New Alienware 17 R5 on Order - HD Question

I have a new 17 R5 on order, so it's the latest version, and it will have the individual RGB lighting for the keyboard.

I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but is a 1TB per HD the max capacity for a drive in this system? I had planned on installing a Samsung 860 EVO 2TB, and maybe a Samsung 860 EVO 2TB M.2 as well.

 

I have 2 x2tb m.2 nvme drives and a 4tb 2.5ssd in my 17r4 without issue. I would imagine the r5 would be ok. I can’t vouch 100% for the r5 though.

 

That sounds great. You're doing video editing with it I suppose?

 

The 17 r5 doesn't come with the per-key lighting by default - that's an upgrade for $30. If you meant you upgraded to that, my apologies; just don't want to see someone disappointed when their laptop shows up with the standard per-region lighting if they assumed it came with per-key by default now.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I did indeed add that to the order, and really only mentioned it to emphasize it being the latest version.

 

Unfortunately I learned that the hard way. For a while the top end config had it included but when my order was finally placed they had removed it from being included and I didn't catch it until it was too late.

 

4TB 2.5" drive? Name please, I couldnn't find anything larger than 2TB.

 

You didn’t look very hard.

Samsung 860 Evo and Pro both available as 4TB. $800 and $1200, respectively.

Hell you can pick up a 16 TB SSD if you’ve got the money for it. Although that’s Samsung’s SAS drive so won’t do you much good in a laptop.


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I know about the 16TB one, but never found a 4TB one at 2.5". ._.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch...e=UTF8&qid=1538994036&sr=1-2&keywords=4tb+ssd

 

If you need / want 8TB it would be possible to get 2x 4TB 2.5” Samsung drives, remove one from the casing, and piggy back it on to the other. That way you can fit two 2.5” SSDs in that bay.

Plus the nvme drives that would give you 12TB total flash storage with a minor modification, or 8 TB without the mod. Heck - that doesn’t count the 2242 slot either.


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Wouldnt 2x limit the bandwitdh?

isn't a HDD better then?

 

It depends on your usage and needs. If you tapped the piggy back drive over to the m.2 2242 slot then it’s a non issue but I would rather have two SSDs sharing bandwidth than one spinner. Plus I’m not aware of a 4TB spinner that will fit in these - the max size is 9.55mm and that’ll only get you 2TB.


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By the way, if you really need this much extra high speed storage it would be a lot more practical to use an external drive chassis connected via USB 3.1 gen2 10gig or Thunderbolt 3 for ultimate throughput.


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Just need space, also the issue is that I only have msata and sata slots.

 

I was worried about that too. Was very hard to find people verifying they had installed larger! Salesperson of course said "no 1 TB is maximum", but didn't know actual specs. I am not sure if 1 TB is a holdover from what they wrote down many years ago when there was no consumer drive larger than that anyway, or if they have some reason. I was thinking temperatures, but my factory 512 GB drive gets higher temperatures than my 2 TB 970 EVO! Going to post those in the Lounge thread next. Am hoping to reduce SSD temps by adding thermal pads to bridge them to the rear case cover.

I also have the Firecuda 2 TV in the 2.5". I didn't really need the space, definitely not high speed, right now. I have a Crucial MX400 (I think now it's the 500) 2 TB in a Lenovo ThinkPad. It works very well. Not as fast as the NVME in this one of course, but to be honest, day-to-day, it's a noticeable yet small difference. Of course if you're doing some real file work then you'll notice for sure.

Now I am going to contradict myself on just saying it's not much different, but... Any reason you're not going for the 970 EVO for the m.2? The 2 TB just came down to $579. I paid $100 more just a few weeks ago. Thinking about returning and buying again but out of time to transfer data between the two, my 30 days with Amazon is almost up, so I'll probably just live with it. Anyway re-reading it sounds like you might just put the 2.5" one in for now then the SSD later.

Assuming you get the SM961 for your main NVME drive (assuming you ordered that way), it will be very fast. Mine is a bit faster than my 970 EVO on all except the write tests! I was pretty surprised. Definitely glad I didn't buy a replacement SSD for the boot drive off the bat.

 

I'm new to SSDs. I've been a hold out for years until now. I don't even know what all the acronyms are yet. All I know is that the new Alienware 17 I have on order has space for one 2.5" drive, and two clots for the new M.2 drives, which are basically like RAM sticks. One of the things I plan to do on this laptop is video editing. I like using three drives for that. So I figured I'd use all three internal bays for them. First drive OS and Apps, second drive Scratch, third drive Output. I also plan on running two large external drives; one for backups, and the other for archives. I'll check out that 970 EVO now, thanks.

 

There’s actually room for 4 drives out of the box. The PCIe drives can be put in a RAID but I’ve found that’s only useful if you want to combine both into a single massive drive.

1x 2.5” SATA bay

1x M.2 2240 - SATA only. This will not take PCIe nvme drives.

2x PCIe m.2 2280 (These are blazing fast SSDs - they make a “traditional” 2.5” SATA SSD seem like ancient technology


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I plan to start out with only one drive, and then build out from there. Since PCIe m.2 2280 is the fastest, I should start there I suppose? Also, it looks like the 860 EVO does not come in a "NVMe PCIe M.2 2280" version like the 970 EVO does, is that correct?

 

I'm not an expert on video although I do editing from time to time, but I know for audio, nowadays its acceptable to keep the project disk the same as the scratch disk. SSDs just have so much bandwidth

I think that makes sense, start with one and expand later. You can always move your scratch disk easily later, right... People used to install music applications on a separate drive, content/samples (stock content and virtual instruments) on another drive, and projects on a third, and then even maybe scratch on a fourth. But now with Windows 10, it's easier to just install apps where they're supposed to go, they don't even always give the option anymore anyway. (I still try to install audio/video stuff into its own folder on the root of C at least, but some programs don't prompt to change the location so I can't do anything; and most will always save settings and stuff like that in C:\ProgramData anyway.)

You are correct on the 860 EVO. It came in m.2 format, but only m.2 SATA, not PCIe/NVMe. As you can see, the speeds/IOPS are about the same for all three formats it came in (the second being 2.5" form factor SATA, the third being the older mSata format which, if I am not mistaken, got replaced by m.2 SATA, basically):

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/860evo/

I do think their naming is somewhat confusing. I don't think the second digit every indicates if it's NVMe or not. (take the 950 Pro for example) Neither does EVO vs. PRO, that is just the type of NAND they use. Personally I think Pro is w waste of cash unless you really need some of the specifics it's better at.

To be honest, I don't know if this is your full-time thing or not, and if you are doing 4K video or not - I can't advise for sure, but I would think the 860 would still be acceptable (in case you'd rather just spend less). If you have multiple camera angles while editing at 4K, then that's a lot more bandwidth of course than just one clip at a time on the timeline. The big block sequential numbers are always impressive but when it comes to the smaller, random access reads and writes, they're slower on any SSD. (although for audio and video, they are usually continuous access, I would think)

I've been debugging why my SSDs get so hot, also. One of them gets to 95 degrees C while doing a write benchmark. On some forums people say that's normal for a laptop. I've never had as fast or large an SSD as this and I never monitored temperatures like with this computer, so I don't really have past personal knowledge to lean on. Dell supposedly puts a copper plate on the SSD if you get the 1 TB option. I've seen them for sale on Amazon. Not sure if they do much though since there might not be much airflow in that area. I am going to experiment with using thermal pads to bridge the air gap from the SSD chips to the backplate and see if that reduces their temperatures significantly or not.

 

Oh, almost forgot to mention - pay attention to the life expectancy too. The 2 TB 970 EVO has the same ratings for total IO as the 970 Pro! Smaller sizes have less lifetime. So that is something that I believe the high end NVMes have going for them also vs. cheaper SATA SSDs, which is important if you're going to be importing, copying, and exporting video often in quantity. (can't speak to all of them though)

 

@scooberdoober Just an update - after sharing some results in the 17 R5 Lounge, I decided to return my 2 TB 970 EVO. Either it's just not that fast, and/or the EVO drives just don't get along well with Dell/Alienware mobos/controllers. I tried everything possible to make sure it wasn't my config or anything. My 4k read/write speeds have been as low as 35/95, and never more than 44/100. I was going to stick with it because some online benchmarks show other users have the same results, but after others gave feedback that my throughput just wasn't normal, I decided to not stick with it. It seems other brands or only the Samsung Pro series do well in these machines. I am considering either a SATA m.2 for lower cost, or I might try WD or Micron as suggested if I do another NVMe SSD.

Anyhow, I just wanted to update you since I know I kind of left it in my last message that the 2 TB 970 EVO was probably the best pick; on sustained read/write, it works great, but I don't think it gets its money's worth on the smaller block I/O. Wouldn't want you to go with that drive and not have a good experience either.

 

I'm going to go for the 860 to save some money. I think it will serve me fine for a good while. Thanks for all of the help here, I really appreciate it.

 

Wow, ok, thanks for that. I was all set on a 2TB 860 EVO M.2, but do you know if it will also be slower than it should be in the A17 like the was the 970 EVO is? I really want that level of endurance and under $400 for a 2TB drive.

 

I am not sure. I changed to a 2 TB Intel 760p myself; while my speeds are still slower than reviews post for the same drive, I am much closer to the reviewer benchmarks, at least for the read speeds (write speeds are still way off but I still think that's caching-related). For example, I actually get a 52 MB/s for the 4k random read speed, unlike the 35-41 I got with Samsung. But it's still slower than online reviews post, most are 58-59 for that benchmark, with one getting 71 (not sure how that's even possible, 59 seemed the fastest I saw).

So, it might just be that any NVMe ssd, or even any SATA SSD, runs slower than potentially possible in these AW 17 laptops! I added heat sinks to mine, so I don't think the heat is the culprit anymore, either (maximum of 48 degrees C on this new Intel drive during benchmarking; 970 EVO got 60s range, and before heat sink, was in the 90s!).

I would be prepared to buy and try like I am doing, using Amazon or anywhere with a friendly return policy.

Also, there is one new drive from Intel I think you should consider, since you were willing to go with the 860 EVO SATA speeds - I might switch to this myself, I don't know. The 660p - it is actually NVMe, but at the price of others' SATA SSDs! I couldn't believe it; 2 TB for $375. Unfortunately, right now, Amazon only has it for $425 (maybe they will start offering it directly soon). NewEgg has it for the $375 but I hate NewEgg nowadays. It gets better speeds than SATA, but not really near the top NVMe performers, kind of 30% better than SATA it seemed. I don't know if that means it will still have issues, and at that point, it's better to just get SATA. Or if SATA SSDs will also have slowdown issues in these machines - if not, then yeah, SATA SSD seems logical choice still since apparently we can't get the full performance out of NVMe.

The only downside of the 660p is the terabytes written - it is only 400 TBW on the 2 TB model, which is a third of the 760p's rating (which in the 2 TB size, is the same rating as the 970 EVO, 1200 TBW). Whereas the 860 EVO 2 TB is 1200 TBW also. (you probably know this, but just in case not - the TBW rating varies with the size of the drive; for example, a 256 GB will only have 150 TBW rating, although still 5 years) So, since you value the longevity (who wouldn't - unless I guess you're just writing a lot of games to disk and samples libraries, then read-only for most of the SSD's usage), 860 EVO is still attractive.

I am afraid I can't tell you if the 860 EVO being SATA will get its advertised speed, or only a portion thereof. I am guessing that since it is SATA and will use the onboard SATA controller, it will get its advertised speed. Whereas, from what I understand, the NVMe is tied directly to the CPU and thus PCIe bandwidth issues and driver issues and even CPU usage all come into play. I could be TOTALLY wrong about that summary - anyone who sees this please share if I'm totally off-base.