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Shivavishnu
71
Jul 25, 2017
I'm currently using last years version of this beast. I bought it from Newegg. One of the things I liked about this laptop (hopefully they didn't start soldering everything down in this model) was it's ability to customize/upgrade things. I don't know if they've changed the internal design, but two of the memory slots were trapped behind the motherboard so I only upgraded it to 32 GB. Customer service informed me that I could access them by pulling out the motherboard, but that it would void my warranty. I pulled out the streaming card and put a flash drive in it's place. I upgraded the big hard drive slot to 2 TB and put all the flash drives into RAID 0 for another 2 TB drive. I do waveform analysis for multielectrode arrays at work, and it pummels through the raw data while having several other programs and browser tabs open. At work I use the onboard screen for small windows, while it's connected to two other 1920x1200s for main tasks. At home it's connected to a 3440 x 1440 screen which I play video games on, a 1920x1200 screen to play movies, and another 1920x1200 in portrait to read forums/news/e-mail. I don't use the onboard screen at home, 3 screens is enough for me. I don't play games on super high graphic settings but FPS stays pretty high and the browser response remains snappy. Published benchmarks show what a monster this thing is, but I just wanted to say what a positive experience I've had with last years model.
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It does get really hot if you're doing a lot on it. You'll hear the internal fans go into overdrive like mini jets. I've found a laptop cooler stand solves the issue pretty easily. I bought a cheap heat sink from an old kegulator which I have plans to turn into a liquid cooled laptop stand. We'll see how that goes...
B_Mill
11
Jul 25, 2017
ShivavishnuI see you're a man of culture, I too fly minmatar.
Scionyde
107
Jul 25, 2017
ShivavishnuNice overview, thanks! Just to confirm, you can update the storage drives without having to move the motherboard, right?
Also, I'm curious - you end up having to use your own personal hardware to do stuff at work?
Shivavishnu
71
Jul 26, 2017
ScionydeThe motherboard does not have to be removed to upgrade any of the drives. All the drive slots are very accessible after the bottom access panel is removed. I never took any pictures of when I opened mine, but I found some of this new model here: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Aorus-X5-v6-Notebook-Review.179321.0.html. The old school 2.5 slot can readily be seen in the bottom right corner. It also appears that still only two of the four RAM slots (top middle) are easily accessed without removing the mobo. That's a major design flaw in my opinion. They advertise it as upgradeable to 64 GB, but that's not really possible without voiding the warranty. Sure, 32 GB is more than sufficient for everything I do; but I want to max out my rig. My e-peen needs moar!
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This is a close up of the three M.2 slots (the two in the top left are empty) and the new fangled PCIe NVMe Gen3 slot. Mine came with only three M.2 slots at the time.
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I'm only a PhD student so I don't really get a laptop like most post-docs do. I'm kinda like a post-doc, in that I already have an MD, so I could most likely get one if I asked nicely. However, the IT department at our school are real autocrats. They require that any computer purchased (even those bankrolled by government grants awarded to individual investigators), to have them as a the primary system administrator. Installing programs, and potentially a video game here and there, becomes a real hassle when you have to put a work order in to have someone from their department visit the lab simply to enter in a password. I like having my computer be my computer. That blue Linksys router on the right hand side of my work photo is also a no go by the tech Nazis, even though the building's wireless is extremely spotty in our lab. Thank goodness for the ability to disable SSID broadcast. What they don't know won't hurt them.