Ordered 17.3" Defiance III :D

Chassis & Display Defiance Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 7700HQ (2.8GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 16GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 - 8.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1, G-SYNC
1st Hard Disk 500GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 2.5" SSHD - UP TO 5X FASTER THAN HDD!
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor 1 x 200W AC Adaptor
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + MIC/Headphone + SoundBlaster X-Fi MB3
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0
USB Options 3 x USB 3.1 Type A, 2 x USB 3.1 Type C AS STANDARD
Battery Defiance Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (60WH)
Keyboard Language DEFIANCE SERIES RGB BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Notebook Mouse INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM




Happy!

The Defiance is a lovely - if large - laptop.

Personally, I'd have foregone the SSHD, had the upgraded pasting and silver warranty

Tony1044 said:

The Defiance is a lovely - if large - laptop.

Personally, I'd have foregone the SSHD, had the upgraded pasting and silver warranty

Click to expand...

What do you mean and foregone the SSHD could you explain a little more please? as for the other stuff I'm quiet hands on with the laptop so any with it can be done :stuart:

robhen said:

What do you mean and foregone the SSHD could you explain a little more please? as for the other stuff I'm quiet hands on with the laptop so any with it can be done :stuart:

Click to expand...

The ssd portion of sshd is bypassed when you have an ssd as the primary drive, and the disc portion of the drive is 5400 rpm, so you're essentially left with a slow hdd. A 7200rpm hdd would offer better performance for less money.

So would it be better to change it to a normal HHD with 2TB? Rather then Hybrid?

robhen said:

So would it be better to change it to a normal HHD with 2TB? Rather then Hybrid?

Click to expand...

Yes, it will be faster and cheaper

Would it actually be faster? Both the 2TB SSHD and the 2TB regular HDDs are 5400rpm with 128mb cache.

The regular 2TB HDD is only £11 cheaper (unlike with the desktops where it's like £30- 40 cheaper).

If the OP wants a 2TB HDD I'd probably stick with the SSHD..

I would suggest 2 x 1TB WD Black drives (assuming the OP doesn't mind using the 2nd storage bay) but PCS only sell the 1TB Black in one of the two bays.

Oussebon said:

Would it actually be faster? Both the 2TB SSHD and the 2TB regular HDDs are 5400rpm with 128mb cache.

Click to expand...

The normal ones are 7200rpm with a 64MB cache - does the faster cache on the 5400rpm make it equivalent? (I hadn't considered that it would, but I honestly just don't know)

But they're not 7200rpm, or at least the configurator claims that they aren't:

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/defianceIII-17/

It's the desktop drives that are 7200rpm with 64mb cache.

Oussebon said:

It's the desktop drives that are 7200rpm with 64mb cache.

Click to expand...

Oops, I was looking at the desktop ones - I'll go hide under my desk

Either way I've changed it to the 2TB SLIM SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm) and added ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND and saved £2

The biggest issue with SSHD's is that they use "intelligent" caching to put the most commonly accessed data into the SSD portion.

Which is great when it works but my experience is that unless you're using expensive tiered storage arrays there's a) never quite enough SSD portion and b) too many changes in a typical install to hit the SSD cached portion successfully which means performance isn't really improved that much over a HDD.

Alas I can't point to any metrics.

All of that said - the defiance (well my DII at least) has room for 4 drives (2x m2 and 2 x SATA) so storage isn't likely to ever become much of an issue

The SSHD could have an advantage when loading games compared to a regular HDD.


(The 2nd run is faster, once it learns that it needs the cache the stuff to load the game, shows some improvement)
http://laptopmedia.com/review/seaga...d-solution-suitable-for-both-pcs-and-laptops/

For £11 difference at 2TB capacity I'd have probably kept it tbh. But if you're putting your favourite / currently played games on the large SSD you're buying anyway, then you probably wouldn't see much benefit to the SSHD as others have said.

Thank you all for the input. I have decided I'm only going to be using it as storage part. My current laptop is running a normal hard-drive with 5400 rpm and that playing all my games fine.

Oussebon said:

The SSHD could have an advantage when loading games compared to a regular HDD.

View attachment 10385
(The 2nd run is faster, once it learns that it needs the cache the stuff to load the game, shows some improvement)
http://laptopmedia.com/review/seaga...d-solution-suitable-for-both-pcs-and-laptops/

For £11 difference at 2TB capacity I'd have probably kept it tbh. But if you're putting your favourite / currently played games on the large SSD you're buying anyway, then you probably wouldn't see much benefit to the SSHD as others have said.

Click to expand...

The problem is though that it has to learn and unless you're loading the same things time and again the cache hit is...not good.

Honestly, that's why you won't see hybrid drives in the enterprise - it's all tiered (SSD, Fibre, SAS, SATA etc).

The thing is that with games, unless you complete the whole thing in one sitting (which you can with little indie games), you are going to be loading the game over and over. Not to mention loading screens within games. And save files.

I'm not an SSHD fan, and in desktops where the cost difference is pretty large I'd pretty much never advocate one when the £ can instead go towards an actual SSD. But there are some potential merits that can't be dismissed out of hand.

Kinda irrelevant as the OP has decided they're happy with the 2TB regular HDD, which is a very valid choice in my view.

Oussebon said:

The thing is that with games, unless you complete the whole thing in one sitting (which you can with little indie games), you are going to be loading the game over and over. Not to mention loading screens within games. And save files.

I'm not an SSHD fan, and in desktops where the cost difference is pretty large I'd pretty much never advocate one when the £ can instead go towards an actual SSD. But there are some potential merits that can't be dismissed out of hand.

Kinda irrelevant as the OP has decided they're happy with the 2TB regular HDD, which is a very valid choice in my view.

Click to expand...

Some good points - not sure how true it is of modern games. When you have them taking 20, 30, 40 or even 50GB+ it strikes me that not much is reused except perhaps some models. But then I am no programmer so that could be bull.

Either way, agree with your points. Just never been a fan of the claims made by SSHD manufacturers like 5x faster than HDD. Yeah...maybe...occasionally

Tony1044 said:

Either way, agree with your points. Just never been a fan of the claims made by SSHD manufacturers like 5x faster than HDD. Yeah...maybe...occasionally

Click to expand...

Ive had 2 sshd's both on business laptops and I swapped them both out for wd Scorpio blacks which trounced them straight off. Performance degraded with time, started off promising but steadily got clunkier and clunkier like from a badly fragmented drive back in Xp days. I would never go near one again.