E6540 Owners Thread

Looks like Dell is unimpressed by, and will not be taking action on my BBB complaint. They still want my laptop at the depot, and if it fails testing, they'll replace with the exact same model.

Does Dell not employ anyone that understands basic thermal handling? That tiny little sink simply isn't capable of getting rid of the heat the CPU and GPU generate. it's not happening. It throttles whenever loaded, which lets it pass DFT, and that seems to be all Dell cares about, their only criteria for "needs fix" are crashes/hard locks/unexpected power off. Throttling is JUST FINE, and WORKING AS DESIGNED.

I think someone should class action them over this. The CPU is marked and sold as 2.7GHz, turbo to 3.6, not 800MHz and stays there any time it's used.

 

I didn't think they would care especially since they aren't a BBB member. Would have been nice to get somewhere with that, but apparently if you want to solve the problem you'd have to order from the Australian outlet since they seem to be the only people who care.

 

Or maybe you should try small-claims court?

 

Given how much time I've wasted on this issue already, and how much more it would cost me, both in time and money, I can't, mazyarjr.

I'm far more likely to make a Youtube video of smashing my E6540 and bonfiring the pieces while explaining how Dell has cost me money and time and nearly my job, and how I won't willingly be doing business again with them for a very long time, maybe ever. After supporting a changeover to Dell as our OEM of choice at work, I'm left feeling like a huge fool. Next time someone suggests purchasing from a different OEM, I'm not going to speak against it at all, despite it increasing my workload.

Dell, you've screwed up. You've turned a big fan into a deeply aggrieved opponent, just by sitting back and mindlessly parroting a broken flowchart instead of helping someone with a problem. If I ever do business with Dell again, it's going to be a very, very long time. Given the current consumer PC market, that means I'm pretty much stuck working with HP and/or Lenovo. Wonderful.

 

It will be interesting with the Precision M2800 being announced as I'm pretty sure it is just this machine with different graphics. I truly hope some giant company orders a ton of them and then finds out they can't handle the load..

 

So, maybe I'm being overly picky or just have bad luck, but when the fan kicks in on my machine it makes a little "chunk" noise when it starts to spin up. I've been through at least 5 heatsink/fan replacements and they all do the same thing. My first two e6540 machines didn't have this problem, but they also had a different manuf for the heatsink. Am I alone in this and everyone else has a smooth starting fan? Considering the fan kicks in every few seconds it really gets annoying.

 

I hear you. Once I found myself in a pretty similar situation with a bunch of Asus machines. The laptop is yours so it's up to you what you want to do with it, but when I reached that stage with mine, I just donated the thing to a local charity hoping that it could help some needy people (doubtful) and I could at least recoup some of my loss in tax write offs. Good luck!

 

My M4800 is in pre-production. I've been assured (in writing) that I can order the QHD screen and necessary cabling/bits later, since it isn't available right now. I can live with that.

After a bit of looking around, I should be able to swap the Quadro K1100M out for a K2100M via eBay for about 200-250$, then sell the K1100M to recoup some of that. I'll probably try to get that done between now and the QHD coming back in stock.

Hopefully by Christmas, I'll have a 3200x1800 screen, full of XFCE glory. The four ram slots will make my VMware work a lot easier, and it has all the ports and plugs that my E6530 does, and my E6540 lacked. Now I just have to hope the cooling system is as good as it looks on paper.

 

No need to hope - my M4800 (i7-4700MQ / Firepro 5100M) has great cooling: I can't make it go above 70°C, and it is quiet.

 

I just pulled the trigger on a M4800 as well from ebay. QHD and the K2100M with a SSD for $1150 was too much to pass on - though I hate having spent so much more over the price of the E6540.