M4700 Owners Thread

That's interesting, as I've read that the flex is worse on the backlit keyboard. I don't have a backlit keyboard.

 

I have both, don't really notice a difference. the there is an additional membrane for the back light, but it does not seem to offer much more in terms of stiffening the keyboard. but the tactile feedback on the non back lite keyboard seems a little better

 

Well, I've been playing about with various calibration tools, (purely software, no hardware) and I've had some success with regards to getting a reasonable colour image on this panel. I've used the "AMD Catalyst Pro Control Center". Within the desktop management tab/header there is a desktop colour option. I've attached screenshots of my settings for the different Red, Green and Blue Channels.

It goes without saying, this solution is only applicable to those of you with an AMD M4000 graphics card. Hope it helps, I definitely have a warmer tone of colours now.

 

@karupin101

So you have the M4000... a question for you (or anyone else who can answer):

What is the GPU fan behavior with the M4000 and external displays?
Is it possible to downclock enough and tweak the settings so that the fan has a steady quiet RPM with low GPU load? Or even passive cooling?

With the K1000M the fan is cycling annoyingly when external displays are connected, even with 0% GPU load. Apparently because of the Nvidia hardcoded high performance mode with external displays and very limited performance tweaking possibilities. Probably combined with bad fan control strategy.

I got the M4700 for music production and I don't need lot's of GPU power, just external displays.... and as quiet as possible in studio environment!

Now I've managed to reduce the K1000M GPU fan cycling somewhat by downclocking it with MSI Afterburner, playing around with Win7 power settings. and placing an external fan under the GPU. But still not satisfied, seems to be no good low RPM mode available.

And based on what I've read here and elsewhere about K1000M/K2000M and M4700/M6700 I don't keep my hopes high about sudden major improvements.

So I was thinking that if the M4000 can be tweaked to a less disturbing fan operation then I would consider GPU replacement.

Cheers!

 

If the clock profiles are like those of the M6000, the memory clock will be at it's max and the core clock will stay at what it would be if the laptop was plugged in without another monitor hooked to it. It does generate a bit more heat that way, whether it is enough to get the fans going or not is something a M4700 owner will have to answer. Just a repaste would likely do a lot for the fan, but that's not for everyone.

 

I'd be wary of a repaste alone, won't buy you much if you have single pipe GPU heat sink, that seems to be where the "real" thermal gain can be had, dual pipe.

Initially my temps after CPU & GPU repaste were actually slightly higher; about 1 week later repaste temps are about the same as with OEM's paste job. Low reward, high risk in my case, but now I know how to take the machine apart without worrying about breaking things (always the case first time), and can hopefully get some dual pipe heatsinks to get significant temp reduction.

Anyway, K1000M/K2000M might as well be some discarded trash picked up from the roadside as far as Nvidia is concerned -- zero over/under clock support (ironic given that these are the "high end" GPU upgrade options offered by Dell). K3000M is over/under clockable, fun.

Windows users appear to be lucky, MSI et al are able to force underclock and reduce GPU temp, right? If so, how much with multi-monitor? On an old laptop I was able to drop GPU temps a full 10c underclocking via MSI (I did not test with multi-monitor setup before I sold it, however). On Linux you're basically completely at the mercy of Nvidia's decision to force full throttle when a multi-monitor setup is detected.

Of course the full throttle event does not always occur. For example, some days I can run my machine for hours in dual monitor setup with not a single click-whirrr fan cycle (GPU freqs at this time are anywhere between 135mhz and 450mhz). Then other days, just typing an email, working in a terminal, or doing other light load activity, the GPU ratchets up to 57c (the fan trigger point on my machine) and click-whirrr fan cycle for ten seconds drops GPU down to 40c, followed my GPU temp again climbing to 57c -- rinse, repeat every f-ing minute! At these times GPU freqs are at max 900mhz.

No rhyme or reason -- have Windows on 2ndary drive, am considering attempting to flash video BIOS in hopes of force downclocking the chip (if it bricks, try ATI instead of Nvidia).

 

Thanks for the input you two!

You can underclock memory and core with MSI Afterburner. I.e. you essentially underclock the "high performance" clock with externa displays. (unfortunately the voltages are locked, would be nice to decrease).

I don't remember details and I'm not at home right now. But roughly the result was this:
The testing was using two external DVI via dock plus the integrated. I was looking at GPU idle fan performance.
Using lowest possible clocks I was able to increase the fan cycling time roughly to the double. Still cycling between same temps as earlier, but the temp increase slope is not as steep after fan stops. So definitely reduced heat generation. But this doesn't give much noise improvement, if you go from say 1 minute fan cycling to 2 minutes... still annoying.

The underclocking was enough to start giving artefacts while watching HD film. For me this doesn't matter as the GPU is still more than enough to handle Avid Protools, which is the main use.

When I combined the underclocking with having an external silent low RPM fan under the GPU I managed to increase the cycling time to a few minutes.

(as a side note: with a MacGyver style rubber and duct tape gimmick I used the external low RPM fan to suck air directly through the GPU fan exhaust... worked nicely otherwise but somehow the internal fan controls freak out occasionally so that the fans seem to get stuck on and not stopping even when temps are down and stabilized. Maybe because the gimmick also sucks in air back way through CPU exhaust? who knows)

Win7 power settings also had a "silent mode" which I think actually reduced fan rpm and noise. Slight improvement, but nothing to jump around about. Might also be my imagination, have to test again.

I have built, tweaked and overclocked my DAW PC's before, so I wouldn't be afraid to repaste or change graphics card if it would help. But as you also point out, I don't think repaste will do much good, the real problem is elsewhere. And I still have full warranty and can return the M4700 with factory settings, so I don't want to spoil that chance yet.

What I could consider is changing GPU to Firepro M4000 if it has better underclocking and tweak possibilities. I wouldn't mind the fan going all the time if it would just modulate down the RPM instead of the cycling. E.g. my Lenovo T430 at work is really silent with two external displays. Also my old work Dell D820 fan was tolerable silent with external display (although with integrated GPU) even when it cycled. So it's quite stupid design miss to have a machine with this price tag not being able to do better than this! grrrr

@tijo
Does the M6000 modulate the RPM or does the fan cycle?

Actually, does anyone know if the fan control is done by the Dell BIOS or the GPU BIOS or the GPU driver? As I understand the GPU fan has 4 wires and PWM and thus should be able to modulate, but who decides how to control it? Dell or GPU manufacturer?

And another idea I had... is the Firepro M2000 is compatible with the Precision M4700?
EDIT: Nope, seems to be different form factor than M4000...
EDIT: But the FirePro M5950 seems to have same form factor and a lower wattage rating.

 

Hi, I've just revieved my newly bought M4700 but there's a seroius issue with it, the keyboard randomly stops working. Does anyone have any idea how to troubleshoot this problem?

Thank you.

EDIT: I removed the keyboard, reconnected it and now it's fully functional.

 

That Keyboard ribbon cable is real touchy at the keyboard side of the connection

 

True. The clip was not propperly flipped so I had to remove the tape and flipp it down. After that it's working as i should.

Also, I accidentaly nuked the recovery partition and had to format the entire laptop. Does anyone know what drivers do I need to install for the laptop to be like the factory image?