M4700 Owners Thread

That's right, not quite there yet, but it is a beta release and hopefully in the coming months they'll provide something similar to Windows functionality. Running both Intel and Nvidia chips at low power would be ideal.

We'll see, looks promising regardless.

 

Proud new owner of a M4700.

3920xm
K2000
512 GB Lite on SSD
24 GB ram
Blu Ray

Got it for my work rig. I probably will never max it out performance wise, but that was the point.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 2

 

Beastly specs, congrats ;-)

 

Just wanted to chime in with multi-monitor info for M4700 with NVIDIA Quadro K1000M and E-Port Plus Advanced Port Replicator. This setup supports four (4) displays:

1 DVI or DP + 1 DVI or DP + 1 VGA + built-in LCD = OK

The maximum resolution I could get on DVI was 1920x1080. I had to use DP to get 2560x1440.

 

Hi everyone,

I just got my M4700 and I already upgraded the RAM from 4 GB to 16 GB.*
Now I am thinking about replacing the original DVD-Writer with a Blu-Ray-Writer or a Blu-Ray combo drive.
Does anyone know, what type of drive I have to look for?
The standard 12.7mm (0.5") drives will not fit, right?

Regards
Michael

*If someone is interested:
I have a dual core and the 4 GB were installed under the keyboard.
I bought a Corsair Vengeance RAM Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10) and I replaced the RAM under the keyboard with it.
I did not try the other slots.

 

Correct, you need a 9.5mm "ultra-slim" drive. For a BD-RE, I think the only drives available are from Matshi-ta/Panasonic. UJ-262, UJ-252, UJ-242, etc. (higher numbers are newer models, but the older ones are probably cheaper). These are tray-loading drives. If you have a slot-loading drive you'll need to make sure the tray drive you gets has a bezel that works (standard square bezel). I think there's a slot-loading version available too but I don't remember the model number.

Check eBay. I bought mine from eBay (UJ-252, newest at the time), installation is straight-forward.

 

How useful is the "Dell Client". It keeps telling me there is four updates and it never installs them. Still on bios A05. You think it would download and install A09 for me.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 2

 

Found a workaround for 3 displays. Sweet silence with passive cooling...
This might help some people:

3 displays in use, optimus activated
Integrated -> HD 4000
External VGA -> HD 4000
External DVI -> K1000M

The catch: connecting 2nd external display to VGA switches it over to the Intel HD 4000 GPU reducing the load on the K1000M. Memory controller load dropped to half on idle. And temp reduced of course, so the K1000M stopped triggering the fan. (If you connect two externals to DVI both will go through K1000M)

This also might explain a bit why people get different fan behavior as it depends on which outputs you are using.

Also... seems like with only one external display on the K1000M it will not default at max clock! With stock vBIOS it will idle GPU@135MHz and boosting as necessary according to boost table. So it looks like no underclocking is needed. Good news for those who do not want to start flashing vBIOS. Although you can probably optimize further by limiting the boost states.

At 20ºC ambient, passive cooling:
K1000M idles at around 51ºC (after a long time, some light use)
HD4000 idles at around 55ºC (depends of course on your CPU load)

Using a notebook cooling pad with 2x120 low RPM fans under the CPU and GPU I can get a few ºC lower idles, which increases headroom so that I can probably manage during summer also.

At 20ºC ambient, cooling pad with very silent RPM:
K1000M idles at around 49ºC (after a long time, some light use)
HD4000 idles at around 50ºC (depends of course on your CPU load)

At 20ºC ambient, cooling pad with acceptable silent RPM:
K1000M idles at around 46ºC (after a long time, some light use)
HD4000 idles at around 45ºC (depends of course on your CPU load)

The temps will of course keep getting lower as I increase RPM, being a compromise between noise and temps. Still at max RPM less disturbing than integrated fans cycling.

You will still get fan cycling because of the CPU load eventually heating up the integrated HD4000... or the CPU itself need cooling.

Other heat source info:
CPU is 3820QM
GPU is K1000M
Single heat pipe on the GPU and dual heat pipe on the CPU.
4 sticks 1.35V mem
mSATA + HDD
I am using a docking station.


Can someone experiment what happens with different DVI+DP combinations?
I don't have any DP displays. Although I'm guessing that these will all put the discrete GPU to full clock and increase memory controller load so fan cycling starts again. But using different combinations may distribute heat differently on the board.

Are the DVI and DP hardwired to the discrete GPU?
I have not found any way to select different outputs for GPUs in nVidia control panel.

Cheers

Also...
what happens with Firepro?

EDIT:
Underclocking and undervolting gave slight improvement. I could shave off about 2ºC from the above temperatures with these settings:

P00 and P08 minimum GPU: 50MHz
P00 and P08 voltages: 0.825V (minimum allowed)
Memory clock: 450MHz (half of default)

With the above display port configuration in use you don't actually need to underclock the max boost state, as the K1000M will not run at max clock when idle. Although it may be good to limit it as it looks like just a momentary boost will quickly increase the temp and trigger the fan.

 

On the firepro, everything is routed to the GPU, the HD4000 is completely bypassed so clock control is the only non intrusive way to get lower temps.

Side note, congrats to your promotion to senior member Aaron (700+ posts), you should now be able to use a custom title should you want to.

 

You can safely uninstall, if it is annoying you. Then check and install manually from here:
Dell downloads
Not all updates/software are relevant for your system and needs. So don't just blindly download and install everything.

I simply have to uninstall all such OEM "bloatware" doing system checks and connecting to internet without warning. Disturbs audio streaming which be catastrophic during a recording session.

Do you mean BIOS A08? I am not aware of an A09 version released yet... A08 just came out.