Getting a new laptop...

[BTGBullseye]

Ok, so I have finally gotten enough money to be able to upgrade my 2 year old Dell 1558 laptop (6GB 1333MHz RAM, i5-450m CPU, HD 5470 1GB GPU) to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246491

 

I'm also getting these to replace the single 4GB 1333MHz RAM module that it comes with: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211568 (gonna replace a 2GB module in my old laptop with the 4GB one from the new laptop, then turn it into a Linux box)

 

What do you think? Not bad for $647 is it? (I'm doing the rush processing, hence the added $4)

[BTGBullseye]

Ok, so I just got the laptop this evening and this happened...

 

[attachment=0]8.8GHz i5-3210m processor.png[/attachment]

 

An 8.8GHz i5-3210m processor!

 

This was just an error on the part of OpenHardwareMonitor, it's really only running at about 2.5GHz. lol

[sheridanm962]

Man I wish that was correct (also in the GPU), good luck rendering the universe and everything with it then.

[Obsidian]

Sheesh, are those temperatures the idle temps? I forgot how hot laptops run (my desktop peaks out at those temps while rendering on an average day).

[BTGBullseye]

Actually, I was installing Starcraft 2 in the background when I took that screenshot. (installing using a backup disk image from my HDD, and running Avast!, so lots of processor usage) Idle temps for everything are around 43c. (when the fan is off, and it's not on a laptop cooler) Max temps I've seen are 65c when maxing the GPU and CPU loads in a stress test.

[Obsidian]

Then those seem pretty darn good for a laptop when under a load. Definitely beats this laptop I had a few years ago, especially when it's TIM completely dried up. That wasn't a fun repair.

[Humin]

My laptop used to idle around 34 for the gpu and a little higher for the cpu. Now it's 38 and my cpu is 45. Under load my gpu used to be 56. Now it's around 70 or higher and my cpu can hit 80 or higher. It needs to be cleaned.

[BTGBullseye]

Well, I think I managed to get the cooling solution in this laptop to set, and it now has max temps of 76c. Still, that's 10c less than my old laptop... I need to replace the stock grease/pads with some PK-1...

[Obsidian]

That would definitely be a good idea, especially since most laptop manufacturers go for the cheapest thermal grease/pads as possible for their units. The stuff in my HP turned into some really nasty white, solid compound that I had to chip off the heat-spreaders to get off all the way. 76c seems really high, then again, my comfort level for temps on my CPU cores is 60c, though I'm managing to get satisfactory performance without hitting 55c these days (I'm hoping I'll be able to get them down to 47c later this month as temperatures continue to drop).

 

What kind of power does your new laptop consume when under load?

[BTGBullseye]

Well, I don't know about power to the video card, but the processor does top out at 35w. (exactly as specified in it's specs)

 

Under load battery time is supposedly around 1 hour.

 

 

Damn, can't seem to find my tube of PK-1... Have to look for it later.

[Obsidian]

Did you ever put linux on that old laptop? Which install did you choose?

[BTGBullseye]

Yeah, I put Fedora 17 LXDE on it. (I was trying to get Fedora 17 Security Edition, but I don't have any CDs, and USB install doesn't want to work for some reason)

 

Oh, and a couple days ago I found my thermal grease, so now my temps for my new laptop are 52c-68c. (I did a slight stress test to find out the high temps) Considering the processor and GPU are rated for 100c+, that's not bad is it?

[Obsidian]

Hm, that's odd. Maybe Fedora thinks you're being too paranoid. Then again, I've had problems in the past with installing Linux OSes from USB before, so maybe it was just bad luck.

 

Those numbers seem legit, though I'd be curious about how well heat transfers out to the bottom of the laptop and how hot that gets. I imagine most people don't regularly use laptops on their laps these days, but hey, there are probably some who do.

[BTGBullseye]

Actually, all the heat goes out the side, and I actually timed it going from 68c to 52c... Took all of 8 seconds! (most laptops take 30 sec to do that last time I checked)

 

Now I'm just having troubles with the video card; memory overclocks, but the shader/core won't.

[Obsidian]

Which utility are you using for overclocking? Have you tried others? Also, it's possible that the GPU has a funky firmware or BIOS or something that prevents shader/core overclocking. Lenovo is weird about that stuff sometimes, since there's a bunch of Wifi cards floating around the internet with a Lenovo firmware on them that detects whether you're using a Lenovo computer and the model of said computer. If both of those don't check out, the card just refuses to work properly.

[BTGBullseye]

Well, I've tried all the different popular OC utilities, but right now I'm using Nvidia Inspector for just about everything. I'm getting a strong vibe that it's the firmware. (I'm not comfortable with getting a custom firmware though, last time I did a firmware update it bricked a $500 motherboard and two 600GB Cheetahs)

 

Oh, and it seems that the issue with it having trouble with the processor speed is not just a one time occurrence... I even get a reading of 10GHz sometimes! lol (restarts fix the problem)

[Obsidian]

I can't blame you, I've only hacked the firmware on a few mobile devices and wouldn't do the same with my computers. I'd rather not brick my system just to get a small increase in performance.

 

Hopefully it's only having issues reporting the speed. It would suck if it started to misrepresent your temps too!

[BTGBullseye]

Nah, temp sensors are entirely separate... The speed report may show it as extremely high speed, but it runs EVERYTHING at about 1/8 the normal speed. (no biggie, it only takes 30 seconds for a full reboot, despite the full HDD)

 

The absolute biggest issue I have: not enough HDD space.

[Obsidian]

If you have the spare cash, now is the time to remedy that issue, since most everyone is having decent sales on drives now. Plus you could always try removing the optical drive and replacing it with a 2nd HDD if you wanted.

[BTGBullseye]

Yeah, no. I'm dead broke, and jobless. Living with my parents that just took out a loan against their next paycheck just to be able to fix a car so they can get to work... Can't buy a thing. (good thing I still have internet so I can pirate things, and burn them to disk as Christmas presents)