News on Haswell based mobile Precision M6800 ?

After 3 days work I can say it's sporadic, and the only time the fans go on full sound is when I put it to render. Even then it's ok (comparable to my workstation), I just had to get used to it. Also the conbination with the optical drive made me focus on the sound issue. Now that is fixed aswell. Solid machine, really like it till now.

 

It of course depend on your environment temperature, but it's all CPU-related. Idle temperatures of my 3740QM are around 50-60 degrees so somewhere around that must be the trigger of fans.
2600RPM is not full speed, I would say it's half or 3/4 of full speed that fans can go, yet it's quiet around it makes sounds like little hair dryer.

The worst thing is you can't logically explain when exactly and for how long will fans go. As I said sometimes (for example now as I'm typing it) it 5-10 seconds of cooling - what's the purpose as temperature stays the same? I have no idea, other time it's 10-20minutes non-stop and it is simply cooling the CPU until it's below 40 degrees.

The worst thing is you can't edit fan behavior with SpeedMeter/HWINFO as controller is blocked by DELL firmware.

Just wondering if there are any real changes with Mx800 series.

 

What you need is a 55w heatsink that normally comes with XM cpu. Next, use a high quality TIM. That should be enough to keep the idle temps in check and never trigger the fans.

 

Could you point me to part number or something?

 

See this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ision/710800-m6700-heatsink-swap-repaste.html

 

From Aaron's own findings, 45W heatsink with a good repaste job = (roughly) 55W heatsink with stock Dell paste, so in any case use your own paste. On mine, the fans trigger on a much less frequent basis (if at all) at idle and spin at lower speeds thus reducing noise at high loads. Docked with dual monitors, I'm running into the GPU temp threshold for the fan to kick in before I can run into the CPU threshold.

There's always the odd program I use that spikes in CPU or GPU usage that can trigger the fan, but it doesn't happen in MS Word, Zune which I use as a media player can cause this though with GPU acceleration enabled.

By the way, anyone with the stock 45W heatsink kind enough to run a tress test and report back on the fan speed. I can't remember what the max speed is and unless I crank the heat to completely uncomfortable levels, I won't be able to hit it on mine.

As to how the fans are controller, you have a temperature for the fans to kick in and one for the fans to go off (which is lower than the one that triggers the fans as far as I can tell).

 

Of course first thing I did was repasting with Arctic, but I forgot to check if I have dual heatsink. I should have a single one, but I think it could be a dual one (which would be strange itself). Hate to check it now.
My idle temps at the moment are around 60 degrees on all cores, yet fans are OFF. I bet that after a few minutes, CPU will go to 50 in IDLE and my fans will magically turn on.

BTW. Read the given thread I can't find that heatsink to order anywhere. Does DELL sell them?
BTW2. Could you tell guys your IDLE temp and CPU you have? Is 50 degrees actually OK temp? I thought it should be around 40.

 

You have to call Dell to order, they'll likely shuffle your call around a bit to get you to the right guy to order that kind of part. 50 idle is ok by the way.

I'm currently running a light workload test to try to get the fans to kick in and see when they kick in, hopefully, I'll get the CPU to have the fans kick in, I'll post the results in a more appropriate thread. I don't want to start putting a load on it because there's usually a small lag in any control system. Kind of wondering what kind of controller Dell uses P, PI or PID...

Fan has been off for a good 5 mins, temps slowly climbing up.

 

If you take the keyboard out, you should be able to tell which heatsink you have without disassembling the whole system. Under the keyboard there's a place where you can see part of the heat pipe (and whether it's single or double). The dual-pipe heatsink is visible in one of Bokeh's pictures.

For idle temps, for some reason core 0 is always high for me (though it evens out under load). I'm looking at 49 for core 0 and 44 for the rest of them.

 

Try this part #: CRYV5

The difference between the single and dual-piped HS is pretty substantial. I'd highly recommend upgrading. Both Idle and load temps will be significantly lower and the fans will kick in far less often.