E6430 Owners Thread

HI all, I have just received my E6430s which is company issued. Specs are I5-3320m 16GB ram 256GB SSD. So far am happy with it, the build on this particular model I think has improved. I have been holding off switching from a HP 6930p which has been my workhorse for over 4 years. Our company switched to dell some time ago and I vowed to hang on to the HP as along as possible due to my dissatisfaction with what I was seeing others using. Anyhow the time has come to accept it and run with the new Dell. One of the features I was waiting to appear on this series was USB 3 which is finally available on the 6430. Our company issue has a corporate load on it that does not have the right drivers for USB 3.0 to function so all USB ports functioned at USB2.0 spec. I downloaded what was required and go it running on USB3.0 Specs however have noticed one annoying behavior. Every 30 mins or so, my external HDD disconnects and reconnects. I run a few VM's on the external drive which don't always handle this well. Has anyone else experienced this?

Also I'm keen to change the keyboard over to backlit version, anyone know the part number? I've seen references for this in the forum for the 6430, not sure if it is same for 6430s

 

Is the Dell 5530 WWAN card compatible with the E6430?

 

How does the keyboard on these compare to the E6400/E6410? I've got an XPS 14 Ultrabook at the moment which is sexy as hell but the keyboard is like typing on a Casio calculator the keys are so flat, shallow and spaced too far apart.

Would anyone swap their E6430 for an XPS? That's a hypothetical question not a proposition.

I'm beginning to think I'm a sucker for marketing and form over function. Should have stuck to Latitudes...

 

I have written in this forum about a problem I have with my E6430's fan which is always spinning. It is so loud that makes me crazy because I spent about $1500 on it. My brothers's T420 is super silent and this makes me more crazy, because his laptop is also high performance. So I had Dell replaced the motherboard, fan and heat sink, but it didn't solve the problem and now they are going to exchange my laptop with a new one.

But, I have heard from some people that it is normal with this kind of high performance system to be so noisy. I was wondering if anyone can tell me if they had similar experience with their machine? My laptop has core i7-3520M processor and NVIDIA 5200M (1GB) graphic card and my fan never slows down. Even when its is unplugged and there is no high load on the processor.

 

We both have the same machine (CPU, GPU) my fan barely comes on though, are you using the latest bios?

 

Yes, I have the latest bios. Actually, I have tried everything to solve this problem. But, non of them worked. So I thought that this laud noise is kind of normal for this laptop. I have to wait for couple of days to see if the new laptop is also the same or different.

So you barely hear your fan?

 

Not Barley, it rarely turns on, when it does its not very audible, I have to put my hand at the vent to know its on. I use a tool called Everest 64 to monitor the system. The fan does not "kick in" until it goes beyond about 60c.

 

pmpl.....................

 

Are you sure it's the fan and not the hard drive? Even with my fan off the computer is kind of loud because of the 7200RPM drive. Not much you can do about that besides getting an SSD.

A simple way to see if the fan is running is to stick a small piece of toilet paper near the fan outlet. If it moves when you lower it in front of the fan vent then the fan is on.

I have found that once the fan turns on it takes a long time before it turns off. You may be able to get around that by switching to the "Quiet" power plan and then back to the one you normally use.

 

Bios A11 is out..

Fixes & Enhancements
1. Updated BIOS UEFI GOP (Graphics Output Protocol) driver.
2. Improved the format of help messages in One-time Boot Menu.
3. Enhanced TPM control for CCTK/OMCI application.
4. Improved PXE boot screen.
5. Enhanced Blue Tooth control function.
6. Synchronized Intel Smart Connect Technologies status between application and BIOS.
7. Enhanced HDD Remote Wipe feature.
8. Improved DCIM/DFEP application support.
9. Improved HDD password functionality.
10. Improved BIOS setup functionality.

E6430 Drivers and Downloads