Samsung Series 5 NP535U3C Thread

[Thierry19]

Hi there!
I just purchased this little computer for my personal use and I was wondering if anyone else here have it!
This thread could be a good place to share information, tips and tricks about the computer.
Feel free to post your impression about the computer and if you have any question I will be quick so answer!

Information sheet:
Specs - Series 5 Notebooks NP535U3C | Samsung Laptops

[davidricardo86]

Glad to see this thread started. I'll link this owner's thread to The Ultimate AMD Trinity Notebook List.

[spence91]

Hi Thierry 19. I'm very interesting in purchasing one of these. I love the size of the machine and it's at the top end of what my budget should be.

I do have a few questions:

Have you added more RAM to it yet? And if you have, did it make a large difference to the performance?

Also, have you tried playing any games on it yet? obviously no one expects to be able to play everything with 120FPS but it'd be nice to know if it'd be capable of playing a few games.

[Thierry19]

Hi Thierry 19. I'm very interesting in purchasing one of these. I love the size of the machine and it's at the top end of what my budget should be.

I do have a few questions:

Have you added more RAM to it yet? And if you have, did it make a large difference to the performance?

Also, have you tried playing any games on it yet? obviously no one expects to be able to play everything with 120FPS but it'd be nice to know if it'd be capable of playing a few games.

Nop! I still have the standard 6gb, I'll be upgrading later this week. I also bought an SSD, which should be there around the end of next week.

What game are you planning on playing?
I did not play any actual game. I did however play a couple of game available on the chrome store, and it went well.

[Chris_tt]

Howdy guys, first post here!

So happy to find this thread! I just discovered this laptop here in Norway in a local electronics store, and was quite impressed as the seller told me it would be equivalent to a current core i3/i5 in terms of performance. The price was just so much better than the series 5 ultrabook and the UX32VD that I considered before. I was really close to buying it right away, but I decided to go do some research for myself.

Immediately it seemed wise, as a few performance tests i looked up shows that it's even slower than the lower end i3-sandy bridge cpu's. What I don't know however, is how it works in every day use - as none of the reviewers really tell how it performs other than in benchmark tests. Now as you've had it for a few days, it would be great to hear how you would consider the basic performance level of it.. I'm just a normal student, not going to use it for games - but I multitask a lot (gimp, youtube, spotify, several other tabs are usually open at once) which is where I wonder if this cpu delivers enough power.

As of today I have an old Samsung X125 with a AMD K125 single core processor in it, so I guess anything would be an improvement really. Like I said earlier in this post I'm also considering both the Intel version of the series 5 as well as the UX32VD, but if there's no real difference in terms of normal everyday use - I don't see any reason for investing the extra 35% in one of those two. What do you think?

Looking forward to hear your answer!

EDIT: Also found that the 6GB RAM version don't really deliver real dual channel, which might hurt performance a lot on trinity. Did you experience this on your piece?

[spence91]

What game are you planning on playing?

Civ, Starcraft II, Diablo III.... Nothing that's super taxing but might still run slow on something without a decent GPU.

Also, does it run particularly hot? Some of the user reviews on the Amazon store complain that it gets seriously warm quite quickly.

@Chris_tt - apparently adding an extra stick of RAM makes a big difference to the AMD APU's - and on this particular model it's very easy to do, there's just a panel on the bottom that can be opened and there you go...

[Chris_tt]

@Chris_tt - apparently adding an extra stick of RAM makes a big difference to the AMD APU's - and on this particular model it's very easy to do, there's just a panel on the bottom that can be opened and there you go...

Yeah, I noticed many mentioning it. Got any tip for a good piece? I was thinking that many of the benchmarks might have been done without running with a optimized dual channel set up.

[Thierry19]

Howdy guys, first post here!

So happy to find this thread! I just discovered this laptop here in Norway in a local electronics store, and was quite impressed as the seller told me it would be equivalent to a current core i3/i5 in terms of performance. The price was just so much better than the series 5 ultrabook and the UX32VD that I considered before. I was really close to buying it right away, but I decided to go do some research for myself.

Immediately it seemed wise, as a few performance tests i looked up shows that it's even slower than the lower end i3-sandy bridge cpu's. What I don't know however, is how it works in every day use - as none of the reviewers really tell how it performs other than in benchmark tests. Now as you've had it for a few days, it would be great to hear how you would consider the basic performance level of it.. I'm just a normal student, not going to use it for games - but I multitask a lot (gimp, youtube, spotify, several other tabs are usually open at once) which is where I wonder if this cpu delivers enough power.

As of today I have an old Samsung X125 with a AMD K125 single core processor in it, so I guess anything would be an improvement really. Like I said earlier in this post I'm also considering both the Intel version of the series 5 as well as the UX32VD, but if there's no real difference in terms of normal everyday use - I don't see any reason for investing the extra 35% in one of those two. What do you think?

Looking forward to hear your answer!

EDIT: Also found that the 6GB RAM version don't really deliver real dual channel, which might hurt performance a lot on trinity. Did you experience this on your piece?

Hi There!
I did have a hard time deciding if I wanted to keep this laptop. The performance are really not amazing. It gets frequent slowdown when I am multitasking (to be fair, my other computer is a i7 2700k with an SSD and a pretty fast GPU). The laptop also comes loaded with bloatware, which you really want to get rid of (I would recommend a clean install).
Once all the crap is removed, the performance is not so bad, but do not expect a lot of multitasking, the cpu is indeed pretty slow.
The hard-drive won't help either, it's a standard 5400rpm, so if you have a 7200rpm HDD or a SSD laying around you know what to do!
I am also a student, I use this laptop everywhere I go to take notes, do some homework (Word, Excel and powerpoint mostly) and it does the job quite good.

Civ, Starcraft II, Diablo III.... Nothing that's super taxing but might still run slow on something without a decent GPU.

Also, does it run particularly hot? Some of the user reviews on the Amazon store complain that it gets seriously warm quite quickly.

@Chris_tt - apparently adding an extra stick of RAM makes a big difference to the AMD APU's - and on this particular model it's very easy to do, there's just a panel on the bottom that can be opened and there you go...

I will install Diablo III in the near future, I'll report how well it works when I have the chance.
And yes, it is quite hot, although nothing dangerous/hurtful. It will get particularly hot when it is charging, but otherwise you will feel the warmth pretty much always. I might try to apply some new thermal paste. Depending on how lazy I am.

[Chris_tt]

...

Thanks for the quick answer! Auch, that was indeed not what I wanted to hear, hehe.

Frankly I would like to have a laptop that would be quick enough for 2-3 years to come, going to be a hard call.. I considered buying it with an extra piece of ram and a SSD, but then I might end up on nearly the same price as an Intel based series 5, at least in my country.

[targetzone]

I've also just picked one up (in Canada) for $550. Considering the lowest zenbook prime (ux32a) is $800, pretty much a no brainer.

That being said, the main things I was looking for were form factor, portability, and good enough battery life (get approx 5h 30min on 1/3 brightness, energy saving mode). Bonus that it only has a HDD, I don't have to worry about constant hibernate ruining my ssd. It wakes from hibernate in about 12 seconds. I mainly use the computer for word processing, taking notes, web-surfing, and not much else.

If you're looking for performance I'm afraid this is probably not the computer for you. But if it's mainly for office tasks/student tasks, it's pretty awesome for the price.