Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

Spoke too soon. It seems my NVIDIA GPU fan still cycles when the machine is first turned on and cold. After I let it warm up for about an hour, I reboot and the fan cycling stops. I observed this behavior consistently over the past few days. This is very annoying.

 

hello,
same behavior in my M4600, but I noticed that it depends on which program is activated at startup and in the background.
In my case because I have BOINC, a program of shared GRID-type for molecular optimizations which relies heavily on the GPU. The cicling of the cooling fan of the GPU is program-dependent. If I pause the program the cicling ends.
I hope this observation was helpful.

 

On startup, I'm running nothing but Microsoft Lync, Outlook, Evernote, KeePass, Dropbox and TrueCrypt. None of these are graphics nor processor intensive. My CPU usage is less than 5% the whole time. Are you using external monitors so the NVIDIA Optimus is active?

 

Looks like Dell pulled the A05 BIOS from their support web site. Only A04 is available.

 

I did not update the bios...so cool with me.


One thing that quite annoys me is when I use the laptop with battery only the laptop seems to have trouble playing a HD movie I mean how much power does it take for such a thing. Is the battery really this week or is the laptop takes too much power even for a 9 cell.

 

wolfindersteppe,

If your bsod experiences were truly cpu-related, you might want to ask M6600 users, as well as those from other manufacturers.

In the past month (almost) of daily use, I have never encountered anything like you described, certainly no blue screen of death. M6600 has been satisfyingly stable for me; performance has fulfilled my expectations, too. I'm also impressed with on-site service when Dell replaced my Chi Mei display with a vastly superior LG Phillips at no cost.

It's more likely that your issue arises with Lenovo rather than Intel.

--John

 

Hi Everyone!
So after spending several weeks trying to get the best bang for my buck and the best laptop to do the job – I took the leap and got a Precision M4600. I am a graphics designer for apparel and I do flat graphics with adobe cs5.5. Now I am having a problem with the cd player. I got the 8x DVD+/-RW Drive w a tray loader (not the slit one). I listen to audio books from the library while I work and the M4600 won’t play some of them – it just gets jammed and starts to hum louder. The same discs can play in my old Inspiron 1505E. Granted the library cd’s are banged up – but if my Inspiron can play them – them my Precision should be able to play them too. They are replacing the cd player with another one. I will get it tomorrow. The tech support guy said it may not solve the problem because it may be that the cd player is ultra-sensitive. The customer support guy said that the Precision models are not strong in the media area and when asked said I would be better off with the xps line. My sales rep said that was not true and that the Precision is the top of the line they have. I am running out of time as I only have till Friday to pull the plug and send the whole thing back. I wanted to check to see if others are having the same problem. I have to return the system by Friday as my 30 days will be up. Please let me know which drive yo9u have – cd, blue ray, etc. and if you have trouble with yours. The customer support guy was like (not his exact words) – this is a high end computer – you need a home model if you want a cd player. I told him I wanted the high end model to do my work and I listen to audio books WHILE working. Ugh – anyone have something to share??
Thanks for your help!
JP working

 

@jpworking - sounds like a defective drive, it happens. I haven't had any problems with the tray-load DVD-RW drive. Hope your replacement works better.

 

As nobody with an AMD FirePro M5950 answered: I got HDMI-audio to work. I don't yet know what exactly prevented HDMI audio from working until now, I played with all configuration options in the past and did not get any sound from the TV.

Now it works by (Win7) Start -> Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Sound -> AMD HDMI Output -> Set as Default Device.

After this I have to open op the Volume Mixer and select "AMD HDMI Output" as Device. Now everything works as designed.

I still recommend this link from the Dell Support Forums for this: How to Enable HDMI Audio

 

My new M4600 has FHD WLED screen, but viewing angles are so-so, I think they are worse than in my M4500. Windows reports that the manufacturer is LG: LGD02D9. Is this the screen that dell advertises as FHD WLED "wide viewing angle"