E6520 Owner's Thread

Why does everybody think they need to modify the cooling of the laptops? Seriously, unless it causes issues (throttling/crashing) there is no reason to mess around with this.

I know thermal pads are not optimal, but it is it really worth all the effort to find a copper shim to save a few degrees?

 

Here are my i7-2720QM CPU core temp's after my simple re-pasting of the GPU and CPU (which share the same copper heat pipe and fan).

The top pic is within 30 seconds of a video transcoding task while two browser windows are still open playing flash 10 video. You can see the temp is back within normal range after a few seconds of being pushed very hard (see the max core temps). This shows proper thermal heat transfer. The fan RPM encreased for less than a minute then went back to normal speed.

The bottom pic is after four minutes of cooling at normal fan speed and represent the typical core temps while idle and doing light work (Office Word, Excel, IE 8.0, etc). All looks good on this end.

As mentioned, it should not matter (within reason) how hot the system gets when active and under load, but how well it cools and gets back down to an average level of 50-60C. Likewise, it should stay within this range or a little less (48~53C) when idle or not doing much.

Hope this info helps.

Scott-

Note: Real Temp does not yet read the clock speed on the Gen 2 Sandybridge processors so that reading is at 0.00MHz along with a 0.0% load reading.

 

Hi, if I get a second hard drive installed via the media bay, will I be able to dual boot into either hard drive using F12? Thanks!

 

Yes

Scott

 

What do people think of 6520 sound compare to the 6x00 and 6x10 series? It seems improved to me however that may be my wallet doing the listening

 

Yes, it is better than the previous E6x00/E6x10 line.

Scott

 

Do you send this one back? I bought the same configuration from the outlet and have the exact same behavior right out of the box. I don't want to mess with it unless it is a pretty straight forward fix.

 

Does the 9-cell (87Wh )battery stick out ? or just the 9-cell (97Wh )?

 

Yes, I sent it back the next day and got a full refund. You should be able to return it too; just call Dell and tell them you received a defective laptop and want a full refund.

I didn't try hard to fix it. It could be a simple driver conflict or a major hardware defect. I didn't want to waste my time on it only to find out it was a serious problem.
As far as I know there isn't a straight forward fix, so I guess your best option is probably to return it, unless you want to try your luck with Dell tech support.

 

I can tell you one thing... I don't have to get frustrated about all the crap that gets in the speaker grills anymore.