Replacing Parts

[Harun677]

Hi,

These may be dumb questions but please answer them if you can, I'm not much of a laptop hardware specialist in anyway.

I have the Vortex III, running awesomely but I have some questions if I decided to upgrade the hard drives or gpu in future.

If I decide to get a new hard drive from pcs or anywhere else what is the specific spec I would look for to make sure it actually fits in my laptop (not memory wise but things like 2.5" etc)
Same goes with a laptop graphics card and RAM
When it says SSD cache drive, what does that mean?

Thanks,

Harun

 

[Yamikotai]

If I decide to get a new hard drive from pcs or anywhere else what is the specific spec I would look for to make sure it actually fits in my laptop (not memory wise but things like 2.5" etc)

Any 2.5" SATA drive will work fine. There are two iterations of SATA that would matter to you - SATA2 and SATA3 - but they'll work equally well.

Same goes with a laptop graphics card and RAM

I'm not sure on GPU - I know PCS are starting a GPU (graphics card) upgrade service for some of the higher-end models but I don't know if the Vortex III is included in that.

RAM is the most easily-replaceable part of a laptop. Both the 15.6" and 17.3" versions of the Vortex III have 4 slots - meaning you can have 4 modules installed - up to DDR3 1333Mhz normally, or up to DDR3 1600MHz if your laptop has an i7 CPU. The maximum size of each module is 8GB, meaning that the most you can have is 4 modules of 8GB.

So, if you were to want to upgrade your RAM, you would most likely look for DDR3, with 1333MHz speed, in the capacity (2GB/4GB/8GB) you want. Keep in mind that if you want to add additional RAM, make sure it is the same speed as your current modules (probably 1333MHz) - the laptop will usually just run the faster modules (1600MHz, for example) at the same speed as the slower modules (1333Mhz), but this isn't guaranteed and can issues.

When it says SSD cache drive, what does that mean?

An SSD is a flash-based drive - like a USB stick (no moving parts) - but much, much faster. Your usual SSD shows up as any other hard drive would in Windows - you see a drive in My Computer, with a drive letter and free space/total space, that you can move files to and from. They are much faster than standard hard drives but more expensive and lower in capacity as a result.

A cache drive is different in that it doesn't show up as a usable drive. This is because that instead of acting as a usable storage drive - you have no direct access to it - it keeps a copy of the files and folders you use most often. This means that the files you access most often load much faster than if you didn't have a cache drive, since it gets those from the cache drive instead of the much slower hard drive.

 

[Harun677]

Thanks for the info

I think they said the GPU for vortex III was upgradable but if I bought the gpu from elsewhere idk what kinda slot I would be looking for ie SLI, express (I know the slot isnt SLI) but which is it

 

[Yamikotai]

I think they said the GPU for vortex III was upgradable but if I bought the gpu from elsewhere idk what kinda slot I would be looking for ie SLI, express (I know the slot isnt SLI) but which is it

It's not the sort of thing you'd be able to do yourself with some electronics knowledge.