Advice on a Hard Drive.

[Manuel Chachere]

I'm building a Gaming Laptop from the Xotic PC Website and I have a couple of Options.

It will be on a Sager NP4658.
Processor: 4th Generation Intel® Haswell Core™ i7-4700MQ (2.4GHz - 3.4GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce™ GT 840M (2.0GB) GDDR3 PCI-Express DX11 w/ Optimus™ Technology
Ram: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz [2x4GB] Dual Channel Memory (SKU - RAM01S)

My Main Question: mSATA or HD/SSD
My Options for budget reasons: (First two comes from the mSATA Options).
1) 120GB Crucial M5 mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive (Operating System – Drive C: )
2) 120GB Crucial M5 mSATA SSD ( Storage Drive )
3) 750GB 7200RPM [SATA II - 16MB Cache] (Stock)
4) 1TB 5400RPM [SATA II - 3GB/s] (Free Upgrade)
5) 1TB 7200RPM [SATA II - 3GB/s] (+20)
6) 120GB Crucial M5 Series SSD [SSD2 - SATA III] (+50)
7) 120GB Samsung 840 EVO Series SSD [SSD2 - SATA III] (+65)
8) 1TB 5400RPM (w/ 8GB SSD Memory) Seagate Hybrid 64MB Cache [SATA III - 6GB/s] (+70)
9) 128GB Samsung 840 Pro Series SSD [SSD2 - SATA III] (+95)

To give a good Idea for the best opinion. It will be used primarily for gaming. But I wont be "Stressing" too much on my laptop either. Playing games like PWI, Diablo 3 (maybe 2 LoD again), LoL. Maybe Dota 2 and Tera. Mass PvP ofc but I'm also not wanting to play all games on ultra and see the grass grow, kind of stuff. Just want my frames at a decent rate while allowing Skype call (w/ video) or RaidCall to be in use while playing 1 game at a time or Dual Client multi accounts on 1 still. No Recording or something. Knowing that just the standard of what this Laptop comes with meets the Recommended requirements to run, if not all, most of these games means I'm not trying to push for the BEST.

I was digging around and saw that Bigfoot Network Killer isn't really a necessity. And lastly, Operating System. I'm not in love with the Windows 8.1 and wanted to get a windows 7 OS. (Currently Xotic PC has this laptop at a buy now with no OS.)

So this is what my budge with standard options look like: $862.33
1 with 3 +100
1 with 4 +100
2 and 3 +100
2 and 4 +100
or
options 5 - 9 Alone without a mSATA
(Reason being is because I'm trying to stay in the $900 and just adding a mSATA alone is +100 equaling a total $962.33).

Of course i could just go for the most expensive but I rather Save some money and only be what would be necessary and not just spend money on things that I problem wont use to the fullest.

Also, upgrading from a HP Pavilion G4 Notebook PC with a Intel Pentium CPU B940@2.GH.
Ram: 4GB
Free Space 218 GB
Processes running at the moment is: 72
CPU Usage: low 48% High 86%
Physical Memory: 76%
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics

Running PWI:
FPS 10.7 - 25.7 *Depending on What town I jump from (Heavily Populated or not)
Memory 1.447mil
Ping: 248 ms
All Settings that can be changed are on the lowest settings and Sound is completely turned off.

Running Skype w/o Cam.
And also have 2 tabs open on FireFox.

Sorry if there is un-needed information here just wanted to make sure I could be as detailed as possible for the best results. I've been known to go into depth for small things. Still. If there is something else needed I will be happy to oblige.

 

[popatim]

Anything using the sdd as a storage is a complete waste IMO so the only option making that worthwhile is 1&3 as 1&4 does not have a big ssd to make a 5400rpm hdd feasible IMO.

The option to consider with no ssd is the 5:1tb 7200rpm HDD for +$20.