M4700 Owners Thread

After a number of frustrating hours...

Seems like there are two GPU temps kicking in the fan(s):
nVidia k1000m temp
Intel HD 4000 temp

You can see both of these temps e.g. in the GPU-z by changing monitored GPU.
SiSoft Sandra reports the k1000m temp as Board temp and the HD 4000 temp as GPU1 temp.
Not completely certain but it looks like the temp limits are k1000m 57ºC and HD4000 68ºC.

Even if your k1000m temp is low the integrated HD 4000 temp will trigger the fan. And the CPU activity will of course also increase this GPU temperature.

The HD 4000 is running all the time on 350MHz core and 800MHz mem. I haven't been able to throttle down on these with any settings in BIOS or power plans. And the nicest thing is that even if you close the lid and run only external displays these same core and mem speeds are still reported, so the HD 4000 doesn't turn off or throttle down??? Similar post here.

There is an app from intel called Intel Extreme Tuner for tweaking Intel stuff, but of course Dell seems to have locked everything so that you cannot underclock the HD 4000 either. Although I'm not sure this can be done separately from the CPU. There may be some other tweak programs for undervolting and underclocking but I'm fed up trying.

Tried also disabling optimus and uninstalling HD4000 drivers and then running all displays (including integrated) on k1000m only. This also worked fine, but it seems like the HD4000 is still generating heat, so I'm not sure if it's really ever turned off on HW level (after all, it is integrated to CPU).

With external low RPM fans under CPU and GPU I can get some stable environment where the fans do not kick for long periods... but there is not much headroom for summer amb temps. Seems like it's important to have both to avoid weird air circulation inside the chassis. (I've had cool k1000m but the HD4000 triggering the fans instead )

Well... anyways, the real problem is still the Dell stupid choice of no low constant RPM option on the fan. Or the other way to see it, way too high lowest RPM level. And this seems to have been bothering Precision users since several model generations back if you google. and both the 4000 and 6000 series. There is a thread about trying to fix this SAME problem on precision M4300.

And as far as I understand this is a firmware choise, not hardwired. How about a power plan where one can choose between either a low rpm constant fan or this on/off passive failure?

Thus the conclusion also seems to be that changing to AMD GPU for easier tweaking will not help much because even if you could underclock and undervolt the discrete GPU to absolute zero, the HD4000 may/will still be causing noisy fan cycling. Depending on the CPU+GPU load of course.

Guess I will start reading the small text about return policy next...

 

Not sure how much actually changes, but there are some options you can switch between if you install the Dell feature enhancement pack (if you haven't seen them already).

 

Sounds like M6700 users have it much better in terms of cooling. Look at recent posts on M6700 thread and you'll see one user posting sub-40c GPU temp with 4 monitors connected Of course, that's with the K5000M chip, which has full over/underclock capabilities. K1000M/K2000M are apparently from the NRT (Nvidia's Roadside Trash) line

Kidding aside, I would have thought that disabling Optimus would eliminate the HD 4000 temp. Perhaps try dedicating the HD 4000 to the laptop screen, and the K1000M to your external monitor(s), and then software underclock to the max. Also, set Windows power mode to conservative, and do the same in the BIOS for CPU power saving settings. Under light usage you should be able to get < 50c on the CPU, and hopefully under 57c on the GPUs (laptop stand might save you a couple of C on temps as well).

Not sure how much luck you'll have with ATI graphics, multi-monitor max performance mode is I suspect, an industry standard. Where else will you go if you return the M4700? Not like Thinkpads are an ocean of quiet, and the Macbook Pro with its thin single fan case probably has heat/noise issues as well.

Thermal repaste seems to have helped some Precision owners drop temps up to 10c (did nothing here, but I likely put a applied a bit too much paste like the OEM paste job).

As a last resort you can try to hardware underlock via vBIOS, but that's for users that only care about driving multi-displays and not high end gaming, or other graphics-intensive processing. I'm going to completely underlock once summer arrives, leaving moderate underclock in place for now, working well.

Good luck!

 

Will have problems on the CPU side with power profiles. I use Avid ProTools for music/audio and it forces high performance mode and audio work does not like sleep/throttle anyways, everything needs to stream smoothly real time. So a constant low RPM on the fan would be ideal.

Running a T430 at work with 2 external displays, fan control wise like a dream compared to this, runs almost completely silent while light use, fan running continuosly but modulates to really low RPM. Even when the fan spins up it's nowhere near the annoyment factor of the M4700 sudden hair dryer noise. But T430 has its config limitations... And I am aware of the W530 reported problems, that was why I got the M4700 in the first place... thought it would be more silent lol

Tried Mac two years, not my stuff.

Well, I'll cool my head for a few days and ask Dell for an explanation on the fan control strategy in the meanwhile.

Cheers

 

Just ran through the M4700 manual, unless the CPU heatsink removal pic is from an older model, it's single pipe.

M6700 level arctic cooling may be possible on M4700 if dual pipe heat sink available for both CPU & GPU. Part numbers appreciated

 

I am not even sure a Dual pipe would fit in a M4700

 

Optimus for Linux?
NVIDIA Releases Optimus Linux Driver With New Features - Slashdot

 

Aaron thanks for the slashdot link, now to see what Optimus functionality really means on Linux -- would be incredible if integrated Intel HD 4000 could drive the laptop display and the Nvidia K1000M drive my external display; that way forced power mode would not be required and I could get rid of the hardware underclock patch.

Not expecting miracles though, getting non-mirrored (i.e. independent) displays under multiple graphics cards is no easy task on Linux ("Bumblebee" is closest thing to Optimus on Linux and is not without issues).

 

Removed the factory 2gb and the clock went up to 1600Mhz. Windows Experience Index for memory also went up from 7.7 to 7.8 Thanks a lot!
p.s. The memory is manufactured by some Nanya Corporation. Never heard of them before.

 

Looks like NVIDIA's Optimus drivers for Linux are not quite there yet. From what I'm reading, this new release seems to only support rendering the entire desktop on the NVIDIA card and passing it off to the Intel GPU for display through the framebuffer. So, all rendering happens on the NVIDIA card and it just sends the final output to the Intel GPU for display. (This is as opposed to on Windows where the Intel GPU runs the desktop and the NVIDIA card handles rendering only particular apps and sends the output to the Intel GPU through the framebuffer.) So, on Linux, the NVIDIA card will always be active, whereas on Windows it can power down if no apps are using it.