Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

It's wonderful!
It has been a month since I got M4600, I use it to do some coding after work, and I'm very satisfied with it.
The screen display is perfect, and the whole machine is very efficient. And I like the design, very simple. And luckily I don't have the fan noise problem, it's always very silent and cool.
However, the keyboard seems to be to "soft", I wonder how long can it stand.
As for the sound effect, because I use it mainly as a work station, so I didn't listen to it carefully, but never mind.

 

Kai Zhou, are you saying the fans on your machine don't go through an ON(loud)/OFF cycle but instead always rev quietly at low speed?
When revving at low RPM, do they also speed up slowly and gradually to higher speed or "jump" instantaneously to the new RPM?
Have you tried doing some low-CPU-usage tasks (office, net browsing...) for an hour or two and check if it keeps this quiet behavior, or resume the ON/OFF ?

If the fan behavior is indeed fixed, can you post your hardware and software specs ?

I'd be especially interested in knowing what CPU, GPU, BIOS revision, and OS (Win7/2008, Linux/BSD, 32/64 bits etc.) you have on this machine. Many of us are waiting for a fix, that would help us. Thanks in advance!

 

I did a fresh application of Artic Silver to both the GPU and CPU, seems to have helped with the fans not having to come on as often or as fast as before.

 

Hi Theora,
I run Office 2010, VS2010, Chrome, SQL Server 2008 and some other little programs on it for hours. My program is to download data from SQL Server and calculate. No, the fan never "jumps", it's always very silent, and the machine stays cool.
Here is the original spec:
Dell Precision M4600 Mobile Workstation
CPU : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2640M Processor (2.8GHz, 4M Cache)
Display : 15.6" FHD (1920x1080) Anti-glare, LED-backlit Display
RAM : 8GB (2x4GB) 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
HDD: 750GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Display Adapter : NVIDIA(R) Quadro(R) 1000M with 2GB GDDR3
Wireless : Intel(R) Centrino(R) Ultimate-N 6300 (802.11 a/b/g/n) Half Mini Card
Bluetooth : Dell Wireless 375 Bluetooth Module
OS : Windows(R) 7 Professional 64-bit (English)

 

You are so lucky that not getting fan noise issue like others include me. I have m4600 the spec quite similiar to yours except the CPU is i7 2620m, ATI GPU, and primary HDD is SSD. But i've been suffering from the issue which Theora just described in detail.

 

Sounds great! A specific fan control program? You developed that by yourself?

 

i think he meant, he changed the thermal compound.

 

Im also in the same boat as simple tasks dont make the fan jump RPMs and its pretty quite when doing basic tasks(e.g. JS/php development and web surfing). The base does get warm when using on my lap, but wasnt uncomfortable in a 77f house last night. I also seem to get pretty good battery life with the 97wh battery and the ATI card.

The only issue I have with the rig at this time is it does stutter when multitasking and gaming at the same time (WoW) but I am going to say at this time its the 2GB of ram as Im 100% sure I thrash alot. I usually hover at 1.9 and higher RAM usage, but Ill verify when my 16GB come in hopefully today.

 

Thanks everyone.
We need to identify what machines suffer from the fan problem, and which one don't.
Apparently, it's exacerbated by the ATI card, while the M1000 does it less. But it doesn't explain everything as the fan is BIOS managed and I guess they have a single code path whatever the card is.

Dell makes it hard because the BIOS has a timer which keeps overriding any software control over the fan. That's the reason why SpeedFan does not work, it can really manage the fans, but the BIOS overrides it immediately with its crappy management so it won't work for more than a second. Engineer mode (fn+1,5,3,2,4 - fn+R) is not an option and is actually dangerous to use.

Has anyone phoned Dell support recently and ask for an update about the issue ? We WANT this fix!

 

Ok well after some rough "testing" the fans come on and off without my cooler on for a few seconds here and there. Annoying? No. But still kinda funky fan timing if I say so my self. As for battery operation the fans were less erratic and if I use the cooler at work the fans dont seem to come on very often, but then again I have 3 120mm fans running at 100% so its cooling pretty well. Id say with my cooler on it seems to be about 95% radiating heat.

I can see how in a dead silent room somebody who is picky about noise would get annoyed by the fans on and off.