Thursday, April 19, 2012

Dell Latitude E6410 Upgrade

I have a Dell Latitude E6410 for work and I have to say, I like the laptop.  The build is good and it's very easy to service.  It has one plate on the bottom that exposes all the components including the heatsink and fan assembly, CPU and GPUs.




There is an empty slot next to the WLAN card for a WWAN card and the antennas come prewired.



In the upper right hand corner next to the DisplayPort is another mini PCIe socket, however, it's labeled DO ENCR.  This is the Latitude ON feature.  I don't know if it will accept other mini PCIe and if it'll be recognized by Windows.  Here's information on installing the Latitude ON card.






Intel Core i5 520M.









nVidia NVS 3100M 512MB gDDR3





Intel BD82QM57 PCH






The heatsink for the CPU is good, but the thermal paste could be better.  Definitely a candidate for Arctic Silver.  However, both the nVidia GPU and the Intel BD82QM57 require copper shims to improve contact to the heatsink.  Notice the thickness of the pad and the distance to the heatsink.  There is no direct contact and the pads alone are transferring the heat from the chip to the heatsink.  This of course boils down to poor heat transfer.





2012-05-24 Update

I work with a lot of image files, virtual machines, and data files which take up a lot of diskspace.  My Dell Latitude E6410 came with a stock 500 GB HDD, but I was quickly running out of diskspace.  I spent a lot of time shifting data between my internal HDD and a 1 TB Western Digital portable external HDD.  I preferred to keep as much data on my computer as possible, so I decided to give up my DVD/CDROM for a HDD caddy.  I bought a 3rd party HDD caddy from amazon.com.  Modern notebook computers use a slimmer 9.5mm DVD/CDROM these days vs the older 12.7mm DVD/CDROM.  This particular model comes with a notch where the DVD/CDROM release latch is placed on an official Dell DVD/CDROM drive.  However, with the HDD in the HDD caddy, the drive just barely slides in and there's not enough leverage to pull it back out.  I had to remove the bottom casing and slide it out.  Good news is is that it's very tight, but it's not very easy to take out once it's in.

Again with these 3rd party HDD caddys, the construction is very flimsy which means DO NOT try to force out the tray if it doesn't want to come out because you'll probably end up ripping the face plate off.  Otherwise, it works well with the 1 TB 2.5" Western Digital Scorpio Blue drive that I have installed.








Notice the HDD activity indicator light and the notch where the release latch should be located.

2013-07-29 Update

I've been having video playback stuttering problems where either the video playback would pause of the audio would get stuck even though the CPU was NOT pegged at 100%. I opened up the Dell Latitude E6410 and replaced the stock thermal paste with Artic Silver 5 on the CPU and also put some over the GPU. I didn't replace all the thermal pads since it's not my computer, but for now, problem solved. No stuttering video playback and the computer much smoother.

15 comments:

  1. Hey Dude, nice blog.
    Quick question: Regarding this fact- ":intel BD82QM57 require copper shims to improve contact to the heatsink". Have you replaced the copper shims or kept the same one (just replacing the thermal paste on the cpu)?
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, my Latitude E6410 was a work machine so I didn't tinker around with it too much so as to not void the warranty. I did however, replace the CPU thermal paste which did help a little. My general experience is that the CPU is sufficiently cooled. It's usually the GPU and other chips that are insufficiently cooled. For example, I had a similar situation with my HP Pavilion dv9207us (see earlier post) where the Intel chip had no thermal pad at all and it was suffering from the occasional crash. If you're past the warranty, I would DEFINITELY recommend replacing the thermal pads with copper shims to improve heat transfer. Make sure you get the right thickness to fill up the gap. I would recommend a copper shim pack with a variety of sizes so you have all your bases covered. Good luck!

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    2. Hi Meep, very informative blog!
      I am in the process of upgrading my E6410 and I had a kind of failed attempt to improve the heat transfer of the gpu. I used thermal pads but they did not do a great job. I was not aware of copper shims, and will definitely give them a try! I have two questions regarding the shims.
      1) Should I apply thermal paste on both sides of the shim?
      2) What is the best thickness for the shim?

      Thanks!

      Delete
    3. Yes, definitely apply thermal paste to BOTH sides of the copper shim. Personally I prefer the 0.5mm thickness (20mm x 20mm x 0.5mm). However on occasion you'll need a thicker shim for large gaps between the heatsink and the chipset controller, for that, I would say get a assorted pack so that you have a variety of thicker shims for those occasions. Good luck!

      Delete
  2. Hi,

    First of all great blog.

    I wanted to try this (link below) for the same laptop.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_8EYQ-2RA

    But I wanted to confirm if there is an extra PCIe slot, before purchasing this device, since you have already opened yours can you let me know if there is an extra slot available?

    TIA

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Dell Latitude E6410 has a total of 3 mini pci-e ports: WLAN, WWAN, and the Dell ON Flash. I can't guarantee that the WWAN slot is a PCI port because WWAN cards are generally use the USB lanes, so sometimes manufacturers do not wire up the PCI lanes. Worst case, you can always replace the WLAN card with a USB wired version. Sorry I can't be more specific, there's a lot of trial and error that goes into modding your laptop. I don't even know if you can make use of the Dell ON Flash mini pci-e port for anything else other than the Dell ON Flash card. Good Luck!

      Delete
  3. E6410 as well. I had attempted to replace my factory WLAN card, with an Intel 3160 dual band WLAN card, hoping to have access to 5 GHz WiFi bands. Even after installing the proper drivers from Intel's website, it only functioned as a Bluetooth card (no WiFi whatsoever). For kicks, after reinstalling the factory card, I decided to place the 3160 into the Dell ON Flash mini pci-e port. It was open, an appeared to be the right fit, so I threw it in. Perfect fit, screw and all. After rebooting, Still only 2.4 connectivity, seemingly from the old card I put back in, but the Bluetooth still worked. So I guess it works for WLAN cards too. Even broke ones.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Has anyone put an msata SSD on the WWAN slot with success?
    Thanks for any hints.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes SSD works good but not at full speed, it's better than HDD speeds tho.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello! Please, I would like to know:

    1) Will the full height mini PCI-e WWAN slot accept a full height mini PCI-e WLAN card?

    2) If so, will the original antenna cables from the half-height slot reach all the way to the full height slot?

    3) If not, will the cables that are pre-installed at the full height WWAN area work as well?

    a) Or, are those antennas designed for different frequencies and the original WLAN antenna cables will need to be extended?

    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi! This was my old work computer and I don't have it anymore. I saw on this thread

      http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/latitude-e4310-wwan-slot-will-a-wlan-card-work.553212/

      and it looks as though someone put an AVerMedia A312 Hybrid ATSC TV card in the WWAN slot, so it seems like it's not USB ONLY.

      Unfortunately, the original WLAN 3 antenna cables will not make it up to the WWAN spot, however, modern WLAN AC cards usually only have 2 antenna jacks. I have used the WWAN card antennas with WLAN cards in the past with no issues. However, I can't speak for the Dell E6410, but I'm leaning towards it'll work.

      I used to get my WLAN card upgrades from embeddedworks

      http://www.embeddedworks.net/wlan.html

      But it looks like they don't sell Intel anymore.

      Looks like Logic Supply still has the Intel AC mini-pcie cards.
      https://www.logicsupply.com/products/components/networking/?expansion_type=325%2C327%2C330

      Delete
  7. Replies
    1. It's for Dell Latitude ON.
      https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln284203/what-is-latitude-on-featured-on-some-dell-laptops?lang=en

      Delete
  8. İs it possible to connect external graphic card?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, I to date have not attempted an eGPU setup, but it looks like it's possible for the E6410.
      http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/upgrade-video-card-on-e6410.608375/

      Delete