Some questions to the happy owners of the Precission M4600 Notebooks

Hello,

I have seen that some of the M4600 have already arrived. So I hope this is finally the chance for me to get some questions answered.
I'm thinking about buying a M4600 myself but I'm not sure so far. Actually it is difficult to find out some certain details about the M4600 on the web page of dell. The answers will be very helpful for me to decide:

1) Do the fans turn all the time? Or do they switch off when the notebook is idle? Is the fan active while surfing the web or watching a movie?
I think this depends also on the configuration (mainly CPU and GPU) so please tell me also witch configuration you have.
Produces the Notebook any other noise? I've seen - uhm actually I've heard - a notebook that starts to chirp if the power supply is removed and the battery is used. Sadly, I have very sensitive ears..

2) How fast is the SSD? Is the hard-disk SATA? Can I exchange the HDD by an common SDD or only some special types?

3) Does anybody know if the IPS display is brighter than the standard full HD display? Is there a difference in the contrast of the display? Or is the difference just the quality of colour rendering?
Is someone able to measure the brightness of the Display? Also for the brightness of the different displays I was not able to find out something on the web page of dell

Kind regards and thanks in advance!
Christian

 

To add to that list, what is the real battery life of the M4600 using the FirePro card?

@Christian.H: all hard drives these days are SATA, so you can use any laptop hard drive you want (same rule applies to SSD). Might want to check the height though; most laptops need one that's 9.5mm high, though some take 12.5mm. Not sure which one the M4600 has, since I don't own one, but I'm sure a quick Google search can help.

 

I have the 2.3 GHZ i7 and the Nvidia 2000 GPU. Surfing the Web or watching a movie, it stays completely calm. Even now where I'm transcoding a Video while writing this, the fans are not overly loud compared to the amount of power the CPU is drawing. The dual fans appear to work extremely well keeping noise down. One thing I have always been impressed with is the noise spectrum of Dell fans. Here, again, just unobtrusive pink noise of a comfortable mean frequency. It does not change pitch with changing load, just becomes more or less loud.

Nope, no chirping, hissing, anything. Even the keyboard clicks are subdued.

I'm quite pleased with the mini SSD in combination with a regular HD. With the HD being a standard 9.5 mm 2.5 inch SATA drive, you'll probably be able to exchange it with any standard SSD of that format.

I guess you'll be hard pressed to find anybody outside Dell who has simultaneous access to two M4600s with different full HD displays. the IPS display subjectively has decent brightness even though I am spoiled by the extremely bright RGBLED display of the M4400. I'm using it comfortably at 75% in a well lit room. 100% definitely is to bright right now.

Cheers

Joe

 

Ok. I was confused because the mini SSD has another interface.
Also the system builder form dell is really confusing. There is an option to operate the harddisks in raid mode, if two identical disks are build in. But I do not see how this is possible.

completely calm means switched off? This would be really nice!

I think the biggest problem is that the bearing of the fan gets damaged sooner or later. When the fan is always turning it will be sooner. An then it's really noisy (my experience with my two recent notebooks).

Sounds good!

Have you measured the transfer rate? Looking at the price it is more likely that I will buy a SSD afterwards.

You are right...
By now I found the specification from Dell at:
Dell - Auswahlhilfe: Displays
(Its in German, but I think the values can be understood anyway)
The FHD display has 300cd/m^2, the RGB display has 210cd/m^2.
I want to be able to work outside, so brighter is better.



Thank you both for your replies!!

 

They'll remove the DVD drive and use that space for the second HDD.

 

That is not correct. For the M4600, you can get RAID with the 128GB Mini Card and a 128GB SSD in the main drive. The DVD does not appear to be easily removed like in the Latitude line. Havoctex reported on this in another thread.

 

I would not worry too much about that. The fans are really impressive. As far as I can tell, they might be running at a extremely low rate every now and then even when the desktop is idling.

I did a quick check of the mini-SSD and got beyond 200MB/sec reading. I don't know if youl'll be easily be able to get one that fits somewhere else.

Cheers

Joe

 

Battery life is about 2 hours 15 minutes on M5950. browsing only without gaming. Using WIFI.

 

I would buy a 2,5" SSD and remove the HDD. 200MB is okay, but I think that there are faster SSDs in 2,5" case.

The system builder returns an error when I try this:

I don't see an option for 128 GB for the second HDD. Might be that I found a system builder where some options are missing?

Can you tell me what the fans are doing in your configuration and witch processor you have? I am also thinking about the M5950 option.
The TDP is lower then the TDP of both Quadro Chips, but this does not mean, that more power can be drawn when idle.

 

If you choose WWAN card the second hdd option will be missing. they cannot co-exist.

I did not pay attention to the fan activity, it is quiet and the temperature is rather low. 2920xm, running at only 800mhz most of the time. there isn't much cpu power needed during web browsing.