Samsung NP300E5C Ports

[IInuyasha74]

Hello Everyone,

Does anyone own a Samsung laptop with a model number beginning in NP300E5C?

I just bought one of these, and it functions pretty great so far for everything I do with it, even gaming. The big issue I have with it is at start up I feel some serious slow down while everything loads.

I think this is either because:
1. The Hard Drive is not able to dish out the data fast enough.
2. The RAM is slowing my system way down.

I am coming from my main system with an i7-3770k and a small 60GB SSD as the main drive. RAM in my main system is 16GB 9, 9, 9, 24, 1T at 1600Mhz.

The laptop, which I am only using for school and when I am away from home has an i5-3210M, the HDD main drive runs at 7200RPM, and the RAM is quite bad at 6GB 11, 11, 11, 28, 2T, at 1600 Mhz.

I didn't notice a huge boost while using my SSD on my desktop so I am not sure if the HDD is the slow down, regardless I am not willing to drop from the 1TB HDD to a much smaller SSD and I cannot afford a large SSD. I am considering going for an mSATA drive, hence why I am wondering how many mSATA ports are available.

I might one day try changing the RAM but I am unsure if thats the issue with the slow start up. I think 6GB is plenty but I am quite concerned with the high timings.

Thanks for any info.

 

[IInuyasha74]

So I found a good video taking apart the system online and was able to see that there is only one mSATA port, so the only spot I have open for expansion is the SD slot and obviously thats not an option for the main drive.

\anyone have a feeling as to if its the hdd or RAM though causing the slow down?

 

[Eximo]

Well, whenever you get an OEM machine, make sure to remove any of the pre-installed software you don't see yourself using. Usually not written that well and can be a serious drain on the system.

i3 isn't exactly a speed demon, but I couldn't find any models out there with a 7200 rpm drive or DDR3 1600, usually 5400rpm and 1333.

6GB isn't ideal, means you have one 4GB stick and one 2GB stick, so I don't think dual channel memory is working, that will cut that bandwidth in half, but shouldn't be causing huge system slow-downs.

If your are willing to invest, one of those hybrid drives with the SSD cache on board would probably be worth having.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Oh I already reinstalled windows with a fresh version, pretty much the first thing I did.

Its got an i5 not an i3. i5-3210M with a base speed of 2.5Ghz and a max turbo of 3.1Ghz. I know its still not quite a speed demon but its relatively good. Runs circles around any of the AMD mobile CPU's in benchmarks.
I understand your confusion on this though, I have a special foreign version of this machine. Most of them in the US have i3's and I don't think any of them have dedicated graphics cards. This is the Turkish version someone brought over to the US and sold for some reason.
Here is the full model number: NP300E5C-S07TR
I just left off the last half cause all of them are made the same with just changed up hardware.

Does dual channel not function right with miss matched RAM? That sucks if so. It is taking like I think at least 3 or 4 minutes after the desktop is first seen that all the programs load, and all I have on here is like one Chinese IM program, Steam, driver add-ons for the Nvidia stuff, and I had FRAPs start on system boot also, but thats it. So I know its being a bit too slow. After it fully boots though it comes out of sleep mode fine and does everything else good so I am not sure what its issue is.

Oh yea I forgot about those. I went and glanced at SSD's earlier but those were crazy too expensive. I will be spending a month in China next year and so I need storage space more than the speed and an SSD with 1TB cost nearly twice what I paid for the system.

I will go look at hybrid drives. Thanks for the idea.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Just looked at Hybrid drives, wonderful price really if they do like they say. Do they really give a big boost in performance? It says they have an 8GB SSD section, I guess they use it as an extremely large cache or something?

Also is Seagate the only one who currently makes them? Thats all I saw on Newegg.

 

[Eximo]

There are a few other offerings out there, but Seagate hybrids seem to be the only ones that Newegg has.

Supposedly it takes all the most commonly used data you have and shuffles it to the SSD portion based on heuristics. Generally, Windows files will end up there which will decrease boot times and increase Windows desktop performance.

 

[IInuyasha74]

I am considering going for one at some point. It does seem like it would help a lot with boot time which is really the part which is really the slowest part for me. I looked at some benchmarks and they do seem to do as you say and help a lot with increase in boot time and with other applications when it is able to guess correctly what you are going to do next and that is pretty much what I am wanting.

 

[Thanesh s]

So I found a good video taking apart the system online and was able to see that there is only one mSATA port, so the only spot I have open for expansion is the SD slot and obviously thats not an option for the main drive.

\anyone have a feeling as to if its the hdd or RAM though causing the slow down?

Hi IInuyasha74 i saw one of your toms guide post on a samsung series 3 upgrade you upgraded a i5 3210m to an i7 3632qm. I also have a samsung series 3 laptop NP300E5C with the same i5 3210m.
Can i do the same upgrade did you have the same one?
Were there any bios issues did you need a custom Bios.

Thanks in advance
Thanesh