Looking for advice

[AngusYoung]

Hello I'd like to replace my Dell Inspiron i7-3630QM which is still working great but it's now 8 years old.

I am a web designer and I use Photoshop and Dreamweaver with many files open, Thunderbird, Opera with 10/15 open tabs, MusicBee, qBittorrent, sometimes Word & Excel. When at work I use a LG 29WK600 monitor.

I'm thinking of buying a Lafité and I have a few questions:

Lafité 14" can have 2 SSD, Lafité 15,6" only 1, why is that?

I would go for a SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 250 GB, NVMe PCIe as main drive to install Windows and a SSD Samsung 860 QVO 2,5" 2 TB, SATA 6 Gb/s as data storage. Or is it better a single drive SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 2 TB, NVMe PCIe?

16GB or 32GB RAM?

Will the processor i7-10710U be available soon on these laptops?

Any advice would be welcome.
Thanks.

 

[Oussebon]

Be aware that the CPUs in the Lafite, while an upgrade, aren't a massive upgrade

Mobile Processors - Benchmark List

This is a benchmark list of mobile processors like Turion, Pentium M, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, sorted by performance.

tinyurl.com

This is because they're lower power parts. So you're still getting an upgrade in performance for less power consumption, but it may not be an upgrade that's actually worth the price of the laptop.

32gb is way more than you need for the uses you've described. 8gb would probably cut it tbh, 16gb is plenty.

No idea why the 14" Lafite has 2 M.2 slots and the 15.6" one only 1.

Also note that the i7 10510U is the same as the i5 10210U but is just a little bit faster and has a little more L3 cache. Depending on the price difference, the i7s are rarely worth it over the i5s. The i7 10710U has got more cores at least to differentiate it but 1) for your uses the i5 10210U should be more than enough - tbh your current CPU is more than enough - and 2) I doubt PCS will offer the 6 cores ones in the Lafite though to be sure you would need to phone them

 

[AngusYoung]

Thank you very much Oussebon for your comment.

I read in another topic that the i7-10510U is not worth the extra money than the i5-10210U. And you're telling me that also the i7-10710U is not really a big gain for what I need.

I'll go for 16GB RAM.

What's your suggestion about the drives?

 

[Oussebon]

I suppose it depends on your Adobe workloads, but depending on those and certainly for everything else you're not going to see benefit from a 6 core CPU.

As for the drives, which system are you going for?

 

[AngusYoung]

I think in the long term 1 TB drive will not be enough so 2 TB would be the preferred solution.

A single drive SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS 2 TB of course would be optimal but it's too much for my budget, so I was thinking I could go for a SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS 250 GB as main drive to install Windows and a SSD Samsung 860 QVO 2 TB as data storage.
Or for the same budget I could get a single drive Intel SSD 660p 2 TB; which configuration would you suggest me?

 

[Oussebon]

Does the data benefit from being on an SSD? If not, or not really, then a 2TB HDD would be fine and much cheaper.

If they're project files you're working off for Photoshop, then probably, but if we're talking about archived projects then not really.

PCS have an open case policy too, so if you bought a 1TB M.2 SSD now, but found you needed more in the future, you could always pop the laptop open and add a 2TB SSD/HDD in yourself.

In which case a 1TB SX6000 SSD would give great bang for buck for the time being.

 

[AngusYoung]

At the moment the drive configuration on my Dell is:
1st drive SSD Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB, Windows and all programs
2nd drive SATA Western Digital WD10JPVX-75JC3T0 1TB, all my files I'm working are store here and it is quite a slow drive

My doubt is, what should I choose?
Single drive Intel SSD 660p 2 TB or will I have better performance with a dual drive configuration where the 1st drive would be a Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 250 GB and the 2nd drive a SSD Samsung 860 QVO 2 TB assuming that all work files will be on the 2nd drive?

 

[ubuysa]

At the moment the drive configuration on my Dell is:
1st drive SSD Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB, Windows and all programs
2nd drive SATA Western Digital WD10JPVX-75JC3T0 1TB, all my files I'm working are store here and it is quite a slow drive

My doubt is, what should I choose?
Single drive Intel SSD 660p 2 TB or will I have better performance with a dual drive configuration where the 1st drive would be a Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 250 GB and the 2nd drive a SSD Samsung 860 QVO 2 TB assuming that all work files will be on the 2nd drive?

That WD HDD is a slow drive, it's a 5400rpm drive. A 7200rpm HDD will be noticeably faster, but whether it will be fast enough I'm not entirely certain. If you're saying the 5400rpm drive is 'quite slow' then a 7200rpm HDD might not be fast enough for you.

You definitely do not want a single SSD. There can only be one I/O at a time in progress to each drive so a single drive will suffer longer queue lengths and poor performance.

If you can afford the two SSDs then the 970 EVO for Windows and programs and the 860 QVO for your data is your best option performance-wise.

 

[AngusYoung]

Thank you very much Ubuysa!
Will definitely go for the 2 SSD configuration.

 

[AngusYoung]

Still thinking which laptop I should buy... I am considering a Fusion IV which has a dedicated graphic card and better battery. But a single channel RAM... Or should I prefer the Lafité which has a dual channel RAM and integrated graphic?

And about the drives, 970 EVO PLUS 250 GB for OS and programs that would be the obvious choice. Anyway I see the Fusion IV configuration can't support the 860 QVO... Intel 660p 2TB for data would still be a good choice?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Oussebon]

What is the budget?

 

[AngusYoung]

Around 1000€.

 

[Oussebon]

I might have suggested a Recoil GTX or a Vyper but these would be above budget. At least it would give you an -H series CPU which is a more meaningful upgrade, and a more powerful dedicated GPU. As well as dual channel RAM.

 

[AngusYoung]

Thanks Oussebon i tried to configure the models you suggested me but they are too much above budget... Still having to decide between a Lafité and the Fusion... Will my daily usage suffer more from a single channel RAM or from the integrated graphic?

 

[Oussebon]

If your daily usage doesn't involve photoshop, the Lafite wins for me. If it does, I've no idea I'm afraid.

 

[AngusYoung]

Yes Photoshop is part of my daily usage, mostly for cropping and resizing photos tho.

What's your recommendation between Samsung 860 QVO and Intel 660p considering them as a secondary drive?