Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum and I recently got my m4500, some notable specs include:

i7 920xm
4gb 1333mhz ram
quadro fx 1800m
FHD 1920*1080
centrino ultimate n 6300

I'm really enjoying the computer and it meets all my expectations. I just have two questions to ask. Are your optical drives loud and do they emit a higher pitched noise when they spin up and a disk is loaded? My optical drive is the standard dvd burner. The ambient light sensor also works well but it is very sensitive and sometimes annoying when it suddenly changes brightness a roller coaster up and down. How are your ambient light sensors?

 

Anyone overclock their FX 1800M yet?

 

yes, it has noise when my optical drive runs.
no, I have no trouble with it. you can always turn the auto-adjust off.

 

For those of you with high powered M4500 machines (920xm, fx1800m): can you shed some light on the power consumption you see at idle, simple office work or video watching?

While having high performance at my fingertips when I need it is important, I do care about battery life in "everyday computing situations" as well.

As always: replies are much appreciated.

 

I'm also interested in knowing the power consumption, as well as the average 6-cell and 9-cell battery life for the 720QM/820QM and FX880M when doing less CPU-intensive tasks (MS office, web browsing). Also, how hot does the machine get when on battery with light usage?

 

I will post my findings as soon as I get the opportunity to test battery run time for the above usage scenarios. My computer is high powered with the 920xm, quadro fx 1800m and the full HD screen. On idle or light work such as web browsing or office tasks in the high performance power profile it is warm with the fans spinning at a very low rpm 90% of the time and barely audible even in a quiet room. I'm guessing lower powered configurations would be silent with the fan mostly.

 

Hi,

As I posted earlier, I have an M4500 coming and I have some questions.

When it comes to the memory, can I run anything faster than the stock DDR3 w/any noticeable results?

As for the HD, I plan to order a 500Gb Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive with 4GB solid state memory for the time being, w/an SSD in the future. Can more than one HD be installed in the M4500? If so, then I could set up a
small SSD for the OS. Would that optional 64 Gb pcie mini SSD been worth the investment?

Finally I went w/the Intel 6250 Wireless w/WiMax card vs. the 6300. Would I
have been better to go w/the 6300 instead? Does the M4500 come standard w/a third antenna wire for the 6300?

Thanks.


.

 

Although I havn't ran it through the power paces, I can count on a 2.5-3 hour battery life with my i7-920xm and a 6 cell battery using wifi. I rarely pull it out and sit down to use it for a short period of time so it's normally plugged in.

If there is an actual 'low usage' benchmark that you would like to see the results from, let me know.

 

I hate to quote myself but anyone?

 

Is there anywhere one can purchase an M4500 9-cell battery for less than what Dell offers it for?