e6420 any unresolved heat issues - other problems?

Hi,

I'm thinking of getting a e6420 possibly from the UK outlet. The models I'd be looking at would be similar to:

i7-2720QM (or other quad i7)
128gb+ SSD (might upgrade myself)
8 GB (2x2GB)1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory
14.0in High Definition+ (1600X900) LED-backlit with Premium Panel Guarantee
nVidia NVS 4200M 512MB DDR3 Discrete Card

With the quad i7 plus the discrete graphics am I going to have any heat issues? Someone told me in another thread that with the e6520 there is a different cooling system with the i7 quads - is this also the case with the 14" quads? Anyone got a quad i7 and care to comment on heat after having it a while?

Same concerns with the discrete graphics. Came from a furnace like and now dead t61p which produce burn inducing heat a good deal of the time.

Is optimus all working well with this model? Read that there were problems with the 15" version.

Many thanks!

 

Any input on this? I'm interested to know how the heat is on a e6420 with a quad-core i7.

I'm a bit torn between the e6420 and e6520 - prefer the size of the 14" but the screen quality of the 15". If the cooling is poor on the 14" it might be enough to make be jump to 15.

Thanks

 

Hi, well i have just suffered with similar problem, which i sorted out by my own. i do not have the i7 quad, just i5, but had a problem with nvidia. while the lappy works on intel gpu, everything was fine, but nvidia fan goes on max rpm even shut down because overheating. i think you problem is poor kvality of the heatsink pad/shim on GPU. i replace it, make a bigger one and now everything is fine, temperature goes down a lot, laptop is quite and cool now. I know the i7 quad producing more heat, but not extremely more take of the fan with heatsink and check the heatsink pad/shim on your nvidia GPU.
just ran 3d mark 06 and i got 5440 score.

 

Interesting - that is kind of what I feared could be the case with the 14". Did you contact Dell re the gpu fan? Or did you just prefer to fix it yourself? I don't really have the skills or the inclination to be messing about with potentially warranty voiding parts of the machine.

Thanks

 

well first of all i thought, the nvidia GPU gone, as i bought the laptop from private person, not from shop. so i called the dell to discuss about the symptoms etc. they told me the mobo needs to be replaced, but i've opened the laptop, unscrew the fan and noticed the gap between nvidia and heatsink. probably the previous owner he tried to re-past it the laptop and he did it wrong, so i managed it by my self, easy job to do, but the heatsink looks to me litle bit bend, so instead of new mobo i will claim new complete fan, hopefully they will send it over the post and not send the engineer to replace the fan, it is about 10 minutes job.

 

My stock quad-core E6420 doesn't have any heat issues. It idles at 50C and doesn't really start rising all that much unless I really push it (it rarely hits 60C under light-medium use). Meanwhile, my older laptop *did* generate really hot exhaust on light to medium load (>70C), so this is a definitely improvement.

The quad core version has the beefier heatsink, so it doesn't really get hot. Some users were saying the dual core version does, though I can't really say since I don't have a dual core setup. http://forum.notebookreview.com/7880272-post489.html

The only heat issue I've seen is a heatsink spacing/alignment issue which one of the users in the user lounge posted which was fixed by Dell:
Dell Latitude E6420 with NVIDIA Quadro 4200m: Manual heat control - YouTube

 

Hi,

Just to add, I bought an outlet e6420 with 2720qm and Nvidia video card. Setup is just like what you are looking for except I have 4GB of ram. I just it regularly on docking station and off. I will open a game or use photoshop from time to time, but I have not had any heat issues. Fan gets loud a bit when playing games but not ridiculously so.

 

When docked does your e6420 seat firmly (i.e. by pressing keyboard top side keys or top corners makes it move)?

Thanks

 

I have a 9 cell battery and I get a bit of wobble if I push the corners.

 

Thanks.
What about if the battery is unplugged?