Updated build (following advice)

[Dragilex]

After some lovely advice I've updated my proposed build. Comments again welcome. Question about the RAM. What would the difference/benefits be between 1x4GB, 2x2GB, 2x4GB? The major use of system will be gaming. Would an external HDD be more advisable than 2 internal HDDs?

Vortex II: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2630QM (2.00GHz) 6MB Cache

4GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)

1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (17.3" Vortex II)

1st Hard Disk 500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE
(7200 rpm)
2nd Hard Disk 500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE
(7200 rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE

Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Surround 5.1 PRO (£64)

Network Facilities GIGABIT LAN & INTEL® CENTRINO® ADVANCED-N 6230 inc BLUETOOTH

Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

 

[omens]

Main difference in pairing ram is speed. 2x2GB should be faster than 1x4GB. As for quantity, you don't want to strangle the system with only 2GB. It's like working in an office that's the size of your cupboard under the stairs!

External HDD will always be slower than internal HDD, so not sure why you would do this. You could of course have one internal HDD and buy an external HDD but the main benefit for this would be to have the data stored elsewhere, separately and securely.

 

[Flucky]

What's your budget Drag?

 

[Retron]

After some lovely advice I've updated my proposed build. Comments again welcome. Question about the RAM. What would the difference/benefits be between 1x4GB, 2x2GB, 2x4GB?

There'll be a noticable boost in memory performance by getting a pair of DIMMS. You may as well go for 8GB from the off if you can; just sitting here at the Windows desktop with Firefox open I'm using 2GB (and that's without loads of background apps!)

Having a single 4 GB DIMM will give you 5.9 for RAM on the Windows system test. Getting a pair of them should give you 7.6 - which is a big jump.

As for hard drives, instead of getting two 500s I'd suggest getting a 750 and an SSD. Your system will be much more responsive in everyday use as a result. It's one of those things that until you've experienced it, you don't realise how good it is - and then once you have, not having an SSD seems like going back to the stone age!

 

[Dragilex]

There'll be a noticable boost in memory performance by getting a pair of DIMMS. You may as well go for 8GB from the off if you can; just sitting here at the Windows desktop with Firefox open I'm using 2GB (and that's without loads of background apps!)

Having a single 4 GB DIMM will give you 5.9 for RAM on the Windows system test. Getting a pair of them should give you 7.6 - which is a big jump.

As for hard drives, instead of getting two 500s I'd suggest getting a 750 and an SSD. Your system will be much more responsive in everyday use as a result. It's one of those things that until you've experienced it, you don't realise how good it is - and then once you have, not having an SSD seems like going back to the stone age!

Budget is about £1500, its a bit flexible while I'm dreaming of laptops.

Retron I had originally planned for an 80GB SSD with a 500GB HDD but was put off by some other comments that were informing me off their lifespan and that they're not necessarily faster. But you've spurred me on again now.

 

[Dealmaster13]

SSDs are most certainly significantly faster!

 

[Flucky]

I know this goes a tad over budget, but I've included the 120gb intel 510 SSD *drool* which will perform very nicely, and is big enough to fit the OS and a lot of your most commonly used programs. The rest is what you wanted originally +8GB RAM. If it is too much over budget switch the 510 SSD for a 320.

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Chassis & Display
Vortex II: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2630QM (2.00GHz) 6MB Cache

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card
1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (17.3" Vortex II)

Memory - Hard Disk
120GB INTEL® 510 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 450MB/sR | 210MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£89)

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Surround 5.1 PRO (£64)

Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & INTEL® CENTRINO® ADVANCED-N 6230 inc BLUETOOTH

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Price: £1,549.00 including VAT and delivery.

 

[Retron]

Retron I had originally planned for an 80GB SSD with a 500GB HDD but was put off by some other comments that were informing me off their lifespan and that they're not necessarily faster. But you've spurred me on again now.

It's definitely worth going with an SSD if you can afford it although, the near-instant access speed is what really makes the difference. Lifespan is nothing to worry about providing you store things like temp files and your swapfile on the other hard drive. Since January, running Windows pretty much every day, I've written 448 GB of data to my SSD and read 1.4 TB. It still reports as having 100% of its lifespan left.

Indeed, assuming you have a 64 GB SSD and it takes 10,000 writes before a cell dies, you'd have to write 625 TB of data before it exhausts its supply of working blocks. At my rate that'll be something like 833 years until it dies!