Cooling/Voltage questions Precision M4600

Hey everyone,
I recently bought a used Dell Precision M4600 off of ebay. I am very happy with it, it seems to be very well built (though difficult to get to the CPU and GPU for a relative beginner like myself), and i paid very little for it.

The CPU that came with it (I7 2620m dual core) was not really cutting it in Premiere Pro, so I bought an engineering sample 2760qm from my sister, and a new 180w adapter to power it.

This engineering sample CPU has a TDP of 55w rather than the normal 45w for the 2760. With SpeedStep re-enabled (i found it better to disable it with the dual core) the new CPU is drawing almost 70 watts at times! (during PassMark benchmarking). All four cores will go to over 3 Ghz and stay there sometimes.

Performance is great, however it gets up to 94 degrees C during this very short benchmark. The 130w adapter seems to limit it to a more manageable level, but obviously if I can get the temps down Ill be able to enjoy the full power of it, which seems to be on par with the extreme series Sandy Bridge CPUS.

I have two questions:

1. Ideas for cooling upgrades to this specific model. I'm going to try a repaste as this is the first CPU ive installed, but i dont think that by itself will be enough. Obviously I could get a cooling pad as well.

2. If I were to upgrade the GPU to a Firepro m5100 (supposedly plug and play on this model), would the 180w adapter have enough juice for this setup? I don't really understand how to calculate the total power draw of a system.
Also, would the potentially hotter m5100 exacerbate my CPU cooling problems?

thanks in advance, and I apologize if I posted in the wrong place

 

1- Your temps are quite high. Not sure how good the cooling system is on that model, but definitely try a repaste and consider a good cooler or at the very least, a stand of some kind and perhaps taller rubber feet to allow air to flow more freely into the vents on the bottom.

2- The m5100 has a TDP of 50W from a quick search. The m5950 has a lower 35W TDP. With a 180W adapter and your current CPU you should be fine. I'm basing this on the following review which tested the 55W 2920XM and 55W Quadro K2000M. In their tests power consumption maxed at 156W.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Precision-M4600-Notebook.62946.0.html

 

I would assume you already cleaned all the dust from fan and radiator, when replacing cpu and fan is spinning and blowing out hot air. The simplest way to cool the laptop would be to take bottom cover off and blow cool air underneath with desk fan or something like that, but that's only for testing and when laptop is stationary. If that works well, you may not even need repasting, good cooling pad maybe enough. There are also vacuum fans that attach to exhaust and suck air out, helping build in fan.
Finally, I hate the way my Dell's cooling is set up: fan won't spin at all until cpu is about 75-80c and by then it's already cooking. There is no manual override and I can't find modded BIOS for it, maybe yours is easier to ramp up fan speed.
As far as power needed, basically you add everything up: 60-70W for cpu, 50-80W for gpu, add 5w for HDD, another 7-10W for screen and assume 80% efficiency for power supply to get some ballpark max figures.

 

Thanks guys
Yea i tried with a desk fan and the bottom cover off, it dropped the max temps about 5 c. But youre right its kind of impractical for everyday use.

I hadnt noticed but i think my fan does the same thing. So youre saying the fan cant be set to go to full power sooner?

I was checking out some videos about applying thermal paste and i think i may have put way too much AS5. Definitely going to redo it as soon as i have the time

 

Thanks guys
Yea i tried with a desk fan and the bottom cover off, it dropped the max temps about 5 c. But youre right its kind of impractical for everyday use.

I hadnt noticed but i think my fan does the same thing. So youre saying the fan cant be set to go to full power sooner?

I was checking out some videos about applying thermal paste and i think i may have put way too much AS5. Definitely going to redo it as soon as i have the time

 

AS5 also has a curing time so it should get better over time. The best way to apply it is simply placing a small dab of it on the center of the cpu or gpu die and allowing the heatsink pressure to spread it. I also recommend applying it and then removing your heatsink to observe how well it is spreading; then re-clean and reapply. A thin layer that spreads over the entire die is ideal. I used to use AS5 but I prefer Arctic MX-4 nowadays.

You can control your fans using HWinfo. In the sensors section there's a little fan icon where you can access the fans and control them manually.

Some laptops just run hotter than others though. My Precision m4500 runs hotter than my Alienware M15X using the same CPU. It has to do with the efficiency of the cooling system more than what paste I use. The m4600 though has a much beefier looking cooling system than the m4500. Let us know how the re-paste goes. Remember, less is more

 

I cant seem to get fan control to work. When i change the fan speed it revs up for a second and then seems to go back to normal.

 

The ES CPU might be causing those issues.. How are you changing fan speeds? Try using Hwinfo64 to control fan speeds..

Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk

 

Yes im using hwinfo64.

 

Yes im using HWinfo, the fan control doesnt seem to work, dont know if its supposed to work on the precision m4600 bios A16

Did a re-paste with AS 5 using a smaller amount. seems to have dropped 4 or 5 degrees during the PerformanceTest benchmark (maxes out at 89 or 90 with the case bottom on). Im considering trying MX-4 or IC diamond to knock of a few more degrees. Still idling pretty hot

It looks like the CPU is labelled Q15G, Ive read this is actually a 2900 series ES rather than a 2760 which is what HWmonitor thinks, which would make sense because it has an 8mb cache.

does anyone know anything about those little copper things you can attach to the heatsink? I dont even know what theyre called. Are they worth a shot?

 

Have you tried using the Dell Command | Power Manager software?

It offers several different thermal management profiles.

John

 

I've read that some ES CPUs do in fact run hotter than final retail or OEM versions. That could be it.

You are talking about copper shims, meant to fill large gaps between the CPU/GPU and heatsink. They're available on e-bay in different thicknesses. Are you seeing that you need to apply a large amount of paste in order for it to spread? Then a shim may help.

 

No I have not. Thanks for the recommendation, Ill try it today.

Actually I'm not, less did turn out to be more in terms of filling the gap.

Im actually talking about these cute little guys: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...gclid=COKI-I-r9csCFZVahgodjc0HBQ&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

Those may help but not sure if you'll be able to close the bottom lid with those installed on the heatsink.

 

Get some Gelid GC Extreme.. AS5 is obsolete.. GC Extreme will drop your temps even further...

 

I will definitely try it, for now i ordered some mx 4, ill see how that works out.

Finally figured out how to use hwinfo fan control. The system wont keep the fan spinning without using the respin, which i set to 100ms. I set the fan to go to max when cpu package goes above 50, and the other fan to go to max when the gpu goes above 60. This has gotten my max cpu temps to around 84. Except when using warp stabilizer "synthesize edges" feature in Premiere, which seems to stress the cpu more than anything else ive seen (even more than prime95, maybe im not using it right), during which it hit 92 for a second.

I guess this temps are relatively safe for now, as long as theyre not there very often. Im going to repaste the cpu again and also the gpu with mx 4.

 

Cancel MX-4.. More junk and pumps out.. IC Diamond or Gelid GC Extreme is best!

 

Im sure it is better, but for whatever reason my temps dropped another 5-8 degrees after applying MX 4. Now my cpu is maxing out at 80/82.

 

I use MX-4 and GC Extreme. I haven't noticed much of a difference between the two. I prefer MX-4 both for price and ease of use/cleanup.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/anyone-using-gc-extreme.789675/

 

Pettiford,
I have the M4600 as well. Its hot. So hot in fact, the first one I owned burned up and is a parts donner for my current one.
I installed the HWINFO app after trying SPEEDFAN without luck.
Set the respin in HWINFO to 100 ms like you said, and the fans actually spin up, but throttle quite a bit. Were you able to find a way to stop the throttling up and down on the fans?

 

From what I can tell it only does the throttling for a few minutes. If you just leave it on for a while it seems to level out. Try just leaving it on while you play a game or something and see if it stops throttling. It works pretty well, But my CPU is still super hot. I can't use the turbo boost as it is now, it gets to the 90s. Without turbo boost it maxes at around 82, if i make sure and have the back raised up off of my desk. GPU is great however, considering I have a firepro m5100 overclocked to 1375/950 and it never gets above 82

 

*duplicate*