M6600 Owners Thread

That's about where mine (RGB IPS) is on battery, between 2 and 3 hours. Should get slower drain/more reserve after replacing HDD with SSD, but haven't tested.

Illustrator,

Would getting a second battery help? It is probably too inconvenient because there's not an external charging option outside the machine.


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I should mention a couple things about battery care. I had a link to a Dell article regarding latest battery care but can't find it now.
Anyway, the key things were, and I do remember them:
Never discharge the battery completely. Always let the machine either hibernate or shutdown at the 5% remaining action. Don't fix it so that it can go lower.
Never store the battery in a discharged state. Always fully charge it before removing for long term storage.
Do store the battery in a cool unlit place.

Some battery articles also say,
If you're not going to use the battery then remove it from the laptop. It will lose some 20% over six months so recharge at least once a year keeping it above 50%.

 

While gaming (world of tanks mostly) gpu went to 80+C (176F) and CPU was hoovering around 70C (158F) which was too much for my comfort. So I've made myself cooling pad for this hot summer temperatures. Altho I have AC in my apartment i only use it to bring temp down to 27C (80F) since I'm a smoker and often go outside to balcony where temps are 33+c (94+F) bigger temperature difference gives me headaches and I start sneezing like hell.

Stock everything, Dell Power Preset: Ultra performance (used trough entire testing). No notebook elevation. Prime95 and OCCT for gpu used combined. HW Info used for average and max temps.
Starting temperatures:
CPU max: 77
CPU average: 73
GPU max: 84
GPU average: 78


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So back to the point. Cooling pad consists of two fans 120mm and 140mm that spin at 1000 and 800 rpm @ 12v some electornics and external power adapter. While on adapter speed of fans can be regulated and while used connected to USB port they spin at 500ish and 400ish rpm (5v). Both fans are from sharkoon silent eagle series.

Temperature differences after running prime95 (maximum power consumption preset) and occt (gpu preset) were minimal. Around 3 degrees Celsius for max and for average temps after 1h. Same result i get when compering temperatures of notebook on flat surface vs rear end just elevated by 1.5cm with legos. So all the drilling, sawing, painting and soldering was pretty much useless as i can get same result with few lego bricks.

Summary with notebook on homemade cooling pad.
CPU max: 77c
CPU average: 72c
GPU max: 81c
GPU average: 75c

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When you take down maintenance cover and battery and then repeat those tests max temp for cpu remains at around 70c (max was 75c) but cpu keeps itself at 3.0ghz for longer periods of time and minimum drop i saw was to 2.6ghz during testing. Gpu drops down to 75c max but average temp was 73C. But using machine without maintenance cover and battery is not an option for me, as i haul it with me to work and collage every day and those two screws that hold maintenance bay are 2 screws to much

Summary for no maintenance bay.
CPU max: 75c
CPU average: 72c
GPU max: 75c
GPU average: 73c

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In the end i decided to do few more things. I've repasted both cpu and gpu with mx4 and undervolted gpu vBios using RBE and winflash.

Result of this was: OCCT+Prime95 with its elevated.
cpu max: 75c (that one remained same trough entire testing)
cpu average: 72c (also the same, this time i didnt really pay attention to turbo)
gpu max: 76c
gpu average: 71c

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Conclusion:
Dell has retarded fan control on Ultra Performance profile. If I cool entire machine via coolingpad, undervolting and new paste - it will just run its internal fans slower. I dont think that at any point during my testing fans got to 100% in this power profile.
If I use Cool profile - cpu is then limited to 1.8ghz (gpu still goes to max power state) but then fans actually kick in harder and are fu**ing loud when temps of 70c are closing in I didnt run all the tests again but all temps were 5-8c lower.

Also one more retarded thing - when first starting anything power hungry, like a game or rendering a video - both cpu and gpu will first hit max temps and then fans will kick in then keep them at average temperatures. You wont see those max temperatures again until you stop taxing your system and then start again.

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First picture is my not finished cooling pad - fan retention system is improvised atm and finished product is waiting for me to come back to my hometown sometime during the summer.
Second picture is Paste job by Dell(tm) - gpu was even worse but i didnt take picture of it.



EDIT: Also finally got non-CMI pannel - its LG. It only took them 4 CMI's.

 

Yeah, having a separate battery to charge and swap would be a huge pain. At this point I may be leaning towards getting the Nvidia card to take advantage of the power savings with the optimus technology, but I am still not sure. I have never had to take my battery out of my laptop, but I have heard that you are supposed to use the laptop unplugged sometimes to keep from killing the battery cell, and I never do that. I pretty much keep my laptop plugged in all of the time except for recently where I am looking to work "away from the plug" more.

 

These newer batteries and charging systems seem better. Small partial discharge and immediate recharge are probably the hardest on them. Though they have some sort of wearing technology, repeatedly doing that causes top end to wear and the cascade down begins. The other would seem to be storing where it could completely discharge without getting a recharge.
I've noticed on mine that the machine will allow the battery to discharge naturally (decay) until some level like 94% while in the machine then it will start recharging, probably not the best for it either.

This topic came up awhile back and a member had recommended never turning off (or sleep, or hibernate) the machine when the battery is installed and it should be kept installed; Probably good for the system too. Power on electrical surges take their toll on circuits. However it is likely impractical for most owners.

In the end it really comes down to individual use. And on that we all vary quite a lot.

 

You can set the charge/discharge settings in the BIOS of the Precisions though. That usually helps improving battery longevity even if you leave it plugged in all the time, in which case, you can set it to start charging somewhere between 40-60% battery.

 

You have a variable in yours?
Without going into the BIOS, I only know of two options for 6600, rapid (express) and slow.
Rapid gets you from ~0 to 80% in an hour and the rest in the next hour.
The other is a slow trickle charge that takes longer than 2 hours.

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Addendum:

Just went into the BIOS, we definitely don't have any more options than those two I listed above. Must be a new feature that the 6700's have.

Pity us.

 

That's too bad, in the M6700, you can set the charging limits like you can on Thinkpads.

 

Probably a chip/circuit for that. Otherwise I'm using my powers of telepathy to Dell to add that for us.

All joking aside, then I guess the previous assumptions about care are correct, though just very inconvenient to implement manually.

As you put on your wishlist - having a permanent foot on the base instead of the battery would be at least... never mind. It is what it is and has been this design forever.

 

Maybe, anyways, here's what the M6700 settings look like:


Too bad if they aren't there on the M6600, it's pretty neat to have those.

 

Well dang that looks very flexible for preserving the battery under different conditions.

Nope - we don't have that and I'm absolutely sure of it. It's new starting with 6700's.