Advice needed for a Genesis II based system.

[tjm]

Hi,

I've been shopping around for a new laptop for a while now and was desperately looking for somewhere that would let me customise it fully to my needs so it's great to find pcspecialist but now I have a few questions.

The base system I'm looking at is the Genesis II with the i3-350M processor, 4G of RAM, 320G 7200rpm hard drive and no operating system. I then plan to buy a 60G OCZ Vertex 2 SSD from elsewhere and swap the drives.

So my first, and perhaps most important, question is, would replacing the hard drives myself void my warranty?

Secondly I'm going for no operating system as I use linux as my primary OS, so I wonder if anyone has any experience of using this system with linux and if I should expect any problems.

A very important factor to me is battery life, so I wonder how long I'd be looking at getting with this system (with the SSD in there).

And finally, I wonder what sort of operating temperatures this system would run at. I'm a little worried as I hear the SSD's are far more susceptible to heat damage and my current Dell laptop runs very hot indeed when under any sort of load.

Also, a bit of an aside, but I'll ask it while I'm here, I did have my heart set on the i5-520M but think (as I'm already pushing the budget) I'll have to sacrifice it to get the SSD, but I wonder, if I could make that work, how much of a difference would it make to the speed of the system and the battery life, etc. Any other suggestions of improvements/modifications to the system would be welcome too (but my first 4 questions are really what I want to know). My situation is that I'm a maths student and as such run maths/scientific software on linux as well as some windows only course software that I run in a virtual machine. I program for pleasure but it takes a lot of my time. I do a little graphics/web development work and run a local webserver. No gaming to speak of (well the odd one here and there! but nothing intensive). And of course the usual email/internet stuff.

Thanks in advance for your help and advice.
T.

 

[Meds]

Hi,

I've been shopping around for a new laptop for a while now and was desperately looking for somewhere that would let me customise it fully to my needs so it's great to find pcspecialist but now I have a few questions.

The base system I'm looking at is the Genesis II with the i3-350M processor, 4G of RAM, 320G 7200rpm hard drive and no operating system. I then plan to buy a 60G OCZ Vertex 2 SSD from elsewhere and swap the drives.

So my first, and perhaps most important, question is, would replacing the hard drives myself void my warranty?

Secondly I'm going for no operating system as I use linux as my primary OS, so I wonder if anyone has any experience of using this system with linux and if I should expect any problems.

A very important factor to me is battery life, so I wonder how long I'd be looking at getting with this system (with the SSD in there).

And finally, I wonder what sort of operating temperatures this system would run at. I'm a little worried as I hear the SSD's are far more susceptible to heat damage and my current Dell laptop runs very hot indeed when under any sort of load.

Also, a bit of an aside, but I'll ask it while I'm here, I did have my heart set on the i5-520M but think (as I'm already pushing the budget) I'll have to sacrifice it to get the SSD, but I wonder, if I could make that work, how much of a difference would it make to the speed of the system and the battery life, etc. Any other suggestions of improvements/modifications to the system would be welcome too (but my first 4 questions are really what I want to know). My situation is that I'm a maths student and as such run maths/scientific software on linux as well as some windows only course software that I run in a virtual machine. I program for pleasure but it takes a lot of my time. I do a little graphics/web development work and run a local webserver. No gaming to speak of (well the odd one here and there! but nothing intensive). And of course the usual email/internet stuff.

Thanks in advance for your help and advice.
T.


PS. Also just to let you know, I noticed that if you add the Belkin surge protector to that setup it say it's on special offer for £6 but the price goes up by £18.

Hey & welcome to our forums, I hope I can answer most of your questions for you!

1. Removing the HDD and fitting an SSD in the future will not void the warranty. However, as you can understand IF any damage/faults occur as a direct result of you fitting the SSD then the repair costs cannot be covered under warranty.

2. As we do not install Linux on any of our Laptops we cannot guarantee that all drivers are available however when customers in the past have installed linux on our laptops they have done so successfully, most moan about the wireless drivers (Azurewave wireless cards) but they find a driver sooner or later - I'm sure if you know what your doing you should be ok.

3. Battery life. It all depends on what you do, I would say the average battery life will be around 2 - 4 hours but if you run a lot of intensive applications, you can understand the battery life to be lower.

4. Operating temperatures are pretty good to be honest with you, I can assure you that unless there is a generic fault with the cooling system (which there wont be ) then I wouldn't expect the SSD to fail due to heat damage.

5. In regards to the price/budget the i5-540 is around £40 - £50 extra so if you can squeeze this in then it would make an impact on performance.

 

[PCS]

To add to Meds comments, why don't you buy the 60GB OCZ Vertex II from us? That way we can install it into the laptop for you and also cover it under warranty? This will also save you having to buy a 320GB hard drive from us and you could then, just maybe, use the money saved to upgrade to an i5-520M?

If you wanted both drives, we would be happy to provide you with the 320GB as an additional drive.

I've checked the surge protector price, and it was increasing by £8, not £18. It should be correct now...

 

[tjm]

Thankyou Meds and PCS for your answers.

That's very helpful Meds. Yes, it's always been wireless cards that have been the big pain I've had when installing Linux systems in the past so it's good to know what cards you use so I can do a bit of research about them in advance.


To PCS, hi! It's all the budget I'm afraid. I was really looking for a sub-£600 system (and even the top end of that was going to be a stretch) so now I'm just trying to save every penny where I can.

The system as I stated was coming up as £501 (yesterday, seems today it says £503) and I found the OCZ Vertex 2 for £127 elsewhere (with a plan to shop around more before buying). Giving me a total of £628 (£630), for which I get the OCZ and the 320Gb drive. I already have an external enclosure for a 2.5" drive, so that would cover both my storage and system drive needs.

The system with the OCZ from you was coming up (I thought, but I'm not as certain about this one) as £617 (yesterday, today it says £611). So to make it equal I would need to find the 320Gb 7200rpm drive for £11 (£19).

I wonder now, what make and model do you use for the regular hard drives?


EDIT. Just a quick search finds the OCZ for £122. (Only £5 less, but £5 is £5!)


Sorry if I made a mistake on the cost of the surge protector but thankyou for fixing it, I'll edit that out of my original post now. And I'm hoping I've done my sums correctly above

EDIT. About the surge protector I just noticed something weird, if i add it to my system with the 320Gb drive selected the price now goes up by £16, if I add it with the OCZ drive selected it goes up by the correct £6.

 

[PCS]

FYI - the 320GB hard drive is scheduled to go EOL very soon, so you may have to configure your laptop with a different sized hard drive.

Our price for the OCZ is cheaper than £127 - I recommend you save a quote for the system with the 320GB HDD or the SSD and I'll have a look at what price we can do both for you. Please save it under the same email address that you registered for these forums, then I can see your quotes

Our regular drives are usually branded Seagate, Hitachi or WD.