

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I can speak for the transfer/cloning software Crucial uses that @RCoon mentioned, and it is super easy to use. Just make sure you hook up the MX100 via USB while doing it, and THEN when it's complete turn off the laptop, and switch HDD to SSD.
 

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Whatever you do, do not buy the MX100 its a really shitty drive.
 

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Whatever you do, do not buy the MX100 its a really shitty drive.

going by reviews - its not that bad, Im also running a 512GB MX100 myself for my games, Its never skipped a beat
 
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I have one. No problems with it
 
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There are dual core I7? Not in the past couple generations. Those Re I3 or Pentium man. I5/I7 are quad or hex.
there are dual core laptop i7s. They turn up in ultrabooks.
 

rtwjunkie

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Whatever you do, do not buy the MX100 its a really shitty drive.

Um, you are basing this on what? It's reviews are great, and it's faster than the previous mainstream SSD of theirs, the M500. And, I have yet to see anyone on here say it's a shitty drive. In fact, it gets almost as many recommendations from members as any Samsung does on TPU. The only reason I could see you saying that is speed...and they don't claim to be the fastest. Crucial has always produced the pack mule, the one that keeeps going reliably carrying a load. Besides, even the "worst" SSD is a helluvalot faster than an HDD. :)
 

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There are dual core I7? Not in the past couple generations. Those Re I3 or Pentium man. I5/I7 are quad or hex.

if it is an ultrabook the i7s in those are dual cores.

Like such.

http://ark.intel.com/products/65713/Intel-Core-i7-3517UE-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-2_80-GHz

Pretty common i7 chip for most ultrabooks in the last year or so.

Also the i7 chip for Surface Pro 3 is dual core 4 threads

http://ark.intel.com/products/75114/Intel-Core-i7-4650U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz
 
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Whatever you do, do not buy the MX100 its a really shitty drive.
I have purchased 2. One for my mom's laptop and one for my brother's girlfriends laptop. They both boot in under 10 seconds. No issues. Also came with acronis.
 

rtwjunkie

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funkypup24

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What if you are using products all the time like Photoshop and Illustrator? For example, I have an old 2008 Macbook and I just bought new ram of 4GBs in each slot so it holds 8GB total right now.. But I still can't use my 3D content in photoshop for some reason since it says I don't have enough 'something' on my computer.. so I can't figure out if I should just buy like a 500GB SSD... that was my next thought.

Does anyone know if buying a SSD if help me out in this situation vs buying higher RAM that I'm not even sure if my macbook can hold.

Please someone help!
 
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