New Dell Studio 1749

Is it possible to order a AU Optronics B173HW01 V.0 HW0A matte screen I wonder?

 

I have not seen a matte version. Is it compatible with the Studio 17? I'm personally okay with mine being semi glossy. It's perfectly matt in the dark.

 

Installing the freefall sensor driver without the "FF Install Filter Service" seems to cause setup.exe install problems for all software:

I.e. the driver seems to mess up the system in a way that needs correction from a permanently running service. Truly abysmal.

No setup.exe file will run (Win 7) - AnandTech Forums

 

For those lazy noobs like me, reading about it seems the throttling issues for the i5 in the 1749 are none existant even with the 90W adaptor. Mine's shipped now, due monday so quite excited.

 

Mine was ordered 9/8, had an original delivery by date of 9/23. Still shows "In Production" since 9/9/10 and the delivery date now says 9/30/2010..This is my first and last DELL order....

 

What have you ordered spec wise? Mine was also ordered on the 8th of Sept, projected delivery was 29th of september and is, as I type, out for delivery with UPS (UK).

 

mine was ordered 8th of sept and was said to arrive on the 24th but will be arriving today instead but im still waiting though since 9 am =/ stupid ups.

The laptop got completed and shipped out by dell on the 17th and since it came all the way from shanghai china it will arrive here to my home address between 9 am and 5pm as stated by ups. grrr i cant stand the wait.

 

Well, it's here and I have to say I'm impressed so far. Haven't really given it a good chance to stretch it's legs yet (most challenging thing yet is Civ IV at native res and it eats that without really breaking a sweat).

Only concern so far is core temp is reporting reasonably high temps (mid 40's (deg C)) at lower loads (internet browsing etc). Will have to buy a cooler but the one I was looking at (zalman 2000) has it's vents too far forward to assist the mainheatsink.

Obvious add ons for me to get are backlit kb and in the slightly longer term an SSD for primary disk.

 

do anyone know if this laptop will fit 12.5mm hdd?

 

I haven't tried myself, but someone mentioned it does not fit.

 

According to this needs to be <=9.5mm

YouTube - How to Add a 2nd Hard Drive (or SSD) to a DELL Studio 17 (models 1745, 1747, 1749, 1735, 1737)

I fitted a 2nd HDD recently - Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 - and it was a breeze

Hard drive caddy for DELL Studio 1745, 1747, 1749 (2nd HDD bay) [DELL-S1747] - $26.95 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

 

good thing i cancelled the 12.5mm 1tb hdd.

 

Does anyone have a colour profile I could try for the AUO149D which is the FHD 'B+RG' (whatever this means) screen in the 1747/9?

I see there's a post for this for the XPS16 here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...color-profile-xps-1640-5-7-wled-monitors.html

Would it be a good idea to try the one 'seeker_moc' has posted for the XPS16 AUO monitor?

 

I ordered my Studio 17 on August 11th with the Intel Core i7 720QM and 17.3 inch multi-touch HD+ display. I was told the delivery date was August 23rd. On August 23rd I started receiving weekly emails for the next month telling me the laptop would be delayed another week. During this time I demanded to be told what was the problem. They refused to return my calls. After a few weeks of that I was told it was a video card end-of-life problem (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 1 GB), and they were actually making me redo the whole order all over again just to pick a new video card. Finally, they started sending me emails like the one below (Sep 15th) stating that they are not making Studio 17s with the i7 anymore, and that I needed to accept an i5 instead (which I will not do). The Dell website at that time was still advertising i7s for the Studio 17.

Does anybody know what Dell's problem is? This is unbelievable. I can't think of anything more incompetent by a laptop manufacturer!

Dear Grant Wood,

We need to make a change to your order due to a Dell operations request. The Intel Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz (2.8 GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache) is no longer available for the Studio 17.

At this point the only option we have to complete your order is to change the processor for the Intel® Core™ i5-520M 2.40GHz (2.93Ghz Turbo Mode, 3M cache) which is the best available option for this system.

Please let us know how to proceed.

You may reply to this mailbox for any questions, when you do reply please use the reply button in your email to keep the subject line so that your email will not be lost.

Thank you for your patience and understanding and please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this matter may have caused.

Dell Employee and Education Personal Purchase Programs​

 

I got mine OK with an i5-540M well within the due date for my system. From what I can tell it's a slightly o'clocked version of the 520. If you want the i7 you'll need to get a 1747 to get a quad core i7.

 

Yes, Dell has no idea what Dell is up to. And yes, it's almost unbelievable at times. It's a well known problem that the available options are varying seemingly at random, from day to day and country to country. What you see on the websites and get to know about in e-mails does not necessarily have anything to do with reality. In my experience you need to call a sales rep and be quite insistent - then the various options may magically become available.

What country are you in, BTW?

--

 

I just checked the Norwegian site. There you can order the Studio 17 (1747) with i7-720 or i7-820. The graphics card is a 1 GB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 560v. On the US website only the 1749 is listed, and then with the i5-520 as the top end CPU and Intel HD graphics.

Go figure...

--

 

Try and calibrate your screen manually via CCC control panel unless you can afford a calibration tool. Seeker's profile is for his sxps16(god knows which brand) which is completely different.

 

Hola everyone:
I am new to forums but like what I see on this one.
I am doing a 1749 the hard way (starting from a mobo) and may have noticed something important on the fan noise issue. The 1749 uses a 3 pin fan connector which may be just on/off with a sensor. What each of the 3 wires do I do not know for sure. But most of the other Studio series I have diddled with have four pin fans which may include a speed control function. In other words the fan noise issue may be a hardware problem and a BIOS update won't fix it.

I have also noticed sluggish response from a Studio 1537 with a slow, failed or failing hard drive. You can try Dell's diagnostics to see if it shows any hard drive problems. Anybody know whether we have 64 bit Dell diagnostics available or in the works?

 

^ AFAIK 3 pin fans usually have Ground, +ve supply and a tachometer output pins. The fan speed can be controlled by software. As many users have reported, it's not the noise level of the fan as such, but the on/off behavior that is annoying. There is also a plain old bug where the fan gets stuck at maximum speed, seemingly for no reason. The latter is more than annoying and really needs a fix.

--

 

^^ That's a scary posting, anodize

--

 

Has anyone tried SpeedFan 4.41 on the 1749? I see the HM55 chipset supports Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) which is what is normally used to control fan speed but that doesn't mean you can actually vary fan speed.

 

looks like they stopped offering 1080p panels.

 

Since I had updated my 1749 to BIOS A05, my fan is no longer getting randomly stuck at maximum speed.
With previous BIOS, I had sometimes to restart my Studio to decrease the speed of the fan (whereas, before restarting, my CPU temperature was only about 35°C)...

 

^ Thanks for that report cedugato! I've been holding off A05 since several people reported that there were no changes in the fan behaviour. If only dell would make some useful release notes for the BIOS updates. I will upgrade to A05 right away. Maybe I can finally start to use that laptop...

BTW, the temps on mine, with the i5-520, were at or below 30°C at idle with the fan stuck at max.

 

Is it me, or did Dell's offerings really start to suck starting sometime in the last few weeks when it comes to laptops? I picked up a 1749 with multi-touch, i5-520m, Radeon 5650, and 4 gigs of RAM, BluRay drive, bluetooth, WiMAX adapter. Just after I ordered mine, I noticed they also had i7's available in the same configuration... but the order had already processed (and been charged) so there was no turning back. I'm really kicking myself now for not picking up an i7.

More to the point, I'm a bit concerned about what will happen if anything actually breaks on my machine? I've got a three year accidental damage warranty (that's already replaced the LCD, BD drve, case, bezel, keyboard, memory, HDD... it had an accident a month after it came in from Dell). What the heck are they going to do for me at day 950 if my LCD completely craps out? Heck, are they ever going to get around to updating the N-Trig drivers? They're almost an entire release behind at this point.

 

I'm in the US - Salt Lake City.

 

My CPU : i5-540M
I hope that updating your 1749 to A05 will end this stupid fan behaviour too...

 

^ BIOS A05 really does the trick, or so it seems...

After two days use as a Digital Audio Workstation, my 1749 has not once latched on to full fan speed. General operation may (or may not...) be quieter, as in possibly not exhibiting as brutal on/off cycling as before, but it's hard to tell - I'm really not sure. The i5-520 CPU cores sit fairly steady at around a 42°C average when idle.

--

 

Hi Mate,

Did you have that screen still ? The company I was originally trying to get the screen from was unable to get the correct resolution.

 

Yep, I still have it.

 

is anyone still waiting for their 1749? mines is supposed to ship today but still in production. does not look good. order fhd rgbled panel which they dont have as an option. could that be delaying the order hm.

 

Ok I noticed a new issue with my 1749 the other day.
I was playing Global Agenda which is an online shooter game. The game looks and plays great with frame rates in the upper 30's on my 1749. That is where the good ends.
Randomly while playing the game will just freeze or pause for about 5 seconds for no reason. I hae also noticed this in other games too but not as much as in this game.
I have tried to figure out what is causing it but I'm at a loss. I thought the CPU might be getting over loaded but when it happens the CPU usage drops to near zero. I do not seam to have a heat problem either. I have created a new login just for gaming that has all options in windows 7 turned off as to free up as muc resources as I can. Still no help.

System is 1749
I5-520
8GB ram
Fresh install of Win 7 64bit
Only needed drivers installed no extra crap
1080 screen

Any ideas or help would be great.

 

Interesting (to me anyhow!) article on fan speed control :
ADI - Analog Dialogue | Fan Speed Control
The author concludes that noiseless fan speed control for PCs requires high frequency PWM (>22.5 kHz)outside of the human acoustic frequency hearing range. This requires a 4 wire fan. This type of fan is essentially always on, but has a wide speed range and can run at very low speed.
The 1749 only has a 3 wire fan and the author comments on acoustic consequences with 3 wire control.

 

does this mean that beside playing with the temperature treshold, there is nothing that can be done?

 

I don't know Pd. I still need a heatsink and a video cable for my 1749 project . Does the fan speed or noise level on yours change as a result of any temperature settings? What I am really saying is MAYBE you should not expect to get rid of the fan noise completely on the 1749.
I have found that the latest version SpeedFan does not do anything useful for my Studio 1537 which has a 4 wire fan. When I put my ear next to the fan it seems to be running at very low speed just about all the time.

 

No, the speed can be varied too.

Of course, fan noise will never go away completely, but the perceived noise can be lowered by better fan management. The article you reference quite correctly states that linear control (just varying the voltage) is the quietest option. One thing worth mentioning here is that it's not the fan motor that makes most of the noise, it's the air stream, the shape and size of the fan blades and the air ducting.

--

 

Well as I always said about this machine it's not as much the noise as the total lack of smoothness when the fan starts spinning.

Where the hell is the sound of the fan spinning quietly, preventing temps from rising too quickly? I either hear the HDDs spinning or the fan spinning fast. My 1720 isn't like that, and certainly doesn't need a fan that noisy to achieve the same temps.

The thing is, i'm not using this machine myself (I use the M17x), and I haven't had the chance to open it up and see how it is from the inside. Who knows maybe some thermal interface application would help a great deal.

I think near 60c or less (cpu) the fan blows at mid speed, and after 70c (from my experience it almost always needs turboboost to go that high), its at max speed and really noisy. Since there is no "quiet humming stage", I think the cpu reaches 50-60c really easily.

I asked my GF yesterday if I could open it someday to try and apply some new TIM and she agreed, so I'll see at some point what benefits can be achieved by this. But this will only make it harder for the cpu to reach ~60c, nothing else.

 

Mary Burke of Analog Devices says it a lot better than I can. (I believe AD make chips for everything to do with thermal management.) The motor itself of a low speed pwm (3-wire) fan can make noise in the range audible to humans. This is referred to as commutator noise. That is in addition to any noise made by the fan pushing the air and turning on and off. Speed with a 3 wire fan can vary quite a bit which is good for thermal control but that is not the issue. Noise is the issue. You need a 4 wire fan with a high frequency pwm control to minimize audible sound. For those of you in a hurry, just look at the summary at the end of the article.
I am wondering why Dell used a 3-wire low frequency pwm fan for the 1749 but I suppose you would have to be on the design team to know the answer to that one.

 

I wonder if anyone can help me out with two remaining critical part numbers to finish my 1749: (I'll do the full specs if/when I have it running )

1) Is the JWJ85 heatsink the correct one for the Y99F7 motherboard?
I just bought this heatsink on eBay so I sure hope it works

2)What part number(s?) for a video cable do I need to match the MC13K LCD?

Dell seems to be using numeric part numbers now and I believe my LCD has part number 320-8820 and my mobo 320-8817.
Thanks in advance for any help everyone...

 

anybody knows what the new bios does?

Drivers and Downloads

 

*please delete this post*

 

A new BIOS, A07, has been released for the Studio 1749. Dell does not provide any details on what was changed

I wonder if any of the many fan issues has been fixed ??

 

For me I initially had 2 fan problems when I got my Studio 1749 in August 2010 (shipped with BIOS A04)

1). The fan would occasionally get stuck on high speed (very loud) forcing a reboot to stop the problem. Upgrading to BIOS A05 seemed to fix this.

2). Annoying fan on/off behavior. This occurs fairly often ..with the fan turning on and off rapidly within a short time frame of a few seconds.

After upgrading to BIOS A07 fan problem #2 does not appear to be fixed

 

From the comments I have gathered nobody knows what it does but it is certain that it does not adress the fan's way of turning on/off.

and btw sorry for the double post but the site was totally unresponsive the other day...

 

Well, installed the screen that anodize sold me..

Things I have learned:

• I sweat a great deal when stressing about gutting a laptop
• I have one screw left over and I hope it's not a crucial one.
• You can basically do the whole job using a set of jeweller screwdrivers (actually just two of them) and a butter knife
• It's better to shutdown your laptop rather than hibernate it after you have put in the new screen.
• It takes an amazingly long time to get past the blank screen on bootup to the bios screen when you are running off battery.
• My little black pug is very sooky and wanted to watch me type this post.
• There is a surprisingly large amount of doublesided tape used to hold various cables onto and around the screen.

Other things I have learnt:

• The contrast difference between the 1600x900 screen and 1920x1080 screen is incredible.
• The viewing angle is incredibly better on the 1920x1080 screen over the 1600x900 screen.
• Upon a boot up rather than restoring from a hibernate, the screen just works, no changes required to devices or resolutions or anything !
• The better screen really does make this a lovely laptop rather than something that had that constant bugging feeling about it !

I most certainly recommend upgrading the screen or if you're shopping for a new one, make sure it comes with the better one

 

Dell has plainly stopped providing release notes with their BIOS'es. A bad move, but in accordance with the policy of keeping customers in the dark, I guess

I recently installed A05 which fixed the "fan stuck at max" -bug. I wonder what happened with A06... perhaps it accidentally improved general fan behaviour and thus had to be pulled

--

 

Updating the BIOs on a system always makes me nervous when they do not provide any release notes or documentation.
A messed up update to the BIOs could really screw your system!

 

Nice job on replacing your screen - not sure I'd like to take that job on. Welcome to the wonderful world of quality FHD in your DELL - it really is a lovely screen isn't it.

 

Hi ppl I have to say I have read through this thread with intrigue and now at the end I am probably right in saying there has been no advice from dell regarding the fan noise.

A week ago I was considering a 1749 until I read the review on notebookcheck and I ditched my plans and was looking at other machines however I am having a rethink because apart from the fan issue this is quite a nice laptop from what I have read, so I wanted to ask the few who have this system still and also the quite way over my head techies on here for some advice.

I have never owned a Dell before and this is a big spend for me so I want to get it right, if I was to say that having a full HD 1920x1080 screen is the best option am I right? is it worth considering a refurb or am I inviting problems? Is there any good time to buy as we are approaching xmas do Dell run any offers? how good is customer service as I get mixed feelings from others, of those who still have this machine is the fan issue still so much of an issue for you or have you got use to it?

Is the Dell supplied with lots of bloatware on it? or do you just fresh install regardless. My old Toshiba's fan rattles so bad and runs constantly so I think the Dell may be an improvement!!!

Any advice is appreciated, thanks