I bought a used Dell M6800: what tests to run?

[Sredni]

_{Oh, in all these years I have never noticed there was a computers section! Thanks Halcyon for moving it here.}

I kind of haphazardly bought a used M6800 with i74910qm and Nvidia Quadro k3100 (I don't care about graphics), 32 GB ram, 512+960 SSD.

I already ran the built in diagnostic and found out that the supposedly new battery was manufactured in 2015 and is reaching end of life (I wonder why 😱 - seller already agreed to replace it).
Also the supposedly 240w power supply is only 180w (again, promised to replace that as well).

The 32 GB of memory are all 1600mhz but of three different manufacturers. Shouldn't they be identical in pairs?

I am a bit out of sync with hardware specs, so, what are the test programs I should run on this system (right now windows 10 not activated since they botched the installation disk - looks promising, right?)

[SiliconWizard]

You can try this: https://silver.urih.com/
Don't try it with Firefox though, it's slow as a dog on it - use Chrome or Chromium. Curious to see what you'll get.

[amyk]

Memtest86+
Linpack

Clean the heatsinks first.

[Halcyon]

The 32 GB of memory are all 1600mhz but of three different manufacturers. Shouldn't they be identical in pairs?

Not really. Mixed sticks of RAM should work without a problem, with the caveat that all modules just run at whatever the lowest speed and longest CAS latency of any single module is.

Ideally you want the specifications to be the same, particularly if the machine supports dual-channel memory.

In your case, the machine won't support 32 GB RAM that's faster than 1600 MHz, so if you are looking to replace it, don't waste your money on anything faster.

[Sredni]

I ran both the bios and win10 memory test and both passed. I will try memtest and the other progs  tomorrow, thank you.
Also, what programs to assess performance? I am currently airgapped so I can't run the online test. Is sysmark still a thing?

In the meantime, I have found a very peculiar loss of time., by taking pictures of the windows time when the battery is 100% and the system is attached to the power supply
EDIT: I had some computation botched, the corrected and updated table is this:

Pic taken on       OS shows      -deltaT (dd:hh:mm)   comments
_________________________________________________________
-- still disconnected from power
18 nov 17:07      15 nov 18:46      02:22:21         seems stable now
-- turned on disconnected from power: battery at 98%
-- disconnected from power with battery at 99%
18 nov 05:51      15 nov 07:30      02:22:21
-- turn off with battery at 100% disconnected power supply
18 nov 05:19      15 nov 06:58      02:22:21
18 nov 05:04      15 nov 06:43      02:22:21
18 nov 04:47      15 nov 06:26      02:22:21
18 nov 03:54      15 nov 05:33      02:22:21         two hours lost when doing 2h memtest
--mem test--
18 nov 01:54      15 nov 05:06      02:20:48
17 nov 23:47      15 nov 04:41      02:19:06
17 nov 23:22      15 nov 04:16        02:19:06
-- from now on, connected to power supply
17 nov 20:29      15 nov 04:05      02:16:24         a lot of time lost when battery connected
16 nov 02:19      15 nov 03:24      00:22:55         time lost when battery disconnected
-- battery disconnected
15 nov it was ok                           airgapped, on power, battery always in

Can this be a simple case of dying CMOS battery? The system is not connected to the internet, so it cannot sync the time. It was fine two days ago, but then after the main battery failed to power on the system (because it was new in 2015!) and I got it powered by the supply, time was crazy.

I hope this is is not some hardware damage to the mobo...
Anyone has ever experienced this? I once had a CMOS battery die on me, but the time was reset to the date of manufacturing, not one or two days before present time.

[rdl]

Why is the time off by 2 days? Set the clock.
After that, let it run a few days to a week and see how far it's off. Most computers, if not constantly synced will gain or lose time. How much will vary, but several minutes a week is not impossible.

[Sredni]

I am trying to ascertain what is the cause.
The first big gap in the clock happened when I disconnected the battery, which made me think it could be a CMOS battery problem. Now that I have corrected the table, it seems the drift, when the battery is charged, is slow but still big. I have an even older DELL laptop that has a dead battery, is frequently unpowered and does not synchonize on the net (because with my multiboot it's better to let another OS do it and then change the others manually), and it doesn't skip a beat. Only a handful of seconds in weeks.

I will set the clock manually tomorrow, right now I wanna let it sleep to see if the gap, which seems constant now, will widen after several hours.

[Sredni]

Diskmark on the 960 HP disk



The peak values are more or less in line with the disk's declared values.
Not sure what to make of the third row result. Is that normal?

[Sredni]

You can try this: https://silver.urih.com/
Don't try it with Firefox though, it's slow as a dog on it - use Chrome or Chromium. Curious to see what you'll get.

I use Thorium (and I guess I found my new favorite browser), and I got this for performance

P11212

Whaddayathink?

I then ran the stress test, it went on more than half an hour showing fps: 0.0089.. then it goes something like "producing results" but nothing happened, it just went on again saying it would go on forever until stopped. I stopped and... nothing. Went back to the home screen. I don't know what to make of it.

[Lindley]

What about the replacement Battery and Power Supply the seller promised , have they arrived ?

Have you gone online and tried to activate  W10 ?

Do you know the seller, are they local,  all sounds a bit dubious to us ..

[TERRA Operative]

I remember having one of these. I might even have a better Quadro GPU floating around if you are interested.

I used to use 1.35v RAM instead of 1.5v stuff to increase battery life and reduce heat.

[Sredni]

What about the replacement Battery and Power Supply the seller promised , have they arrived ?

Have you gone online and tried to activate  W10 ?

Do you know the seller, are they local,  all sounds a bit dubious to us ..

Seller is local, a friend of mine bought a used m6700 there, but I have now found reviews online where the seller is called untrustworthy, a "liar" and even worse.
One even won a civil suit against them.

I am going right now to the store to discuss the keyboard issue - it's a deal breaker to me - and to see if supply and battery will be replaced.
The software issue seems minor, but ... What is one expected to receive with a used laptop with win10 pro? There has to be a sticker on the machine? This is supposed to be an ex-leasing machine.

[Jeroen3]

The sticker is under the battery.
It has a cmos battery.
Check the bios fault log.

[Sredni]

Also, when running the performance test above, I had a USB stick in one of the ports and near the end I got a message that the the us key was not accessible. The open folder of the USB stick disappeared and when I took it off the port and reconnected did not appear again.

Tried on my other laptop and it was fine. Might be an issue with the stick but... Bad vibes...

How do I test USB ports when the system is under stress?


(When I ran the builin diagnostics CPU max temp was 84 degrees Celsius - it's an i7 4910qm)

[Sredni]

The sticker is under the battery.
It has a cmos battery.
Check the bios fault log.

There are no windows or Microsoft stickers, and right now the battery is sealed with a warranty sticker. On the phone the seller told me to remove it but I did not trust him because he could claim I voided the two years warranty (which at this point makes me wonder what would that be)...

Bios fail log (the one with the diagnostics) reported the underpowered supply, date and time not set in 2015 and iirc nothing else.

[SiliconWizard]

You can try this: https://silver.urih.com/
Don't try it with Firefox though, it's slow as a dog on it - use Chrome or Chromium. Curious to see what you'll get.

I use Thorium (and I guess I found my new favorite browser), and I got this for performance

P11212

Whaddayathink?

I then ran the stress test, it went on more than half an hour showing fps: 0.0089.. then it goes something like "producing results" but nothing happened, it just went on again saying it would go on forever until stopped. I stopped and... nothing. Went back to the home screen. I don't know what to make of it.

Frankly I don't know how much we can trust this benchmark as it seems to be Javascript and heavily relies on the implementation on a given browser, which is why it's horribly slow on Firefox and gets results on par with what others claim on Chrome/Chromium. While Thorium is Chromium-based, it may have a slightly different performance for this benchmark, I don't know. I gave the link as I came across it lately and it's convenient for quick benchmarking as it doesn't require any installation.

Assuming that you would get the same result with Chromium - which is what I tested it on - I got about P16500 with Chromium (on Linux) on a small box with a Core i7-4790T and 16GB of RAM (which is what I have most similar to your laptop in terms of CPU.)
According to this: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-4910MQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4790T/m9700vsm13586 , the 4790T should be about 5% faster than your CPU, so your P11212 result looks relatively low, but I would take this with a pinch of salt. You could check what kind of power profile is set (I think you are on Windows?) - possibly not on the highest performance profile.

On my desktop computer, I get about P60000.

[Sredni]

According to this: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-4910MQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4790T/m9700vsm13586 , the 4790T should be about 5% faster than your CPU, so (Attachment Link) your P11212 result looks relatively low, but I would take this with a pinch of salt. You could check what kind of power profile is set (I think you are on Windows?) - possibly not on the highest performance profile.

On my desktop computer, I get about P60000.

Well, 5% difference is of little concern to me. After all this is an old computer.
I am much more interested in all the difformities I have found so far

The "new" battery was new in 2015 and near the end of its useful life. The seller came up with the excuse "I call it new if it gives excellent health in the F2 menu". I am pretty sure the law (even in my country) is not that carefree with words.
The 67Wh battery has been replaced with another "new" 97Wh one, that at least passes the BIOS diagnostics the other one does not.

The 180W supply is still waiting to be replaced.

The 'new' Hynix SSD has some 12thousand hours under the belt and it's 28% good: see https://youtu.be/VCrW1y_WVok (I copied this by hand, I hope it's the right link) - this is new info because before yesterday it was a hidden disk. This laptop is the gift that keeps giving...

I have now noticed that when the wifi is on, the fan are continuously running, but it might be Windows - that has yet to be activated (they botched the installation, as well...) that is downloading and installing stuff. I did not disable everything yet for... reasons.

I am a bit worried of the fact that when HW monitor is running, the fans on the left side keep starting up every few seconds. See https://youtu.be/PPBDmGe2lQw (one needs headphones to hear it).

Any idea of what could it be? HWmonitor on my other computers does not cause that.

[Sredni]

Oh, boy. This laptop is the gift that keeps on giving...

The seller replaced the 67Wh battery that was reaching end of life with a 'new' 97Wh one.
And in effect this battery did pass the diagnostic test, showing a manufacturing date of august 2023.
But here's what I found by checking its discharge profile:

Turn system on with battery at 100% at 23:15 on 23 november 2023
At the end of boot into win10, battery is at 95 % at 23:17 - remaining time 5h 5m
Not working at all, only writing this text file at the beginning.
Sceen brightness is low, 2nd bar from the bottomù.
Wifi is initially off (airplane mode)

Time   %batt   remaining time      notes
==========================================================================================
23:17   95%   5h 05m
23:23   93%   5h 15m
23:28   92%   5h 10m
23:31   91%   5h 06m
23:36   90%   4h 53m
23:38   89%   4h 59m
23:41   88%   4h 56m         turn on wifi 23:41
23:43   87%   4h 54m         open thorium
23:48   85%   2h 51m         prolly extrapolation
23:53   83%   4h 05m
23:58   81%   3h 12m
00:04   79%   4h 12m
00:05   78%   3h 29m
00:13   75%   2h 39m         close Thorium, open Edge
00:19   72%   1h 19m
00:21   72%   1h 38m         close Edge
00:22   71%   3h 29m         Edge better stay closed, it sucks battery big time
00:24                       wi-fi disconnection (not my choice)
00:25   70%   3h 47m         manually reconnecting to wi-fi
00:30   69%   3h 10m
00:32   68%   3h 22m         open Thorium
00:38   65%   2h 02m
00:40   64%   1h 49m
00:44   62%   1h 23m         playing yt video
00:45   7%   16m         message "Battery is almost empty" (translated by me)



So, this supposedly 'new' battery only lasts 1h30m on very light load, and drops from 62% to 7% in less than a minute. It passed the diagnostics that the previous battery did not pass (and funnily enough, even being 67Wh and end-of-life, it lasted more...) and it has a manufacturing date of August 2023.
Makes me wonder I bought this laptop from a wizard.

How did he manage to have a battery that behaves this way?

[TERRA Operative]

Why are you still dealing with such an obviously dodgy seller peddling defective crap as 'new'?

[Sredni]

Why are you still dealing with such an obviously dodgy seller peddling defective crap as 'new'?

Well, I am trying to get the system I paid for. It is now clear that the... gentleman is a bit... how to say, liberal in his use of words and I am pretty sure that the law (even in my third world country, if you have a commercial license you need to abide to a certain set of laws, and this is a brick and mortar shop that supposedly sells ex-leasing laptops) does not allow all that freedom. Would you just let go of your money and do nothing?

Oh, and the meaning of my previous post is to ask how a battery with that characteristics can show up as manufactured in 08/2023.

[TERRA Operative]

I wouldn't be letting the money go, I would be taking it back for a refund..

[SiliconWizard]

Oh, and the meaning of my previous post is to ask how a battery with that characteristics can show up as manufactured in 08/2023.

There are many non-original replacement batteries for laptops out there, many of which are utter crap.

[Sredni]

This is marked as Dell, and appears to be original Dell.
But then... It's just ink on plastic. I was wondering if the chip can be rewritten to show a different manufacturing date. (No idea who would want to do that... )

[SiliconWizard]

This is marked as Dell, and appears to be original Dell.
But then... It's just ink on plastic. I was wondering if the chip can be rewritten to show a different manufacturing date. (No idea who would want to do that... )

You think that because it's marked Dell, then it's a genuine part? I suggest just looking up replacement batteries for laptops for a few minutes, you're going to see pretty amazing stuff...

[Halcyon]

The "new" battery was new in 2015 and near the end of its useful life. The seller came up with the excuse "I call it new if it gives excellent health in the F2 menu". I am pretty sure the law (even in my country) is not that carefree with words.

Batteries degrade even if they aren't being used. As you rightly said, if it was made in 2015, it's towards the end of its usable life.

Some machines will report battery "health" based on number of discharge cycles, others might base it on date, or a combination of both. Some will even have their own discharge test built-in to determine whether a battery is weak or not. In your case, I wouldn't really trust "excellent" to really mean "excellent".

"New" is subjective. Something is new if it's still in the box and never been used, even if it was made 20 years ago.

This is the risk you take buying "new old stock" items. Batteries are a bit like servicing your car; They are a consumable item that should be replaced either after a certain period has elapsed, or it's "milage" is getting high (whichever comes first).

On the subject of consumer laws, obviously they vary by country but they typically only apply to "retail" type sales. For example, in Australia, individuals selling their old stuff aren't bound by these laws. Likewise if it's sold as an auction item (e.g.: eBay), consumer laws don't apply either. You'll have to do some research as to what is applicable in your country. Usually consumer laws deal with items being "reasonably durable" and that depends on the item. I'd expect a brand new model of laptop to have a battery that will last several years from the date of purchase, however if I was buying an old model that isn't made anymore, well you could argue that "durability" might only be measured in months (if at all).