Looking at Sager np9170

[idiot101]

I cannot answer that question. I went for the Samsung because there were very few complaints. After the firmware update, my colleagues have had nothing but good things to say about the M4. Both are solid these days. I would simply go with the cheapest if I had the choice now.

[w3ak3stl1nk]

So i should get the 8gb 1600 ram with the ivy bridge, and is the 128gb crucial m4 a decent ssd?

And will the 9170 ever have any overheat issues? Or are the fans good? because I was looking at getting the IC thermal compound.

Most say 8GB ram is enough for gaming. 1600 ram is your call but is not normally noticable with "normal" use so 1333 should still work. The sager/clevo line is considered one of the best cooling systems. thermal compound isn't considered a really big benefit but relative cooling posted in many threads.

[Directive]

Hi, I had ordered a Np8170 back in January. I am very happy with it. I got mine from XoticPC.com . In terms of hardware I think out of the box the standard Sager models are excellent. They are great machines and the clevo Motherboards are awesome. Battery life is only about 1.5 hours long ( web surfing ) and probably one hour long gaming. The power pack is massive so taking it places make the already large laptop even more unnecessarily big. Otherwise its a great buy, it runs every game I have on ultra settings. ( I have hd6990gpu and 2960xm intel i-7. ) If you want anymore info just message me. I think this laptop would be a good buy for you, especially with the new backlit keyboard and components.

[Pvt. Parts]

All right I'm confident about buying the 9170, but I talked to an xoticpc rep today and he said that a lot of people use the SSD as the primary drive, and the HDD as the secondary. Does anyone know if this is a good idea?

[maverick1989]

All right I'm confident about buying the 9170, but I talked to an xoticpc rep today and he said that a lot of people use the SSD as the primary drive, and the HDD as the secondary. Does anyone know if this is a good idea?

That is THE idea. I don't know why anyone would want to go the other way round. SSDs give you speed. Unless you drop your laptop a lot or punch it in frustration when you realize that kill boxes on Crysis don't move along with the person you are shooting at in which case they also give you better protection for your data than a HDD with a spinning disc.

HDD's are slower than the speed the RAM talks to the CPU at. So basically many a times, the RAM is waiting for the HDD to feed it information and then send it over to the CPU. You improve the RAM-CPU link by increasing the RAM speeds. You improve the HDD-RAM link by increasing the HDD speeds (or getting an SSD).

So what people do is get a 128, 180 or 256 GB SSD, use that as the primary and put a bunch of other stuff like songs, frequently played video games and other stuff you use frequently on there. That way, it is accessed fast. Movies, you would put on the secondary because you watch one and then shelve it for like a year.

[Pvt. Parts]

All right thanks for clearing that up, I'm new to the whole PC thing, and I have to say after years of the Xbox, PC's seem so much better in a lot of ways besides just gaming. What size would you recommend of SSD and HDD? I will mostly just be storing less than 30gb of music and a handful of new games and random school assignments for Microsoft Office.

[maverick1989]

What size would you recommend of SSD and HDD? I will mostly just be storing less than 30gb of music and a handful of new games and random school assignments for Microsoft Office.

How tech savvy are you? You said you are new to computers but that doesn't tell me how easily you can learn about them.

If you know enough (and it really doesn't require much knowledge to do what follows), you should simply get the stock (if stock = 250GB then 500GB) conventional HDD and then buy a 120 or preferably 180-256 GB SSD off of Newegg and install it yourself. It could potentially save you up to $100.

Also, if there is a sale on Newegg or the price of a particular SSD that your reseller is offering is much more (~$80-100 or greater) than the EXACT SAME model or a very similarly priced model on Newegg, you can haggle with them and convince them to price match and sell it to you for cheaper. That way you won't need to install it yourself.

[Pvt. Parts]

How difficult is it to install? I'm guessing there's YouTube how-to's?

[s2odin]

Unscrew bottom panel, push SSD in to place, close back panel.

[maverick1989]

How difficult is it to install? I'm guessing there's YouTube how-to's?

Yes there are. Just search Youtube. There are several, both from professionals and some guy sitting in his messy room.

Unscrew bottom panel, push SSD in to place, close back panel.

Yeah I suppose it is that easy. However, for some people it is more of a psychological thing (opening laptop, fear of messing with stuff) than the difficulty in actually doing it.