E6420 Owner's Thread

I understood what you were saying, but had some other thoughts on what I would do in regards to seeing how the system cooled after the upgrade. The temps went up about 10 degrees C on average during idle and operational states, but never got above 79C even during an Intel diagnostics/stress test. The fan is obviously more active, but I feel there is enough meat on the dual core/NVIDIA heatsink (D/PN 7MJYV) to support a 2720QM under light/moderate use. For extended stress loads such as video encoding that exceeds 4 minutes, I agree that a dual heat pipe solution (D/PN TYP01) for under $25 from Dell directly is the proper path to take.

If anyone else is running 16GB, please start the system diagnostics at boot up (hit F12) and let it run. Let me know if your system shows an error trying to test the larger than 4GB sticks at about the 80-90% complete mark. Since mine test fine in Windows 7, I believe this may be a Dell diagnostics memory mapping issue (how ironic).

Scott-

 

Here is one that will work for the E series: Dell eSATA External DVD RW Drive E16DVD01+Cable N820P | eBay

Here is the best HDD caddy currently avaiable: 2nd Hard Drive Caddy DELL E6520, E6420, E6320 E-Module Bay [DELL-2BAY-E6520] - $48.95 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

Scott

 

I own a Dell e6420 and I can vouch for the NewmodeUS Caddy. I had spent days looking at ebay and google looking for a good cheap caddy. The cheap ones that claim to work with it, will not be flush with the design of the e6420. I ended up giving up cheap and paying around $56 total with a coupon code i got from their facebook page. I have a 256 WD SSD and momentus XT hybrid 500GB in the caddy. The XT is known to vibrate a lot so it was a big concern if the caddy would amplify that affect. So far no vibration, unlike when the XT was the main drive in my Dell D630. I am quite happy with it.

Biggest drawback for me though, is the bright Harddrive LED light on the side of it. I feel like I draw too much attention working in a coffee shop as the light points directly at the people at the next table. I'm planning on cutting a small piece of black electrical tape and cover it to solve that problem.

 

do you know if this dvd can be used as bootable source?

 

hmm didn't think people will still talk about the heatsink design, but coincidently I changed mine to the twin pipe designed for the i7 CPU.

To be honest I did not witness any throttling when I had the single pipe design using the i7-2720QM, just that the fan will kick in hard. I would say both heatsink design will handle fine, as long as you like the fan noise. Though in comparison a friend with a T420 had a i7 and that throttled down every interval (every 1min), couldn't even manage a simple benchmark.

Hope the picture will help anyone..

p.s these heatsink are for the E6420 with the Nvidia GPU
[Edit Due to forgetting to blank out my details ]

 

I forgot there was a different heatsink design for non-Nvidia E6420, here is some photos from eBay seller marcusparts as a comparison.

The copper piping is so thin, wouldn't think having a i7 is good....also the fan is different. The Nidec fan (non Nvidia ) looks like a silent fan with little blades, comparing to Suno fan (Nvidia ) with actual long blades hence why its loud

 

Yes

Scott

 

hello,
found these two alteranatives,as I already have removed the DVD drive so dont want another dvd drive.

if our ESATA ports are powered then this will work best.

Power ESATA (esata+usb combo) to 22Pin SATA cable,0.5m | eBay

this looks great for purpose.


for caddy also ,I found good deal on half the price.
I always found newmodeus caddies overpriced and their shipping to my country( India) is more than cost of caddy.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200707369925

this one is matched bezel and without ejector..

with "ejector" for Dell E6400 E6500 E6410 E6510 2ND SSD HDD HARD DRIVE caddy | eBay

this one is just 11$ but not matched bezel.

what to do....
too many choices...

 

Dr. Pratik: if you have the E6420 do not buy the last ebay (11.00) hard drive module as it will not fit in the 6420--it is made only for the models listed. I know because I bought one and had to remove the ejector in order to insert the module. Luckily, I had a spare ejector from a DVD ROM that I could jury-rig to use it but the ejector sticks out slightly from the E6420 frame. No big deal for me but some people would not like the fit.

 

that cable will work with our laptop's esata port?
i already decided about that 23$ caddy.