Another attempt at a new laptop

[Stephen M]

Some unexpected bills forced me to abandon my last attempt to get a new laptop, although seeing some of the new stuff on offer now I am quite glad.

I will be getting either the Vortex IV or Octane 17.3", although Octane is favourite at the moment. I had a lot of good advice on my last build attempt, thanks to all for that and all I need to do is tweak it a bit but a few more questions.

Main drive will be the 250GB Samsung SSD but unsure about second drive: The 2TB SATA 2.5" (32MB Cache, 5400rpm) looks great for storage but I know nothing of the performance of this drive, would I be better with the 750GB Scorpio Black (16MB Cache, 7200rpm). I already have several USB3 portable drives for storage, so could continue with them and prioritise what goes on the laptop - if there is a notable performance difference I will do that.

If I go for the Octane, there is not a lot of price difference between the three i7s on offer - 4790S (3.2GHz - 8MB Cache), 4790 (3.6GHz - 8MB Cache) or 4790k (4GHz - 8MB Cache). Would any of these be a better option. I am also undecided on 8 or 16GB RAM.

I may try some gaming but that is not a priority. I will be doing some audio recording/mixing (mainly with Ardour and associated progs) plus some video editing and adding soundtracks to videos. When working I will have many windows open, I nearly always have music in the background (Clementine) and often have a sport (cricket) TV stream to watch in a smaller window. The main works windows, all open at once, will be Libre Write, Libre Calc, GIMP, Okular plus several web pages.

I am working to a budget of about £1500 but will consider more if it is worth it.

Any thoughts anyone?

 

[SpyderTracks]

1/. I would choose the scorpio black over the 5400rpm drive, it does make a big difference performance wise.

2/. Out of the three I would personally go for the 4790 as the 4790k has a higher TDP and can run quite hot, and the 4790 is faster than the 4790s (lower power version)

3/. For RAM 8Gb is fine presently, and it's easy to add a further 8gb dimm yourself should you need to. If budget isn't being stretched, I'd go with 16 for your usage.

 

[dogbot]

The only laptop I know about is my Vortex III. After a few changes it has a 250GB Samsung mSata SSD as the system drive with a 750GB 7200 rpm SSHD for video source files and a partitioned 1TB 5400 rpm Scorpio Blue for general user files and exported video. Although I do have a variety of external drives, these are mainly for backups and archiving. Unless doing a direct drive to drive copy, the speed of a drive is not likely to be an issue but of course the large files most likely to be accessed (source video) are on the faster drive. Any rendering is done on the mSata SSD where fragmentation is not an issue.

Ram is comparatively cheap and I bought 16GB even though I don't really need it. With all those open programs it might be better to be safe than sorry.

Don't forget the carry case.

 

[Stephen M]

Thanks, have repped you both. Good thinking about the carry case, luckily I have a nice sturdy Targus from my first PCSpecialist order and my old laptop will be retiring to my mum and dad's living room and not travelling any more.