Seriously I am not good at putting them into words like you did

Yeah desktops are the same but they have advantages in space so we can have additional cooling

wow that looked bad. perhaps it's just gpu got overheated. right try to do a thorough cleanup of fans and heatsinks with replacement of thermal paste first.

for gpu upgrade, i think you can talk to putochip123.

seriously? that many recovery partitions?

my best guess is still the one in green based on the partition size (the rest are too small to store the recovery image)

i suggest you don't do that. usually it will break the recovery (unless you already created a working recovery disk set).

sorry but i never used the recovery function or any of the recovery media before. to me it's fresh install all the way.

all the above can be done if you are familiar with the windows recovery stuff (diskpart, dism, recimg, wbadmin, etc.). it's a long process. what you want to achieve is to reorganize your hdd partitions at the same time you wanna make recovery partition to work after that (which is unlikely because moving stuff at that level definitely will break things; and you need to reassign the pointer to the correct recovery partition)

do you really wanna go through all these, with your stock drive? other ways like cloning will make your life much more easier. (but again, recovery partition might not run properly unless you fix the pointer to it)

by the way it's supposed to be super easy to create a system image backup in w8.1. (google is really your friend) fire up windows powershell as administrator and run

wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:<target.drive.letter>: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet

where you replace the <target.drive.letter> with your backup drive letter.

notes: i have tested the command line i mentioned above to create system image backup for my OS drive only, and it works well for me. (maybe it's because of my simple drive setup)

my laptop has 4 physical ssd drives: OS drive, apps drive, data drive, and then games drive. the OS drive contains only OS and everything that make it work (e.g. latest drivers), plus junctions that link to other folders in other drives (apps and data drives).

before i did the system image backup, i upgraded the whole OS, drivers, and apps in it, cleaned up (disk cleanup, system optimization, etc.), then issued trim command via disk optimization, and finally rebooted the system.

i formatted my games drive (after backup), and used the command to generate the system image backup consisting of c: only and saved it into that newly formatted drive. it backed up the OS partition, and relevant EFI system partitions also (i.e. everything in the OS drive).

finally i used windows install usb to format and restore the drive. (choose repair at the windows installation dialog)

everything i need is restored properly (in a few minutes only).

one caveat of this system image backup is that it will restore everything (including partition tables) if you chose to reformat via the restore dialog. so a better way to use it is to plan and create your partition layouts first, install windows freshly, install everything else, clean up and optimize the system, and finally create the system image backup.

this way you have created yourself a recovery option with everything in it that can be restored in a few minutes

oh. well, it's a good thing to have a clean install you know.. you can set the system the way you want.

you can always call dell to help if you really need that recovery thing. (however everything will come back, including those partitions)

you must install intel rapid storage app in order to check it out.

haha yeah clean install is more straight forward, with minimal efforts to trouble shoot this and that.

the list of driver orders is a nice find normally i just start with intel drivers, gpu, sound, and network. to me intel chipset driver should always be the first, and motion sensor is always the last (apparently it is not the the case based on that guide lol!). still, everything works fine.

yes, ssd runs cooler than hdd in general so it helps (due to its characteristics such as no moving parts, much less power draw). previously i had a weird experience with intel 520. it generated more heat than usual in an r4; solved with bios update. (i still don't know what caused the abnormal heat). for the rest of ssd brands (tested with samsung 830 and 840 pro, plextor m5pro xtreme, crucial m500), it's usual to have 33+ c but normally not more than 40c.

however please bear in mind that heat dissipation in laptops also depends on many other factors.

edit: correction - plextor drives have no sensor so i couldn't check their temperatures. however one of my laptops is running 2x plextor m5pro xtreme and a m5m msata ssd. no overheating issues.

This post has been edited by horns: Apr 21 2014, 10:36 PM

yeah a cooling pad helps, too. i have a coolmaster u3 and x3. u3 is more flexible so i position all fans to the intakes lol! x3 is a huge fan blowing the whole bottom of laptop.

http://www.coolermaster.com/mobile/laptops...ing/notepal-u3/
http://www.coolermaster.com/mobile/laptops...ing/notepal-x3/

right support up to 6 fans. i just plug it directly to the power source via usb extender and a power plug hehe

those are good temperatures

agreed. this is exactly why i always recommend putochip123 to those who wanna get good deals. if you haven't engaged him before you have no idea what he can offer you. (just don't be a lowballer. it does you no good. to him, he has nothing to lose)

personally i have gotten some good stuff from him, with damn good price. seriously never get disappointed, every time

ah.. all those nonsenses about genuineness, ap sets, etc. are cow dung assumptions and imaginations based on nothing. (i said cow instead of bull because cow doesn't have something hehe)

Before i forget again, a friend reminded me about vindicator 18": Add-ons in Mid Valley is selling it at MYR 209.00.

yeah i got one from the same shop previously, then i told some friends about it, but kept forgetting to post it here.

Add-ons is the name of the shop it's vindicator 18". more space for a 17" (the 17" bag is too fit for the laptop). as far as the compartments, they're tighter compared to orion.

if you really wanna do that i suggest you do some studies on the capacity of aurora cases first in terms of future upgrades. imo pc chassis in the market these days are much better.

yes you can do that. i think you should talk to putochip123 about this. he has done a good job on [PF] T.J.'s m14x. (read here: https://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...ost&p=67705432)

a good question. from the previous trends, it will take a few months before reaching here. dell singapore has already begun to sell it. (about MYR 12k)

still if the new laptop comes with a 880m, i think he should just take it.

in terms of performance reasons, i think putochip123 is mainly referring to upgrades, which is not worth it because of only minor performance boosts compared to our current cards. (but if you have an entry-level card, you still should upgrade imo)