Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

~1.5 years in and the battery wear is at ~28% and the 2860QM is starting to run HOT.

 

Hey Sphinx,

28% battery wear doesn't seem bad for 1.5 years. Did you get that figure from HWMonitor?

I have the same 2860QM processor. What do you mean by "hot"? What temps at idle vs casual internet use?

HWMonitor and Speccy has mine at 43 - 47 degrees when idle. It will hit early 60s when watching Youtube videos for a while, fan will blow for a few secs.

(OTOH, running prime95 and an OCCT blend test push temps to 80 degrees.)

Have you ever overclocked your CPU? If yours still has stock settings, I'd be interested in a CPU-Z screen shot to see the stock voltage and multiplier settings.

I've had my refurb rig a few weeks. I started testing it and found that my CPU has been OC'd.

The Intel Processor Identification Utility shows it was expecting 2.50 GHz, but my CPU speed shows up as 3.29 GHz.

My front side bus speed also shows at 99.78 MHz instead of the full 100 MHz. Makes me wonder if the voltage has been mucked with.

Z

 

Want super in-depth info on your M4600 - M6600 rig?

Here's the formerly classified Dell Precision M4600 – M6600 Technical Guidebook (from Dell's PartnerDirect site):

http://partnerdirect.dell.com/sites...0_Technical_Guidebook_October2011_English.pdf

Tons of info above and beyond what's in the Precision brochure and spec sheet.

There is also a Precision M4700 - M6700 Technical Guidebook on Dell's Partner Workstation Resources page, but it's not available unless you're a Dell Partner (I guess it will become available with the next Precision release):

Partner Resources

Cheers!

 

Check your fan isn't clogged with dust. The g/f complained my M4400 was getting noisy, it went silent again once I'd cleaned out the fan filter.

 

How do you return an overclocked i7-2860QM to stock settings?

My Dell M4600 refurb's i7-2860QM should run stock 2.5GHz, but runs 3.29GHz instead.

I'd like to learn the stock voltage settings, as I'm guessing those tweaked by the previous user in the BIOS.

It sometimes runs lower, as if it were underclocked, at .798MHz.

Intel's Processor Identification Utility picked this up, as did CPU-Z and OCCT.

View attachment 96569

For more details, see my new thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...719932-reset-overclocked-cpu.html#post9213893

 

This is normal. Newer Intel CPUs have a "turbo mode" where they will run above stock clock for a while until they get too hot. In the Precisions, they are able to maintain this speed indefinitely. The speed will change dynamically based on load. There is no other option to overclock the CPUs in the Precisions.

 

Thanks for the reply, Aaron.

Are you sure the CPU can't be OC'd by tweaking the voltage in the BIOS?

Did you see my link to the other thread?

What you say makes sense. OCCT shows an underclock of -68.1% and an overclock of 31.7%. I can see that as the CPU cycling up and down depending upon the load placed upon it.

I'm not doubting you, but I'm questioning why would I:

Pass:

- Memtest86+ at 20 hours

- CPU: OCCT Automatic test at 1hr, 29mins

- Prime95 Small FFTs torture test in 2 hours

but Fail:

- CPU: OCCT Infinite test (blue screen) ~ so I didn't even try CPU Linpak test, which is more demanding

- Prime95 Blend torture test (blue screen)

Are those two tests so tough that my CPU couldn't handle them, even in Turbo mode?

Just wondering why I would bluescreen at all while running tests. I've read that unstable overclocks can cause BSOD when pushed in testing.

That's how I arrived at my conclusion.

 

There could be something else causing the BSODs, some drivers not liking those programs or something like that. 3.3 GHz is the 2860qm's max clock speed on turbo by the way so you're just clocking to the max turbo. Also, Intel locked their mobile core i's pretty tightly when it comes to voltage, you just can't change the voltage anymore or at least, no one found a way to do it like you could for the core 2s and older CPUs. Desktop K and X core i CPUs allow it, but not the mobile ones. As far as I know, you can't tweak the voltage on the mobile xm CPUs either, not directly anyways, but I could be wrong on that, it's been a while since I played with a xm CPU.

 

Thanks, tijo.

For a while, I thought the 3.6GHz max overclock was achieved manually. But btwn your and Aaron's responses, I'm onto the fact the overclock happens automatically with Turbo.

Another poster enlightened me on how the 3.6GHz max is for a single core, 3.5 for two cores, and 3.3 for all 4 cores.

This isn't a gaming rig anyways (more for 3D/film), so I'm fine with CPU, as-is.

Come to think of it, I may have failed those tests before connecting to Dell's website and updating drivers last week.

Maybe I'll do a quick test or two again, but I'm anxious at this point to install more software and get to work.

 

Got my M4600 yesterday. I live in China, so I ordered laptop on Taobao. It is custom built ref. I got 16Gb RAM, i7-2820QM, Q2000M, no DVD, no HDD and LCD panel changed to B156HW01 V4 from Lenovo W530. Installed Intel 520 SSD 240Gb and my old WD750Gb 7200rpm HDD. Also, for 25USD I got DW5550 WWAN module.
Great laptop. It even can be powered by my old HP AC Adaptor (but doesn't charge battery)