E6410 Owner's Thread

hmmm well i am sure i dont have onboard and no new hardware from my old motherboard which showed the full 8gb

 

Can anybody with the i5 520m and nvs 3100m share the (IDLE cpu discharge rate) as reported by aida?

I am thinking of downgrading from my i7 640m to get better battery life

 

So.....

I pulled the trigger and bought i7 820QM just 2 minutes ago. Will replace my i5 580M 2.66GHz.

I am 100% certain with copper mod with the Nvidia GPU. Is there anything else I could do for the CPU? I know copper mod is not recommended for the CPU heatsink, so I would appreciate any other suggestion.

Also, will 16GB work with Quad i7 CPU on the E6410? I had M17x R2 that only offered up to 8GB officially, but 16GB actually worked. Since the memory controller is on the cpu chip, I was wondering if there is any possibility.

Did not find definite answers on Google with Quad i7.

 

So i have been going through overheating with this machine for some time it's really an awesome machine, i should of looked into doing a cooper mod, i mean it was fine with the dell paste, i've used, artic silver terrible terrible stuff, ic diamond and now recently, Antech paste, and well some pretty bad temps for the gpu mostly man it really really sucks. The screen has been flicking here and there if it is on the wrong type of surface, i am running windows 8 and dual booting unbuntu really interesting OS's. Anyway i have no warranty and whatelse should i do with this machine? I understand what a cooper mod is, i have seen it plenty of times i just have always been terrible with hardware.

 

I am also interested in swapping a Quad i7 (probably 720QM or 740QM) into my E6410 solely for the possibility of using 16GB RAM. Can you report back on how your's is doing? I have seen some reports on other systems from HP with Quad i7s (1st gen) and only 2 memory slots that have been able to use 2x8GB, so it might work.

 

I didnt get a chance to snap in 16gb, per budget reasons, since really 8gb is enough for a low speed quad like this.

I did copper mod for the gpu, using both 0.5mm and 0.65mmish copper. Terrible temps with AC5. Throttling inevitable with 100% load. CPU and GPU hitting like 94-95 at 100% load. It might be a few degrees lower when AC5 settles.

I am still using it since in real life, 80% of constant use would be the max it gets, which wont cause throttle. If I ever need 100% usage for awhile that leads to throttling, it means I need to upgrade the whole laptop itself. the only thing is if I play BF3 in low setting with 100% stressed GPU, CPU I think clocks down to 1.3-1.5GHz at some points. But eh, it is what it is.

I wouldnt recommend you opting out for a low speed quad just for 16gb ram.. I mean I'm sure you are not running 2-3 VMware on this laptop.. Also If you are using top of the line dual core, I don't think 1.60Ghz Quad will make that huge of a difference. I got the 820QM over 740QM since 3.06GHz of turbo was gonna make the slow base clock at least little worth of an upgrade. Just drew the line there.

Going for a Quad is a great idea if you can get one for around $50 and sell yours for around $30. I can now use it and wait until the 2nd generation octocores come out. By then laptops with 1st generation octocores should be cheap.

 

What are the temperatures you getting for CPU and GPU under load?

Keep taking the heatsink on and off makes the contact of the thermal pad for the GPU worse. If you used all those pastes to repaste CPU, odds are your pad is no good.

I actually highly recommend copper mod. 0.5mm ones just does it. $1.5 from Ebay.

I am using AC5 too. To be honest, terrible. At least not anything good as it could be.

Regarding flickering, you can check the cables. But odds are it is the screen getting old. I get flickering too even with the replaced LCD..

 

Thanks for your experience, having the best dual i7 available at the time I think i'll stick with it until I can afford something like a T440/E6440. I actually do run 2 VMs on it, Ubuntu and XP, and even with Ubuntu compiling 100% CPU load on 2 cores its still decently fast, until I hit 7.8GB RAM usage.

For anyone with a flickering problem, it is probably the worst issue on this laptop. I had mine depot repaired many times with new LCDs, cables, everything and nothing helped. An easy replication is to set display sleep to 5-10 min, wait until 5 minutes after the screen sleeps, and then wake it up. Pretty much all of 2012 I was without the computer as it was in repair. In the end they replaced the whole system (where I got lucky and got a much more high-end system). If you still have warranty I highly recommend taking it up with upper level support as they upgrade to E6430s now, or if you are out of warranty just never let the display sleep.

 

When it flickers, it something helps for me to turn on and off the auto LCD brightness. But yeah when it comes back on from sleep this thing is like earthquake.

Eh I wont trade my E6410 ATG with E6430 maxed out. Not a chance. Design issues!

 

The flickering issue on the E6410 has been traced back to the NVS3100M chip. It becomes very unstable after getting too warm (the 1st time) and will never be 100% after the issue presents itself.

Dell should replace your main system board if you are still under warranty and never did anything to comprise the stock setup. That is the only real way to resolve the issue.

Personally, I do not like the heat-sink used since the thermal transfer between the GPU and heat pipe is not great due to the high potential of a gap being present between the two components. So I went the copper shim-sandwich root when I set the unit up before listing it for sale (link below).

My recipe is:
1. Apply a micro amount of thermal compound on the NVidia chip itself;
2. Then place the 12x12x0.50mm copper shim on to the NVidia chip;
3. Now apply slightly more thermal compound on the top of the copper shim and the heat sink;
4. I also add a 12x12x1.0mm to the upper Intel chipset thermal point to make that section more robust to temperature;
5. Once the CPU is also pasted along with that section of the heat-sink, I tighten everything down evenly and make sure all is tight/snug, but not over torqued.

Everything has been working great although the system only gets used once in a blue moon – thus the reason I am selling it.

Overall, I love the E6410. I also use the E6520, which is my favorite 15”.

I will be reviewing the E6430u shortly for another web site and that beauty is quickly becoming my favorite to date. Looks great, built tough, thin/light, and nice performance.

Scott-

My E6410 for sale: http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...0m-160gb-ssd-8gb-nvidia-900p.html#post9067756