Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

I have some issues with the touchpad.

It works OK most of the time, but sometimes it behaves as if it is possessed.

For example, I move the mouse pointer to the left or the right from an initial position with my finger, and when I stop touching the touchpad with my finger the pointer returns to its initial position. When that happens, sometimes it also clicks by itself.

If the above situation occurs, I use the pointing stick to go on with work (which always works), and eventually (after a couple of minutes) the issue settles by itself.

Thus, the behavior is not consistent, so I do not know what might be causing it. I am running on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, but I do not think that is the issue. I thought that perhaps some dirt has accumulated beneath the touchpad that moves around and confuses some sensor or something like that.

Have you experiences any issues like that or can you guess as to what might be causing this?

 

Did you try to reinstall your touchpad's driver?

 

No, but I am currently playing with some sensitivity settings.

 

Hello

I'm the happy owner of m4600 but would like to upgrade graphic card. As far as I understand I could upgrade to Quadro 2000m, Firepro M4000 or Firepro M5100.
Since the Firepro M4000 is currently most reasonable price-wise I would like to ask you if this card will work with Dell m4600, but if it comes out from HP laptop.
I'm asking because I could get hold of brand-new Firepro M4000 for reasonable amount of money, but it is HP spare part and I'm still not sure if it will work with my Dell m4600.

My next question is about heatsink. I found a lot information about how you must change heatsink when coming from nvidia to amd and from what I found 0P854T is the AMD heatsink, while 06CW3P is NVIDIA heatsink. Curious thing is that I have Quadro 1000M and 0P854T heatsink. Do anyone compare them side by side - are they really different?

 

Can't tell you about the heatsink, but I've read the AMD GPUs and Nvidia have a different one. You lose Optimus GPU switching by switching to AMD as well as I don't think this gen has AMD Enduro.

 

Well, I honestly don't care too much about Optimus as I don't need superb battery time. I bought my Dell second hand so my battery is now about 33Ah instead of 66 or 97 and with the same conditions (LCD Backlight on 7, wireless on, dell battery plan switched on) I got higher power consumption with Optimus on than with Nvidia Quadro 1000M alone. It wasn't big difference, but seriously noticeable and on such settings I'm able to browse internet for about 1,5 hour.


However I've another question and it's about RAM configuration. Here: http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN104599/EN we could read that with Quad Core processor (which I have - 2820qm) you could use all four slots, however they mention using only the same size memories e.g. 4x4GB or 4x8GB.
I've read here, however, that one user got total 12GB of RAM by using 2x4GB + 2x2GB and I wonder if anyone used similar configuration as well and could say it's ok. I'm asking because I could get 2x2GB quite a lot cheaper than 2x4GB and still I don't need 16GB of RAM.

 

You "should" be fine running different size RAM modules as long as they are installed in pairs. For best results, make sure the timings (CAS latency, etc.) are the same on all of the modules. Otherwise, you might get locked into a lower speed than what your modules support (or in some cases, the machine may fail to boot). You can use CPU-Z to see what the timings are on your currently running modules, and then make sure that you buy new modules with the same timings.

 

If someone is interested I can confirm that USB 3.0 on Dell Pr03X dock station don't work with our M4600. I know that one user had already tested it so unfortunately it wasn't only his dock that didn't work.
Also, at least on USB 3.0 version of this dock, all LEDs are in blue colour, which is a bit disappointing as it would look much better in standard white - as on laptop. I've returned USB 3.0 and order USB 2.0 dock version which is cheaper, but I doubt it will have different LEDs colour.

 

USB 2.0 version does indeed have blue LEDs.

 

Couple questions on the cooling capabilities of the M4600. It previously had a i5 2520m and i just upgraded it to a spare 2670QM i had laying around. While doing regular tasks it keeps the cpu generally cool (high performance setting) under 60c. But when i throw some games on it, it easily starts to climb into the 90c range. It doesnt get much hotter then that, but was this a bad idea?

Iv been repasting laptop cpus for awhile now and i havent had any problems with temps so im assuming my paste job was good. Perhaps the Artic silver 5 has finally met its match. I just feel like the temps seem a little high for how well this computer cools otherwise. Whats do you guys think?