M4400 heat & noise questions

Dell M4400 Bios A13 Changelog:
1. Updated thermal table.

Okay dudes - lets collect the impressions! Ill do todays evening

 

Hmmm...interesting...ill try it later today

 

This BIOS allows the CPU & GPU to run several degrees higher than earlier revisions until the fan turns on.

On my system, the CPU now reaches ~45 & the GPU at ~65 before the fan kicks in at a very quiet medium-low speed.

The fan runs for less than 30 seconds until both components drop about 5 degrees. Left alone, my system idles at ~42 CPU & 55 GPU, and stays at ~45 GPU & 60 GPU while web browsing & messing with emails - the fan does not come on during the above usage.

Playing COD5 for about 10 minutes with the volume off showed the fan running on the above mentioned medium-low until I exited the game, at which point it took about a minute to turn off as long as the GPU dropped to ~60 degrees.

While E-Ported, there is virtually no change to the above behaviour - a welcome BIOS revision indeed.

Haven't tested external monitor setup yet.

All in all - a nicely done thermal table modification that finally allows one to reap the benefits of an almost noiseless system - the increased tolerance to temperature seems to be a vote of confidence on Dell's part towards the Quadro 770M not having heat/packaging issues like earlier NVidia GPUs.

EDIT - The fan turning on seems to be more a function of the GPU reaching ~65 degrees rather than the CPU temps - as all 4 cores of my CPU stay at ~42 degrees during basic web browsing & composing emails in Outlook. Fan behaviour is virtually similar to the missus' E6400 equipped with a P9500 + Intel 4500 - I am very pleased!

 

Yep, flashed to A13 from A06 and fan is definately kicking in later! Superb!!!

Sami