Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Memory upgrade question:
I opened up my new M3800 today to examine the existing 8GB SODIMM. What I found was a Hynix HMT41GS6AFR8A-PB.
If I were to add another 8GB, would it need to be the same? What else would be compatible?
I ask as that Hynix part doesn't seem to be readily (at competitive prices say to Crucial).

 

You can use CPU-Z to see the timings, and find a matching crucial SODIMM.

Edit: I meant CPU-Z not hwinfo - changed my post to reflect that. Good catch, tolga!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

@discerne: Identical modules would be optimal, but it's not necessary. You need a perfectly matching memory module, vendor is irrelevant. It should have identical specifications - check them via CPU-Z. The specs for your memory are:
SO-DIMM 8GB DDR3-1600 CL11 (512Mx8) LV (1,35V) DDR3 SDRAM non ECC unbuffered SO-DIMM 204pin 1600 MHz (PC3-12800) JEDEC. As an alternative, just grab a 16GB Dual Kit (example 16GB Corsair Vengeance SO-DIMM DDR3-1600 CL9 LV 1.35V) and sell your 8GB on eBay. There could be some compability issues, which you can opt out by simply buying a dual kit. You should also find out, if your RAM is dual ranked or single ranked and buy a matching memory module.

@Pirx: I forgot to mention the throttling issues of my Lenovo ThinkPad T440s. Eventhough it has a CPU supporting up to 2.6GHz, it's maximum is limited by about 65°C. I could only reach 2.3GHz CPU and maximum 800MHz iGPU, when on full load - if CPU and GPU were fully loaded at the same time, the CPU throttled even more, all the way down to 1.7GHz - 1.9GHz. And it was November back then, when temperatures were pretty low. I'm not facing such an issue with the M3800 - the CPU is going all the way up to 3.2GHz at full load and the iGPU is at 1150MHz, reaching about 85°C - 87°C at quite some noise. When idling, the system is practically unhearable, besides the coil whine issue (which gets better or worse, depending in the battery charge / GPU load). I don't have any information about the new Carbon X1, but I wouldn't expect it to be completely different in terms of throttling. Definitely look that up, before purchasing. Judging from the pictures, M4800 seems pretty anti-mobile to me; if you have the opportunity, check it out at a store. But I agree: there is simply no perfect device - you have to choose the least pain.

@All: Working with this machine is simply incredible. I wouldn't have thought that working on with Linux on a laptop could be better than on my ThinkPad T440s - I've been proven wrong: excellent Linux support by the M3800 - almost everything working out of the box. You have to mess around a bit with Optimus, but it's okay for the stunning result! What's still left to do: for some reason, the M3800 doesn't underclock when idling - it's running at 2.2GHz all the time; going up to 3.2GHz when on load. Under Windows 8.1, I was able to reach 800MHz when doing nothing. The CPU scaling governor is set to powersave and minimum freq is reported at 800MHz. That's really weird. I've even tried out cpupower - no changes. This could easily save some significant battery life. Maybe this is the main reason, why battery life under Linux is worse than under Windows ?

 

I'm curious as why there is such difference between your unit and mines. Could it be the overhead of using Ubuntu+Cinnamon vs your DE, or may it be related to the QHD+ screen? Are you using XFCE by any chance?

That's amazing, far from what I've been able to achieve so far. Could you detail with tunes gave you a nice improvement?

The weird thing is, with my 14-15W in idle, powertop also predicts about 6 hours of battery life.

 

Nope, I'm using default GNOME 3.10, only with slight modifications.

The QHD+ screen needs significantly more power - that's why you're overall consumption ist higher.

Do you have the 9-cell battery version / mSATA-only version? Cause I have the 6-cell battery + SSD configuration, featuring a 61Wh battery.

 

That's very interesting. I'll try decreasing the resolution and see if that affects the energy usage. It could be a measure for extending the battery life in certain situation where you need that extra couple of hours.

Or it could also be the case that the different technology of the QHD screen just uses more power, period, even at the same resolution.

I have the 91Whr battery (remember that there is no 9-cell, both are 6-cell). Note that mine is not the m3800 but the XPS15, so there could be other subtle differences as well (NFC which I have disabled, Nvidia card that I have also disabled).

Have you found a reliable way of testing the battery usage? The numbers provided by powertop are not very stable, and sometime it takes quite a while (in the order of minutes) to stabilise.

 

The QHD+ display is actually IGZO, so if anything it would use LESS energy than a typical display. I don't believe the resolution you configure affects the display's power consumption since it's still driving all of the pixels on the display; the GPU power consumption might decrease with lower resolution though.

As for the batteries, the real cell count is still up in the air because I've seen the 91 WHr battery described as both 6- and 9-cell. I can't remember if it was a difference between the XPS and M3800 or Home vs Work stores or older vs newer versions of the configurators, and it's just not important enough to me to go looking because cell count doesn't matter, only WHr does.

 

The Spanish Dell website lists the XPS as 3200x1880 resolution, and it's not the only mistake I've seen around. So, I wouldn't trust that much what you see around. Anyway, as you say, the actual capacity of the battery is what matters, and not how it is physically organised.

 

When I plug in the power cable to the laptop, I can feel some kind of electric stuff when I touch the aluminium body. Is it a problem? Do you have same experiences? It is very weird.

 

If you're saying that you can feel electricity (like a shock) in the aluminum when you plug the laptop in, then yes, that is a problem.