Aaron44126

If you want a lower-powered CPU, you need to avoid HX CPUs. These are repackaged desktop CPU dies and even the low-end ones will run to the thermal limit in a laptop. You could look at a system with H series CPUs which are actually designed for laptops (XPS 17, Precision 5680)... or maybe even U series. Honestly, if your workload isn't CPU demanding and you don't need a high-end dGPU, there are a lot of options and maybe you don't need the absolute fastest laptop CPU? Note — HX CPUs were only a thing starting with 12th gen. Before that, "H" was the top laptop CPU available (like the one you have in your 10th-gen system). They basically rebranded 45W H to HX starting with 12th gen, and the 12th/13th-gen H CPUs are lower tier similar to the 35W H from prior generations. Unfortunately I am not able to point to or provide feedback on what the fan behavior is like on any specific models, including AMD systems; I have been using exclusively Precision 7000-series systems for the last many years, until just recently when I got the MacBook Pro. (I've posted elsewhere about my reasoning for switching but I am largely fed up with the PC/laptop ecosystem, both because of the direction Microsoft is going with Windows 11 and because of the overall direction that laptop hardware is going in general... and your complaints about "idle workload" noise here definitely play into what pushed me off as well.)

Precision 5490 has been certified by DMTF, confirming another model.

Dell has been selling these with an integrated GPU option for a while now, since Precision 7X30... dGPU is no longer a requirement. If the web site won't let it spec it out how you like, try going through a sales rep, they have a bit more flexibility sometimes. You can probably get it cheaper that way, anyway. I saved around 20% off of the web price of my (high-spec) Precision 7770 by going through a sales rep. You can always order the system, check it out, and then return it if you find it unsatisfactory. I believe there is a 30-day return window. I get the worrying about the fans. Probably buying a system with an HX-class 55W CPU is not the best if you want it to be quiet. (And this is one thing I love about my MacBook Pro... I never hear a peep from the fans unless I am doing gaming or video encoding or something intense like that.)

I had a Precision 7770 and I never thought it was that loud with an "idle" or "office" workload. I cared more about the very noticeable noise that the CPU fan made when cycling on after having the fan off for a while. (On an "idle" workload it does tend to cycle the fan off and on periodically.) I am not sure if Precision 7780 fans still make this noise. Anyway, for years I have been limiting the CPU speed of my laptops to keep the fan speed and thermals under control when I am not using them for serious work. See the link in my signature about options for quick ways to toggle turbo boost on and off. You do not need the CPU to be in turbo boost if you are just doing light work or watching videos, and you can just turn it on if you want to use the system for gaming (ideally with ANC headphones!).

As stated above, this only works with 10th-gen (2020) systems and earlier. Dell has changed how fan control works and 11th-gen (2021) systems and later cannot be manipulated at this time, by any software that I know of.

I think @Ionising_Radiation did something similar with a RTX 5000 in a Precision 7530. IIRC, Dell actually released a vBIOS upgrade package for the Precision 7X50 that ups the power limit. You can download that, pull the vBIOS image out of the download package, and flash it yourself on an older system.

Hyper-V blocks undervolting on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. I believe that it is enabled by default in Windows 11 but not in Windows 10. You can disable it by either removing it from "Turn Windows features on or off" or by passing a BCD boot parameter, but then you forego some features that rely on it, like VBS and WSL2.

Precision 5690 has been certified by DMTF. I was wondering if they were going to change up the branding because they are running out of numbers, and it might make sense to pair that with a chassis refresh (which 7000 series is due for), but it appears that is not happening yet — at least not for 5000 series.

The replacement heatsink/fan assembly arrived in one day but I didn't actually replace it until yesterday. The system is definitely better off for it; not only is the "grinding" sound gone, but the fans are running at a lower speed than they were before the swap on my mostly light "office" workload (≈1600 RPM now vs ≈2200 RPM before) — probably repasting and a proper cleaning could have also achieved a RPM reduction, though. I've got 6-7 months left on the warranty for this thing. Not sure if I will try to have the motherboard replaced again. Still can't use the primary NVMe slot. Disappointed in the "longevity" of this system somewhat. My keyboard is in rough shape (black coating coming off of some keys). Some of the "rubber" coating on the palmrest has come off. The fans, which I really liked at the start, starting running higher and higher as time went on ("reset" when I replaced the assembly) even though I did blow out the dust every few months. ...I'm leaning more and more towards having my work system replaced by a MacBook Pro as well during the next refresh, later this year.

I was watching this show "live" and I recall this. Production was impacted. There was a gap of over six months or so between the first and second halves of season 4, which was not their original intent. (That seemed like a long time back then, especially since it wasn't even technically a break between seasons, but I guess now it is normal to be waiting over a year between 10-episode seasons of a show like this.....) At least one writer made comments along the lines of maybe the show wouldn't ever be finished, if SciFi gave up and cancelled it before the strike was resolved.

Man, I have fond memories of that show but it does start to peter out later on. I think it could have done with fewer episodes per season; I seem to remember some pointless filler episodes in the latter halves of both seasons 2 and 3 that sort of dragged down the pace. I also remember thinking, they have this "...but they have a plan" text that shows up in the intro bit, but it was clear that the writers did not have a long-term plan for the show, and it hurt them as they were trying to figure out how push towards the ending.

Some reviews in for Framework Laptop 16. No time to digest right now but I saw these in my news feed: https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/framework-laptop-16-review https://www.theverge.com/24047424/framework-laptop-16-review [Edit] Also -

dGPU stuck on? Assuming you have graphics switching enabled in the BIOS, and you're not running any graphics tasks, try disabling and then re-enabling the NVIDIA GPU in Device Manager and see if that helps. Sometimes that kicks the dGPU into powering off properly. (I was just complaining about this the other day.) Also be aware that your monitoring tool might cause the dGPU to stay powered on by trying to monitor it. Might be better to use something external like a Kill-a-Watt to measure the system power usage.

I've never found Windows Search to be especially reliable... I use Directory Opus as an alternate file manager / File Explorer replacement, and it has its own file search function that doesn't seem to rely on Windows indexing.

You will want 180W to run without throttling. (They make slim 180W adapters now that ship with newer Precision systems and these will work with the M4800.) You do not need to get Dell's HDD optical drive caddy. Pick any one that you want from Amazon or wherever. It just needs to be one that fits a 9.5mm height drive bay, not the larger 12.5/12.7mm. You can easily take the mounting bracket off of the optical drive and install it on your caddy.

You will be able to run the system, but both the CPU and GPU will be heavily throttled. These systems are very aggressive about throttling with a low-power adapter attached even if it seems like there should be enough headroom. You may be able to override this behavior with something like Throttlestop (I haven't tried myself). You can also use that power adapter to charge the battery while the M4800 is powered off or sleeping, and that should be fine.

You can force the NVIDIA GPU to the P8 "idle" state using something like NVIDIA Inspector. It still pulls too much power in this state (IMO), especially when it is basically doing nothing while the iGPU drives the display. I'm not aware of a way to force the NVIDIA GPU to fully power off on Windows; I think it stays powered on even if you disable the device in Device Manager. But, on Linux you can unload the NVIDIA kernel modules and then force the NVIDIA GPU to power off with Bumblebee, which does some ACPI magic to make it happen.

Unfortunately, I never messed with swapping out the display panel in the M4800 so I don't know much about that. I would think that any "standard" eDP panel should be fine, as long as it has the right connector in the right spot. You may have to transfer the mounting brackets over from your current panel. Looks like you are looking to stay at 1080p, so it should be straight-forward. Higher resolution panels (QHD/UHD) will disable integrated graphics, may only work with NVIDIA GPUs in this system, and may require a BIOS reset to get working. I doubt that mini-LED panels would work at all.

Looks like a dual-pipe CPU heatsink, which is the best that you can get. (I remember upgrading my M6700 CPU heatsink from single-pipe to dual-pipe.) I also think the only GPU heatsink variations are one for AMD GPUs and one for NVIDIA GPUs, and the difference there was basically to account for different heights of the GPU die/chip. I wish they made still made laptops more like this... I love how many things you can swap out! (I guess there is always Framework.)

1. This thread has some information on M4800 fans types. See posts by @unnoticed. Delta is generally considered the best, but not that one that you have there... There is another one that has way more blades and a sort of cone-shape raised thing going on. I think that the one that you have was intended to be paired with a lower-powered dual-core CPU. 2. The difference between the docks AFAIK is that the wider one has an extra DVI/DisplayPort output (and maybe a couple of other extra ports). Both of them support an iGPU-attached display through DVI/DisplayPort if you enable that BIOS option, but if you get the wide one then only one of those ports will attach to the iGPU (you'll have to do trial and error to figure out which ... I do not remember). Note that there are also different USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 versions of the docks, but it is hard to tell them apart because they look the same. The USB 3.0 version might have a little "+" symbol next to the USB ports on the left side ...?

Same driver but it is pretty easy to accidentally have Optimus not available if you are doing manual mucking in the driver INF file. (I think NVCleanInstall does modifications to the INF but I have not used it myself...?) I found this out when trying to do an "unsupported" GPU upgrade on my Precision M6700, putting in a Quadro M5000M, which requires INF editing; on my first try, the driver installed properly but Optimus simply would not engage and render anything. There are a a few flags that need to be set properly in the INF in order for Optimus to be activate after the install is done (NVSupportMSHybrid, NVSupportOptimus, NVOptimusHCloneDisabled, ...). NVIDIA does not tend to set them for laptop configurations that do dGPU-only output, and they have a separate set of configuration/flags for pretty much every laptop model / dGPU combination.

(Rant time...) Optimus is a wreck. It is a really cool idea for power savings, but it is a kind of tacked-on solution to Windows that I have not found to work well. Specifically, the dGPU frequently does not power off when it should, rendering the solution pointless. Many users have reported issues with it on the Precision line. It is way too easy for the system to get "stuck" with the NVIDIA GPU powered on even when no apps are using it. The tray icon that shows whether the GPU is powered on or off isn't even always reliable and sometimes shows that the dGPU is powered off when it is actually on; you might have to check using the nvidia-smi command line tool, or the NVAPI library. Some easy ways to get the NVIDIA GPU stuck on: Plug in an external monitor that attaches directly to the GPU, and then unplug it to go back to a single display powered by the iGPU. Some processes will be locked to the NVIDIA GPU and keep it powered on. Use fast user switching to activate a second Windows desktop session under a second account. Same thing, some processes will be locked to the NVIDIA GPU and keep it powered on. Run a background application that just doesn't have good "Optimus-awareness" and improperly attaches to the dGPU for tasks that could be handled fine by the iGPU. Examples: Epic Games client, Cygwin X Windows server. Some of these can be "solved" by specifically setting them to use the iGPU in either NVIDIA control panel or Windows graphics settings... but some apps bypass those settings and attach to the dGPU anyway. A possible solution when this happens is to just use Device Manager to disable and then re-enable the NVIDIA GPU, causing the NVIDIA display driver to reset and all apps attached to the dGPU to detach. This seems to kick it back into the correct state so that it will power off. You can script this with a tool like DevManView, which has command line options to enable and disable devices. Linux isn't much better. At least when I tried Ubuntu on the Precision 7770, getting the system configured so that Optimus would even properly shut the dGPU at all took some reading and experimentation, and then it was pretty easy to get it into a state where the dGPU would not power off even though it "should" if certain programs were running. (Doesn't help that many tools that monitor the GPU will cause it to power on, too...) I'm not sure how far it extends; Precisions are the only laptops with NVIDIA GPUs that I have used in recent memory. I have no idea if similar issues occur on systems with AMD dGPUs. I will say that I have much appreciation of my MacBook Pro in this area after 10+ years on the Precision; it reminded me that high-performance laptops can actually be portable without a constant worry over power management — I routinely have it unplugged and powered on for over 12 hours at a time (not in use with the display on the entire time, but never "sleeping") and it usually still has over 50% left on the battery! I wish the PC laptop ecosystem would get this figured out.

I believe you will find that the heatsink is different between lower-end and high-end GPUs. You can enter your service tag at dell.com/support and get a parts list for your system. Maybe someone with a higher-end system can compare the part number for the heatsink.

See my post above on Pascal GPUs (GTX 1050Ti is Pascal, I believe...). It will not work. With M4700/M6700 you will get a lock-up at boot and with M4800/M6800 you will get a BSOD from acpi.sys (but Linux will work).

The Dell docks typically have an unmarked round button on the top that is actually a power button which you can use to turn the laptop on while the lid is shut.