Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Wondering If current owner/reviewer knows this:

What is the weight difference on the 61Wh vs 91Whr battery? and do you know if we order one, can we buy a spare of the other separately?

 

Thanks for the replies! It's still too expensive for me, but I'm really looking for a system to run Inventor and AutoCAD well. However, gaming capabilities are appreciated. I understand this ain't a gamer.

Is processing power or graphics more important for good CAD rendering? Are there certain Intel processors that work better for CAD or are they more linear than Nvidia?

 

Regular CAD work and rendering are two different beasts. Rendering is usually constrained by the CPU. More cores, faster, will always be better.

 

I think its fair to say its all application based.. for example for my work flow i need everything.. so an XPS wont do for my needs, the video card in this system seems more appropriate for me.

3Ds Max's creation process uses good chunk of ram + video card for view port performance, then CPU for rendering.

Zbrush All functions are primarily RAM + Scratch Disk(aka Harddrive) + Some CPU for some rendering/calculations

Keyshot 4 and Marmoset Toolbag GPU Rendering

Adobe Photoshop RAM + Video Card + Scratch Disk

Adobe Premiere RAM, Video Card some CPU

 

Will pull the 61whr batery and weigh it. Will also weigh the 2.5" HDD. Should give a decent estimate of how many ounces of weight you might add.

You should be able to order both batteries. Swapping them requires a torx bit and a phillips bit to remove the bottom cover.

In a perfect world, Dell would have 2.5" drive sized battery modules. Need tons of drive space and 3 hours of battery life? Put in two 2.5" drives and one 2.5" battery module. Need 9 hours of battery life and only mSata storage? Put in 3 battery modules and no 2.5" drives.

 

Have a look at this:
ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-prod...laptop/xps-15-9530_Reference Guide2_en-us.pdf
61Wh: .71lb / .32kg
91Wh: .97lb / .44kg

 

So I just looked up a WD 1TB laptop drive: Weight 0.27 Pounds

So replacing the Drive with the battery should be almost identical. Should be negligible weight difference between the two, maybe some interfaces/glue/screws difference

 

except the Dell site claims 1.88kg for M3800 and 2.01kg for (both versions of) the XPS 15 while someone measured around 2.1kg for the XPS

a bit weird/inconsistent

 

Hmm I thought they were almost the identical chasis and configs.. with just the graphics card being slightly different.. I ordered the XPS 15 under that assumption, but may cancel it for a m3800 if for some reason its a bit lighter with the same specs.

 

Weight: starts at 4.15lbs; 1.88kg (with 61Wh battery and optional mSATA)

I think this "Dell speak" means: 61Wh battery, mSATA SSD and no HDD in the 2,5" bay. The HDD does weigh about 100-120 grams.