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[Haswellbeast]

Hi guys, I recently picked up a Dell Latitude E6420 that I have given the works. I upgraded to a quad core and 8GB of ram, plus a new battery. Anyway, I saw today that the E6440 is in almost the same chassis, but uses Haswell... a way more efficient CPU architecture that I wish I would have seen first. I would Sell this with a 2720QM and 8GB of ram (no batt) for $40-50 depending on shipping. Either that, or I would swap you for an E6440 that may be lower spec, but that I can upgrade- even if it is a "barebones unit" Either that, or if you have a REALLY good price on an E6440, I would definitely buy it off of you- I really like my E6420, besides the battery life, which Sandy Bridge makes piss-poor.

 

[70 Polara]

Wall of text incoming..........

I've worked on, upgraded, and repaired more Dells from that era then I can count and I suggest you will be disappointed with the E6440. While Haswell (Haswell and Broadwell are my favorite Intel architectures - still so usable today IMHO) and AVX2 support is nice, these machines run hot even with an i5 and good thermal paste (I end up disabling turbo boost in BIOS when I know the owner will not be super careful with where the machine is placed during operation), and are prone to various system board failures. I think the only quad-core i7 I would even think about trying would be the 37W 4702MQ or 4712MQ! I have replaced several system boards in these machines, and they all had charging problems, or more likely, will run the CPU at a maximum of 800MHz as it can't detect what type of AC adapter is plugged in. The 15" E6540 with the optional Radeon 8790M GPU is an even worse furnace. May be interesting to try a PTM7950 thermal pad on the CPU.....and the E6440/E6540 are the last Dell laptops with socketed CPUs as I recall. Incidentally mobile Haswell has higher TDP then Sandy/Ivy too as I recall.

Note: The E6440 had two different motherboard part numbers depending on which type of display and cable is installed - one being harder to find then the other. I have found the ones made by Dell vendor HannStar are more reliable the vendor GCE as far as frequency of failures.

Whereas the E6420 Sandy/E6430 Ivy in my experience are pretty damn reliable, run cooler typically, and about the only gripe I've had with the many I've worked on over the years, especially lately as they are aging (these are one of my goto machines for people who don't have much money but need a usable laptop - can get nice ones for $40-$50 on ebay frequently) is the rubber coating on the palmrest and trackpad buttons getting sticky/gooey. But there are companies that make precut pieces that overlay that and solve the problem. I have never personally seen a system board failure in the E6420/E6430 or E6520/E6530 and I've been through dozens over the years.........really one of my favorite "old school" laptops. My personal laptop is a mint condition E6530 with a quad-core i7 3740QM upgrade and copper heatsink upgrade (some of these came with a heatsink that had a stainless plate where the CPU meets it - these run too hot with i7's), 16GB, and a 1TB SSD that does everything I need it to do. Bummer about no AVX2 support but so far it hasn't been an issue.

 

[Haswellbeast]

Wall of text incoming..........

I've worked on, upgraded, and repaired more Dells from that era then I can count and I suggest you will be disappointed with the E6440. While Haswell (Haswell and Broadwell are my favorite Intel architectures - still so usable today IMHO) and AVX2 support is nice, these machines run hot even with an i5 and good thermal paste (I end up disabling turbo boost in BIOS when I know the owner will not be super careful with where the machine is placed during operation), and are prone to various system board failures. I think the only quad-core i7 I would even think about trying would be the 37W 4702MQ or 4712MQ! I have replaced several system boards in these machines, and they all had charging problems, or more likely, will run the CPU at a maximum of 800MHz as it can't detect what type of AC adapter is plugged in. The 15" E6540 with the optional Radeon 8790M GPU is an even worse furnace. May be interesting to try a PTM7950 thermal pad on the CPU.....and the E6440/E6540 are the last Dell laptops with socketed CPUs as I recall. Incidentally mobile Haswell has higher TDP then Sandy/Ivy too as I recall.

Note: The E6440 had two different motherboard part numbers depending on which type of display and cable is installed - one being harder to find then the other. I have found the ones made by Dell vendor HannStar are more reliable the vendor GCE as far as frequency of failures.

Whereas the E6420 Sandy/E6430 Ivy in my experience are pretty damn reliable, run cooler typically, and about the only gripe I've had with the many I've worked on over the years, especially lately as they are aging (these are one of my goto machines for people who don't have much money but need a usable laptop - can get nice ones for $40-$50 on ebay frequently) is the rubber coating on the palmrest and trackpad buttons getting sticky/gooey. But there are companies that make precut pieces that overlay that and solve the problem. I have never personally seen a system board failure in the E6420/E6430 or E6520/E6530 and I've been through dozens over the years.........really one of my favorite "old school" laptops. My personal laptop is a mint condition E6530 with a quad-core i7 3740QM upgrade and copper heatsink upgrade (some of these came with a heatsink that had a stainless plate where the CPU meets it - these run too hot with i7's), 16GB, and a 1TB SSD that does everything I need it to do. Bummer about no AVX2 support but so far it hasn't been an issue.

interesting, I have been warned. Side note: I almost always disable turbo boost with my laptops, (on battery) because, especially with the older ones like the E6420, the voltage goes from like around 1 volt, all the way up to 1.2!- on sandy, that just creates a ton of heat really quick. Another gripe with Sandy is that I cannot undervolt with it, while if I get a Haswell one, I could try and undervolt it for some decent temps- I have gotten really good results on Haswell-U in the past. That said though, if I want to get better battery, would an E6430 help?

 

[70 Polara]

Since a majority of these E6440s were for friends, neighbors, etc over the years......I've never set up Throttlestop on them as that's more software to break and/or confuse the user lol. But I have tried undervolting the E6540/Radeon furnace I owned and it didn't help much. And it still doesn't solve the fact that quality plummeted on the E6440/E6540 IMHO. You'll still be dealing with fragile system boards. Haswell-U low power mobile CPUs seem to benefit more from undervolting as far as temps and battery life as I think Intel was full of it stating they were 15W TDP parts. I have a Latitude 3340 i5-4200u that saw significant temp improvements and now impressive battery life. It'll run for apx 12-14 hours on a charge depending on usage with the optional 6-cell battery.

It is a bummer that I don't think Sandy/Ivy can be undervolted by software as Haswell can. An E6430 is slightly better on battery in my experience but not hugely so. I do personally feel that the HD4000 graphics in Ivy work smoother in Windows 10 though and drivers are newer. Not sure if it's because Ivy HD4000 has full DirectX 11 support or what though.

A trick I do for battery life is slightly limit CPU speed in Windows power management using the "Maximum Processor State" setting......and obviously dimming the screen somewhat.

 

[Haswellbeast]

Since a majority of these E6440s were for friends, neighbors, etc over the years......I've never set up Throttlestop on them as that's more software to break and/or confuse the user lol. But I have tried undervolting the E6540/Radeon furnace I owned and it didn't help much. And it still doesn't solve the fact that quality plummeted on the E6440/E6540 IMHO. You'll still be dealing with fragile system boards. Haswell-U low power mobile CPUs seem to benefit more from undervolting as far as temps and battery life as I think Intel was full of it stating they were 15W TDP parts. I have a Latitude 3340 i5-4200u that saw significant temp improvements and now impressive battery life. It'll run for apx 12-14 hours on a charge depending on usage with the optional 6-cell battery.

It is a bummer that I don't think Sandy/Ivy can be undervolted by software as Haswell can. An E6430 is slightly better on battery in my experience but not hugely so. I do personally feel that the HD4000 graphics in Ivy work smoother in Windows 10 though and drivers are newer. Not sure if it's because Ivy HD4000 has full DirectX 11 support or what though.

A trick I do for battery life is slightly limit CPU speed in Windows power management using the "Maximum Processor State" setting......and obviously dimming the screen somewhat.

Yeah, I am using Linux on my e6420, and I have somewhat improved battery just now by installing tlp and disabling some stuff in bios- which in my experience, does not really help newer systems, but on older ones, they do not idle well, and thus benefit from having this stuff disabled. EDIT: Wow, i have pretty signifigantly reduced consumption, I went from estimated like 6hrs of total life (and with some head math, the percentage per minute or whatever seemed to reflect that) to like 8 hours- good enough for me. Anyway, I am going to close this and maybe make a discussion about some older laptops, I have gone through a few older ones, and I have some thoughts on what I consider "usable"