Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

well am back. bought refurbished Mobo

 

Does anyone know of a way to quiet the fans? I've been using the Dell Power Manager's "Quiet (Reduced Fan Levels)" power profile when I take my laptop to class, but it doesn't help as much as I'd like. It's fine most of the time, but when I have to do something that warms up the processor -- say, open a project in an IDE -- the fans kick on to bring it back down. In the few seconds they're running, the fans sound loud in the lecture hall; while nearly every student has a computer with them, they tend to have more consumer-grade notebooks, rather than semi-retired mobile workstations.

So is there a way I can make the fans quieter? I'm not necessarily talking about making them run slower or more/less often; more like, is there anything I can do physically to the fans themselves? I've already cleaned the heatsinks, replaced thermal compound, etc., and I'm comfortable opening it up (I've upgraded the GPU a couple of times). Are there any suitable replacements I could try? Barring that, are there any modifications I could make to the fans to quiet them without hindering their effectiveness?

 

See: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ual-custom-control-of-the-laptop-fans.827106/

 

Thanks, but I was hoping for a way to make them run more quietly at the same speed. They kick on when the temperatures get too high (mid- to upper-90's), and they slow down and stop when the temperatures come back down. I want them to run when needed, but when the fans are running, they're embarrassingly loud.
I might try ordering some replacement fans I found on Amazon. If they're not so loud, all the better, but if they are, then I have a spare set that I can try modding physically without worrying about messing up the originals.

 

anyone still using this laptop.? am going nuts i need help on how to troubleshoot laptop shuts off mostly while on opera/firefox/chrome watching you tube.. i need to know whats wrong.

 

Is it throttling? Are there any errors given?

 

no error just shuts off. no it does not throttle.i really dont know if its heat or something else. thats why am so confused.
i live in small town closest city is 40km from me. besides ill have to leave laptop and i od not trust them. they could just close the shop and theres nothing you could do.
i made a call the other day to a shop and a guy that runs the shop in another state from mine.he told me he had many m4600 serviced and the problem is the video card. he told me to remove the quadro 2000m. that it was the reason why it shuts off. i did that.. run the laptop in the morning for 3 hours all fine. then run it again today for almost 4 hours then it shut off. since i was testing removing the quadro 2000m ive used cheap thermal paste. i have used this on the past and didnt have a problem. i do have m4x thermal paste. ill attach logs. if you look at the logs you can see that at the time of shut off temps are ok.

 

Hey, has anyone here ever tried swapping out the M4600 motherboard and CPU with that of an M4800?

I'm asking because some my software engineering course work could benefit from the AVX2 instruction set added in the Haswell CPU line, but I've already upgraded my M4600 over the years with (for example) the FirePro M5100, a Dell Dual-Band Wireless-AC7260 module, an integrated webcam module, and so on. My wife has an M4800, and from what I can see, nearly all of the components are identical, and the chassis looks *almost* the same. It looks like a motherboard and CPU could be considerably less expensive than the whole new machine, but I don't want to spend the money without checking here to see if it's a dumb idea. I know that it may be better to just pay for the whole M4800, but given that it's only two years(ish) newer than the M4600 that I've had for five years, I'm reluctant to pay as much for it now as I did for this one back in 2015.

Is this an intriguing possibility, or a disaster waiting to strike? Or is there a better option that I'm overlooking? I keep hoping that the newer Precision models will come down in price, but I don't want one with a soldered GPU, so I guess I'll be waiting for the 4-year warranties to run out on the 7510 and friends.

Thanks in advance!

Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk

 

The chassis is similar but not similar enough. M4700 or M4800 motherboard will not fit. (An obvious difference is the lack of the 1394/Firewire port on the left side, but also there are different positions for the screws, and other component positions are different which will cause the heatsinks to not line up.)

This is in contrast to the 7510/7520, or 7530/7540, which actually share an identical chassis layout and you could upgrade to the newer system's motherboard.

You could get a barebones M4800, or a M4800 chassis if you could find one, and then swap in most of the components from your M4600.

 

So... Does anyone know if BIOS update A19 has expanded the GPU compatibility on the Precision M4600 in any way? My firepro M5100 gave up last April and i had to fall back to the quadro 2000m.