Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Which version of the Intel video driver are you running?

I'm running 207; the fans definitely come on quite high when I'm compiling things or running a VM. The threshold temperature seems to be a bit higher than I remember it being before messing with the software -- around 80C according to Intel Power gadget, after which the processor seems to bounce in the range 77-84C.

(I was about to add "or run SWTOR" but that's dual-boot back into 7.)

 

4300. I'll try to run some CPU intensive test in Visual Studio or something and report back. I'm ok w the threshold being a bit higher... as long as they come on eventually.

 

You could try raising it on the dell support forums.

 

Well I tried spawning a bunch of threads to stress all the cores... I didn't spend too much time on it, but did let it run 100% CPU utilization for several minutes. Fans def came on but were barely audible. Temp never passed 72C and in fact dropped to 68C when I lifted the machine to listen for the fans. I could definitely feel them blowing... But, again, were very very quiet. CPU stabilized at 2.90ghz for the duration after hitting 3.2ghz a couple of times.

Not sure what it means, but really haven't had any issues. I'm content.

 

I have problem with screen brightness control in windows 10. It works at half, not more. It can work less then half. A tried any drivers for integrated video, it works similar. Lightness works at MAX if i disable integrated video, but it only MAX, not less
Anybody know, how I can fix it?

 

Hello everyone.
After a myriad of MOBO replacements in my XPS 15 9530, Dell decided (without notifying me) to replace the mobo to a PRECISION M3800 motherboard with different GPU.

Since then, when I put the laptop in sleep mode (pressing power button, closing lid, after 15 minutes of no use), the laptop simply restarts, and I lose all the work. This doesn't happen all the time , and I couldn't find a specific pattern or behavior for this issue so I can address it.

I read on the Dell forums to disable the USB wake support, but it didn't help.

Any idea what can be done??? Thanks in advance.

 

Anyone faced the same problem???

 

I've had a similar but less severe problem -- the screen sometimes does not come up after waking. I'd initially thought it just wasn't fully coming up, but if I have music or video playing when it goes to sleep (using a program that doesn't sense sleep) it will keep playing. Re-sleeping the system and then waking it fixes that.

As for you problem, my bet would be slightly different interactions between the drivers and BIOS version. Which OS are you on? Are you on the current A10 BIOS? (You'd think Dell would put the most up to date on replacement boards it sends out, but IME that's not always so

If you don't want to do a full reinstall, and you're on 7 or 10, do a refresh install (yes, it still works in 10) or if you're on 8 or 8.1, upgrade to 1d0 which will effectively be a refresh install in the process (oh, and that works if you're on 7 too, but I assume if you're on 7 you want to stay there, whereas 8 or 8.1 have all the annoyances of 10 and few of the benefits.)

If you're not comfortable with doing that, or don't have Windows media (it's easy to get for 10; just do the "create media" using the Windows 10 downloader -- otherwise you should be able to get the version that came with your machine from Dell support), you can try backing out drivers -- in particular, I'd try reinstalling the newest chipset drivers (Dell stops updating them, but Intel chipset drivers are backwards compatible; you can get the latest for a related machine -- say the XPS 15 9550 or the Precision 5510/7510, and that will have any relevant updates for the Haswell ones...)

 

Thanks for the answer.
I updated to the latest BIOS version A10.
I originally had Windows 8.1 installed, and did an upgrade to Windows 10 a long while ago, before the mobo swap to an M3800 one.
I updated the latest drivers, and also installed he latest chipset drivers from the Precision M5510 model.

Still no luck. The laptop randomly (and very often) reboots after stand by, and all work is lost.


A member on the Dell forums suggested to enable "USB wake up" in the BIOS. At first I thought tat fixed the issue, but unfortunately it didn't.

I wish there where other ideas instead of a fresh Windows 10 install, as it will be quite difficult to backup all data I have. In case I don't find any other possible solutions, I'll have no choice other than a fresh install.

 

If it's just data rather than application installs, the "reset" feature (saving files) will retain your data but clear out any applications and user installed drivers.

If you've got a spare disk (or mini-card, if that's what you're on) you could swap your main one out, do a clean install, and see if the problem persists on the clean install before doing anything like a reset.