Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

Small update from a new owner...

I ordered my M4500 to have more power on the road, and in one go also replace a 4,5 year old desktop.

8GB RAM, Quadro 880, 1600x900 screen, i7 740 quadcore, 500GB 7200 disk and the advanced docking station.

I'm very pleased with the build quality, the screen is great but definitely on the limits of what I consider comfortable to work on(dpi-wise). Pleased that I didn't take the full HD option as it would have given me sore eyes for sure.

In terms of replacing my desktop, the performance of the 500GB disk was somewhat disappointing. Also because on the desktop I had 2 HD's and had split software installs that impact startup between the two, which made for great boottimes even without RAID. Not that I hadn't anticipated the storage performance hit, but boottime is definitely worse that I expected (some 45s from power-up to get into Windows, which is more than 10s slower than the desktop). Since I really don't like that experience from a NEW system, it has accelerated my decision to upgrade (add) an SSD. I had always planned that, and had already ordered the drive bay for the optical drive, but wanted to wait for SSD prices to drop some more. A Seagate Momentus XT option would have been great, though! According to reviews, it would definitely have allowed me to wait a bit longer with full SSD.

After researching for several days, I merely ended up with my head spinning. SSD performance comparison is a can of contradicting worms!! Just when you think you've figured it out, another review totally downplays the significance of that one benchmark result you thought was worth that price difference... At one point I found a great online deal for a Crucial RealSSD 128GB from Amazon, then it turned out it couldn't be shipped to Belgium, let alone for free as promised on their site. Grrr... In the end I went for the recently released Intel M-25 120GB for EUR 190. Exactly the kind of compromise that I was looking for between storage capacity, price and performance. Skipped Sandforce drives because I'm going to Truecypt-encrypt the boot partition and one frequently-used data partition anyways, so most reads and writes will be totally random data which theoretically would cripple the Sandforce performance advantage. My CPU should be powerfull enough to not let Truecrypt slow me down, BTW (fingers crossed )...

Should have the disk tomorrow or saturday and will report boottimes and afterwards.

 

is cpu oc impossible like any other dell machines?

 

A06 Bios is now able to be downloaded from the website. Not sure why but the link was broken yesterday.

I installed it and all seems okay. No better scores on WEI with new BIOS.
7.1
7.5
6.6
6.6
7.8
For my setup.

 

I can't seem to get the A06 one to install on mine. Once I hit "OK" on the first screen that pops up, nothing happens. I hadn't had any issues with previous updates and I've tried re-downloading it a couple of times. I've also tried running it in compatibility mode for XP and Vista and making sure to run as administrator (even though I have UAC off). But for whatever reason, it just doesn't work. If I run it in Safe Mode, it complains that the AC adapter isn't plugged in. Any ideas?

 

Not quite sure what your problems might be installing A06. Can you list your system specs and which operating system you are using. I'm assuming that your running windows 7 but you didn't specify.

 

hey tom bell:

are you able to oc your 1800m through nvidia software?? 880m is able to but when i try higher clock for the 1800m, it just says it is invalid and wont me let oc, even with 3rd party software.

also do u know if there is a way to oc cpu?? and what is your idle temps? i have the same spec as yours and i get mid 50s... that seems a bit too high for idle...

Thanks for your response in advance.

 

Fan on mine seems to stay on a lot longer [i5/FX1800], doesn't come on at a lower temp unfortunately.It didn't mention a new thermal profile in the notes though.

Faster post my bum, it's still easily the slowest posting computer I've owned, way too much sitting there looking at black screens, try harder next bios dell

 

I have the exact same problem on mine: It asks for the BIOS password, then pops up a wanring to not interrupt the update process, I click OK on that, and then nothing happens, at all. If I try it in safe mode, same story as yours: A complaint that both AC adapter and battery must be present. This is on Win7 x64. Previous BIOS updates were fine (well, I remember having to boot from a DOS USB stick once before, going to try this next). I am on A05 now. In brief, the update doesn't work on my machine.

Update: I tried putting the file on a DOS-bootable memory stick, and booted from that, but this is still a no-go. I can start the BIOS update utility, it says "Please Wait...", then flashes an error message for maybe 1/10th of a second, then the piece of garbage clears the screen to make sure I have no clue what the problem might be... Come on guys, can't you get your act together and publish a BIOS update utility that actually works? For cryin' out loud, this is not the first time I was forced to fiddle with DOS boots to get a BIOS update installed on the M4500. Sheesh...

 

Pirx, Which hard drive mode are you running? I'm set for AHCI mode myself, I thought that I read someone one time that the mode might matter.

Weegie, my cold boot time is somewhere between 10 and 15 seconds into windows 7. What hard drive do you have?

Delleillenware, Sorry I don't ever overclock - my pc is more than fast enough for me, and i'm super picky about stuff like that. I think my idle temps were around 65°F

 

Really? My M4500 probably hangs around in POST longer than that before it even starts booting the OS...

P.S.: I am in AHCI mode, too, and my hardware is very similar to yours, except for the hard drive, and my processor is an X920, which is supposedly faster than yours. My POST takes forever, and this is regardless of POST mode. It's slow even at the "Minimal" setting. As Weegie said, it sits for seconds at a black screen with just a cursor blinking.

P.P.S.: Just timed it: About 22 seconds before the "Starting Windows" message appears.