New Laptop Has 2 M.2 NVMe SSD Slots

[kaywhyn]

I'd have to wonder - on a new PC, is hibernate actually going to be that bad? I'd figure with the speeds of modern RAM and SSDs, it'd probably only take a couple of seconds to fire up?

So far, in the few days I have tried it, hibernate is comparable in speed to shut down. Both are not as fast as standby/sleep, but they both take about the same amount of time to get to the Windows screen. As you know, shut down is the safest of all the options, but it's also the slowest in that all programs you had opened before are closed and so you're not picking up where you left off.

my best PC is 6th gen i7, DDR3 RAM, SATA SSD. Apparently, a current-generation Ryzen 3 would outperform it - probably getting towards time for an upgrade then!)

Yea, you're definitely way long overdue for a new machine. The latest current generation of processor chips is 10th gen. I can't say for sure that AMD chips are better than Intel, as I have always had machines that use Intel processors, but based on what I have read online, AMD beats Intel in the lower end with, say, i3 and i5, but Intel starts excelling over AMD at the higher end with the i7 and i9 even though they tend to not be as expensive. Also, as we have already discussed, definitely get a machine that uses the M.2 NVMe form factor for the hard drive. Much smaller and much faster than SATA.

A few months ago, I debated with myself for a really long time whether or not to upgrade my year old Surface Pro 6 to a Surface Pro 7. Design-wise, they're essentially identical except for the addition of USB C ports, meaning you pretty much cannot tell a 6th gen Surface apart from a 7th gen one just by looking at it. There are some differences in the architecture, though. The 7th gen uses a 10th gen processor, while the 6th gen uses either a 7th or an 8th gen processor (I don't remember). Now that I have made use of my 7th gen Surface for about a few months, I'm so glad that I ended up getting one even though there's not much difference being the successor of the 6th gen. The upgrade to a 10th gen processor makes a huge difference performance wise. It's much faster. Even though it heats up very quickly just like the 6th gen device when I'm playing Candy Crush, it doesn't speed throttle, or slow gameplay to the point that it's unbearable to even play. In all the times I have played CC on the Surface Pro 7, I still have never encountered speed throttling. I also went from 8GB RAM to 16GB RAM with the 7. I figured that if I'm going to get a 10th gen processor, I might as well double the RAM too. Hard drive capacity is the same, I went with 256GB of storage for both devices. I don't really plan to use the tablet much for gaming, mostly for work/future schooling. Also, it is capable of using Wifi 6 with the ax protocol, while the 6 can only use Wifi 5.

[namida]

Also, as we have already discussed, definitely get a machine that uses the M.2 NVMe form factor for the hard drive. Much smaller and much faster than SATA.

My laptop has an M.2 SATA slot (with a 1TB Samsung Evo 860 - upgraded from a generic 128GB that it came with) and a regular 2.5" SATA slot (with a 1TB HDD, no idea about brand / model). Doesn't support NVMe, though.

Yeah, I'll likely be looking to upgrade in the next year or so. It's not urgent - current one definitely still does the job. NVMe goes without saying for anything new these days. Probably happy to settle for Ryzen 5, though if there's a Ryzen 7 for not too much extra I'll go with it. 2-in-1 is an absolute requirement - I currently have a regular laptop (the one described above), as well as an older 2-in-1 (4th gen i5, 4GB RAM, 256GB SATA SSD). Would much prefer for them to be a single device. 16GB RAM is pretty much an exact target - don't want to settle for less, don't have any need for more - and for storage, I now know I can get by just fine with 512GB (but wouldn't quite make the cut on 256GB), so that's where I'd be looking.

At least in the laptop market, AMD seem to outperform Intel in all tiers except super-budget (ie: Pentium / Athlon or lower) at the moment, so I'll definitely be looking that side of the aisle - unless Intel's 11th gen really shakes things up.

[kaywhyn]

Probably happy to settle for Ryzen 5, though if there's a Ryzen 7 for not too much extra I'll go with it. 2-in-1 is an absolute requirement - I currently have a regular laptop (the one described above), as well as an older 2-in-1 (4th gen i5, 4GB RAM, 256GB SATA SSD). Would much prefer for them to be a single device. 16GB RAM is pretty much an exact target - don't want to settle for less, don't have any need for more - and for storage, I now know I can get by just fine with 512GB (but wouldn't quite make the cut on 256GB), so that's where I'd be looking.

Definitely depends on your budget and whether you can afford to go the extra mile. I think it's like a couple extra hundred to go from 5 to 7. Granted, the performance boost from 5 to 7 isn't that huge, but it does make some difference, even if it's not too noticeable. This being said, what do you generally prefer/advise in terms of number of cores/clock speed? I seem to be one of those who goes more cores = generally better, but I know that the drawback means lower speeds per core since there's more to split the speed among. As for the RAM, 16GB or more is definitely the way to go these days. I went ahead with the 32GB RAM configuration for my laptop, even though it's likely overkill, but at the same time it's mostly a matter of whether you want to have the right amount of RAM from the getgo or if you're willing to do the upgrade yourself later. I can definitely upgrade the RAM later on, but I decided to just get the right amount from the start so that I don't have to open up my laptop and stick in the new RAM sticks myself later.

For storage, I say 512GB or more is the way to go for your primary laptop. For something like a Surface or 2-in-1, 256GB is probably enough, which is what I went with for my Surface Pro 7. Given how I have way more than 512GB of laptop content, 1TB is definitely the way for me to go, which is exactly what my 2 SSDs are each, i.e, I can hold 2TB total. I could had definitely went with the 2TB configuration when ordering my laptop, but I decided against it, especially since i have barely come near to maxing out my 1TB hard drive. In addition, I didn't know that it would come with two hard drive slots since the manual doesn't even specify that.