E6520 Owner's Thread

So, based on this, there is no thermal pad? It's just paste? My previous Dell's all used thermal pads, that's why I never tried AS or something due to the large gap...

 

Well I do not know if mine uses a pad...when I decide to remove the heat sink I will tell you.
I guess it may well be the ambient temp which rose nearly 10C so having 5C more on idle CPU temp may be right.

 

Perhaps it was a small thermal pad, a replacement of the copper heatpipes on a laptop from a colleague showed it. There is not a large gap? The thermal pad is just a small amount of paste like on the intel coolers (http://www.bouweenpc.nl/uploads/2_1200006217.jpg) and the cheap paste Dell (and HP) uses granulates quick. It's not the solid white pad's you see sometimes. Just some bounded paste. That's why replacement is that easy..

 

ok, good to know. in previous laptops I've worked with there has been a literal pad I could peel off and put back if desired - hated those dumb pads....

 

Search is not working for me in this thread, but I wanted to ask.

How would the speed of an expresscard SSD compare to a miniPCIe SSD, if we were able to get that working? Equitable? slower? I've been searching the 'net and my impression is that the Expresscard slot interacts with both the PCI bus and the USB bus, depending on the device. PCI bus interaction will offer ~2Gbit/s whereas SATA/eSATA would offer 3GBit/s (SATA II)? That should still be pretty fast, compared to a mechanical SATA II HD, I think...

would it be simpler (as of now) to get an expresscard SSD to boot Windows, or would we still run into problems (e.g. BIOS recognition...)?

I ask because I've been looking at several Expresscard SSD's, wondering if they'd have better luck in the E6520 as a boot/OS drive...

specifically, I was wondering about this one: Wintec Filemate 64GB expresscard SSD

 

A12 bios version is release! it must be upgrade from A8 version

 

ok so I just got my computer yesterday. I love it, keyboard is just so lovely! Screen is beautiful, sound levels are very low. Touchpad is lag free.

My computer does get a bit too hot though. Yesterday I was installing everything and after a while I felt the computer burning on the downside. Also the touchpad seemed to become a bit hot.

I have one question though... How can I know when/if the geforce graphiccard really is in use? I tried playing Diablo 3 yesterday after everything is installed. It was barely playable on the absolute lowest settings (though still at 1920x1080). Like average 23fps. Im just not sure if the geforce GPU is working or if its the internal, and I dont know where to check it.. I read somewhere that the geforce GPU will kick in when a known game is detected, well Diablo3 is very new just released like a week ago.. Anyone know how I can control it?

thx!

 

Right click on the desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel > go to program settings tab and select which program you want to use the dedicated card

 

Ahh I see. I didnt have the latest nvidia driver settings (I found them on nvidias site rather then dells driver database). Now I can rightclick and choose GPU as well! great!

So now I have a question about this fingerprint reader on the computer. I cant find the driver anywhere. Scanned through dells webpage even using their own system to search my computer for needed drivers. Nowhere I could find this driver for the fingerprint reader.
Thanks for help

 

Go to the Dell Driver site and get Dell Data Protection (3) and/or it may be Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United Kingdom]

The driver is for sure on the Dell driver page but I cant remember the correct one