£350?!

Hi,


You may have seen my posts concerning my NP350VC and how dead it appeared to be. Sorry if they were annoying and off-point, but I was panicking about losing my main work device at the time.

Well, after taking various stabs at fixing it myself, I gave up and sent it to a local repair shop (couldn't send it to a Samsung centre because of where I'm based). They've come back with news that it is the main board that's dead, and that it will cost the equivalent of £350 (or $500) to replace it. What I want to know is:

- whether or not this is a fair price, especially for a machine of this age, and...

- if I would be just as well off just buying a new laptop of equivalent specs.

I am leaning towards the second option. However, I have to take the fact that I will lose the device license for an expensive piece of software into account. I can install it on 2 additional PCs, but will still be throwing away about £60 by replacing my laptop. (Of course, the damn programme will probably perceive a new mainboard as a different PC anyway.)

I feel like I'm going to be screwed no matter what I do. So advice and/or insight would be appreciated

 

The £350 is plausible - they could want £200 for the mainboard and the rest for labour. Soldered CPUs means mainboards are expensive because you are buying a new CPU.

You can get a complete working NP350V5C (I assume that you missed the 5 in your model number) on ebay for somewhat less that £350. There are also a few parts for sale but no mainboard. You are correct that a new mainboard will probably be seen by software as a new computer although this depends on how the fingerprint is worked out (RAM and storage are usually considered upgradable parts and hence not used in the fingerprint).

However, if you can find the money then it would worthwhile considering buying a newer notebook. I would strongly recommended working through the stock of Latitudes at Dell Outlet. The Latitudes usually have a 3 year on-site warranty and spare parts are easily available, but the other Dell notebooks are also good value when bought from the Outlet (the Outlet stock is cancelled orders or returns and are like new unless marked as "scratch and dent") and usually around 60% of the normal price.

John

 

Hi @John Ratsey, and thanks for your reply. I did mean NP350V5C - my phone's keyboard is just expressing its hate there. I should have mentioned it's the i7 variant, which I cant find for under £400. (Unless the chip can be transferred over to a replacement board...correct me if I'm wrong, but that might be unfeasible. I'm not sure at this point what condition this component is in, either.)

I'll look at the Dell outlet, it seems like a good idea. Cheers again

 

Yes, the CPU can't be transferred when it's soldered and the i7 carries a substantial price premium. I wouldn't be too excited about the performance difference between and i7 and an i5 (I don't notice the difference between in i7-4600U in my previous notebook and i5-5300U in my current one) but the i3 is slow in comparison (and hence much cheaper).

Generally, it is wiser to spend money on the rest of the system, particularly an SSD, rather than pay the premium for the fastest CPU.

John

 

Yeah, and there is a relatively huge choice of chips this model came with - including AMD A-series ones, which I didn't realise until now. (That might have changed my original choice considerably, btw.)

If I buy a second-hand model for the mainboard, does it matter which CPU it has? I can't find any with an i7 now.

Also, I've been told that some of the licenses I was talking about might be on the HDD. so could I just transfer this to a similar, working machine? And if so, should I pick another make/model, or another NP350V5C? I'm aware by now that Samsung has saddled this thing with weird BIOS and UEFI settings, which may be why I'm in this situation to begin with.

 

Your current Windows installation on the hard drive should be able to run with an NP350V5C board with an Intel CPU but an AMD-based board is likely to confuse it or possibly cause a BSOD due to some core drivers needing to be completely different. AnNP350V5c board with i5 CPU would only be a step or two down from an i7 and the performance difference might not be very noticeable.

I don't know how well Windows would work if the HDD is dropped in to another computer which has the same hardware specs. Acronis think they can do this with their universal restore but you would first need to have the backup.

John

 

Backup?

[EDIT:] Also, does anyone know if it has to be the same Samsung? I'm looking at a good deal on a Series 7, which despite my current antipathy to this brand is looking good :?