Precision M4600

Our company purchased 5 Dell Precision M4500's around 3.5 years ago. While the laptops have been heavily used and have done a good job, in that time we have had overheating problems with all 5 systems. One system required a Motherboard replacement and a second one now appears to be going down the same route. In the other laptops the fans are constantly running. We updated the BIOS on these systems as there was a BIOS fix for the overheating but that didn't appear to resolve the issue. I came accross a particularly good article on this issue here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...n/467210-m4400-overheating-shutting-down.html. These systems are now out of the 3 year NBD warranty and we are now looking to buy a few new units and we are considering the M4600. Has anyone tried out the M4600 and if so how do you find it in terms of heat/fan noise?

 

M4600 GPU and CPU heatsink & fan are now separated. Running cool under normal use and no noise noticed.

Stress Test result:-
GPU max 65C in Furmark test. (M5950)
CPU max 91C prime95. (2920XM)

 

fan noise is low, and there are 2 fans, one each for the GPU and CPU. Definitely much cooler than my old M4400

 

Hello afhstingray & iieeann,

Thanks for your replies and advice on this. It's good to know that the M4600 is cooler as we'd like to continue to use the same type of spec.

 

Just for info, under extreme stress test with prime95, cpu recorded 91C and the fan is very noisy.

 

Hi iieeann, thanks for the update on that. these laptops are going to be used mainly for Oracle/Web development they won't be doing very heavy processing so it's good to know that they don't overheat for standard use.

 

for the usage you're describing, you can even leave it on a bed and it wont heat up. i'm in malaysia at the moment and the ambient temperature is close to 30*c and its on my bed running quietly and not hot at all

 

Well i would said the notebok is quiet most of the time, the fan will spin at higher rpm occasionally with noise for about 3 seconds and slow down again.

No additional base fan is needed for this notebook.