Dell Latitude D820 Loudness

Hi there!

I would be ever so grateful if the proud owners of a Latitude D820 could elaborate on exactly how often the fan kicks in when doing light office work such as e.g. using MS Word or surfing the web. Is it always on (if so, audibly or not?) or does it stay off most of the time. Please also state which graphics solution your machine is equipped with since I belief this influences fan behaviour. I am very sensitive to sounds, therefore please give as many details if you can.
Ideally you would also tell me more about any "sound smog" emitted by the unit, e.g. hard noise, static buzzing etc. Thank you very much indeed in advance!
Any comments about battery life are also greatly appreciated.
My key problem essentially is that I am unsure which graphics solution to go for. I do not play games at all, therefore concerning loudness and batterly life, the integrated intel chip would probably be best. However, with Vista looming near the additional power of the discrete cards might well come in handy. But I am unsure if I should go for those more powerful options if they raise loundness to an unacceptable level.

(PS. Sorry for my English, not a native speaker)

 

I recently posted a review in this forum covering your questions. Fan noise is a absolute zero, I've yet to ever hear my fan come on. Options are further available in the BIOS settings to run the system either full bore like I like it, quiet, or battery saving depending on what options you turn on/off in the BIOS.

As far as Graphics options go, with any system these days the more powerful the graphics card you select the hotter things are going to run. The bare minimum option on graphics for this model is tested and approved for Vista with some limited capabilites to full abilities depending on where you get you report from. Upgradining to the max available should insure your future comaptability

 

Esoterica, thank you very much indeed. I read your brilliant review but somehow missed the crucial part on the fan. I was somewhat concerned about this since I read somewhere else that the discrete graphic options produce more heat and thus cause more fan activity. But obviously that does not seem to be the case.

 

The harder your hardware works, the hotter things are going to be. No design masters can work around the relationship between wattage used by a device and heat disipated for that excessive wattage. Its simple mathmatics that the faster a system is, the more power its going to demand and the more heat its going to have to disapate while doing that work.

There is no magic way around this, if you want more power out of your suystem then your going to have to tolerate it also requiring more power which means its going to have to disapate more heat.

The more heat produced though the less available power your components are going to be able to have. This is why massive server systems for major companies are kept in climate controlled temprature specific rooms. There's a direct corolation between the more power you consume, the more useable power you'll have available to you providing you can disapate that heat effectively. I'd rather have noise and heat (within reason) than an under powered quiter but cooler system.

It cracks me up to hear these morons talking about underclocking their systems to get more battery life and less heat out of their laptops. That just has to be the stupidest thing on paper only a totaly moron would do.

Why pay for a higher priced faster system then tune it down to the equivalant of a system you could have instead paid 5 or 6 hundred dollars less for to achieve the same results? I'll tell you why, because they're morons, that's why.

I think I've read it at this very web site before where someone has said you can underclock your system, run cooler, use less battery and still have the same performance.

Unfortuneatly math follows some pretty albeit basic, but standard principles. It's not mathamaticly possible for such a moronic statement to be true. If you want more speed your going to have to consume more power and in order to consume more power your also going to have to disapate more heat and that's just how it is, everything corosponds with the other.

If we wanted to produce something that would defy these most basic rules we'd have to further our deveopment in quantum physics and unfortuneatly we hav'yett yet from other compaines

 

Esoterica, thank you for your thoughts. While most of these deliberations are true, they fail to address the issue. The correlation between power and heat is a well-known one. But the important issue is to what extent the system can throttle down when in idle mode and how much heat can still be dissipated passively.
Undervolting (not underclocking) a chip is something I have successfully done for years. While it reduces voltage when a processor is in idle mode and thus gives you a much cooler system and more battery time it does not affect AT ALL the processor's ability to increase power when power is needed. I think that is a very intelligent thing to do. With my past laptop computers I was thus able to effectively reduce fan activity and increase battery time WITHOUT affecting the chip's power when I asked for power.

 

For Esoterica (and anyone else with a d820),

You say that you never hear the fan turn on on your d820. I just got my d820, and I've made the same observation. The bottom of the computer gets quite hot, yet the fan never comes on. Is it possible that the fan should, in fact, be coming on? How would I know if the fan was defective?

Thanks

 

mandarinq,

I had a similar problem with my d820, and recently returned it. It got very hot on the bottom (I could deal with that), but it also got very hot on the left palm rest and even the touchpad. And it got this hot after doing nothing but browsing the internet and checking email for ten or fifteen minutes. The fan would come on intermittently and was extremely quiet. As hot as the machine got, I would have preferred it to run all the time. Anyway, this seems contrary to most all other posts I've read about the d820. Most have described it as a cool running machine. I was pleased with most everything else about it and may reorder and hope for better luck next time.