Hi guys,
 
Just wondered how this grabs you for a Sonar Platinum laptop build for use with my MOTU Ultralyte Hybrid Mk 3. It has VGA and HDMI. Anything you would change?
 
Chassis & Display Cosmos Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 6700HQ (2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 950M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12  
2nd Hard Disk 1TB WD BLACK 2.5" WD10JPLX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
M.2 SSD Drive 512GB INTEL® 600p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (upto 1775MB/sR | 560MB/sW)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)  
Memory Card Reader Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
AC Adaptor 2 x 120W AC AdaptorPower Cable
Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card Via® 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options 3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery Cosmos Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (48.84WH)
Keyboard Language COSMOS 17" SERIES UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence  
 
Many thanks!
M

Happy New Year!
 
A couple of things about the hard drives after doing some research.
 
I was pondering having the second drive being a 960Gb Kingston UV400 SSD instead of 1Tb 7200RPM SATA for audio but I'm not convinced that it is a necessity performance-wise and more of a pain to recover data if it fails for quite a price-hike too.
 
Also...the builders advised that a 2Tb SATA would be unwise for a laptop audio drive - is it true that it would be slower e.g. a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM?
 
Thanks!
M

SSD is about three times the speed of a conventional 3.5" HD (2.5" HDs are a little slower than 3.5" conventional HDs).
 
Whether you need the performance difference is completely dependent on the scope of your projects.
If you're not working at higher sample-rates... and not working with large track counts, then the 2.5" conventional HD will be fine.
 
If you need higher performance, definitely go with the SSD.

If your "Audio" drive has to do double duty in the laptop (also running disk-streaming sample libraries), then definitely go with the SSD.
 

Thanks Jim :-) 
 
I was looking at putting the sample libraries on the OS drive - mostly EZDrummer, Komplete Ultimate, Dimension Pro, Z3TA2 etc. I think these mostly get loaded into RAM, no?

I also got some feedback that the Intel SSD is not a great choice (Samsung better) and that the Kabylake CPU is coming out soon and might be worth a month or so wait?
 
M

FWIW, Initial release of Kabylake is great if you want long battery life.  
The i7-7Y75 is dual-core and clock-speed is about the same as the quad-core 6700HQ.
https://ark.intel.com/products/95441/Intel-Core-i7-7Y75-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
 
 

Jim Roseberry
FWIW, Initial release of Kabylake is great if you want long battery life.  
The i7-7Y75 is dual-core and clock-speed is about the same as the quad-core 6700HQ.
https://ark.intel.com/products/95441/Intel-Core-i7-7Y75-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

 
Thanks Jim. Slightly confused about the similar clock speeds (7500U too) - are there actually any further performance benefits? I've read something about a 20% increase.
 
Cheers
M