Out with the old... sort of...

Okay guys, so I have a M17x r1 it is almost 3 years old, sadly, I did not get the extended, take care of everything warranty. This past week, the computer just powered down randomly, and I don't know why. The light on the powersupply stopped glowing all together. I've had this happen once or twice before, and I was able just unplug the power supply from the surge protector wait a few seconds and plug it back in, and then back into the laptop and everything would work fine and dandy. However, this time, when I plug the powersupply back into the computer, the light on the powersupply turns off again, and I don't know what is going on. While unplugged I tried turning the computer on, and nothing, no response from the power button, even though the battery meter is still showing full on the actual battery.

Now, the good news, I was able to sweet talk my fiance into letting me get a beastly M17x r3, so I'm not that concerned about the old one anymore, however, it would be awesome if I could get the old one repaired. So I'm wondering, since I don't have the warranty, should I still call Dell, or should I just take the ole girl to Best Buy and let Geek Squad sort it out? Or is this something I can fix myself? I'm fairly computer saavy, and don't mind taking some stuff apart, (I was an IT guy for about 1 1/2 years before getting into graduate school).

 

no harm in calling Dell to see if they can do anything about it

 

Don't bother with anyone but Dell, the Geek Squad can't do anything, they are not specially trained and don't have any special parts. If it isn't something simple and straightforward they cannot fix it.

My guess, it is either your powersupply or your motherboard. If it is your PSU then you can get another on Amazon or something for pretty cheap and voila. If it is your mobo you might as well sell it the system broken or take it apart and sell it piece by piece.

 

only reason why i'd say it isn't PSU is because its not working even on battery fully charged

 

Good point, probably the mobo then, or the CPU. Either way, something so catastrophic it won't be worth fixing.

 

You may want to consider waiting a bit for the r4. However, I'm not sure when they plan to announce it... I imagine soon though.

 

I disagree with this, there is nothing worthwhile coming down the pipeline. The 28nm GPUs are not releasing until Q2, and then I don't expect them to be much of an improvement (the desktop variety is nothing earth shattering). Ivy Bridge is a 5-10% performance boost at most, I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference in terms of performance.

Now is really a great time to buy a new laptop, because we are 1.5 years from the really good upgrades (Intels new architecture).

 

And I disagree with this. NVIDIA's next series of GPUs are scheduled to launch around April, and should provide a very nice performance boost, and much better power consumption.

Also, while Ivy doesn't improve on CPU performance, GPU performance is due to go way up. This means there will be more games you can play on the IGP, saving battery power. Add to that, the fact that the whole package is supposed to be far more power efficient, meaning even more battery life.

If he's the kind of guy that takes his laptop different places (rather than leaving it on a desk all day, etc.) the R4 would definitely be worth the wait.

 

Thanks for the advice guys! I figured since it won't even try to power on unplugged, that it has to be something major. And while I do travel, it is mainly from desk to desk, so power consumption isn't really a major issue. I plan to use it mainly for gaming, and my old r1 had run everything pretty well at some decently cranked up settings. So the r3 should suit me just fine, I just can't wait however long it takes for the r4 to drop! Again though, thanks a bunch for the advice, I may call dell and just see what they say, but I don't have high hopes at this being any where near an economical fix.

 

You just need to be realistic, I don't know what you consider a "nice" performance boost, but for me it would need to be at least 50% to ever be worth waiting.

Obviously we don't know how the new Nvidia line will perform (and I haven't heard anything concrete about them at all), but the Radeon 28nm has launched and it is nothing amazing. "The 7970 is only around 15-25% faster (on average) than the GTX 580 in our tests" from AnandTech - AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One.

In the 2 games I care most about, Starcraft 2 and Battlefield 3, the new architecture and die shrink provided at best a 5% improvement. In other words, side by side you couldn't tell the difference. At this point everything points to the new Radeon line hitting first, and they are targeting Q2. History shows us that the desktop performance closely mirrors the mobile performance (with mobile just being slower, but the gains are generally the same). Thus, we can say with some confidence that the new mobile Radeon line will get at most a 15-25% increase over the 580m, but it is very game dependent and many games get a sub 5% increase. Maybe Nvidia will be somewhat better? I wouldn't expect anything amazing though, we are talking FPS gains that will be nearly unnoticeable in the real world.

It is also worth mentioning here that the 580m is a very developed platform right now. We have modified vBioses that allow overclocking to get performance gains of up to 30%. There is a strong possibility that these new GPUs at launch will not perform as well as a current OCed 580m.

I don't know why power consumption matters for the GPU. I suppose it will lower heat some, but even the giant batteries used by Alienwares still aren't powerful enough to run these discrete GPUs in a performance power state. Heck, right now the IGP performs as well or better on battery than the 580m. The new chips won't change that, you still won't be playing any modern game on the GPU on battery. If you are using the IGP anyway, then who really cares about power consumption changes to the GPU?

Now I agree with what you said about Ivy, I just don't put much value on what they are adding. I never try to game on battery or the IGP, so the fact that they might increase IGP performance from god awful up to horrid doesn't excite me. The current IGP works perfectly for all non-game related tasks, and the new one won't improve enough to make any modern game playable in anything but the lowest settings. Not to mention it would be a nightmare to convince Optimus to let you play on the IGP anyway.

As for the power improvements, that is the one real worthwhile thing Ivy is bringing. It should provide a 30-35% decrease in power consumption, which will translate very closely to a 30-35% boost in battery life. Thus, the current M17x gets 5 hours or so, the new one might get 6.5 hours or so. It is an increase, I don't feel it is really meaningful, since I never find myself using even 4-5 hours of battery, and I have never thought "man, if only I had an extra hour and a half, everything would be awesome". This is very personal though, perhaps it is something that will mean a lot to you, and for you it would be worth the wait.

Anyway, in the end it comes down to a decision to wait 6ish months for very small performance gains 15-25% on the GPU, maybe 5% on the CPU, and increased battery life of perhaps 1.5 hours. If it is a worthy wait is up to each individual and their situation, it certainly isn't for me.

 

Yeah I had to hold back a little bit of a chuckle... Gaming on the IGP...

I might be the minority here, but I almost *never* game on the battery... If I'm working on classwork or just browsing, I'll work on the battery... but for serious gaming? You gotta be plugged in. That's just the name of the game, (as I understood it) - People talk about battery life on laptops, and that's great and all... but when was the last time you didn't have an outlet? The airports all have outlets everywhere, the library has outlets, hell even Denny's has outlets so you can eat your waffles and play Skyrim at the same time.... I've never seen my laptop's battery (even on my M11x) as anything other than a thing to get me between outlets. Like I said, maybe I'm the minority here... but whatever

 

You'd be surprised what you can do on the IGP if you actually bother to try it and don't assume just because it's integrated that it's horrible. Of course it won't hold a candle to dedicated solutions, but that's not the point.

Anyway, on my R1, I could damn near max out UT3 using the 9400M, and the HD 3000 is pretty damn close to this, if not a bit better (very hard to find comparisons). I don't expect miracles - I'm not going to be maxing out Skyrim or anything - but to know that I can play UT3 for three hours straight on battery (yes, I did this with my R1 plenty) is a really big plus for me if I'm on a train or something.

 

I used to be the same , that was because the breaker in the PSU has flip due to overload . But now I have a bigger problem . The M17x now randomly shutdown on me , either load or not , I don't think this is becase of overheating and already changed the CPU and Motherboard. But the problem still persist. Can anyone help me solve it ?

 

you probably should post a new thread on this for more visibility. It shutsdown on you even when you have a full battery?

You say you don't think its due to overheating, but lets get some actual facts. Download Prime95 and HWINFO64. Run a full 8 worker thread test and monitor the temps in HWINFO64. what are your temps after 10 mins?