PC Tech Thread

3D structure modeling. Revit, dynamo. Some Bentley systems stuff. Some finete element.

I'll have a think a our desktop, it's a good idea.

My concern would be whether the integrated graphics is up to the job.

Just reminded myself why I intensely dislike every Windows OS since XP.

Linux doesn't play particularly well with SMB devices either -I can't have all of the machines on my network able to see my NAS, as some OS versions don't like SMB 2.0, others don't like SMB 3.0.

Maybe SMB is just a bit rubbish.

I'd need to go 15" to get seperate graphics, but fair concern. I'll look into that.

When I was looking about 18 months ago, the integrated graphics on the XPS 15 range were outperforming a lot of discrete cards on the market. Seriously cool tech.

Was hoping that it was going to trickle down into the 13 but clearly not.

Ah, could be.

It's all working now.

I just find it much harder to fix problems in newer versions of Windows, but that could be because I don't have to use it as much as I once did.

I have the XPS15 9560 with the GTX 1050. The graphics card performance is underwhelming, and it burns through battery like nobody's business, so I keep it switched off most of the time. It's also surprisingly heavy.

Despite all that, it's a great laptop.

I'd recommend getting the XPS13 though, and (if necessary) get an external graphics card to sit on your desk. And definitely a curved ultrawide monitor.

The other issue I found was that the screen has a very high DPI (it looks amazing), but the monitor you plug it in to will probably have a much lower DPI, and having both screens on causes issues with scaling. I keep the laptop lid shut most of the time.

Late to the convo here, but maybe just install VirtualBox and Win7 for this specific software
Use Windows 10 as the base. Then you can have at least modern stuff for everything else

It's interesting that their competitor Promise Pegasus also taps out at 16Tb in SSD. The Pegasus is dual Tbolt 3 so has a higher through put than the G-Speed (but also 1k more)

Above that, I could only find Enterprise SANs like this

https://shop.dellemc.com/en-us/PowerMax/Dell-EMC-PowerMax-2000/p/DellEMC-PowerMax-2000

You could also buy the Pegauses without SSDs (not sure the Gspeed) and then go crazy like with the Nimbus 100Tb SSDs (no idea how much they cost!) https://nimbusdata.com/products/exadrive-platform/advantages/

Thanks that's helpful.

Yes if I went 15 I might as well.go desktop, and I'll always have the surface for portable.

I'll run the surface till it shits itself and then look at getting more power.

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it!

Go for a 2 in 1 XPS 15....you won't regret it!

Thanks for this
That Nimbus is hilarious.
Twinned with the PowerMax - 1 petabyte ought to do me.

HP Spectre x360 - 13-4000na

This says the SSD in it is "128 GB M.2 SSD"
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04618618#AbT0

This says the SSD in it is "128GB mSATA, SSD"
http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04055643.pdf

This seems to suggest that m2 and msata cannot be the same thing
https://digitalintelligence.com/store/products/a4710

What in the actual cunting fuckery are these knobheads talking about? I just want to order a new HDD for this laptop and every site, video and forum post says something different will work.

This guy's post seems to tally with the videos on youtube:

"The existing SSD is M.2, not msata which are larger. The M.2 socket supports both PCIe and SATA M2 as per the Service manual which is now on the support website.

I used the much faster Samsung XP941. The XP941 has been replaced by the newer Samsung SM951. Currently both are still available but the XP941 is in short supply and the price has gone up $210 since I bought mine so the SM951 is your best bet."

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/SSD-drive-upgrade-HP-spectre-x360-13-4001ns/td-p/5008112

This is what the forum poster is suggesting (single "slot" in connector):
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/512gb-samsung-sm951-m2-(22x80)-pcie-30-(x4)-ahci-ssd-mlc-nand-read-2150mb-s-write-1500mb-s-90k-70k-i

Will this Samsung M.2 work or not?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-MZ-V7E1T0BW-V-NAND-Express-Solid/dp/B07CGJNLBB

HP Spectre x360 - 13-4000na

Crucial system finder always works for me

https://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-upgrade-for/HP-Compaq/hp-spectre-x360-convertible-%28models-13-4000---13-4099%29#SSDFilters

Will this Samsung M.2 work or not?

Yeah, looks like it should

Hmm, not bad and 1TB is £106 which is cheaper than the Samsung I was looking at.

Yeah, cheers, I reckon I'll grab one of those Crucial drives and save £50.

You can clone an existing disk for free with a crucial drive if that is of any use.

I do around three a month, and get paid for twiddling my thumbs for an hour whilst it copies

What do you mean? I can do it for free with (insert cloning tool name I've forgotten here).

Crucial drives come with a limited use version of Acronis, it only works with a crucial drive connected

Ah, I see. I can't remember what I've used in the past but it was a free DOS or maybe linux live cd that did the cloning. Seemed to work well enough.

I reckon I must've used https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php

https://www.techradar.com/uk/best/best-disk-cloning-software

Perhaps https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ ?

It is 30% slower though
https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-970-Evo-NVMe-PCIe-M2-1TB-vs-Crucial-P1-3D-NVMe-PCIe-M2-1TB/m494791vsm607339

In-line with its price. There's about as much chance of my missus noticing that speed difference as me being next year's heroin chic model of choice...