Vostro 3460 Owner's Lounge

I just ordered my 3460 last week so I thought it's time for a Vostro 3460 thread. Dell tells me they ship it out tomorrow, but I've received mine earlier this week so it's good to know Dell's mastered time travel.

I'm just wrapping up initial testing/benchmarking so I'll post some numbers right now. I'm working on reformatting and setting up my system so I can start using it, and I'll be back with some more impressions.


Configuration:
Window 7 Professional x64
Core i5-3210m (2.50- GHz)
4 GB DDR3-1600 1 Dimm
Nvidia GT 630m 1GB DDR3
14" 1366x768 LED matte display
500GB 7200 rpm HDD
8X DVD+/-RW
1Yr Basic Support and NBD On-Site

Price before tax:
$749 with NBD delivery and $100 Dell gift card

I plan to buy an additional 4 GB of memory with the Dell gift card, and I've also added a Crucial M4 msata 128GB SSD.


Benchmarks:
3D Mark 11
3DMark Score: P1242
Graphics Score: 1111
Physics Score: 3817
Combined Score: 1102

Cinebench R11.5
OpenGL: 28.22
CPU: 2.85

LuxMark 2.0
(gt 630m/hd 4000)
Room: 60/24
Sala: 114/64
LuxballHDR: 861/1784

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
(read/write)
Seq: 484.3/201.3
512k: 374.8/200.8
4k: 23.92/46.14
4k-qd32: 251.3/176.9

CPU scores are pretty close to notebookcheck's numbers.

Temperatures are reasonable IMO. Stressing the system can push temps to 90 C. It's a bit toasty, but nothing to cause alarm; I might repaste the CPU and GPU later though. The good news is you don't really feel it on the palm rest and keyboard. Idle temps are in the low 40's, when the fan shuts off.
The fan starts up when temps hit the 60's, and stops once they've dropped to the low 40's. My apartment is pretty loud so I don't have a sense of what how good or bad the fan noise is.


Two good pieces of news:
1: the GT 630m clocks up to 800 Mhz (despite what GPU-z says), making it one of the faster variants. This actually makes it slightly faster than last gen's GT 550m. I'm not sure if it's gf117 or gf108 though. Anyone know a way to check w/o opening it up?
2: The mSata slot is Sata III capable. The speeds are amazing; Win 7 cold boot to logon screen is less than 15s. I'll put up an mSata installation guide later (it's pretty easy).


At this point I probably won't respond to requests for additional benchmarks since I prefer to avoid extraneous software.

 

mSata Installation Guide:

First before we start, I just want to show this image which I think is really cool. On the left is a 128 MB stick of SDR-100 RAM, compared to the 128 GB M4 mSata SSD on the right. Isn't progress amazing?



Ok. So if you've read Dell's owner's manual, ignore that because I did something much easier. Not only does Dell want you to disassemble your computer to install an mSata device, but they're also missing a line of instruction which is to remove the motherboard and flip it over.

The first step is to unplug the laptop, remove the battery, ground the laptop, and ground yourself.

Next remove the bottom cover. There's a single screw and a bunch of plastic clips. If you are having trouble do not force it! Instead apply gentle pressure and flex the plastic back and forth. A spudger or old credit card can be helpful.

You can see in the image that the mSata slot is in the top left. You'll notice that it is partially covered by the chassis, which is why Dell wants you to disassemble the computer, but there's just barely enough space to get it in from the bottom.

You'll want to maneuver the mSata drive in so that the pins and notch line up with the slot.


Once it's lined up, start pushing it into the slot. Do not push on the chips, only on the PCB. Using a spudger or screwdriver to leverage it in helps. The mini PCIe slot is designed to be inserted in at an angle rather than straight on, so it'll be a really tight fit but keep gently pushing and eventually it'll go in. This is perhaps a reason why disassembly is the "right" way to do this.


Once it's in, secure it with an M2x3 screw and you're done! Neither Dell nor Crucial will supply the screw so you'll have to either scavenge one or buy a few off ebay.



Now your SSD is ready to use. As for actually setting it up, that can get into very complicated discussions about boot loaders and BIOS settings, so I'll leave that tutorial for someone else.

 

Just a word of caution - don't do what I did, order the i3 version and expect to be able to install an mSATA drive. a) you can't fit one in as the slot is right up in the top right, under the keyboard & palm rest. Secondly, its already occupied with the WLAN card.

Oh well, I'm now installing W7 onto the OCZ Vertex 4 256 SSD that I had earmarked for my Alienware M14x, but the wife's going to have it in her Vostro instead by the looks of things

I guess I'll have to order another Vertex now. I wish Dell were clearer on their website about upgradability.

I'll post the SSD benchmarks anyway if anyone's interested.

 

and the answer is pretty nippy.

It boots to the windows desktop in about 9 seconds, the SSD benchmarks are below. First one is with the MS drivers, second one with the Intel drivers. Interesting difference between the two...





But I can at least confirm that the 3460 is compatible with the Vertex 4 256GB SSD (VTX4-25SAT3-256G)

 

The Vostro v131 doesn't use a wlan whitelist, I know because I was able to upgrade the wireless card to a dual-band one.

But the Vostro 3460 is a newer machine and I was wondering whether or not Dell has decided to add white listing to their bios. I ask because I am seriously considering replacing my white-listed Thinkpad Edge E430 (an otherwise perfect machine for my usage) with the Vostro 3460.

P.S.

Just in case you don't know what a whitelist is. It is list of hardware that is authorized by the pc manufacturer (usually Lenovo & HP) for your computer. During post if the bios detects a piece of hardware (say a new 3x3 wlan card) that is not on the whitelist; post will fail and you'll get an error message asking you to remove the offending hardware. Unfortunately I didn't find this out until after I purchased the Lenovo.

 

The rep I spoke to said that all Vostro models have the mSata slot. Are you sure you're looking at the right place? It should be under the motherboard accessable from the bottom cover instead of under the palm rest. See the pictures I posted above.

 

speedy1979, unfortunately I don't have any spare WLAN cards so there's no way check. Dell's not known for whitelisting, though, so my guess would be no.

 

Ok, so I have some unfortunate news.
It seems like there's no way to directly boot from the mSata drive. I tried unplugging the hard drive, installing windows, and it booted fine initially but as soon as I restarted the BIOS refused to recognize there was anything to boot from. The BIOS recognizes the M4 as an msata drive, but it doesn't show up on the boot menu.

However it is possible to bootstrap an OS from the bootloader on the HDD's MBR, which is what I think I will end up doing. It's not ideal by any means but it's something I can live with. Still I think this is pretty high on the list of stupid things Dell has does.


I'm going to try contacting Dell support and seeing if there's anything they know or can do about it. Ideally they'd be able to provide a BIOS update to fix this. If anyone knows of someone I could contact to pressure Dell please let me know. (perhaps I should mention Lenovo a few times)

 

Yup, I just looked again after seeing your post and although the motherboard solder points are there, the connector isn't fitted to the motherboard.

Also the directions given in the 3460 Manual on Dell's own website for installing a mSATA card are wrong, hence after dissembling the laptop and mangling the chrome keyboard surround I was really, rather annoyed. Frankly I'd be amazed if anyone can get the keyboard off without damaging that chrome effect strip. If the manual had been correct, I wouldn't have gone near the keyboard and the laptop would be looking fantastic. As it is, its really annoying how your eye instantly gets drawn to the small scratches on the chrome strip

Still, the i3 flies along with the SSD in there though, the standard hard drive is really, really slow!

 

MGSteve, when removing the keyboard you can use a cut up credit card (or gift card or rebate card). The plastic should much less likely scratch the chrome.

Also complain to Dell to see if they'll replace the daughter board with one that has the mSATA connector. I think you can make a case that this is a defect, and if they won't budge threaten to return it and/or drop Lenovo's name a few times.