E6540 Owners Thread

This. Which is exactly why I think the case manager working on hizzaah's case should assume awesome responsibility for our cases as well. Dell really only has a few options that I will accept:

1) Offer me a full refund, no questions asked. Even though I purchased my E6540 in Late August, 2013
2) Offer me a model swap. I wouldn't mind having a "downgrade" to a lower spec'ed machine with store credit.
3) Somehow engineer a respectable fix for the E6540

One of us should take apart our machines and get a part number for the fan, just the fan. Find out who makes it and see if they manufacturer a superior replacement that can be swapped into the existing assembly.

 

I already had the chance to return mine for a refund, but for what I paid I'd never find anything close to this so the only thing I'm going to accept is a working heatsink solution or an upgrade to a working model. I love the feel of this machine so I'd prefer them to just fix it, but don't really see that happening

 

IIRC Sunon manufacture the HSF for the E6540, and it's a custom one so no upgrades. Do we know if the fan ramps up to full speed? It seems like it doesn't at the moment, which leads me to think that A08 UEFI update will have a much more aggressive fan.

Considering all the problems I would push hard for an Alienware 17 with proper support (i.e. the premium 3 year one). It would be cheaper for Dell to exchange these for the 17 as I presume the MXM Quadro cards in the M4800 of equivalent spec to the 8790M are much more expensive.

 

Possible confusion?
Some of the NBC ranking currently appears to be based on specs rather than benchmarks, but ...

The AMD FirePro M5100 and NVidia K2100 are placed at #78 and #79
8790M is at #90
K1100M is at #118

The Precision 4800 with the M5100 is currently priced less than the one with the K1100M.

 

NBC rankings are based on gaming performance.. Not all of the cards are tested so they estimate where they think they'll go and it's not always accurate. Again, quadro/firepro cards are not made for gaming. FirePro M5100 is equivalent to ~750M. Nothing spectacular. And AMD cards are always cheaper than similarly performing Nvidia cards.

I'm pretty sure the fan is maxed. If you used HWiNFO64, you can see/control the fan speed and it maxes itself pretty quickly.

I highly doubt they'd move you to consumer class from business, but even if they did there's no way I'd personally take a 17" Alienware behemoth. It weighs like 10lbs.. The video card options in the 17 are quite a bit more powerful ideas far as gaming is concerned, you'd get the lowest spec bracket. You also have to think about what our laptop cost. I won't even mention what I paid for mine, but I imagine they'll be hesitant to throw expensive upgrades our way..

 

I'd personally love a 17" option - even the M6800 if it didn't have throttling issues as well. I just want a machine that can do what it was made for without slowing down.

 

So I finally got the Intel XTU program to install and it took under 7 minutes of just the CPU stress test to throttle the system. It started to throttle around 95c and even after the test was stopped and the temps lowered the fans never kicked back down.

The plus side is this makes a nice hand warmer..

 

M6800 was suprising:

Though, they did believe that they had an issue with their cooling system.. Also, you can get a beefier cpu heatsink that only came with the 55W extreme cpus.. Or at least you used to be able to. I HATE HATE HATE dell's ordering pages. You can't configure anything. It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen.. Maybe they thought they'd save money by offering pre configured systems, but I bet they're losing money because they're getting 10x as many phone calls because their website sucks../rant

 

I remember back in the day when you could change every single option - I hate the limits they have now. You are usually stuck without being able to change anything. I miss being able to pick from 10 different lid colors.

 

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Good to hear you were able to install XTU. Have you tried undervolting the CPU to decrease heat output? It looks like 5-10C drops are attainable.