Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Here is a picture of the heatsink:



I also have pics of the AMD heatsink if anyone is interested, since i had to fix that bent chassis, i decided to take pictures of things i saw people asking for. I even have silly unboxing pictures.

 

Post the AMD heats sink pics.

If I understand you correctly, your M6700 was damaged during shipping? Elaborate if you can.

 

Quick question, does the second HDD bay take 9.5mm drive, my crucial M4 seems to be a rather extremely tight fit when i try to insert it and i'd rather not try to force anything if i can avoid it.

I'll post pics of the AMD heatsink later tonight and pics of my chassis problem (which is completely fixed). It doesn't look like shipping damage, but rather the chassis was already bent when they assembled the laptop. The weakest point of the chassis happens to be the part between the screen latch and the palm rest. There was a 1mm gap or so there, you had to be close to see it, but like i said, easily rectified.

 

Since when is performance "no big deal?" This is the foundation that makes or breaks a computer. Although 2D doesn't require the best computer, it does require a good one.

What programs are you referring to? All of the programs I need are designed to leverage the GPU. This is the present trend and if you program isn't yet using it, I'm sure it soon will.

ATi for gamers. For photo, video artist, designers and the like I recommend Nvidia all the way.

 

AMD heatsink:



Bent chassis:

 

Thanks for posting the pictures. My Dell rep has stated that both the second HDD slot and optical bay HD should easily fit a 9.5mm drive.

Sorry to hear about the bent chassis. I would have asked for a new part to replace it completely rather than fixing it but good on you.

 

If it had been anything more than that, i would have too, but fixing it was faster and less of a hassle. I'm a laptop DIYer so that was a very easy fix. 20 mins with the owner's manual, a lot of screws later and fixed. I gotta say it is one easy laptop to service. Sure there are a lot of screws, but as long as you keep those safe in separate compartment for each component, it's easy. I also prefer screws to plastic latches, way more durable.

Here is the after (My point and shoot has a tendency to cause a bend effect at higher zoom levels or close range and i suck at taking pictures too ):


The pic doesn't do it proper justice, it looks flush now, but even with the bend effect, you can see it's better.

I'll have to check again to see if i'm doing something wrong with the secondary HDD, the problem is that i have to insert the second caddy diagonally then push it up to the connector. It's the insert the drive diagonally part that gives me problems, the drive's rear is like a 1mm too long (maybe i'm just doing it wrong, but i don't see a lot of ways to do this). Sliding the caddy itself in and out is super easy.

One minor complaint, but that one is not on Dell screwing up, it is on keyboard design. I would have preferred a keyboard layout like this one:


The overall layout is better on the Precision (numpad placement), but i would have preferred bilingual labels as well as the "fat" enter key rather than the US qwerty one. If anyone was wondering what the French Canadian layout was on the M6700, see the pic in my previous post. The keyboard in this pic is on my older Asus N50Vn.

By the way, if there is something else you want to know now that i have the laptop in my hands, let me know.

 

Yes it does. You have to insert it at an angle and it is a bit tight but once you get it in and "flat" it will slide back into position nicely.

 

Yep, i figured it out, i was simply being too gentle, still i don't like having to apply that much force. Then i had to take the drive out and put it in an older notebook to secure erase it. Parted Magic USB + Sleep + M6700 don't mix well apparently. I wasn't getting anything displayed on resume. Anyways, i'm keeping the stock HDD in an enclosure for now in case i need it. I'm using a 64GB SSD to store pictures and music temporarily while i wait for my M4 mSATA 256GB to arrive. I'll get a larger SSD for the second bay when windows 8 is released (dual boot SSDs ).

EDIT: I'm toying with the idea of making an Index sticky linking to user reviews, owner's threads and any other useful threads for the Vostro, Latitude, Precision forum, thoughts? I know no one reads the stickies, but it's useful for regular members to find stuff to link to in case threads get buried.

 

How is battery life/idle temp with m6000(still no switch iirc)? seem no love for Firepro around here . AMD precision is for poor student I guess ~~