Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

I just won't use a laptop anymore without a cooler...however, I did get the GPU up to 81C yesterday with supreme commander maxxed and zoomed in full battles...this was with the GPU o/c's by 100 on core, mem and shader. But for me, that's cool with what I've experienced gaming on other laptops in years past.

EDIT: zalman is pretty good...I have about 5 different coolers and found they basically all work the same for me....air must be blowing UP toward the laptop, not sucking it away.

 

That's true. A cooler that sucks air away is actually working against the laptop's fan and probably either not having much effect or making matters worse.

 

Yup,they all get stinking hot gaming on them,my I8600 used to get up to 96 degC consistently,and M60 which was the same design but quadro fx go1000...98 degC.
At the moment,I'm not using the coolslice and just have a desktop fan pointing at me when gaming and it keeps GPU temp's down to 77 degC,cpu 42degC.....without the desktop fan,GPU temp's usually 82,which is still acceptable,but the notebook fan is going full speed instead of medium speed.

I have got some of that new Tuniq TX-2 thermal paste,haven't tried it yet,but will be interested if it makes any difference.

Also recieved a replacement 9 cell battery today,I did ask for a six cell,but I guess that was a bit technically difficult for them to manage.
I think I will sell the new 9 cell and order a six.
The battery hasn't been going flat overnight lately,but has started to flash amber warning's on the palm rest status light's occasionally,so I guess there's definitely a problem with the battery.....hope it doesn't catch fire or anything

 

I just ordered and received some TX-2 as well, but the expected ship date on my lappy isn't until the 16th. I'm planning on using the TX-2 as soon as I've verified that everything is working.

 

i installed the firmware for the seagate hard drive, its still so noisy. did i install it properly? it only took a min or two...was completing then it said press any key i pressed it and i got a command prompt...so restarted .....weegie said it'll take 20 mins??

its says

exit with code 0
press any key to continue

when i press any key i just get a command prompt...

audio still skipping as well

 

With the new annountments at CES ... dell has a notebook using DDR3 and Nvidia has it's next gen GPU just around the corner.

Will we be seeing a refresh soon? any thoughts?

 

Wa..what did I say would take 20 minute's?

With the hard drive noise,have you tried NHC [notebook hardware control]
you can use different hard drive profiles,eg,silent,without spindown,performance etc.....I have used this software for quite a while,mainly because I don't like XP's power management,but you can easily change the noise the hard drive makes also.

 

yeah, it took me a couple of minutes too and yeah, it said the same thing at the end of the procedure.

I don't know why your system is giving you these problems; esp since you are on vista 64. Are you sure it's the hard drive and not the fan that's noisy????? When I first got my m4400 I found my fan was noisier than I would have liked. I opened up the bottom, dismantled the fan and found a little bit of glue or something like it stuck on the magnet. I sanded it down ever so softly and then lubed up the whole thing and reassembled. Now it runs nice and smooth.

The fan was particularly noisy when it would spin down from a faster speed. The noise would last only about a second (the time it took to hit the new speed I guess)....

The audio skipping sounds like a driver issue or a bad setting somewhere.

As for the Hard drive, honestly I am at a loss.

edit: I would be curious to know if you would have had these issues with the factory installed OS. Sometimes restoring the factory image can help isolate hardware from software issues. If everything were to working properly with the factory installed OS, then it's just something you may have overlooked.

Still, that doesn't solve the problem of the hard drive noise.

 

no its definitely the hdd. i leave my notebook on while im sleeping, and vista tends have quite a bit of hdd activity when idle.... its gonna be annoying. i guess im gonna have to wait for morning and call dell.

 

sorry not you weegie lol...it was lptp

its sooo much louder than my samsung on my other m4400, its definitely not right.