Dell Latitude 6430U fan noise #

The Latitude 6430 Ultrabook is a beautiful laptop: thin (20.9mm), powerful (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD), and tough (tested to 14 MIL-STD-810G standards). However, there are two drawbacks:

Internal storage is restricted to mSATA, which means the new 960GB SSD from Crucial won't fit. The largest capacity mSATA SSD available is Mushkin's 480GB Atlas (tested successfully in the 6430U). Sadly, the other mini PCIe slot (used for WWAN) won't recognize a second drive.
Slightly more vexing is the incessant fan noise out of the box. Here are some tips:
- Pressing Fn+Z turns the fan off until max temp is reached.
- The preinstalled Dell Feature Enhancement Pack offers a "Quiet" option (though it does affect performance slightly): Control Panel > Power Options > Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings > Dell Enhanced Settings > Thermal Mode > Quiet (Reduced Fan Levels).
- A BIOS fix is reportedly in the works.
  UPDATE: Dell now claims that the fan noise is due to "an alignment issue during manufacturing" and that "the affected parts have been eliminated from stock and replacement of the fan through Dell support resolves the noise issue."

/misc | Jul 13, 2013

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