Aaron44126

So they made it look like a MacBook Pro ......... (The color & shape of the palmrest area / lower chassis strongly evokes "MacBook Pro" to me, including that "notch" in front of the touchpad which is there to allow you to open the lid. I had to do a double-take the first time that I saw it.) But I guess actually using aluminum for the palmrest just costs too much ...? And if I am understanding right, it is also not the "soft" / "rubber"-like texture that Precision 7XXX and M6XXX series used on the palmrest? It's just ... plastic, with a silver "metal-looking" paint/finish?

IIRC, Zbook 17 G1 uses LVDS for the display and not eDP, so this mod would not apply. (Newer NVIDIA laptop GPUs do not support LVDS at all. You can only use them by passing through the Intel integrated GPU.)

You can only buy these workstations from the Dell "business" store, but you can order as an individual without a problem, you don't have to be a business. I always have used a small business sales rep to order, not the web site, you can almost always get a better deal that way even if you are just buying a single system.

RTX 4000 Blackwell ≈ GeForce RTX 5080 mobile RTX 5000 Blackwell ≈ GeForce RTX 5090 mobile These days, if you're looking at NVIDIA GPUs of the same generation in a laptop, the main thing that is going to determine the performance is just the power limit that is set in your system. If RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 have the same power limit, they will have the same performance for most loads (<5% difference), even though the RTX 5000 has more CUDA cores. The main reason to pay extra for the RTX 5000 would be if you can make use of the extra VRAM, or if you will be running AI loads that use Tensor cores only (using all the Tensor cores without using the CUDA cores might not push it to the power limit, so you could actually benefit from more Tensor cores in the RTX 5000?). I haven't been paying close attention, so I am not actually sure if RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 have the same power limit in this system. But that has been the case for the past several generations of Dell flagship workstations, so I think it is a safe bet.

In this case there is exactly one screen option. You just need to pay attention to the other things listed in that box. Do you want IR camera for "Windows Hello" face recognition, or WWAN antennas? I am personally bummed that for some reason there is no 4K option for the 18". It's not OLED, so surely they could have found a suitable 4K panel.

There are only three screens. The high-resolution UHD panel (touchscreen / OLED) 1920×1200, 500 nits 1920×1200, 300 nits Do not get the 300 nits one. That is a basic, cheap screen. The 500 nits panel will be brighter and have better color. The "best" screen would be the UHD / OLED, easily, even if you aren't planning to use the "touch" capability at all. Though if you aren't used to dealing with "scaling" in Windows, or if the price is just not worth it to you, then it might be better to get a lower resolution screen (the 500 nits one). Also worth noting is (I believe) the OLED panel will be glossy and the others will be matte. The reason that there are so many options is because the camera and antenna setup is lumped in with your screen choice for some reason. If you would like to use "Windows Hello" face recognition to unlock your laptop, pick an option that says "IR camera". If you would like to use 4G/5G wireless (cellular) service with your system, get one that says "WWAN". (That's just for the antennas. You will also need to get a dedicated WWAN card.) Otherwise, get whichever one is cheapest (that has the display panel that you want).

The “big” MXM GPUs will only fit in the M6800, not the M4800. Maxwell and later GPUs (M5000M, 980M) will likely require a heatsink mod to install. The VRM position is changed and the heatsink has a protruding bit that hits one of them that must be cut off with a dremel or similar tool. Quadro P5000 will also work but it requires that an “engineering sample” vBIOS be flashed on. This GPU doesn’t support LVDS, so if you have the LVDS version of the M6800, you can only use it with graphics switching enabled (Intel GPU driving the display). Any GPU that isn’t “native” to the system (i.e. that Dell didn’t sell with it) will need an INF mod in order to install the driver on Windows. There has been discussion in the later pages of this thread, which you should check out.

I mean, that's part of what pushed me to buy a MacBook (2+ years ago). "If you're going to make me buy a system that is difficult to repair and with limited upgrade options ... I might as well just buy a Mac, then." I've spent a lot of time with Windows, Linux, and macOS. macOS is the best fit for me right now. There are definitely things about both the Apple hardware and software that I would like to see changed. But overall, it is just better than the alternatives. If you're going to get rid of Windows (...and that totally makes sense, given the direction they are going...), I think macOS is better for productivity and Linux is better for gaming. Don't expect macOS to be perfect out of the gate, though. There will be a "learning curve" to get used to the "Apple way" of doing things, and there will probably need to be third-party tools installed to get the behavior that you want (i.e. especially if you want mouse scroll wheel behavior that isn't terrible). This is fun:

If the laptop is plugged in while you are doing this USB charging, the power should be flowing from the power outlet to your USB devices, not from the laptop battery to your USB devices. I don't think this is anything to worry about, as far as your laptop battery is concerned.

The Precision 7560 keyboard is actually lightly bigger, then, on that system I am measuring 26.5cm wide without numpad and just under 34cm with all keys.

I saw this post and wonder if it is relevant to your situation...

I have done quite a bit of gaming with Optimus (switchable graphics) turned on and I have never noticed any issue with latency. In any case, you should be able to try it with your current card and see how it feels for you.

Vsync doesn't require specific support from the panel to operate. (An adaptive refresh rate functionality like Gsync or Freesync does, though.)

7680 cards and 7780 cards are physically different sizes & layouts. You can't mix and match them. [Edit] I was looking at eBay and I see that some listings for a RTX 2000 show compatibility with both 7680 and 7780, so I thought maybe I was wrong (about lower-end cards at least). But then I noticed they ask you to pick between 7680 and 7780 with a drop-down. It still looks to me like the cards can't be swapped between systems.

I haven’t heard of anyone trying something like this yet on this model. Seems like it “should” work, if the replacement panel has the same connector, and you can actually perform the physical replacement. On that last point, I will say that Dell has made it a lot more annoying to replace the panel than it was in earlier systems. Before, you could snap the bezel off, take out some screws, and easily swap out the panel. Now, the panel is held in place by adhesive, not screws. Aligning a new one would be tricky. When Dell replaces a panel under warranty, they just replace the entire top part of the laptop — panel, enclosure, antennas, and all — rather than replacing the panel only like they used to.

Are you looking to try that on your current setup? (Just pointing out that P5000 and P5200 are not the same GPU.)

Can't go wrong with Samsung SSD, either 9100 Pro (PCIe5) or 990 Pro (PCIe4, and a little bit cheaper). Don't get the heatsink version, it won't fit.

You can use a 90 watt then. 130 watts will also work but it won’t get you any benefit. Similarly, any 90 watt Dell charger with the appropriate connector on the end should be fine. It doesn't have to be specific to your model laptop.

That's a standard Dell barrel power connector that they used on many, many laptops from around 2003 until pretty recently when they switched to USB-C (the "flat" connector). So you can use any Dell power adapter with that barrel plug on the end, as long as it supplies enough wattage. 130W should be adequate for any Latitude or Inspiron. https://www.amazon.com/Dell-PA-4E-Adapter-Battery-Charger/dp/B00CKYGN3W?mfadid=adm (If you search for "PA-4E" on Amazon, you will find many options, but most of them are "off-brand".) These are very pervasive, and since don't need one specific to your model laptop, you should actually be able to find one locally without too much difficulty. I would think that a used computer / electronics recycling place would have these laying around and be able to sell one to you. If you have any friends or family who work in an office where they use Dell equipment, their IT department might be able to just hand one out. (I'll note that Dell actually had two different barrel connector sizes that they used with laptops before switching to USB-C. This fat one was used with almost all systems, but some of the slim XPS systems used a much smaller barrel plug.)

“Unknown video card” is exactly what it should say. You might only get this with switchable graphics off. I’m going to suggest that you pull an old version of Ubuntu or Linux Mint, whatever was current when @DynamiteZerg did his vBIOS flash, and try using that to flash on the ES vBIOS. I vaguely remember having an issue when I tried a newer one. Do it with switchable graphics on.

OK yes, I was thinking more about "graphics" and not so much "AI", but if you have a workload that relies on quickly and repeatedly swapping stuff out in vRAM, you'll certainly notice this more. At least, according to @AL123's screen shot above, it runs the dGPU at PCIe5. So, you're looking at the bandwidth cut in half, not cut down to a quarter. Exactly right. From Precision 7750 to 7760, they removed one DGFF connector. They can run 8 lanes through each connector ... but one of the connectors is used power and control stuff, not for PCIe data. So, two connectors = 8 lanes, and three connectors = 16 lanes. Dell dropping one connector corresponded with the transition from PCIe3 to PCIe4, and as PCIe4 is twice as fast as PCIe3, technically they did not cut the dGPU bandwidth by cutting the lanes. (I think also in consideration is the limited number of PCIe4 lanes off of the CPU at the time, and the limited number of PCIe5 lanes available now. They want to allocate some to both the dGPU and to at least one of the NVMe slots...) I thought that with the connector revamp this time around, maybe they switched the pinout around and added some lanes back, but that does not appear to be the case.

Somehow they managed 16-lane for the GPUs in Precision 7750 and earlier. Precision 7750 also had four M.2 slots. The PCH does allow for some additional (shared-bandwidth) PCIe lanes. In the last few generations of systems, Dell has had one of the four M.2 slots attached directly to the CPU, and the other three routed through the PCH. (Even though there aren't that many "slots" on the motherboard, there are a multitude of other devices that gobble up PCIe lanes — the Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and WWAN chips, the memory card reader, the sound chip, Thunderbolt ports, ...) ...Not that I really think that them having it limited to 8 lanes is a big deal. The performance impact on the GPU should be minimal. It is hard to push enough data to "need" 16 lanes of PCIe4 speed, and clearly you can keep the GPU busy (100% utilization / max power draw) with this setup. I think it would not be noticed so much in real-world situations but probably appears as a slight dip on GPU-heavy benchmarks.

I think this is reporting that the GPU supports 16 lanes, but it is only running at 8 lanes (that "@8" at the end). The very low GT/s value would be because at the time that you took this, it was only running at low speed (PCIe1 or PCIe2?) because the GPU was not busy. This makes sense, I can personally confirm that previous generations (Precision 7560 and 7770 that I have access to) only have 8 lanes for the dGPU. They moved from 16 lanes to 8 lanes at the same time that they moved from PCIe3 to PCIe4. It wouldn't matter if it is a 4000 or a 5000 card. The limiting factor is the physical DGFF interface and motherboard layout. If Dell only ran 8 lanes for the dGPU, then that's that. [Edit] Tried to check if my Precision 7560 reports similarly but the security measures that they have in place now will not allow me to run GPU-Z. 😕 (That's my work system. None of my personal systems are running Windows anymore.)

Curious about this too. @AL123 Can you check? GPU-Z will report this under "bus interface".

It was an upgrade for Framework Laptop 16. CPU refresh (latest Ryzen generation). NVIDIA GPU option (GeForce RTX 5070, 8 GB vRAM) GSync certified display 240W USB-C power adapter Thermal improvements, and new more rigid top lid See video in the post above for an overview, and this one for some ideas that didn't make it.