M6600 + 3 U2412M + E Port Plus 210W Screen Flicker

I figured I would post this in the hope it will be of help to someone else. I just picked up a 210w E Port Plus docking station and 3 U2412M monitors. Two of the monitors are connected via DVI and the third via VGA. On the VGA connected monitor I was getting a strange distortion on the screen that seemed to be worse when moving content on the screen (scrolling through a web page as an example). I would best describe it as bands of lighter color horizontally across the screen. I played with the pixel clock and the phase adjustments but the issue remained. Perhaps a bad monitor I thought so I swapped the VGA to another monitor and the issue followed the VGA connection. Okay probably a bad cable, tried a different VGA cable but still having this flicker / distortion on the screen.

On a whim I decided to try my 240w power adapter that came with the m6600 instead of the 210w power adapter and that fixed the issue. I swapped back to the 210w and the issue reappears. I wasn't putting any type of heavy cpu or gpu load on the machine. The only peripherals attached are the 3 monitors and their USB connections and a USB transceiver for my keyboard & mouse. I'm not really sure what would be drawing so much power as to cause this issue.

I am a little peeved that Dell sells a $200 dock with an underpowered power supply. Maybe I just got a bad 210w power supply. I'll be giving them a call to see what they can do for me.

 

Which graphics card do you have in your M6600?

 

Quadro 3000M, i7-2720QM processor.

 

You just cannot operate a Monitor @1920x1200 over VGA.

 

I'm going to need to disagree with you there. The display did work, just poorly with the 210w power supply. The 240w power supply fixed the issue. Dell is sending out a 210w replacement. We'll see if it was a bad power supply or if 210w isn't enough for some reason.

Of course, I would prefer a digital connection but I'm not sure that's possible with my machine. The System Topology section of the nVidia Control Panel shows 3 display port connections. Ports 2 & 3 are showing connected but port one is empty. As soon as I get a display port cable I'll try using the display port connection on the laptop in addition to the two on the dock.

 

UPDATE - Received a replacement 210w power adapter from Dell and experienced the same issue. I even tried a different m6600 to ensure that my primary machine wasn't causing the issue. Dell is now swapping out the 210w for a 240w power adapter. Hopefully that will fix it once and for all.

 

UPDATE - After exchanging two 210w power supplies, three 240w power supplies and the dock, the issue was finally resolved be replacing the 240w flextronics power supply with a 240w delta. The voltage output by the various flextronics power supplies Dell provided was consistently below 19.5vdc and this was causing the screen issue. One was only providing 17.95 vdc and all were leaking voltage from the negative to the ground.