Aaron44126

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.

For drivers, you'll have a much easier time with AMD (Radeon) on Linux than you will with NVIDIA. NVIDIA still produces proprietary Linux drivers that have to be installed separately. Intel and AMD have open-source drivers that are actually included with the Linux kernel. No separate install is needed for them, it just works out of the box, as long as your kernel version is newer than your GPU.

You can also adjust this setting in the BIOS if you don't have Dell Optimizer installed. (You just have to reboot in order to access it...) It is independent from the Windows power settings. I think you may be able to update it from PowerShell as well, using the tools that Dell has to update system settings from PowerShell (for purposes of mass deployment / standardization), but I have not ever tried to do that myself. I agree, though, in the event of a combo load I would prefer to see it prioritize the GPU.

The power profiles (Balanced / Quiet / Cool / High performance) will impact power draw behavior. Setting it to "Cool" might be a way to allocate more power budget to the CPU, for example; in past systems that I have messed with, this power setting put a cap on the GPU power draw but not on the CPU power draw. You used to adjust this in the Dell Power Manager app, but that isn't a thing anymore, I guess maybe it is in Dell Optmizer?

If you want to update the firmware on the SSD, it would be best if you got the Intel storage driver out of the mix. Samsung Magician wants to have direct access to the SSD. You can do this by going to BIOS setup and switching the storage mode from RAID to AHCI/NVMe. (This is assuming you don't have any RAID arrays defined.) You need to take some steps in Windows when you make this change or else you will just get a BSOD at boot because it can't "find" your C drive. Hold "Shift" while you pick "Restart" in the start menu. As the system shuts down, it should give you some options. Pick safe mode. The system will reboot, when you see the Dell logo, hit F2 for BIOS setup. Switch from RAID mode to AHCI/NVMe mode. Exit BIOS setup and the system will boot Windows into safe mode. (At this point Windows will realize that it needs to set up a new storage controller driver. This is transparent, you won't see any visual indication.) Once you hit the Windows login screen in safe mode, just reboot into normal mode.

Framework teasing something for August 26. "Something big just got better" makes me think this might be an actual update for Framework Laptop 16.

There was also something going on with HP including the GPU vBIOS in the system BIOS, rather than on a chip on the MXM card as is typical... I don't remember for what years they were doing this. That could also throw a wrench in if you were trying to use an "unsupported" GPU.

Got to watch out for the higher-end HP cards. The dimensions are a little different and it might not be a big deal if part of the MXM card sticks out a little bit... but the main thing is that the GPU chip itself isn't in quite the same place, so the screw holes aren't quite in the same place and won't line up with the positions of the screws in the GPU heatsink. Thus a heatsink mod being required.

I don't know the specifics of this system, so maybe someone else can chime in, but I think there is no reason that you couldn't replace the whole display assembly and have this work. The replacement display assembly should come with all of the necessary cables. Dell does make it difficult to replace the panel alone now. Especially with a touch screen system (which would have glass covering it, presumably). I've replaced display panels in older systems, but in the Precision 7770 I found that it was held in place by adhesive (not screws), and when I had the panel replaced in that system under warranty, they just sent out a whole display assembly (the entire "top part" of the laptop).

Not sure what you meant to label as "dGPU" in that image. That term usually means "discrete GPU" which would reference the NVIDIA chip on a standalone card. The integrated GPU (iGPU) is actually in the CPU die. What you have labeled "dGPU" is actually the PCH chip. In every CAMM design so far, Dell has put the CPU right up against the CAMM slot. This board layout actually is really similar to what they had in the Precision 7X70 and 7X80 systems. They just sort of ... flipped the DGFF GPU card over so that they had room for the third fan, and some other components have been moved around slightly.

The GPU card fits in the top-right area (viewing from the bottom), a custom form factor DGFF card like they've been doing for several years now. It can be seen in the manual. (Tossed some pictures from the manual in the spoiler block below.) The only new thing here to me is that it appears to be double-stacked over part of the motherboard (but not directly above the CPU). You can see the double-stacking best in the second-to-last image in @AL123's post above. Stacking the dGPU card on top of the motherboard is not that new, it was standard design when Dell was using MXM cards (2017 systems and earlier), but this is the first time that I have seen it since they switched to DGFF. When the Qualcomm AI thing is available, my understanding is that it will also be a DGFF card fitting in the same space, so you'll have to pick between it or an NVIDIA GPU.

M2000M "should" work. I can personally confirm that I used a M5000M in a Dell Precision M6700 with LVDS panel, and it worked fine, even with Optimus disabled (GPU connected directly to the display panel). I believe back then there were people putting M2000M and even M2200 into a Precision M4700 and getting it to work without much hassle. Not clear to me which system you are trying to put the GPU into (you mentioned both Acer and HP?). I also believe that HP systems of the day had a GPU whitelist in the BIOS, so they might be more picky with such upgrades.

I described my experience above, I did use a P5000 in a M6800 briefly to flash the vBIOS on it and I had no trouble with it being "discovered". @DynamiteZerg just joined up and he has a M6800 with a P5000 GPU (see posts above), apparently still in active use? It seems like it "should work" and I'm not sure what was going on in your case, if the GPU card wasn't actually dead. That said, any GPU upgrade beyond K5100M is an "unsupported" upgrade and brings the risk of unknown issues.

With UEFI the best thing to do is explicitly select your boot drive from the boot menu (hit F12 at startup) and then wipe the old drive when you are satisfied that things are working good (diskpart, list disk, select disk X, clean). Then there is no way it will still be trying to boot from the old drive.

I'm actually not sure about Turing, but I know that there are some Ampere cards that look pretty normal like this one or this one. (No idea how to source it.)

The one under the quick access door is primary. Dell will populate that slot first. The idea is that you can easily and quickly remove it or swap it if needed, hence the "quick access". Practically, there is little difference, you can put whichever drive in whatever slot you want and the system is happy to boot from any of them. Do what works for you. (7680 can actually hold three M.2 SSDs, there are two slots other than the one under the quick access door. Though depending on your configuration, one of them may be physically obstructed by the battery.)

Ah, @DynamiteZerg! Nice to see you... [Edit] I have not tried this personally, but my understanding is that Turing and newer cards do not have the same vBIOS issue that we had with the Pascal cards. You can just drop a card in, assuming that you can physically install it (i.e. there are HP cards with weird layouts that require heatsink mods), and you should be fine.

No magic code, use any drive clone tool and you'll be fine. Those drives are definitely NVMe though. Precision stopped supporting SATA M.2 internal drives around the Precision 7X50 generation.

If you are concerned about losing specific CPU capabilities like undervolting, manipulating the AC/DC loadline, and so forth, then you should avoid updating the BIOS until it is well understood if those things will be impacted. Otherwise, I'd suggest to just install BIOS and driver updates, but avoid any third-party software additions that you do not need.