M4700 Owners Thread

Happen to have a DIY guide on this handy?

 

Hi, I have some trouble with my new M4700 motherboard, at first after a clearcmos or removing/changing ram (removing or adding one) the M4700 boot fine, but if I shutdown I couldn't boot anymore (I press on the button, button got illuminated, fan spin then it shutdown, this happen in less than a second, no matter how many time I try to press on the button nothing happen unless I clearcmos or play with ram), I thought it was bios (mine is A11) related but I couldn't update to a new one, no matter if I try A12 or A19, I launch the software, it reboot the computer but nothing special happen at boot :/
Did someone have a hint about my problem ? How could I flash the bios throught windows ?
Thanks

 

I have seen sometimes that you need to plug in for it to boot right. As goofy as it sounds. I have had mine do that once before, just flash for a second. If I plugged it in to power, hit the button, then pulled it out a few seconds later it would boot normally. That was on my old board though. My new board hasn't had that issue, got it replaced just before warranty ended a few years ago.

Sent from my LG-US998 using Tapatalk

 

So this is a board defect ?

 

I swaped bios chip and it seems to boot fine, but I still have one issues, couldn't update the bios, like as before, I launch the setup, it reboot the computer then nothing happen, same in dos

 

Hello, I just bought myself a used M4700. While it's used, the insides are great despite of its cosmetic shortcomings, a few dents at the sides .There are probably some scratches as well since the seller put on a black cover on the palm rest and the display lid but that's good enough I guess.

I've always wanted a Precision laptop but I've moved on to the Razer Blade Pro 2017 last year but it was not a smooth adventure. Tons of issues including crazy thermal distribution on the laptop, it's hot everywhere (you can feel the burn) and the aluminum chassis does not help. There's also a dead pixel on arrival, display colour flickers (changing colours briefly), a green line, some keys does not register anymore and now the battery has swollen and I have not had the time to ask for Razer support. My Clevo was also not in a great condition (tough luck) so I bought this instead for $400 including a Team L3 EVO SSD and 16GB RAM upgrade. I was hoping that I would get the IPS display since the seller said all units had the IPS display but this one did not but I guess that's okay, I don't know how severe the IPS tinting issue was so maybe this is for the better.

Thermal wise, I've seen people saying that the CPU on this laptop runs really hot and mine does. I have the i7-3740QM CPU. It goes over 85-89 degrees a lot of the time at max clock with Turbo Boost enabled. Repasted with a cheap Cooler Master X1 Extreme Fusion and the temperature did not go over 80 degrees even at max clock with Turbo Boost enabled (3.7GHz). I've been thinking of upgrading to the i7-3940XM CPU and luckily, the heatsink is the dual-pipe version but I'm not sure how this laptop would do thermal-wise with the 55W 3940XM since it's struggling even with the 45W 3740QM. I'll probably use a different thermal paste when I do but is upgrading to 3940XM even worth the time and money? It's still pretty expensive to this day.

I'm debating myself whether I should upgrade the CPU or the GPU first on this laptop but then again I'm not even sure if upgrading either of them is going to be worth it. Is it still worth it to upgrade the M4700 in 2019? Or should I wait until some of the newer Precision price to go down (used or refurbished)? Also, how long does the 9-cell 97Wh last usually? Mine is on "Moderate" health according to the BIOS so I'm definitely replacing it soon. It's already at 63% juice from 100% in just 1 hour.

I'm still reading the whole thread and there's so many good info here, thanks to everyone.

Ps. I want to post some photos but I'm too lazy to get my phone and everyone here owns a M4700 anyway.

 

* You will get more bang for your buck upgrading the GPU. Going from 3740QM to 3940XM is only getting you a few tenths of a GHz, but you could double the GPU performance or better depending on which GPU you got in the system. This machine can take a GeForce 965M or perhaps Quadro M2200.
* Getting CPU temperatures in the 80's under full load is normal and not an issue. I'd say that you have cause for concern if you are hitting the very high 80's just because the CPU will begin to throttle down from full turbo.
* These machines are not designed to last on battery all day long. Three or four hours is pretty normal (under light load with Optimus turned on), you can get more perhaps if you are very conservative with background load and keep the screen brightness very low. Hwinfo64 can tell you what the battery wear and actual max capacity of the battery is (if it is old it will be down a good bit from 97 Wh).

M4700 is still a pretty capable machine. I have the big brother M6700 and I am planning to keep it as my daily driver for another three years. I'd say the main thing that newer machines offer would be better graphics performance, possibility of 4K screen, NVMe storage, and better CPU speed (only seriously obtained with the recent launch of 8th gen / 6-core CPUs); any of these may or may not be of serious use depending on what you actually need to use the system for.

 

1. My thoughts exactly, the 3940XM won't bring that much of a difference after looking at charts and stuff for a few days. It mean, it must be nice to have it but it's still so expensive that it's not even worth it. Maybe in a few years time, once it drops to $100 I'll buy it.
2. Good to know that but actually my CPU utilization was pretty low before the repaste. I didn't even do anything but the CPU just love to go really high clock speeds and warm itself up. I don't know why, maybe because of something I installed? Dell SupportAssist maybe? I sometimes see that PC-DOCTOR COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER thing from SupportAssist spiking but I'm not too sure. It's much better now although it's at 60 degrees average with around 10 tabs of Firefox.
   
3. HWiNFO shows 39.7% wear level. I tested the full charge just now, 2 hours of playing FHD videos (in Firefox) while browsing some websites. 40% seems like a lot? Would any of your recommend using the laptop with battery intact while using the power adaptor for a whole day every day?

Looking at some of the GTX 965M MXM 3.0a cards, are AliExpress sellers trustworthy? I shall consult the Upgrade GPU thread for the list of resellers. I saw that you upgraded your M6700 to P5000. Man, that sounds so much fun. I actually looked for a M6700 locally before the M4700 but it's non-existent.

EDIT: I just noticed that my unit does not have a Bluetooth built-in. Weird. The sellers also forgot to put back the 4 hard drive screws after changing it to the SSD.

 

40% wear is really high — basically you only have 60% of the original capacity, a new battery would last 66% longer on a charge.
If you get a new battery try to make sure it is new and genuine Dell. (I wonder if they still make these? Might be hard to find.) In my experience off-brand batteries tend to go bad more quickly.
I don't think that there is a problem leaving it plugged in most of the time. Some people set up a custom charging profile to keep it from topping off too often, which can reduce the wear over time; you can set this up in the BIOS, i.e. only start charging if the battery level is below 60% and then stop charging when it reaches 95%.

For Bluetooth, you can install basically any 802.11ac mPCIe card and it will have built-in Bluetooth. (These systems originally shipped with 802.11n cards that did not include Bluetooth.)

 

Hey guys, M4700 here, 3940XM, k2000m. Is it possible to upgrade the panel to a 4k unit? What would be required?