Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

It has Optimus, so if you leave that enabled, it will use the integrated Intel GPU to drive the display and apps that need the extra power will be rendered by the K1100M.

 

Great Pictures!
Could you make a Youtube-Video with a soundcheck? I think i will buy 2 of this great machine, but i need a silent laptop even under load... The time it
handles the fan-volume without throttling it is the perfect deal. A SSD-Benchmark would be cool, too! I would be happy if you could add display-pictures.
Are the wlan-problems of the predecessor fixed? I think this was the most annoying problem next to the throttling...
Thanks!

 

That's a lot to ask!

 

That's even hard to get on a desktop so that guy is asking too much.

A desktop with a high end liquid cooled system can run quiet (not necessarily silent) and relatively cool.

 

Yeah, unless you get a Serenity from Pudget or a few other boutique solutions, it's pretty rare. My Falcon Tikki is very quiet under intense gaming but not silent. However, what I really meant was in terms of Bokeh making videos of it.

Bokeh, I noticed that you basically just quit that discussion. It's understandable since most of what he wrote was based on prior experience and assumptions rather than any facts.

However, I do wonder about the aluminum. Is there any chance he's right when he writes:

"Dell used cheap sintered aluminum as early as a few months ago. It is very unlikely that they would completely change their standard material and use 2024 Aluminum as that is a very expensive material that is almost never used outside of structural components on helicopters, rockets, airplanes etc."

Do we know the aluminum type used in the m3800?

The other concern I had was about the Carbon fiber being an insulator and what that would mean. Obviously I don't want my lap fried and MBPs are known to do that when under heavy load. In fact, there was even a kickstarter campaign for a solution. However, if carbon fiber is an insulator, won't that hurt the computer's heat dissipation and thermals? I'd rather it be a bit hotter on my lap than an oven inside and risking component failure.

"Dell didn't use carbon fiber for insulation, this was a byproduct of making a stiff chassis. Carbon fiber is an incredibly terrible material to make a laptop out of for just this reason. It's an insulator, in a hot environment. While aluminum acts as a heat sink. I can do some really intense overclocking with my MacBook Retina thanks to the good heat dissipation. "

Everything else he said I don't care about.

 

Nope, it won't hurt the laptop. I'm getting tired of people touting that a metal body is good for heat dissipation like it's the next best thing after sliced bread. It does help, but not as much as people seem to think. The real part of the notebook that dissipates the heat is the heatsink and fan assembly(ies). If you don't get the air moving on the metal, heat transfer just sucks plain and simple. We're talking heat transfer at least an order of magnitude higher for the heatsink and fans compared to a metal chassis. Inside the laptop, you've got a thin layer of air between the metal and the components and quiescent air is seriously bad for heat transfer. So from a practical standpoint, you have a layer of air between the components and the chassis that acts as an insulator. You still have some free convection, but as I mentioned previously free convection (as in there is no induced fluid flow) is a poor way to transfer heat.

On the other hand, you've got metal which is a good heat conductor making direct contact between the component and the heatpipes. The heatpipes then transfer the heat through a liquid-vapor phase change to the heatsink fins (one of the best ways to do this). Once the heat gets transferred to the heatsink fins, that's where the fans come in, the flow induced by the fans allow for good heat transfer through convection. The way the heatsink is made, you also have a rather lage surface ares in a small volume which further helps the heat transfer.

To give an idea of the orders of magnitudes, free convections gives you convection coefficients ~10 W/m^2K, convection induced by flow can give convection coefficients of a few hundreds to thousands of W/m^2K depending on the flow rate, and the fluid used. Air is usually in the hundreds.

So basically, for the heat transfer from the metal chassis, you have heat transfer through the thin layer of air (thin enough to almost be considered only as an insulated and neglect free convection, but not quite) which is bad, heat transfer through the metal (conduction) which is good and then heat transfer to the ambient air through free convection which again is a bad way to transfer heat. Now, you're still transferring heat through the chassis so you'll get a few degrees lower with a metal body, but if you need those few degrees to properly cool the notebook, your engineers didn't do their job designing the cooling system of the notebook. For the heatsink assembly, you have transfer through conduction (good), phase change (good), conduction (good) and convection with induced flow (good) from the component -> plate/thermal paste -> heatpipe -> heatsink fins -> air with a good flow rate.

If the heat transfer from the insides of the notebook to the metal chassis was so good, under load it would be too hot for you to actually handle the thing. Just look at the macbook air or other metal ultrabooks, you have all that surface area of the chassis, a low voltage CPU that generates very little heat and you still can't cool it passively. I think that says it all if you want a simple example.

Again, I'm not saying the heat transfer gains with a metal chassis are negligible, they aren't but they are still very small as to not really have an edge over a chassis made of less conductive materials with a properly designed heatsink assembly.

 

1) What are GPU options and CPU options on the m3800 going to be? Anymore than the XPS 15?

2) Will there be anything faster on the m3800 than the 750m (hoping one of the quadros would be faster for gaming)?

 

Do you guys know if this laptop or the XPS 15 will be available in any of the local retail stores, like Best Buy, Fry's, or the MS Store? I really wanna get get this laptop, but I'm really picky when it comes to the displays and Bokeh's comment here kinda concerns me. For some reason I thought IGZO displays were supposed to be as good as IPS or PLS, if not better, but I guess that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

Ah, but if free convection is such a poor method of cooling, why is the insulator even necessary or helpful? Anyway, it seems like it's well-designed.

1. See the first page. I don't think there are better alternatives to the 512gb SSD or K1100m.
2. The 750m will be faster for gaming but not for CAD etc. The XPS 15 or Razer Blade etc. would be better suited.

 

That guy Doward is an Apple fanboy. There were enough lies to conclude that. An example: He likes overpriced RAM. Overpriced doesn't mean better... I remember back when 16 GB of DDR3 1.35V high quality ( Samsung , Cruical , etc.) RAM was $60.. Obviously I'm not going to spend the time to explain how many things he is wrong about.

I would eventually give up on arguing with Apple fanboys as well.

There will always be people who pretend to know what they are talking about and they are some of those same people that write BS reviews.