Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I would expect a Precision to have next business day on site maintenance as part of the warranty. ie a technician would come with a replacement display assembly and do the exchange. The procedure in the Owner's Manual page 30-31 shows what is required and it shouldn't take long.

Your challenge is to get Dell to agree that the bad pixels exist and are unacceptable. Can you take some photos with a good camera in case they want evidence? Dell's pixel policy is here. You will have to get out a magnifying glass to count the sub-pixels.

John

 

You are right they might have a certain tolerance, to be fair they are barely visible, it is just the principle of having a $2000+ machine and having to deal with dead pixels. I guess things like that happen.

I am running WIN 8.1, I think i will give a go to your advice of scaling everything to 150% and see how it is.

Also a while ago I had found a nice Post about how to clean install WIN 8.1 to the m3800 without all the Dell bloatware, but i can't find it again. Could anyone point me to the right direction?

 

That would be awesome if they would provide that service, it certainly worth trying.

The dead pixels look like the back of a really small needle, can this be an indication of how many they are dead?

I will try to get a picture of them tomorrow.

 

Temps: Can someone go here A Spacecraft for All: The Journey of the ISEE-3 and then report back their temperatures for the Intel HD4600 GPU? Mine's hitting about 72 degrees. Even if I run Chrome with NVIDIA GPU, it seems to use the HD4600, and hits 68-72 constantly.

Thanks

 

Whether that temperature is a problem depends on what the fans are doing. If whoever was responsible for writing the fan rules for the M3800 was the same person as for my Latitude E7440 then a temperature of around 70C doesn't get the fan (or me) very excited.

Run HWiNFO and select Sensors (say OK to any warning about Dell EC) then give the CPU and/or graphics something to do while watching the entries under Dell EC. Make a note of the temperatures which cause the fan(s) to increase speed. Once the fan(s) go faster there probably needs to be a substantial drop in temperature to get the speed to reduce. This is to avoid the fan from frequently switching speed which is a more annoying noise than it running continuously.

John

 

They provided it for me. In my case it wasn't actually dead pixels (it may not be for you either). Instead it was, somehow, dirt between the LCD and the back light. Given the screen appears sealed I'm not sure how that happened. Regardless, Dell sent a tech out and replaced the screen same day. It took about an hour of my time.

 

Perhaps not at all uncommon. I, too, found a bit of something stuck behind the actual pixel matrix, blocking the backlight. Have not yet found courage to have the screen replaced because in my case, who knows what they’d replace it with…

I suppose it must have happened relatively recently when I carried the thing once. I have carried it several times since—in a backpack, the other side up, hoping the dirt would fall back to the edge or beyond, but it wouldn’t.

I don’t know about QHD+ panels, but for some, if Dell says “premium panel guarantee”, I believe that should mean no tolerance for dead pixels.

 

Not uncommon at all. I have 3-4 spots like that, but I can tell they aren't dead pixels. A good way to test this is to place your cursor right on the spot and then move your head from left to right across the screen. If you see the spot move, then it's not a dead pixel.

I have a number of issues with my m3800 that dell is going to service. The support agent mentioned that had one of my issues not been coil whine, that they could send an agent out to me to fix my issues (stubborn enter key and a bright pixel). Fixing coil whine means replacing the mainboard though, so I have to send it in.

 

That sounds strange. I have always thought that if you have the onsite repair warranty still in place, Dell sends a tech out to your house to fix any and every issue. I remember having an Inspiron 15R years ago that literally went through 5 onsite repairs in like 7 days, where they replaced everything but the CPU/Processor (this included replacing the motherboard), and not once did they ever say that I had to send it in for repair.

Has their policy changed, because that doesn't sound right.

 

I can't help you find that post, but just to clarify, Dell does not install any "bloatware" on their professional workstations.