Acer Timeline Ultra m5?

[willmgordon]

I'll update when ram comes so other people know how it went, also been considering replacing the internal drive with one of the new hitachi 7200rpm 7mm drives (pretty cheap) while I decide about large expensive SSD vs small mSATA bootdrive, think I'll see much improvement over the scorpio blue at 5400rpm?

Nevermind, just found this link comparing the hitachi 720 to the scropio blue 5400 Hitachi Travelstar Z7K500 Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews amazingly the scorpio blue comes out on top in nearly all tests!

[willmgordon]

Geil 8gb DDR3 sodimm from newegg installed and recognized fine for 10GB total

[smerdk]

I'm upgrading my M5-481TG today. I'll post pics later in the week as I wish to identify some parts / locations in the pics.

CT102464BF160B - Crucial 8gb low voltage (1.35V) 204 pin SO-DIMM has been recognized by the BIOS. 10GB total ram.
It's PC3-12800, CL 11.

Samsung 830 SSD 256GB SATA III Hard Drive has also been recognized by the BIOS.


I also removed the 20gb mSATA HD, in an effort to further reduce temperatures and power consumption. I hope there is a noticeable effect, along with the low voltage ram.

RAM was kind of expensive, but I have not found value, low voltage, 204 PIN, 12800 RAM.

As it is, now I have an ultrabook with a good dedicated GPU, 256gb SSD and 10gb RAM for less than $1100.

[Bronsky]

Samsung 830 SSD 256GB SATA III Hard Drive has also been recognized by the BIOS.

This is a great SSD. I just put one in my Acer 3820TG, which does not even support Sata III and it is blazing. Congratulations. Looks like you're doing nice things with your M5.

[smerdk]

Here are some pictures that will help people wanting to open up the case and upgrade the hard drive/RAM/mSATA SSD. They are clickable thumbnails to 800 X 600 pics.

[willmgordon]

Ok I can report success in installing a 128gb crucial M4 mSata and using it as a boot drive. Windows experience went from 5.9 with the blue scorpio to 7.9 with the M4 installed.

Only issue I ran into was the M4 wasn't properly detected after install and booting into the pre-installed windows, however, when I booted off my windows 7 recovery DVD it was recognized fine and I was able to format it and install.

Pretty excited to have this machine setup this way now.

[vacaloca]

Ok I can report success in installing a 128gb crucial M4 mSata and using it as a boot drive. Windows experience went from 5.9 with the blue scorpio to 7.9 with the M4 installed.

Only issue I ran into was the M4 wasn't properly detected after install and booting into the pre-installed windows, however, when I booted off my windows 7 recovery DVD it was recognized fine and I was able to format it and install.

Pretty excited to have this machine setup this way now.

Nice! One question, do you still have another drive in the 2.5" bay? Does the BIOS let you select booting from both?

[vacaloca]

Here are some pictures

I just wanted to add, doing that was pretty much how I almost ended up having to put a new flat-flexible cable in -- leaving the cables in place in the board and putting it aside might seem fine, but the force might be enough to mangle some pins. Just wanted to add a small disclaimer with that.

[smerdk]

Do any of you feel the CD drive moving sometimes, even if you don't have any cd inside?

It's happening to me. Maybe 2 times daily.

[willmgordon]

Nice! One question, do you still have another drive in the 2.5" bay? Does the BIOS let you select booting from both?

So I left the blue in there but reformated it during my win 7 install, so I cant be completely sure.

However, what I can say is my windows Boot manager still detected a win 7 boot on the blue scorpio (showed two Windows 7s to choose from on boot screen) that I then went in and deleted after my first restart so it seems you would definitely be able to have OSes on both drives.