Inferno 11.6" Questions

M

Munj

Active member
Hi,

Recently I have been looking to buy the 11.6" Inferno(Clevo W110ER). I have configured it to what I primarily want it for which is gaming and it comes out to be slightly over my budget. These are the configurations I made:

-11.6" Matte HD LED Widescreen(1366x768)
-i7-3630(2.40GHz) 6MB Quad Core
-8GB Samsung 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 Memory (1x8)
-NVIDIA GT650M 2GB
-1TB (5400rpm) 8MB cache
-Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste
-Gigabit LAN & Killer 1102 Wireless Gaming Network 802.11N Network Card
-Norton Anti-Virus 2013 1 year licence for 1 PC
-3 year silver warranty

The notebook with these specs comes to £754. However my budget is about £740. I don't mind spending the extra money but I would just like to know if some of the components are necessary.

-8GB RAM (1x8): I was just wondering what the difference between the 1x8 and the 2x4 8GB of RAM is.

-Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste: I have seen from reviews that this particular notebook can get quite hot(60-90 degrees Celsius) Therefore I thought that adding this upgraded thermal paste would be wise. If anyone has this paste could you tell me how effective it is at decreasing the temperature and if you have a way of measuring it by approximately how many degrees does it decrease the temperature.

-Gigabit LAN & killer 1102: There are two available the 1102 and the 1202. Firstly what is a Network Card? Secondly what is the difference between the 1102 and the 1202 in general.

These are my main concerns about this laptop. Thank You.
 
S

stimulus

Member
As far as I'm aware there shouldn't be any performance differences between 1x8 stick and 2x4 sticks (please correct me if I'm wrong someone). The only issue you have is the expense of upgrades in the future. Say you wanted to go up to 16gigs of RAM, with 1x8 stick, you will have the space to just add another stick, but if you start with 2x4 you will need to buy 2x8 to get to the 16.

As for the thermal paste, I was recommended on getting it by another poster, it's only £9 so I'm getting it on my order.

For the network carsds, can't really help too much on that front.
 
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Toxophilix

Toxophilix

Bright Spark
As stimulus says, the advantage of 1 x 8GB vs 2 x 4GB is that if you get 1 x 8GB then you can upgrade to 16GB simply by adding another stick, whereas if you have 2 x 4 then both slots are filled and you need to throw away the existing RAM to upgrade. For gaming, at least, 8GB is likely to be plenty for a good while to come (4GB is actually enough for any currently available game).

You can see the Arctic MX-4 in a group test of thermal pastes here: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/geek_tested_17_thermal_pastes_face?page=0,1. As you can see, it performs pretty well and is ~7 degrees cooler than the worst performing pastes in that test. However, we don't know how well PCS's "standard" paste would have done - it might also be excellent for its price. But we can probably say that we are going to get 3 or 4 degrees advantage from the MX-4 and quite possibly more. That's well worth £9 in my view, given that all laptops are vulnerable to overheating and this particular laptop packs a high-performance CPU and GPU into a very small chassis.

A network card, as the name suggests, provides your PC's interface to your local network (for home users that normally just means your wifi router) and through that to the Internet. The standard network card in the PCS laptops does a very good job and I would say that, if you are looking to shave a few quid from the price, this is an area you could trim back. The "Killer" cards are supposedly optimised for gaming in that they prioritise game-related network traffic so that if, for example, you were downloading a movie at the same time as playing an online game, the download wouldn't affect your game speed. But then, you could always just not download at the same time as playing. (I have to admit I'm a bit sceptical about the Killer products, mostly because their website is so vague about what they actually do.)

Btw, you could very well ditch the Norton subscription as there are free alternatives available from Microsoft (MS Security Essentials available as a download for Windows 7, or the built-in Windows Defender in Windows 8).
 
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bigben

bigben

Master Poster
Hey, I would consider this Price: £753
It's similar to what you posted, but has a better hard drive and a years dead pixel warranty.

I agree with all of Toxos points.

With regards to the thermal paste: It's £9, seeing as you are spending ~£750 on a laptop my thinking is better safe than sorry.
 
M

Munj

Active member
Thanks so much guys :). And thanks bigben for the alternative configuration which I have substituted for my original one. Just a question to Toxophilix or anyone else. When the thermal paste is applied do you have to re-apply it every month or year or is it a permanent thing. Also if anyone has bought this Arctic Paste with their laptop did you have to apply it yourself or did PCS do it for you.
 
vanthus

vanthus

Member Resting in Peace
PCS applies the paste and you shouldn't really need to replace it unless it deteriorates overtime causing a rise in temperature.
 
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