M4700 Owners Thread

I have two questions regarding upgrades to the M4700 I'm hoping someone will know the answer to...

I have the Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300AGN WIFI card and it drops out once or twice a day for a few seconds at a time which *really* irritates me...... (always right in the middle of a youtube video or big download...)
I'm wondering what is the best WIFI mini PCIe card I can install? I saw the 'Killer Networking' range but what have people found to be the best?
Also, is it possible to stretch the three WIFI antenna leads to reach the WWAN PCIe slot to install a larger style WIFI card?

And what is the best "bang for the buck" CPU upgrade? I have an Intel Core i7-3630QM @ 2.4GHz at the moment.


I'm not adverse to modding this thing. I've already upgraded to K2000M GPU, added an extra 16Gb of Crucial Ballistix RAM, installed a wide gamut LCD panel, installed a Samsung Evo SSD, Installed the optional fingerprint/smartcard reader, installed a DW5560 WWAN card and am running an external Nvidia GTX970 GPU to an external monitor.

I just can't leave it well enough alone....

 

On M6700, I also had stability issues with the Intel Wifi card. I tried a "Killer-N wireless" and found it to be either really fast and unstable (newer drivers) or rather slow but stable (older drivers). I ended up with a generic Broadcom BCM4352 802.11ac card (cheap on eBay) which is stable and fast enough with stock Windows drivers. It only uses two antenna leads but you can get over 800 Mbps "reported connection speed" (read: less actual speed) if your network is also 802.11ac.

CPU depends on your budget and expectations, you already have quad core, if your workload is not particularly CPU heavy you won't notice much improvement.

 

My budget is whatever will get me the best performance for my dollar..

My router is an Asus RT-AC87U, so it should have all the bells and whistles... Does the Broadcomm do 5Ghz reliably?

I do a lot of 3D CAD and video editing etc, so pretty CPU intensive work.

 

At home I only use 5 GHz with it and it works fine.

 

Cool, I'll have a look into it.

Thanks!

 

Hey Terra Operative,

how do you run the gtx 970? Can you post your Setup? Spec Pictures would be cool. Because a faster GPU would be very nice for me.

 

Can you post an update for the Driver? Maybe it is obvious but did you also try the newest quadro driver from Nvidia? How about all the Monitor outputs? Are the HDMI/VGA/Displayport Slots working?
Where do you shoot this card? Cause i am always searching on ebay for one with a dell Bios...

 

I have a GTX970 in this enclosure with a standard ATX PSU powering it:

http://www.hwtools.net/Adapter/PE4H V3.2.html

I would use a different enclosure though (a bit of a search around google will find various forum discussions about these types of adapters in general), as this one needs modifications to fit the power plugs to the GPU (it does *just* fit if you chop the length of the plug down where it attaches the card though, but is is tight...) and the hole in the side of the case needs to be bigger to match the positions of the 3 fans on the card (I'll be getting my case CNC machined to cut it larger soon).
The cable to the expresscard slot is *just* long enough to reach from the laptop to the box when the box is placed directly behind the monitor. I would have liked a detachable HDMI type cable though. Maybe I can mod that myself...
Also disconnect the three small fans at the end of the case, they are unnecessary and *SUPER LOUD*!!!

If you don't mind working around that stuff I mentioned above, it actually works flawlessly. I was actually surprised at how easy it was, literally plug it in and go, not much harder than putting a HDD into a USB enclosure and plugging it in....

As for setup, You just plug it into the expresscard slot, turn the laptop on and install the drivers (unless Windows does it automatically for you). After a reboot or two, it works perfectly as a secondary monitor.
You obviously have to plug your monitor into the GPU itself (no video is going back to the laptop) but I can run a modded Fallout 4 at full settings and it eats it up.

I also have a Dell laptop dock too (under $10 from Akihabara here in Tokyo ), so the expresscard cable is the only wire hanging off my computer which is nice for when I have to take my laptop somewhere else.

Oh, also, with the latest Nvidia drivers, you can hot plug the cable too. The older drivers would BSOD and freeze the computer if the cable was unplugged, but Nvidia fixed that issue and now Windows just throws a message in your notification bar that the video card was unexpectedly lost (I think you can even eject it like a USB drive too) and then just drops to the internal LCD just like you unplugged a monitor from the HDMI port. The screen then pops back when the card is reinserted.

One last thing. The connection from the expresscard slot to the GPU is bandwidth limited to about 5Gbps, so you won't see the same performance as sticking the card into a desktop. The GTX970 I have is rated at 7Gbps, so there's a bit of a bottleneck there, What improvements one would get by upgrading to a faster card remain to be seen...

 

I have found several Dell branded M2000M on ebay today: N16P-Q3-A2

Price is still too high imo though. I'll wait for 200$ range before i'll consider it.

 

FirePro M5100 or go home