Tweaking a new laptop

[arjun.red2]

Hey guys, 
So I'm not sure if this is the right place to be posting this but some help would be much appreciated.

Anyways, I was planning on getting the Dell XPS 9550 15" laptop for college this year. 
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd?oc=fncwx1631b&model_id=xps-15-9550-laptop

It has a 256 GB M.2 SSD (at least i was told it is M.2 by Dell but they weren't very confident about their answer... they also said since it was M.2, there would be a SATA bay available for use).
It also has 8GB of dual channel RAM, running Skylake i7, and a Nvidia GeForce 960M card with 2GB GDDR5.
I was wondering what I would do to spruce it up a bit though.
Do you think bumping the ram up to 16 GB is worth it and if it is, should I get two 8GB or one 16 GB?
Additionally, I don't think the storage space on this laptop is close to enough. Since the SATA bay is open, should I put in a HDD or should I spend the extra money and put in a SSD. OR should I just use an external hard drive?

Any other things I should maybe do as well?
Thanks in advance!

Arjun

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, arjun.red2 said:

Hey guys, 
So I'm not sure if this is the right place to be posting this but some help would be much appreciated.

Anyways, I was planning on getting the Dell XPS 9550 15" laptop for college this year. 
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd?oc=fncwx1631b&model_id=xps-15-9550-laptop

It has a 256 GB M.2 SSD (at least i was told it is M.2 by Dell but they weren't very confident about their answer... they also said since it was M.2, there would be a SATA bay available for use).
It also has 8GB of dual channel RAM, running Skylake i7, and a Nvidia GeForce 960M card with 2GB GDDR5.
I was wondering what I would do to spruce it up a bit though.
Do you think bumping the ram up to 16 GB is worth it and if it is, should I get two 8GB or one 16 GB?
Additionally, I don't think the storage space on this laptop is close to enough. Since the SATA bay is open, should I put in a HDD or should I spend the extra money and put in a SSD. OR should I just use an external hard drive?

Any other things I should maybe do as well?
Thanks in advance!

Arjun

grab a 1tb hybrid drive if you can't make up your mind between a hard drive and a SSD. will be a bit faster than a Hard drive but still slower than a SSD

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, arjun.red2 said:

Dell but they weren't very confident about their answer... they also said since it was M.2, there would be a SATA bay available for use).

Its m.2 but can do sata and pcie. 

 

You can have a hdd and a small battery or a ssd only and a big battery.

 

Id get a single 16gb ram stick.

 

You can customize it more if you buy the dell 3510. Its the same body.

[arjun.red2]

3 minutes ago, Wedsea040 said:

RAM is soldered to mainboard in the new XPS.

http://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/XPS-15-9550_Service Manual_en-us.pdf

I'm not sure in what model, but in this guide it seems as though it would be pretty easy to remove and replace the ram, pg 42ish

[arjun.red2]

4 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

grab a 1tb hybrid drive if you can't make up your mind between a hard drive and a SSD. will be a bit faster than a Hard drive but still slower than a SSD

I'm worried about the fact that HDD are mechanical since I seem to throw (not literally) my laptop around a lot, plus I will be moving it around a lot on campus. 

[arjun.red2]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Its m.2 but can do sata and pcie. 

 

You can have a hdd and a small battery or a ssd only and a big battery.

 

Id get a single 16gb ram stick.

 

You can customize it more if you buy the dell 3510. Its the same body.

Yea i think the version I want has a smaller battery and a m.2
I actually saw the dell precision but i was wondering how does the  AMD FirePro W5130M   compare to the Geforce 90M

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, arjun.red2 said:

Yea i think the version I want has a smaller battery and a m.2
I actually saw the dell precision but i was wondering how does the  AMD FirePro W5130M   compare to the Geforce 90M

You have the m.2 on both, just the 2.5 hdd.

 

Sorry about the other mode wront number Its the 5510. It has a quadro a costs a bit more, but can be configured much more.

[arjun.red2]

Thats fine
Thanks though
also I see you have the Dell 7559
I was actually thinking about getting that but it seemed kind of bulky
Do you like it,... keyboard, trackpad and everything?
Because it would be way more cost effective for me to to get the dell inspiron gaming laptop than the xps

Edited July 31, 2016 by arjun.red2

[arjun.red2]

9 minutes ago, Wedsea040 said:

Ah okay, I was thinking of the XPS 13

Thats fine
Thanks though
also I see you have the Dell 7559
I was actually thinking about getting that but it seemed kind of bulky
Do you like it,... keyboard, trackpad and everything?
Because it would be way more cost effective for me to to get the dell inspiron gaming laptop than the xps

[arjun.red2]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You have the m.2 on both, just the 2.5 hdd.

 

Sorry about the other mode wront number Its the 5510. It has a quadro a costs a bit more, but can be configured much more.

Ahh okay yes I looked at that too because of the Quadro
Supposedly its a lot better for working with CAD softwares (which is what I will be doing) but the thing is that I can get the XPS 15 for about 1320$ while the Precision is over 1600$ so I didn't think it was worth the extra 300

[arjun.red2]

8 minutes ago, Wedsea040 said:

I love it, though it is not built as well as the XPS. The XPS is way more sturdy and travel friendly. It also has better battery life.

Hmm, I might just test it out.
Thanks!

[JefferyD90]

24 minutes ago, arjun.red2 said:

Hey guys, 
So I'm not sure if this is the right place to be posting this but some help would be much appreciated.

Anyways, I was planning on getting the Dell XPS 9550 15" laptop for college this year. 
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd?oc=fncwx1631b&model_id=xps-15-9550-laptop

It has a 256 GB M.2 SSD (at least i was told it is M.2 by Dell but they weren't very confident about their answer... they also said since it was M.2, there would be a SATA bay available for use).
It also has 8GB of dual channel RAM, running Skylake i7, and a Nvidia GeForce 960M card with 2GB GDDR5.
I was wondering what I would do to spruce it up a bit though.
Do you think bumping the ram up to 16 GB is worth it and if it is, should I get two 8GB or one 16 GB?
Additionally, I don't think the storage space on this laptop is close to enough. Since the SATA bay is open, should I put in a HDD or should I spend the extra money and put in a SSD. OR should I just use an external hard drive?

Any other things I should maybe do as well?
Thanks in advance!

Arjun

SSD or bust, and 8GB of RAM is quite a bit...  I'd suggest (myself) if you wanted to upgrade your RAM to use high speed kits of 16GB, that will be plenty.

 

And 256GB is quite a bit of storage, Although you can get 1TB drives right now for less than $300...  Why would you put a platter drive in anything mobile.

[arjun.red2]

3 minutes ago, JefferyD90 said:

SSD or bust, and 8GB of RAM is quite a bit...  I'd suggest (myself) if you wanted to upgrade your RAM to use high speed kits of 16GB, that will be plenty.

 

And 256GB is quite a bit of storage, Although you can get 1TB drives right now for less than $300...  Why would you put a platter drive in anything mobile.

That's true, I'm pretty scared of a HDD failure because that's what ended up happening to my old laptop before I put in a new one (given I had used it for 5 years)
Also whats  "high speed kit" for ram
I'm fairly new to all of this

[JefferyD90]

On ‎7‎/‎31‎/‎2016 at 6:12 PM, arjun.red2 said:

That's true, I'm pretty scared of a HDD failure because that's what ended up happening to my old laptop before I put in a new one (given I had used it for 5 years)
Also whats  "high speed kit" for ram
I'm fairly new to all of this

DDR4 should be considered anything 2400mhz or faster with CAS below 14...  DDR3 (if you went that route) would be 1866Mhz or higher with a CAS below 10.