M4700 Owners Thread

You can actually see this easily if you remove the bottom cover. I dont remember if I needed to remove the fans (which is easy), but I think I could see it without doing so.

My K1000M has a single heatpipe and CPU has a dual heatpipe.
The question is if the K2000M has a single or dual heatpipe.

 

Nicely done, I've got high 40sºC with vBIOS mod, but would prefer the software only solution -- Linux just got initial Optimus support from Nvidia, but likely months away before a fully functional power saving enabled driver comes along.

Beware of summertime ambient temps if you're not in climate controlled environment -- hopefully you're system is not affected by first summertime day temps where I am...post coming

 

Just when I thought everything was stable...summertime temps came along yesterday and wreaked havoc.

Need a diagnostic assist here as I have never had this happen before.

Wasn't even that warm, 26ºC, and cooler inside the apartment with plenty of breeze, but warm regardless. Mid-afternoon, the laptop screen started flickering; 1px vertical lines appeared across the entire screen, flickering back and forth between that and normal display; after a minute or so, screen would go either entirely black, or black with 1px vertical line down the middle -- obviously, not good.

1) external monitor works perfectly fine, video card does not seem to be the problem.
2) laptop screen works fine when ambient temps under 26ºC
3) problem occurs on boot as well, so not OS or graphics driver related
4) CPU/GPU between 48-55ºC

Last evening, when ambient temps cooled down, ran Dell diagnostics on boot (fn + power button) and everything checked out fine except for the keyboard cable, which is apparently not connected (and yet it is, works fine).

Here in SW France until end of June, will have days in the low 30sºC for sure. Can't put AC in this apartment and don't feel like buying more gear to keep the machine cool, it "should" operate just fine in warm ambient conditions.

Is this a motherboard issue? Not sure what else it could be, and unlikely that I'll get a Dell tech here on site (USA purchased) to fix the machine in Europe.

Love the machine but it has been a rocky start....

 

Did you try Win7 with optimus to run displaywith Intel GPU?
(To rule out gpu)

Otherwise your symptoms are similar (except for temperature dependency) to what I had at work with external display. Came and went random. Tech never pinpointed the exact fault, but likely bad dock connector on the laptop. I.e. could be you internal display connection?

 

Actually, I meant A07. Woops.

 

I'm actually first suspecting the display itself, or perhaps the connection between the display and the motherboard. Both a display and cable should be easy enough to find at a reasonable price in Europe (though naturally you don't want to go down that path until you're confident that's what the problem is). But it would be cheaper to buy a box fan.

As mentioned you can rule out the GPU for sure if you can get this to happen with Optimus enabled. You don't even have to boot Windows. If you can reproduce the issue in the BIOS, switching Optimus on (and rebooting) will cause the Intel GPU to be used for the BIOS screens.

 

No, I did not as during heat of the day laptop screen is unusable, there is no way to view the BIOS, just boots into default OS, Linux.

Of course this is a "real" problem if there's a disk error of some sort (i.e. difficult to do a blind repair on boot, even if I know the commands) as I won't be able to use the machine at all until ambient temps cool down.

Did not occur to me that integrated Intel graphics could an issue here since Nvidia requires Optimus disabled in Linux. Will try that a bit later in Windows, thanks for the idea.

 

Interesting, so the Intel graphics could be at play here? I have had Optimus disabled all along since Nvidia requires it off in Linux. At the time of the flickering of death occuring Nvidia GPU is 48-55C.

The strange thing is that it's entirely ambient heat dependent, can cook the CPU & GPU under heavy load and laptop display is just fine if ambient temps are cool.

Another hot day coming this week, so will have a testing window to work with. Need to enable Optimus before the heat comes, however, tough to make BIOS setting changes completely blind.

 

I was actually thinking that yer nVidia undervolting is playing tricks... so if your integrated display works with HD4000 then some circuit on your nVidia may not like the added degrees with your undervolting and freaks out the integrated display output. If you ever did some serious OC on any CPU you probably know the temp->voltage->stability relation

So either try running HD4000 with optimus or increase voltages to stock (don't do both changes at once).

 

Oh, I forgot: Wanna know a magic trick?

Connect your external monitor to VGA and connect an external keyboard.
Without dock: Start the computer, hit F12 and close the lid
With dock: Close the lid, start the computer and hit F12

....and behold BIOS at your service



Well OK... not much magic, this is pretty much standard on many laptops...

EDIT:
Maybe you can even Fn to external, haven't had the need to test on this machine.
And you need optimus for this... I keep forgetting that you disable that for linux