E6540 Owners Thread

Any difference in what they sent or is it just more of the same?

 

Well shoot, Hizz, at this rate Dell may end up shipping you all the things I'll need to fabricate a proper cooling solution! Now just to figure out where a second fan could be packed in.....

 

Looked to be the exact same. Big ol' refurbished sticker on the box too.

Unfortunately my rep said give it back or they'll charge me for it. They have none of my payment info, but I sent it back anyway.

My rep is irritatingly stupid. He kept talking about some replacement hard drive. There was never a hard drive replacement. He originally told me he'd give me my warranty extension when I got the new laptop, but now he says he won't do it until the E6540 and the heatsink are shown to be returned in their system which could be up to 10 business days. I can't sell this laptop until the warranty extension goes through. (I made him give me a 1 month extension on my warranty for wasting my time.)

 

Dell's support team in the US sounds like absolute ****, the one in the UK is so much smoother and easy to deal with in comparison.

I haven't even been offered a refund, a guy sent me an email saying that I could choose a model of equivalent spec and he'll ask his manager to authorise it (since it's a different model and not another E6540). No idea why Dell over there is making you guys run in circles to get simple things done.

 

The part that baffles me is that it's supposed to be business class waranty which they claim to be so much better than consumer. And a step above that, several of us have ProSupport which is supposed to be like a gift to mankind. I had waaaaaay better support as a consumer. I never would've had this problem with an Alienware machine. The last time I had a problem with an m17x, they sent me a new one, upgraded the video card and hard drive, and then extended the warranty.

I tend to like Dell laptops, but after this customer service disaster I guess I'll be going elsewhere for my enterprise class machines.

 

I would be shocked if anyone in the US gets a different system aside from in hizzaahs case.

Of course now it seems this latest machine has horrible electrical whine when the cpu is under high load - none of the previous machines had that issue.

 

That doesn't sound good. Could be the CPU itself. The M3800's are plagued with an electrical static noise when the charger gets plugged in. Apparently there's a revision to the mobo, but it's taking people several replacements to get one that doesn't have the noise. I'm selling mine as is, it's not causing a problem and the buyer can get it swapped later after the revision is in full swing.

 

You are not alone. Mine exhibits pretty loud coil whine when under cpu load.

 

It does it just when scrolling through webpages with the touchpad as well - very annoying.

 

Is anyone using AutoCAD on the E6540? My performance is really bad in 2010LT when doing something as simple as drawing a line. The cursor stutters around the display when choosing a point to drop the second end of a line down. I have the Radeon 8790m enabled for AutoCAD and afterburner shows it clocked at 900mhz core/1000mhz memory. I'm running Catalyst 13.12 (the latest as of a week or so ago on AMD's website). Catalyst switchable settings are set to performance when on ac power. The laptop is in a dock with 2x external monitors connected via. DVI running at 1680x1050. Afterburner shows gpu usage as 100% when autocad is open, but I don't think this is accurate as the temperature hovers around 60C. System fans definitely do kick though.