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Dell M4700 specs (hard drive questions)

jacobcohen

Hello,

I know another computer thread! But really wanted some specific answers and a little lost myself.  I'm starting my M.Arch at Cornell this fall and decided on buying the Dell M4700 with the following specs:

- 3rd Gen Intel® Core™ i7-3740QM Processor (2.7GHz, 6M cache)

- 16.0GB, DDR3-1600MHz SDRAM, 2 DIMMS

- NVIDIA® Quadro® K2000M with 2GB GDDR3

- 15.6" UltraSharp™ FHD (1920x1080) Wide View Anti-Glare,

- 750GB 2.5" 7200rpm Hard Drive

 

While i'm fairly certain this computer is good and it will last me my years at school I wasn't sure if I should have gotten asolid state drive.... If I were to get a SSD I would probably have to get a 128GB (SATA3) Solid State Mini-card Drive as the main hard drive and then a 2nd 500GB or 320GB hard drive 7200rpm as a backup for storage.  Also not sure about Raid at all.  Basically would my main hard drive being a SSD make the computer a lot faster? Also it would cost a fair bit more so I would maybe have to cut back on some of the specs above... either memory or the graphics card. Please if you have advice specifically on the hard drive and how much of a difference this would make over just having one larger 7200rpm drive.

 

thanks!

 
Jun 22, 13 12:42 pm
jll3

I bought the 4600 a couple years ago with the 128 ssd. Dell tends to overprice upgrades as far as RAM and the HD are concerned, so I order the laptop with the lowest RAM and 250 gb HD, then just bought 16 gb of RAM and a larger hard drive for around $2-300 less than what Dell would have charged and installed them myself. So you have that option, they're quite easy to install yourself.

As far as the ssd is concerned, I definitely like how much faster things load and what not, but I'm not so sure the change is so significant that I couldn't live without it, just makes life a bit easier when things run faster.

Jun 22, 13 1:43 pm  · 
 · 
jacobcohen

Thanks for the feedback, do you think overall the processors and hard drive are good enough... or  for the money should really go for the SSD?  I checked and based on the amount I spent to get 16GB of ram I could save about 100$ buying it and installing it myself.

 

Anyone else have any feedback?

Jun 23, 13 11:59 am  · 
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