Precision M4600 - Dual Core - 4 DIMM RAM???

Just remember that when running these benchmarks you should have the system plugged into the power adapter. If not the system will automatically adjust settings accordingly.

 

yes it is always plugged into the wall.

I tried with both the original 180w supplied and with the 240w that came with the alienware. the 240w one was successfully recognized in the bios. In both cases, there were still throttling.

i am much worried because I want to upgrade to the quad core. And if this seems more of an internal issue, I guess the quad core can have a much worse suffering with throttling..

 

Just read your other posts, seems you are also overclocking your system. Just want you to know that this can/will void your warranty.

 

I have only worked on the M6600. One of the 4 that I worked with had the 2620 and the rest had quad cores. The one 2620 was the one I swapped.

I have not worked on an M4600 yet. I don't want to assume what they have inside without actually opening one up.

 

One more thing - its cheaper to buy the quad core with the machine. It would have been a $130~ upgrade for you. You also would not have to worry about opening up the machine.

I understand the situation you are in. You already have the box. You have to upgrade on your own.

Just hoping some other people will read this and buy the quad core. The current gen dual cores offer no benefits as far as clock rate.

 

Agreed.

Urg ANYONE who tried it on the M4600?

 

haha yeah I know. I am not using this machine with overclocked mode as it is already fast enough. I just wanted to find out what the machine is capable of for the future.

At this point i cant even have it oced due to cpu throttling. not so satisfied..

 

No. But having realised I can't upgrade the RAM on one of ours because is a dual core, I'm watching you closely to see how it goes!

 

Went through the M4600 service manual on the Dell support site. Looking at the pictures of the CPU heat sink, it looks very similar to the one in the M6600. Dual pipes, lots of copper, fairly massive.

The M4600 likely only uses one heat sink across all configurations. In the M6600 this was verified with an i7-2620m and i7-2920xm. There is always a chance that something has changed, but I would personally consider it low. My *guess* is that you can drop a quad core in with no hardware related issues.

One piece of advice - if you are not 100% sure of what you are doing, let someone else do the work. There are at least 5 types of easily broken connectors that you will have to remove. If you drop a screw and it hits a trace on the motherboard that is still hot because it is connected to a capacitor, you could fry something. You need to know how to properly clean the heat sink and apply thermal paste to the cpu. I am not saying YOU can't do it, but I am saying there are people out there that should not undertake a cpu swap in this machine.

The stock thermal compound on the heatsink is easy to identify. Dell will be able to tell if it has been swapped. To be 100% sure that your warranty will be valid, you might seek out a Dell authorized repair center.

 

Thanks for looking up online. That was my guess. And I completely agree with what you said. I am going to swap the cpu once I get rid of of cpu to someone else on craigslist. it shouldnt take too long.