Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Aight i went to the GTX 980M and decided to look for it on eBay and suddenly i found one modded on the bottom does it is necesary or not? I mean as far i have seen here the m6800 has heat issues? but is necesary or recomended to do this? even it has a lower CPU a 3630qm

I have my old m4600 lying there, but suddenly like a month ago the screen turned off while using it... Then as soon i got home i opened it and it was a mess inside very dirty of dust and all that stuff, i cleaned it and boom it was working fine again, but then again the screen went blank while using it at Bing maps. I am suspecting that the m5100 it has is broken or failing at me, because it boots but as soon it finish the loading screen of Windows it goes black.

So i guess it shouldn't be a good idea to mod the bottom of the m6700, but i don't know

My final settup would be:
16GB RAM
I7 3740QM
GTX 980M
1TB HDD
May be a SSD of 512GB, instead the one of 480GB i have now, considering change it for the 128GB that my m4600 has right now.

And i am really considering change the motherboard, as i mentioned it only installs Windows 10 Home, but i am finding odd things like... the two USB 2.0 are not working properly... It just charges but does not work correctly, i can't use even a simple mouse or a pendrive, even my iPhone does not charge or connect and weird stuff my SATA 3 HDD just goes on 89 MB on speed test, i have been reading that Intel Rapid storage seems to cause some speed issues but, as soon i have reinstall Windows that HDD was on 95-97MB speed on read and write

 

a GTX980M modded on the bottom? what do you mean by that ? do you have any picture ?
You don't really need to mod the cooling of the M6700, you just need to give it some more height so the fan will have more air, also if you have a non-backlit keyboard you can cut the plastic film behind the keyboard (it just prevent water to go too deep inside the computer) so the fan can suck air throught the keyboard.
For your M4600 you can use it without the M5100 (on the HD3000) if you have the LVDS lcd.

The maxwell isn't dying like kepler or fermi card that suddenly die, it is way stronger in term of "micro ball", the only issue you can have is a broken power circuit which I got on my GTX970M.
I would greatly advise you to take your time and test the heatsink (and pad position) with the card, I made the mistake of not touching any pads from my K4000M then upgraded to my GTX970M which ended bended and VRM not cooled at all (but still work), it seems like choke after kepler are a little bit taller and the choke pads nearly not compressible so the result is that the pads for VRM are not touching the VRM and indeed are not cooled.

I broke 2 time my GTX970M because the VRM were too hot and the card was demanding a lot for them (75~80w), that's why I upgraded my GTX970M to 4 phases VRM instead of the 2 phases but I still did not realize that my VRM were not cooled but it work fine because the load was less demanding for them (like now ~20A for each instead of ~40A).
I was stupid because I noticed that thermal paste was not well spread on the core (like a part of the card got a noticeably thicker layer of thermal paste)...
Then I mounted my P4000 without changing anything and like a month after when I tried some vbios modification I finally "think" and try to find why the thermal paste was not well spread on the core.

For your USB 2.0 on the left side you don't need to replace the motherboard but only the daughter board (5GMM3), and for your sata speed issue you should update to A20 bios and try AHCI instead of the "raid" thing

 

I almost got the w5170m... But it was purchased before I could get it, I have an hp hd5450 i think, and it works without issue, but of course it won't be an upgrade from the integrated HD 3000. Funny part was I couldn't get working after sleep or if I closed the lid... But with the last version of Windows it was working. I am thinking on use that m4600 as media center or sell it, it has the 2760qm and 8gb ram

If you see the pics that's what I am referring on mod the bottom of the laptop, dude opened it and somehow installed two grills below GPU and CPU... And yes I am on a20 and on achi, what is weird. So I would prefer get a cheap replace of the motherboard 30 bucks and even with the k4100m I have there build another one for sell it. Seems it can handle Battlefield V on medium at 1080p.

I am waiting my 980m it's on way and waiting some parts I need to finish building the laptop, what I am missing is the trim bezel of the keyboard... I have only seen it at 30 on some random site and of course it is too expensive just for a trim bezel, so I got the one from an m6600 but it doesn't fit... Might mod it and put it there lol

 

That is a nice mod, ha. You can look at this thread where some of us are discussing the different types of fans and enlarging the holes in the fan grill. It starts out with M4800 but really applies to all systems of this type.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-m4800-cpu-upgrade-tdp-concerns.826646/

 

But It is recommended or not on the m6700? I just think it would get more dust and get really dirty...

 

I don't think you really need it, unless you overclock your cpu and gpu it should be fine, you just want to have a very good thermal paste like NT-H2 or even liquid metal

 

I don't think that you need it on the GPU side for sure. I've never been able to thermal-throttle the GPU (even tried with the P5000). The CPU does thermal-throttle under some conditions. I improved the temperature by a few degrees in mine by just enlarging the holes in the CPU fan grill. If you run into throttling that bothers you, then you could try running it with the bottom cover removed and see if it works much better before deciding to try such a mod.

 

So you guys just enlarge the circumference of the fan intakes and that turned into tangible gains temperature wise?

I may try that on my Ranger, even if it doesnt work I have plenty of spare fans

 

Yes, there was a temperature improvement but minor (only a few degrees). The process is described more in the thread I linked above. @unnoticed has done it as well on a M4800.

 

Yes i have seen that there is some kind of mantle if i can call in that way that can cover the grill, something that the guy who sold that m6700 didn't do... Seems easy to do that mod but where i live is tropical area so you can imagine that dust is something i don't want to be dealing with it... I learned the lection of the m4600 that i have lying there that i don't want to be messing with those little and delicate connectors ie the flex of the keyobard and all that stuff.

Cleaning the motherboard and keyboard of dust it's the only downside and seems manufacturers don't want to create an easy way to attach those flexibles and cables instead of making it so delicate and small.

Now seems that sellers are not selling the entire keyboard with the cable and it's really annoying to be ordering one by one, i like the keyboard with backlit and i ended buying it from China and it didn't came with the flex and i had to buy it... Also i was looking for the one with the simbol of Windows 8 and i couldn't get it, guess it is from the m6800/m4800 it's on blue instead orange lol.

Also i was thinking get a mini vacuum or something like that because dust it's really annoying, i have a desktop T1700 and it absorbs dust like Kirby, even it has it's own fan but, last time almost i got a heart attack lol, was going to turn on the pc and saw the orange light of dead thinking or it was the motherboard or the power supply... And it was just that was really dirty inside

Don't you have the keyboard trim? I am looking for it but i only see the one from m6600 and m6800, i ordered the one from the m6600 although it has the same size it has a different layout to attach it

mmm I see you are right the daughter board it's really cheap... but as i mentioned my sleep or hibernate is not working right... Also i noticed night light also is not working poperly, i have to reboot it and weird part is that if the screeen goes off bright in some way deactivates the night light too... i don't know if bright is broken on Keppler or has it has mentioned here installing a GPU that was not the "factory" ones could get this kind of issues. I am waiting the GTX 980m to test it but also i am waiting to receive the flex of the keyboard too, but this two little things of bright and sleep are making me think order another board.

Also seems that Windows somehow doesn't allow you now to upgrade to Proffesional... I remember the first time i had the m4600 i installed the Windows 7 Professional and it gave me the free upgrade to Windows 10 Professional, also i had similar trouble with a defective m4600 motherboard... somehow it was just stuck with the i7 2760qm at 2.40 Ghz no matter what i did turbo never worked, ended ordering a used one and problem solved, then i remember i by mistake installed Windows 10 Home and after it installed some updates, it displayed something like the Windows version i had installed was not the right or something like that, and it upgraded by itself to Professional. I say this because i got a decent tablet with Core i5 4260u and 256gb ssd and 8gb, and by default it was sold with Windows 8.1 Professional, and the same thing happens it can not be upgraded to Windows 10 Professional just Home, weird stuff too because where i work i upgraded some old HP with Windows 7 Professional to Windows 10 Professional with the same key like two years ago, and there is a lab currenlty running like 24 Dell computers with Windows 7 Professional and two originally with Windows Vista upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate who seems can be upgraded to Windows 10 but doing the entire process, i mean first install Windows 7 and after it finish installing the SP1 and all those updates it can be upgraded using the tool of Microsoft,and that Microsoft somehow under the hood implemented this kind of stuff is a bit misleading in my case.