[SOLVED] A question about my Laptop?

[playstation1868]

So I have an Acer Predator G9-593, the model equipped with an I7-7700HQ and a GTX 1070. I have used it for nearly 3 years and recently upgraded to a custom built PC Desktop that I made (specs in signature). Now, however, as I enter college, I realize that my only option for a laptop is this massive beast of a PC.

Many problems I can mitigate...for the heat? Run it on battery saver and keep fans on max. For the Battery life? Eliminate all background processes and run battery saver. Some things though may need to be upgraded. As is, the workstation speeds of this aging beast just can NOT compete with the snappy speeds of my peers' ultra-books (after all, we aren't gaming in college lol).

The stock HDD is sluggish and worn and the stock RAM, though 16GB, is only clocked at 2400MhZ!! As an aside, MY particular battery is also worn down to only 40 mins. of life as a result of heat and years of heavy use. I have been thinking about what to do about this.

How substantial would the improvement in my user experience be if I, for example, upgraded to 16GB of 3200MhZ RAM and upgraded to a 1 TB SSD in place of the HDD that is stock in it. Also I plan on buying a replacement battery to start fresh on that front as well. That is question 1.

Question number 2 is more odd. In trying to ascertain the actual CURRENT specs of the drives in my Predator stock, I came across something interesting. When I go to my drive properties, I do indeed see two drives...its just that, and third party identifier software confirms this, my current 256GB SSD boot drive (stock) is labled Intel RAID voume 0. I do not know what that is. I can not find this drive online.

I can see that the other is a Hitachi Travelstar 1TB (the one I plan on replacing) but this other drive is seemingly a complete mystery! I know this is a lot to unpack but I am just trying to make the best of the situation. Any answers and/or other suggestions on how to improve my laptop for future college use would be greatly appreciated ( I have heard something as simple as cleaning out the fans can help)!
Thank You!!


Links to the upgrade products I plan on getting:
SSD: https://www.newegg.com/crucial-mx500-1tb/p/N82E16820156174?Item=N82E16820156174
RAM: https://www.newegg.com/crucial-16gb-260-pin-ddr4-so-dimm/p/N82E16820156218?Item=N82E16820156218
Battery:https://www.newegg.com/p/16J-0027-000D3?Item=9SIA3AN4M23946

 

[siaan312]

i suggest not upgrading the ram,
ram speed (especially on intel) isnt very important
my friend recently upgraded from 2133 to 3600 thinking it would be a huge improvement even tho i told him it wont be, and his i5-9600k had less that 5% more fps in csgo.

as for the raid ssd. if its only 256gb its probably just on raid mode but without another drive to raid with or smthn
btw, raid i a way to stripe together drives to achieve different goals
raid 0 makes it so you get the speed of 2 drives, but the capacity of 1 (if 1 card dies, all your data is gone btw)
and a raid 1 makes it so you have the capacity and speed of 1 drive, but 1 drive can die without losing anydata (they just copy eachother) raid 10 6 and 5 also exist but 0 and 1 are the ones you will usually see in nomal use.

if youre booting off an ssd, any games on it and the os in general should feel snappy, and only the games you installed specifically on the hard drive should feel slow. windows should feel fast. an i7 7700hq is a beast of a cpu and it might feel slow if it is overheating too fast or being held back by something else.
a new battery is a good idea tho

so, what i say is
format both the hdd and ssd, download new windows.
open up the laptop, replace the battery and clean it from the inside (from dust and stuff)
use a brush to get into the heatsinks.
and if you wanna get fiesty with it, swap the thermal paste on the cpu and gpu to liquid metal
------WARNING-------
only use liquid metal if you think you can,
it is dangerous for the pc itself, it is metal, so if it seeps from the cpu onto the board, the board is fried.
it will give you much much better cooling tho.
any aluminium the liquid metal touches is immideatly dead too.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTsra-uLBI

this is a video showing how to apply it to a similar laptop.
DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK AND LISTEN CAREFULLY AND THINK IF YOU CAN DO IT USING THE VIDEO.
those are my top tips.

 

[playstation1868]

i suggest not upgrading the ram,
ram speed (especially on intel) isnt very important
my friend recently upgraded from 2133 to 3600 thinking it would be a huge improvement even tho i told him it wont be, and his i5-9600k had less that 5% more fps in csgo.

as for the raid ssd. if its only 256gb its probably just on raid mode but without another drive to raid with or smthn
btw, raid i a way to stripe together drives to achieve different goals
raid 0 makes it so you get the speed of 2 drives, but the capacity of 1 (if 1 card dies, all your data is gone btw)
and a raid 1 makes it so you have the capacity and speed of 1 drive, but 1 drive can die without losing anydata (they just copy eachother) raid 10 6 and 5 also exist but 0 and 1 are the ones you will usually see in nomal use.

if youre booting off an ssd, any games on it and the os in general should feel snappy, and only the games you installed specifically on the hard drive should feel slow. windows should feel fast. an i7 7700hq is a beast of a cpu and it might feel slow if it is overheating too fast or being held back by something else.
a new battery is a good idea tho

so, what i say is
format both the hdd and ssd, download new windows.
open up the laptop, replace the battery and clean it from the inside (from dust and stuff)
use a brush to get into the heatsinks.
and if you wanna get fiesty with it, swap the thermal paste on the cpu and gpu to liquid metal
------WARNING-------
only use liquid metal if you think you can,
it is dangerous for the pc itself, it is metal, so if it seeps from the cpu onto the board, the board is fried.
it will give you much much better cooling tho.
any aluminium the liquid metal touches is immideatly dead too.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTsra-uLBI

this is a video showing how to apply it to a similar laptop.
DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK AND LISTEN CAREFULLY AND THINK IF YOU CAN DO IT USING THE VIDEO.
those are my top tips.

Thank you so much for the reply! So are you saying that because the one SSD is in a raid configuration, if i remove or "kill" the slow stock HDD then it will kill the SSD too? I know literally nothing about raid so i'm sorry if that is a poor question. And you are right about the heat. It is the throttling. It throttles nearly immediately after booting up and idles at like 60 degrees Celsius. Also, how can I know if the battery I linked is the correct battery? I have seen similar batteries for this laptop that look like they are a different shape.

 

[siaan312]

Thank you so much for the reply! So are you saying that because the one SSD is in a raid configuration, if i remove or "kill" the slow stock HDD then it will kill the SSD too? I know literally nothing about raid so i'm sorry if that is a poor question. And you are right about the heat. It is the throttling. It throttles nearly immediately after booting up and idles at like 60 degrees Celsius. Also, how can I know if the battery I linked is the correct battery? I have seen similar batteries for this laptop that look like they are a different shape.

first, i am NOT an expert in raid, not even close
but what i do know, your ssd and harddrive are not in raid together.
if you ssd is labeled raid, there are 2 possible things.

1. this laptop has a configuration with more storage that does use raid and the name raid just stays on there
2. you have 2 128gb ssds in raid in there.

you can take the hard drive out, thats fine tho its mass storage so swapping it wont get you any everyday performacne.
as for the battery............................
no clue i guess.
search "replacement battery for (laptop model)"
if a battery has the same physical connector and fits inside the laptop without being squished then its fine
also, look at your laptops official website and look at how many watt-hours the battery is. that is how big it is and if you buy a replacement one, check it has the same amount of watt-hours.

and, gaming laptops ALWAYS thermal throttle. always.

swapping the thermal paste to liquid metal is a good idea
unless you arent comfortable doing that. if you arent but still care about temps,
swap the thermal paste thats in there to a better paste
IC diamond, Mx-4 and such are high performance pastes that will make the temps lower
but only by 3-5 degrees, unlike the impressive 20 or more with the liquid metal.
process should be the same (like the video) for both.

 

[USAFRet]

as for the raid ssd. if its only 256gb its probably just on raid mode but without another drive to raid with or smthn
btw, raid i a way to stripe together drives to achieve different goals
raid 0 makes it so you get the speed of 2 drives, but the capacity of 1 (if 1 card dies, all your data is gone btw)
and a raid 1 makes it so you have the capacity and speed of 1 drive, but 1 drive can die without losing anydata (they just copy eachother) raid 10 6 and 5 also exist but 0 and 1 are the ones you will usually see in nomal use.

Not quite correct for the "RAID 0"
A RAID 0 can give improved speed vs a single HDD, and the capacity of both drives.

RAID 0 with SSD's does NOT improve the speed like it does with HDD's.

And completely unsure how the OP's system is configured, with 1x SSD and 1x HDD.
Any RAID version with those two drive would be a bad choice.