Bought a used Dell Latitude D630 with Nvidia on eBay - keep it or not?

A few days ago I bought a used Dell Latitude D630 on eBay for only 90 Euro (about 120 $) - it came without a hard disk and AC adapter but I thought it was still an amazing deal.

But now that I read about that this model is affected by those bad Nvidia graphic chips which have some kind of manufacturing failure and will therefor sooner or later fail, requiring the entire mainboard to be replaced, I'm not so sure anymore if it was such a good idea to buy that notebook.

Fortunately I bought the notebook from a company and not from an individual person and therefore according to German customer protection law I can send it back within 14 days to that company for a full refund without having to give any reason for returning it.

But before I decide whether to send it back or keep it I was hoping from some advice from you guys.

Do you think that it is likely that the motherboard in that notebook did already fail in the past and was then replaced by a new (not affected?) version so that I could keep the notebook without worrying about that Nvidia issue?

Or should I rather return it?

Thanks very much for the advice!

karlmueller

 

I think it's more likely that the gpu already failed and they just heated it up to reflow the solder, temporarily fixing it. So it could fail soon.

Or you may get lucky and have it work for a long time.

 

Return it. I bought an E6400 with Intel Graphics for $219 on ebay. I also have a non-Nvidia D630 which I love and has been rock-solid. The Nvidia ones are going to fail, it's just question of when....

- Tim

 

Ok thanks for the advice I guess I'm going to sent it back then ...

Unfortunately I can't go for a D630 with Intel either because I'm planning to watch HDTV on it (which is H.264 encoded over here in Europe and therefore needs a lot of processing power to decode) and without any GPU acceleration even my PC (which is a Core 2 Duo @ 3 GHz) can't decode 1920x1080i smoothly.

So do you maybe have a suggestion for a different Dell Latitude model with non-failing Nvidia graphics? (it shouldn't cost more than 300 Euro / 400 $ though [used])

Thanks a lot!

karlmueller

 

Yeah, E6400 are fast becoming dirt cheap and are occasionally not OOW as well. Not sure about the market over in your side of the world, but you can definitely get Nvidia E6400 for under $400 over here.

 

I just checked eBay and you can get a E6400 with Nvidia graphics for about 300 Euro here too - I guess I will wait a few months (I only bought that D630 right now because it was that cheap) and then get one of those.

Thanks for the advice again!

karlmueller

 

+ return it or get the X3100 iGPU D630 version.

Though I concur with the comments. A E6400 can be had for not much more $$, is better looking, has a 45nm CPU that can be undervolted to run cool and extend battery life and the NVS160M versions won't have the NVidia defect. If you don't need the NVS160M then suggest getting a 13" E4300 instead.. it uses cheaper+faster DDR3 rather than the E6400's DDR2 RAM.

 

As I said the D630 iGPU version is no option for me since I need a dedicated GPU to handle H.264 video acceleration for watching HDTV

And since I have really bad eyes a 13" is too small for me - 14.1" is the absolute minimum size I could life with.

But I guess I will go with the E6400 with NVS160M then.

I told the company I bought the D630 from that I want to return it and they won't refund the shipping costs (which by law they would have to but since it's not their fault either I will accept that anyway) so I will have to pay about 14 Euro of unnecessary shipping cost for shipping that D630 back and forward

But it's still better then keeping it and have the GPU fail after a few months - I'm so glad that I randomly read about that Nvidia problem yesterday

It's really a shame that all D630's with Nvidia GPU are going to fail after just a few months while they advertised it as a highly reliable and durable business notebook testes to run 80,000 hours ROFL

I don't understand why Dell didn't just make a new revision with non-failing Nvidia GPUs. I would imagine that they lost lots of customers who were frustrated that they have to send their "highly reliable" notebook back in for a new mainboard every year and that they can trash it when the warranty is over lol

Again thx so much for your great advice guys!

karlmueller

 

I received the notebook today and it is in EXCELLENT condition - it really looks almost like it was new.

When I entered the service tag on Dell it showed that it was originally purchased July 17, 2008 and apparently the previous owner was the US federal government OMG

Then I called Dell and after giving them the service tag they told me that this unit had never had any repairs done.

I guess when the GPU didn't fail in well more than 3 years it's very unlikely that it will fail now + I don't think that Dell could afford it to sell tons of bad notebooks to the US federal government.

Plus since it had all kinds of support plans that were good till July 17, 2011 I should still have some kind of warranty until July 17, 2012 since I think Dell has extended the warranty for all models affected by that GPU problem.

So I decided to keep it regardless. But still thanks so much for all of your advice!

karlmueller

 

I'm going to buy used D630 with nvidia too. karlmueller have you got any problems with it ?