Concerning the e1705...

Two questions:

The Geforce Go 7800 is still mentioned throughout the website but it hasn't been available as an option in customization for a week or so. What's the story there?

Is this a quiet laptop? That is, when the system is idle and nothing is stressing the CPU or GPU (e.g. during web browsing and document editing) is there still a fan constantly whirring away? I used to have an HP zv6000 and still own a zx5000 and it drove me nuts that the fans were always on.

Thanks

 

Dell is short stocked on the 7800 so they aren't offering it right now. Give it a few more weeks, and it will probably start being offered again.

On the 9300, it is very quiet - maybe a bit too quiet. Dell has it in the BIOS to control the fans, so they don't come on very often. The problem is this causes the laptop to get hotter, so it might be better to download a 3rd party software to control the fans. There is no options in the BIOS to control the fans.

If the fans aren't on, the only thing that you'll probably hear is the HDD which the noise will vary depending on the manufacturer and speed of your HDD. The CD/DVD rom is pretty loud, but that is only for a few seconds when it is detecting the disc.

 

Would there be any reason for that to change going from the Pentium M in the 9300 to the Core Duo in the e1705/9400?

Thanks again

 

Are you talking about the fan situation?

The core duo won't make much of a difference, but your 7800 card will. The 7800 is going to make the laptop hotter, so the fans will come on more, but as far as I know, Dell has the fans pretty restricted in the BIOS.

I don't know exactly when the fans are set to come on since my laptop doesn't get hot enough to test it. Probably during the day, my fans are on for maybe less than 30 minutes.

The fans are really loud in my opinion. I've seen worse, i've seen better. If you compared the fans to a CD/DVD drive when it is first detecting a disc and a HDD - the fans would be in between. My hdd is really quiet where i only hear it if the laptop is near my ear. My cd/dvd drive is fairly loud.

I doubt that is going to help you any.

 

Will the 7800 heat up to fan temps even when not running 3D apps? My concern is that when I'm just web browsing or typing or doing other simple tasks that the fans will be kicking on and off and driving me crazy.

 

I have read somewhere that the Duo's are supposed to have better thermal efficiency than the previous single processor batch, but on some review site, think toms hardware, they reported is as pretty much the same. So there's not much over heating or under heating compared to the single chip variety.

I have the duo 2.0 with 7800 Go, and in everyday browsing, the fan at normal speed is more of a gentle hum. It does kick in at a higher speed every once in a while, and I think that's under a bit of multi tasking load. When I game though, the fans do come on more often, but the game sound drowns it out. i9kfangui is a good fan control program, but it doesn't support the core duos, not until next release.

I noticed that laptops you mentioned are desktop processor notebooks. So they're not really 'mobile processor' class. Those laptops tend to have more powerful and louder fans since those processor get pretty hot. The centrino's don't get as hot, and I doubt it's fans are anywhere as loud as those.

Edit: Actually I just realized that I have the fans set to run at all times , since I installed the mobileforce drivers. So it's actually fairly quiet.

 

On my E1705, there really isn't a lot of heat build-up unless you start pushing the GPU - the fans rarely ever turn on and they're relatively quiet for a 17" notebook. However, you do get some heat from the CPU towards the back of the notebook.

 

This laptop seems very quiet to me. I honestly can't even say how often the fans come on, I don't even notice them. I agree with the pp, there is some heat from the back of the notebook. Now with all that said, this is the first laptop I've owned so I don't have anything to compare it to.