Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Please ignore the other posters comments on this one.
There is no danger at all in using a lower powered PSU - the M6400s have been designed to cope with it.
The only M6400 that needs the 210W PSU is with FX3700m and the quad core and 2 hard disks powered via a docking station.

For instance, I have FX2700m and quad core with 2 hard disks and it needs a 150W PSU. How do I know what it needs?
Well, if you plug in a PSU of a lower rating (like the 90W one that i keep in my bag for travelling with the M6400) it warns you that it needs one of xxx power when it boots up. All that happens if it is under powered is that it doesn't charge the battery as quickly and it prevents the CPU/GPU from running at full speed - but this is designed in, so no harm is done.

 

Not true at all. The M6400 is designed to cope with under powered PSUs. It will be completely stable. If you plug in a lower powered PSU you get warned by the BIOS on boot up and all that happens is that the battery charges slower and in some cases the CPU/GPU are throttled so as not to exceed power requirements.

 

You're wrong there straightaway.
The M6400 is not designed to be run with under powered PSUs. That's complete bull.

What you are talking about is CPU/GPU throttlting all of which are designed to enhance battery life. Nothing to do with the AC adapter.

 

hi,
i have been running windows 7 on my covet from the early betas and it runs very well indeed!
The so called Bluetooth issue wasn't actually an issue at all lol.
The poster just forgot that you can just use vista drivers in win 7 if there arn't any specific win 7 ones!

as for if i am planing on running it when it hit the stores , well that's easy........

i have a Technet account so I'm already running it

P.S.
i would recommend using the x64 version, not the x86 one on your M6400

....

 

Not at all.
Have you tried an M6400 with an underpowered PSU?
If you have you would have read the bios notice indicating what I told you.
If the PSU is not up to providing enough power, the battery will charge slower (or not even charge at all) and the GPU/CPU will be throttled to use the amount of power available.

Also - see this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=324004

All of Dell's laptops are built this way.
Consider this - the 65W travel adapter (here - http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...etail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=310-8814) it lists many laptops that require way over 65W to run (the M4300 for instance). It doesn't list the M6400 as with the screen that would require over 65W just to power up the screen and the rest of it. But if you put a 90W adapter into your M6400 you get a message stating that the PSU isn't large enough and that the system will run slowly and the battery will not charge.

Consider it from a physics point of view though - the PSUs are all voltage regulated. They are not going to damage the computer if they are underpowered, worst case is that the computer will damage the PSU - which is why Dell built into them a system of reporting the power handling of the PSUs - so that the laptops don't strain them.

Also - it might be worth noting that if you use your laptop with power in an environment where the power is provided from a 3 phase isolated system (such as where you are on continuous generator power such as secure installations etc) - in those situations the PSU can (not saying it does it always) misreport its capability, and again you get the warning from the laptop about not charging the battery etc.

On the flip side you can use the 210W psu with pretty much *any* dell laptop with no worries - as most of them don't draw anywhere near that much.

 

Anybody know if the new 1333MHZ Sodimms (DDR3) will offer any improvement in memory speed in the M6400? Intel's Q43 chip is supposed to support them. They are starting to show up, pretty cheap . Just curious....

 

they will run at 1066MHz with better timings. There will be a little performance increase.

 

Thanks, Airborne! The other benefit is they might work on the next available system. Future upgradability.

 

Hey Barn, thank you for info. I have M6400 too and have recently installed Windows 7 on it (XP pre-installed). At the moment, I can't find all necessary drivers and the Vista ones which came on CD with the machine simply wouldn't work. There used to be a post in this thread listing all Windows 7 drivers and a link to rapidshare or something like that. I could'n find it this time. Would you be able to list names of drivers you use so I can google and download them?

Appreciate once again,

 

Which drivers are missing?