Vortex IV on it's way!

[vaudeville]

Incoming Vortex IV - dispatched today!

My 6yr old Dell XPS M1730 just can't cope any more. I have to use coasters under it to avoid 2nd degree burns to my legs, it weighs more than me (ok but it weighs a LOT) and the fan is so loud Mrs has to turn the telly up, so this is a long overdue upgrade.

Rationalisation used to get buy-in from Mrs:

M1730 bought 2008 for £1200 or so: £1200/6 = £200 a year, £100 a year on subscriptions. £300 a year on a pastime. Not bad imo.
Kids get XPS for Sims, Minecraft and whatever else.
She got an iPad.
I won't get a xmas or birthday present for several years.

Anyway, here's what I've got coming. I went with a single 500GB SSD in the end - hopefully I won't regret that decision (OS and apps/games on the same drive?) but my existing work laptop has an SSD and it flies no matter what's going on. I can always add another one and reorganise things at a later date if needed.

Chassis & Display Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4810MQ (2.80GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 870M - 6.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - Hard Disk 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
USB Options 3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire 1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
Battery Vortex 17.3" Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor 1 x UK Power Lead & 230W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System Genuine Windows 8.1 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
DVD Recovery Media Windows 8.1 (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve
Office Software NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

It will be used primarily for World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Star Trek Online and maybe GTA. Probably others too, now that I'll have a machine that can handle it.

I went with a higher 4810MQ core CPU and dropped the RAM down from 16GB to 8GB as I've read a lot about WoW being CPU intensive. It can apparently make use of 3 cores so I ditched the idea of the 3.0MHz dual for a 2.8 quad which should also future proof it somewhat.

I also considered a GeForce 880M but budget really wouldn't allow and I didn't want to compromise on other aspects.

I'll give it a bit of a review on here when it turns up. Can't wait

 

[Ash]

The GeForce 900M series is due to be available any day now. Maybe wait a little bit?

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

Someone else on the forum today said that they were told November by PCS.

Might be worth the wait though as they may release a new Chassis like a vortex 5 or a new range, its all just speculation at this point.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Someone else on the forum today said that they were told November by PCS.

Might be worth the wait though as they may release a new Chassis like a vortex 5 or a new range, its all just speculation at this point.

I'd say it's worth the wait if you can, the 900 series are pretty phenominal cards and worth it over the 800 series, it's not just a simple performance increase, there are some new technologies which are pretty exciting. Plus a refreshed chassis (if that is going to happen) would mean better upgrade potential in the future.

EDIT: Just saw it's already been dispatched. The 800 series are still phenominal, I'm extremely happy with the 870m and the 17" Vortex is a powerful beast. You'll be very happy, I'm sure.

Worth mentioning that the Samsung Evo's all have a bug where you get serious performance loss reading files 6 months old. Don't let me put you off, it's still a fantastic drive and Samsung have acknowledged the issue and are working on a firmware update, so best to keep an eye out on their support forums. As a temporary fix for it, I'd recommend installing the samsung magician software and set the drive to rapid mode.

 

[vaudeville]

Thanks for the info/advice all!

I'm going to be budget restricted so I imagine a 900M will be well out of my range when it is released. That said, the 880 will come down in price I guess so I could look at that a bit further down the line. That's the beauty of these, fully upgradeable.

I did read that there were issues with others and that EVOs were a better choice! That was an older post though so I'll keep my eye on it.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

Thanks for the info/advice all!

I'm going to be budget restricted so I imagine a 900M will be well out of my range when it is released. That said, the 880 will come down in price I guess so I could look at that a bit further down the line. That's the beauty of these, fully upgradeable.

I did read that there were issues with others and that EVOs were a better choice! That was an older post though so I'll keep my eye on it.

Upgrades are possible but troublesome for these laptops. For example, to upgrade the gpu it has restrictions on motherboard issues and also the chassis manufacturer (clevo in this case) producing a bios for the new card.

I have a vortex 2 and i was only able to upgrade from the HD6990m to the HD7970m, i couldn't upgrade to any of the GTX series past the GTX 500 series.

The vortex 3 and 4 customers have been told that GPU upgrades are not possible.

That said there's nothing to say that this will be the case for the GTX 900m series, it was just to make you aware of possible upgrade restrictions further down the line.

The machine you ordered is going to a beast either way though and as you say the 900 series is going to come with a price tag that will probably blow your budget. I've had my Vortex 2 for coming on 3 years and the machine still plays games like Battlefield 4 and Shadow of Mordor on medium to high at 1080 and the GPU have ordered is more powerful than 2 of my cards so i think your going to get a great experience from it.

If you check out this link http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-870M.107792.0.html it will show you that the card has great performance on almost all games at ultra.

Really hope i didn't put a negative note on your purchase with the news of the new series release. Its going to be a beast when you get it. Look forward to your review and pictures, we love pictures

Mike

 

[vaudeville]

...

Really hope i didn't put a negative note on your purchase with the news of the new series release. Its going to be a beast when you get it. Look forward to your review and pictures, we love pictures

Mike

No not at all Mike, very helpful advice for me and anyone else reading it

Anyway, it's been just over a week now and despite not being around as much as I would have liked to use the laptop due to work commitments, I've spent enough time with it to form an opinion. So as promised, here's my two pence worth on the Vortex IV 17.3 (pics to follow - I'm at work now):

PC Specialist - 10/10
First of all, the service from PCS was first class. I called up prior to ordering with a technical question on the CPU and they were very helpful and knowledgeable. Post sales production and despatch were outstanding, with the whole process taking ~5 days. Whether I chose some pretty standard configs or they are just excellent anyway I don't know, but couldn't be happier with the whole process. Well done PCS!

Build - 9/10
Seems very sturdy so far. A few + and - going on experiences a week in:
+ Some have commented on the weight but, as mentioned previously I'm coming from a Dell XPS and if I didn't see evidence to the contrary I'd be convinced the chassis was empty
+ Keyboard is great, very nice touch and key action, although the layout is slightly different to what I'm used to. I'm still hitting "#" instead of enter key regularly - I'm used to the bigger enter key - and the space bar encroaches on the "alt" key territory in my view but these are minor things and I am slowly getting used to it.
+ Fans aren't particularly intrusive. Compared to the XPS they are barely noticeable and mrs no longer needs to turn the telly up.
+ The chassis never gets that warm, again comparing to the oven-hot XPS the heat is barely noticeable.
+ I also love the brushed aluminium cover and the keyboard lights, whilst a bit gaudy and something of a gimmick, are nevertheless a fun little touch

- I find the DVD drawer flimsy and it's easy to catch the button to open it. I don't actually think they are all that different in other laptops but this one feels a little light, cheap and breakable. I speak from experience, having broken the light and flimsy "cup holder" on a previous laptop.
- The rubber feet on this chassis also dig into the unprotected leg. Not sure if they can be removed or replaced but they do get uncomfortable if it's on your lap for long.
- Power button - is that touch sensitive or do I have to push it? Seems both or neither in varying degrees :S

Performance - 10/10
Outstanding in most areas on the performance front. I have got the old favourites on there and installed a couple of new ones and they run flawlessly. OS wise it's lightning fast as you'd expect from an SSD. My decision to drop down to 8GB was justified as I've not found anything that uses the full 8GB and I will rarely run more than one memory intensive game or application at any one time.

+ WoW runs perfectly on Ultra, even with the new (fugly) character models. And I mean perfectly, 60+ fps all the way. Not tested this in a big RAID yet but I imagine it would probably suffer a bit, but PvP bunfights in the middle of the battleground are all coped with without fuss.

+ Star Trek Online again, runs like a dream on Ultra. Shame the game itself is losing appeal (another story). Detail on

+/- Diablo III. Running on highest settings it seems, not laggy exactly, but slow? It may be a feature of the game and in truth I've not really noticed any freezing or anything but it doesn't seem quite the full ticket. Still really very good though and I don't know for sure that the laptop can be blamed. I've not tried dropping the settings down yet as, in truth, it's not bad enough for me to fell it's warranted and the visuals in this game are stunning. If I drop it down and the effect is the same I'll amend the review

+ Newly installed stuff (new to me anyway) like Rift, Assassin's Creed and a few others also play flawlessly. So far I've not even found anything that will tax it enough to demonstrate any lack of performance capability.

Value for Money 10/10
This is key for me. I don't have the budget for personal items like this any more and this investment needed to be just right. I was therefore delighted to find the Vortex to be outstanding value in every area. Similarly specced machines elsewhere, where they are often comparable in price, are purported to be lacking in quality and attention to detail and the customisation choices far more limited. More importantly, it looks like this machine will be able to cope with anything I can throw at it now and for some time to come. That can only be a good thing, because this is a once every 5 years purchase for me, if I'm lucky.

Would I change anything?
Right now, I can honestly say there's nothing I would change given my experience so far. After advice from the good folk above I might have mixed some things up prior to ordering but my experience since taking delivery has been so good I can't think of anything I would change.

Conclusion - 9.5/10
Overall a really very impressive experience in all areas. Very little to complain about despite trying quite hard to find something. Definitely recommend the company and products to anyone wanting a specialist machine!