M4700 Owners Thread

appomo: I am sorry to hear you are having problems... I'm afraid I cannot help. However, could I ask whether you still have your slice battery? If so, could you please help me with my question in post #684 above... I need to decide quickly what to do about it. Thanks, Martin

Edit: to help with power draw, I have posted about this on another forum: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18498794 - I have found that if the CPU is limited a little bit by disabling Turbo (either BIOS or set 99% maximum speed in Windows power profile) you can get power draw down to around 83W from the wall using a 180W charger on 240V AC mains. This was running IntelBurnTest along with Unigine Heaven on the K2000M at the same time. Backlight on full. However, this was with batteries full (i.e. no charging being done). With Turbo enabled you get a similar draw just running IntelBurnTest without the nVidia graphics card being used (i.e. running on the HD4000 using optimus). Turbo really eats power.

 

How on earth do you get 41c CPU idle temps?

I have the same CPU and idle at 50c.

Today I took apart the machine and repasted both CPU and GPU.

The CPU runs slightly hotter now (maybe applied too much paste like OEM paste job, thick), and the GPU dropped by 2 or 3 degrees.

I can't recall now but I believe CPU and GPU heat sinks are single pipe.

Maybe replacing the heat sinks with dual pipe equivalents will drop idle temps to what others are reporting.

Not that 50c is dangerously hot, just close enough to trigger a brief click-whirrr fan cycle for me to want to drop the temps.

 

to be honest i did not checked these things but it doenst even show the boot stuff before it goes into windows so i thought these things would not affect a black screen even on that.
when i put the monitor setting to dual monitor, he put all the stuff like the taskbar on the notebook laptop and the extension of the screen on the second. i of course cant see the stuff on the notebook but since the second work as a second the stuff should be on the first. i can even go with the mouse out of the second monitor so it seems that he still recognize the notebook monitor as the first one.
fidddlingn with the display...do you mean to open it and to see if i can get some connection by checking the cables?
so if its some of the other 3 things you mentioned i deffenetly need the support...damn ...


@ moleyboy: i played already some games with my machine with the slice attached and these worked fine. so i think that doesnt happend to me but when possible i will check it later this day. but my configuration is different then yours so maybe someone with the same gc could check it too.

 

A quick M4700 dual heatpipe CPU heat sink part number update: 080D8V

This is from a UK M4700, but I assume the spec is the same everywhere.

Incidentally, I found my mismatched CPU core temps problem yesterday. The nut that receives the screw for number 3 of the CPU heat sink is either threaded or just spinning. I can't tighten it at all. That said, all cores are now equal temperature and maxing slightly higher at about 78c and idle is 42c.

That is with a very thin layer of Arctic Silver 5 and 20c ambient.

If I take the bottom case off and point a 120mm fan directly at the CPU fan, it goes down as far as 30c

 

Thanks, I would appreciate you looking at it for me. It is the CPU speed that is the issue and happens even when running off the Intel graphics. However, I realise that you have a different CPU but I would still appreciate you looking, as if it does happen for you then I have some evidence to take to Dell.

If possible, could you please run the laptop off the slice in High Performance Windows power profile (without AC charger connected as it is fine with the charger for me). You need to stress the CPU (using IntelBurnTest or Prime95 etc.) and then look at the CPU speed (using CPU-Z or HWiNFO etc.) and see if the CPU is allowed to run full speed or is limited to a lower clock such as 1.2GHz.

Also, would you be able to tell me the model / part number of the slice battery you have, in case Dell have sent me the wrong battery? Mine appears to be "type KJ321" and "DP/N 0UJ499" with a date of "2012 / 07".

Many thanks for your help and I hope you have some luck getting your display working again.

Martin

 

i think there is just one variation of battery slice available,
short answer..YES, it seems your right there is a "problem" when you use the slice.

here some infos i got.

used prime 95/ pc wizard

notebook on the dockingstation
2600mhz available - got up to 3092,16 (is that even possible?!?)

same with the notebook itself wihtout the power cable

notebook with the battery slice and internal battery 1196.95Mz

i hope that helped.



about my issue: they changed the complete backpanel of the display with the wires ect and now it works. he tried first a new display but it doesnt worked so he changed the backpanel and put the old display in which seems to work.

edit: now my windows doesnt work correctly...it takes a lot of time till it loads and then it prepare the desktop and when it finally manage to get to it i got failure messages and a bluescreen........since he ripped the hole machine into pieces and put it back together..can this happen trough any damage the repair guys has done to the machine ??

edit2:
system test error code 2000-0142 -validation 109329
hard drive short self test unsuccesfull.

so it seems to be something with the harddrive... -.-...problem is now that its a ssd not from dell.
he had problems to get it out but after he whas done it worked.
now after the restart this problem appears...
i removed it and put it in again like on the dell website mentioned but that doesnt helped.

what now? i mean they will for sure not replace the harddrive since its not from them but before he opened the hole machine it worked without any problems.
what would you do??

 

Many thanks, that has helped a lot... I will refuse the mainboard change now I know that there is another machine out there that exhibits the same "problem". I will point the Dell technical support representative to this thread and highlight your response so that he can see it is not just my machine but some other issue (BIOS perhaps).

ouch, that is nasty... I'm sorry you are having problems.

It does sound like a hard drive issue, but what exactly I do not know. If you have another disk available to test, I would try another disk and either restore a recent backup (if you have one) or a clean Windows install. If this works, then the disk may have become corrupted or damaged. Of not, there is another issue caused by the engineer. At least you would know.

If the disk is corrupted, you could then try restoring the original disk (again, if you have a backup) or failing that have to re-install Windows. If that fails, the disk is indeed damaged rather than corrupted files, and you will need to replace it.

Whether Dell accept any responsibility is another question... I assume the engineer saw it work before they left and it is somewhat of a coincidence that it fails so soon after their visit.

Please let us know how you get on, and I will let you know if Dell do anything about the slice battery as this would (I assume) be of interest to you as well.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me when you are having issues yourself!

Martin

 

tried out the harddisk which came with the machine and i got no failure message so its for sure the ssd.
i will give it today back and they send it in...thats the thing with when you buy stuff everywhere else...they dont replace it one day later like dell but what dell want for a ssd whas to much for me in the past

feel free to post what came out in your case. i did not noticed it but at the end i dont use it as often as i intendet too and when i do stuff with photoshop so it would not go up so high anyway...when i am not wrong

whats about the othe slice users...same issue ?.

 

I've just received my precision M4700 from the outlet store. I've owned precisions before, for the past three years I've been using a M6400. My first impressions were how tiny this machine is. I know other people have had the opposite reaction, yes it is big for a 15" laptop, however coming from a 17" precision, this definitely feels lighter and was one of the main reasons for me going down in size, so that I could have a little more portability.

First impressions, keyboard. Ugh, the amount of flex on this keyboard is just unbelievable. I really don't like the way it feels or types. The best keyboard I've used on a precision was back on the M90 model, is there anyway Dell can bring back those types of keyboards? They were so solid.

Secondly, the screen. I went for the FHD 1920x1080 screen resolution. As it was an outlet model, I was slightly restricted by choice, however the model I got had an AMD M4000 graphics card. Now, I know there have been a few posts about display quality on the FHD TN panels, unfortunately my display also suffers from these washed out, highly blue tinted colour problems. Checking HWinfo shows me I have the dreaded AU Optronics B156HW02 display. I think having such a terrible colour display screen for what is essentially a profession CAD/DTP workstation is unacceptable. Would I be able to complain to Dell about this and get the panel changed for a different model, as it seems some people have got their precisions shipped with different, (better) display panels.

Other than these two caveats of the keyboard and display problems, (how coincidental that the two direct parts of the laptop that we interface with the most!) I'm extremely impressed with performance. Going from a Core2duo to a core i7 is just, wow. Rendering times are not even halved, more like reduced to a tenth.

If I'm unable to get Dell to replace the display, I may go down the route of changing the display panel myself. I've tried some colour correction settings from the catalyst control centre options, however its very limited in what I can alter.

 

Do you have the backlit keyboard? If not, think about getting one, the flex is notably better.