Final Build before order - lots of comments please

[Dragilex]

Need to finally choose a build to go with. From all the lovely advice I've got so far this is what I'm currently going with. Any tweaks or comments are very welcome. Due to the cost I need to make sure this is the perfect build to last me.

Chassis & Display
Vortex II:17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£69)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2670QM (2.20GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
2GB AMD® Radeon® HD 6990M - DirectX® 11 (17.3" Vortex II)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® ADVANCED-N 6230 (300Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 220W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,570.00 including VAT and delivery.

 

[dangro474]

Hi Dragilex,

I own a similar system with a 580M GTX over the 6990M.

It is tricky to comment on the lastability of technology nowadays, but i can confirmt hat your system will run every current release on maxed settings (including BF3 / Skyrim - which isnt actually too graphically demanding) at 30+ FPS.

If you would like some benchmarks for specific games, send me a PM and i will be happy to provide you with th em, jjust bare in mind that your 6990M is likely to perform between -5% to +10% of the framerate i do with my 580M GTX.

Your CPU will not struggle iwth any applications for a while; your GPU will bottleneck your system performance far before that, however as the 6990M / 580M GTX are the most powerful mobile GPU's available, you don't really have anywhere to go

 

[Music Guy123]

That graphics card is very, very good. I wouldn't recommend upgrading it to the 580M GTX as it is a lot more expensive for a marginal performance increase. Your laptop looks brilliant, I can't see anything wrong with it!!!

 

[UndeadJack]

That graphics card is very, very good. I wouldn't recommend upgrading it to the 580M GTX as it is a lot more expensive for a marginal performance increase. Your laptop looks brilliant, I can't see anything wrong with it!!!

I would as this computer can't SLI and may benefit in a couple years as it may need it to keep it <30fps

 

[dangro474]

Just to clear any confusion, i didn't recommend upgrading to a 580M at all. The 6990M slightly outperforms the 580M GTX in general benchmarking and is considerably cheaper, but for the purpose of guaging his systems performance, benchmarking a few game son my system would be fine

 

[Dragilex]

I think I will stick with the 6990m as it still very good and way cheaper than the 580m. If I don't overclock the system will I need to get some kind of laptop cooling solution for gaming or should it cope alright all by itself?

 

[dangro474]

I think I will stick with the 6990m as it still very good and way cheaper than the 580m. If I don't overclock the system will I need to get some kind of laptop cooling solution for gaming or should it cope alright all by itself?

My vortex II 17.3" maxes out at 82 degrees CPU / 87 degress GPU, although this is during burn-in testing with Prime95 and Furmark, during which the CPU and GPU are stressed to 100% useage for prolongued periods of time. During standard gaming, they hover around the 60-65 degrees mark. My temperatures while playing Skyrim maxed out completely, for example, are 52 CPU and 67 GPU.

The threshold for both is very slightly over 100 degrees C, so i would not get worried unless your CPU/GPU are hitting temperatures in excess of 90 degrees C while gaming.

PCS rigerously test systems before shipping them, so the chance that your system temperatures exceed acceptable levels is low, however i think the best thing to do would be to use temperature monitoring software with your laptop and simply check the CPU/GPU maximum temperatures after you have been gaming for a while.

I personally prefer RealTemp due to its low level of intrusion (only monitors temperatures recorded by the GPU / CPU drivers), but HWiNFO32 is an excellent program to have to keep track of all of your system voltages, temperatures, fan speeds etc.

If you use RealTemp, take the following steps for unintrusive constant monitoring:

- Download and unzip the application into a folder in your Program Files folder or wherever you want to keep it permanently
- Start the program "RealTemp.exe" and uncheck "ask me before loading this program in the future".
- Click "Settings" in the bottom right hand corner
- Check "start minimized" in the bottom left, and check either "ATI" or "Nvidia" in the top right of the bottom section depending on which GPU you have (ATI if you choose the 6990M).
- In the middle of the window, check the boxes under "Core 0" and "GPU", then click the "GPU" button and select which colour you would like the GPU temperature to be displayed in.
- Click OK to exit the settings menu.

In the main menu, you can now see the temperature of all of your cores, as well as the GPU temperature and frequences in the top left. You will also notice that in your tool bar (bottom right) you have two numbers which update once per second, the coloured one being your GPU and the while one being your CPU (you can change these colours whenever you like).



After gaming, you can see the CPU cores maximum temperatures in the main window, and if you click on the GPU button in the top left, you can see the GPUs max temperature. It also displays the time and date that the temperature occured.

If you want the application to start up with windows, make a shortcut to realtemp.exe and place it in the following folder:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

(where [USERNAME] is your designated user name after setting up windows).

I have this running on all of my machines.

Alternatively you can simply install HWiNFO32 and select Sensor Only, then select "Start with windows" in the settings menu to obtain the same result. Overall HWiNFO32 is a more useful application, but as a standalone temperature monitoring appi prefer RealTemp.

 

[Dragilex]

Dangro - thank you very much, awesome info