Ordering a Latitude E6400...help on memory and HD

Hi,

I'm about to order an E6400 from the dell outlet and was wondering if you all have any advice before i order.

I want to upgrade the memory and HD, but i dont know what to buy exactly.

I want 4 gb of RAM, and the quietest and most inexpensive HD that is 250 or 320gb that I can get. I assume that a 5400rpm is quieter than a 7200rpm drive. Any ideas?

thanks so much!

 

Why do you need 4 GB of RAM?, Windows Vista and 7 run great on 2 GB for most users (7 even more so, even in beta) and it may be cheaper to upgrade to 4 GB later yourself. You'll also need to make sure you select a 64-bit version of Windows in the online configurator to take advantage of those 4 GB of RAM.

I have a 7200 RPM hard drive in my D630 and never notice it working. You will get a pretty nice disk access speed bump from a 7200 RPM drive, but battery life may suffer a little, and it might put out just a bit more heat when under load. Hopefully, others with E6400 systems will be able to give you a more definitive answer to your hard drive question.

 

The RAM is DDR2 200-pin SODIMM, preferably 800MHz (PC6400) but slower RAM will work. It's your choice whether you go for one of the well-known brands (eg OCZ) or the cheapest you can find. My E6400 is happily running on 2GB of OCZ + 2GB of the cheapest RAM I could find. I was pleasantly surprised that the latter matches the OCZ's timings.

For the HDD, 5400rpm tends to be a little quieter. The HDD is rigidly mounted in the E6400 chassis so any HDD noise does propagate easily. Seagate have had some firmware problems recently so it may be prudent to skip them and choose between WD and Hitachi. I'm currently using the WD5000EVT which provides an excellent balance between performance, capacity, low noise and low power consumption but may cost more than you want to pay. Other models to consider are Fujitsu and Samsung. You can compare 2.5" HDD performance at Tom's Hardware.

John

 

thanks...are all the 5400 rpm drives pretty much equal in noisiness? ill probably buy cheapie ram if its really cheap, but if its close ill probably just get a well known brand.

should i go for the one with a dedicated GPU if i never play games? im thinking the other would be cooler and quieter and extend battery life.

 

man i wish i could search by screen type...its a pain to find the + models

 

+1 for the samsung drive, its cheaper and its so quiet i can only hear it if i put my ear on the palmrest.

seagate is awful. avoid. i cant sleep with the noise it makes!

 

does anyone know where i can buy a 5100/5300 agn intel card to replace the b/g card that some of them have? i see a 5300 on amazon, but im almost positive its not half height.

err, and does anyone know about how much shipping costs at the outlet? is there tax?

thanks!

 

Samsung (as already mentioned) are quiet and I have been impressed by the recent WD HDDs.

Avoid the dedicated GPU for the reasons you give.

Other members have mentioned ebay.

John