New PC Notebook to Run Arena

[pfelberg]

Hi. I am about to buy a new PC Notebook, mostly to run Resolume Arena.
I could´t find any notebook with a 7200 speed HD. Also, I am curious about RAM, so any comments are welcome.

Here it goes...

Dell Computer
Intel® Core™ i7-4510U (3.1 GHz, 4Mb Cache)
Windows 8.1, 64bit
16GB RAM, Dual Channel DDR3, 1600MHz (2x8Gb)
5400 1TB Hard Drive with Hybrid 8GB Flash Drive
AMD Radeon™ HD R7 M265 2GB DDR3
LED Full HD IPS de 15.6" (1920x1080) Touchscreen
HDMI™ 1.4a, USB 3.0 (2), USB 2.0 (1), etc, etc...

1) Is 16GB really necessary? I have a 8GB option, saving good money;
2) Will it run smoothly with this 5400 HD?
3) If I buy and external SSD Hard Drive,would it be faster?

Thank you all.

Paulo

[Zoltán]

1) Is 16GB really necessary? I have a 8GB option, saving good money;
2) Will it run smoothly with this 5400 HD?
3) If I buy and external SSD Hard Drive,would it be faster?

1. 16GB is not necessary but useful if you intend to do your rendering on the same laptop.
I have 8GB ram in an i7 Dell and can use it fine for all my work, resolume, video editing, rendering, photoshop, etc.

2. no, it will not.

3. my external ssd on usb3 is 3 times faster than the internal 7200rpm WD drive was.

2-3. I bought the ssd, put it in the primary hdd slot and put the hdd in an optbay., this way the ssd is on sata3 port, and I dont have to carry an extenal usb housing.
Boot time from SSD is around 8 secs from power on to desktop, and 40 secs with HDD, so figure.
In my Dell Vostro I even have the option to RAID the sata3 slot with an internal mSata port.
If you have an ssd with the pagefile on it the RAM size matters even less.

[Oaktown]

These days you can get a 500GB SSD internal drive for ~$250 or a 1TB for ~$450 so personally I'd save the money from the extra 8GB RAM and purchase an SSD drive to replace the internal 5400 rpm HD. Then I'd buy a case and use the 5400rpm HD for storage.

[pfelberg]

Thank you for the prompt answer, ravensc. That´s bad but also good news.
Dell customer service around here states that they sell a closed architecture device, meaning that I can´t choose the exact drive I want to be installed in the system.
So, If I buy an SSD drive and open the notebook for exchange of the HDs, I will most probably lose my dell warranty and tech support. Also, I have no experience on opening and changing notebook parts, but desktops. Is this s simple task?
Thank you!

Paulo

[pfelberg]

Oaktown, you make sense as did ravensc.
I am considering that.

Thank you