Buying decision: E7450, E7470, E5450, E5470, can't decide, opinions welcome!

Given all the abuse my E-series machines have taken, I think if anything short of direct immersion could damage the port, it would have happened to one of mine.

That said, a piece of paper (or upside down tape) over the ports, and them tape over that, should cover any worries about conductive contact or about dust/debris. I wouldn't recommend directly taping over the port, as I wouldn't want to risk getting adhesive onto the contacts.

 

That's true of my E6510 as well. But this feels a little less solid than the E6510.

I have done that to my other laptop with masking tape but it seems to leave behind a gunky residue. I suppose it's not the end of the world, but it would have been nice to just have a rubber plug that goes on it.

Thank you for the suggestions.

 

Great news.

By simply using powertop --auto-tune, I am getting readings less then 4W with firefox running with multiple tabs (including youtube paused), wi-fi on, keyboard backlighting on, display set to very low brightness.

It'll be interesting just to tweak around laptop-mode-tools and tlp later. And perhaps cpufrequtils.

Currently I'm getting a projected 13.5-14 hours with just powertop auto-tune. I'm sure there's some error in there but overall it's pretty good. Especially for Linux. This looks better than Windows.

 

I just received my E7470 and, unfortunately, I am extremely disappointed.

Overall, the laptop looks great, fairly lightweight, great specs, etc, etc, etc.

However--- even under a relatively light workload, the laptop starts overheating and the fan is very noisy. May be some of you have gotten used to noisy fans with other laptops but to me, this is unacceptable for such a higher end machine, especially in cases when the CPU is not overloaded. I work long hours and a nosy fans is show stopper for me.

So my question is then-- from the other three models, E7450, E5450, E5470, which one will have the least noisy fan? I am willing to go to lower specs if needed.

Does E7450 have the quietest fan? E5470?

Thanks in advance! All input/opinions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

I'm not sure how to reconcile your experience with the E7470 with the ones we have at work; I've never used them under genuinely heavy load, but for regular office tasks and browsing I've never noticed them having the fan come on to any noticeable noise. I can try to borrow the spare and load it up with Prime95 or something.

A couple of people have pointed out that the E7450 uses a different fan depending on whether the machine has a dGPU or not, and the consensus seemed to be that the dGPU models were better.

The E5450s at my work are nearly silent, but they're all in use by non-technical people who don't hit them hard; I don't recall ever playing with one under heavy load.

The E5470 with the quad-core (HQ) processors are relatively quiet compared to other high-powered machines under load, but it's definitely audible and it definitely gets warm on the bottom -- not as bad in either case as my M3800 or my E6430 before that did, but definitely noticeable in both respects.

I haven't had a chance to try out the E5470 with dual-core (U) processors, as my work has been getting the E7470 instead.

If I had to take a guess on very incomplete information, if you can find a dGPU E7450 that is likely your best bet.

 

Neither temperature nor fan noise is an issue with any of the E7470s we've deployed so far. My personal one has the Iris 540, and I don't have a problem with fan noise either. It'll definitely ramp up when I'm playing a game, but its not like the Jet Engines of yesteryear.

 

Regarding dGPU E7450, how can I tell if a particular laptop has dGPU?

For example, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DH6EAB8?psc=1 This listing does not list/say whether it has dGPU, does it?

How can one tell? What should one look for in the feature list to minimize fan noise? Is there an alternative name/description for dGPU?

Thanks!

 

I don't recall E7000 series having dGPUs, if you want a dGPU, you'll have to look for a Latitude 5000 series or a Precision 3000 series.
Also, as a general rule of thumb, if they don't specifically list AMD or nVidia parts, its safe to assume that its integrated graphics.

 

Is it accurate to say overall though that a Latitude with dGPU will be quieter?

Back to E7470 vs. E7450, if neither of these models have dGPU, would this essentially mean that they are going to be equal in terms of the fan noise?

I thought someone said that E7450 is better than E7470 in terms of the fan noise. So that's then an inaccurate statement? They are the same?

Perhaps I am too picky -- but I work from a home office most of the time and long hours a time. E7470 is definitely too noisy. The fan on E7470 comes on frequently, and one can definitely hear the fan spin!

Thanks again!

 

Dell command power manager-> thermal management -> quiet?