Aaron44126

And today, we have Precision 3490 showing up at DMTF. I think that is all of the models that we would expect, other than the 7000-series...

Dell Precision 3590 and 3591 have also appeared on the DMTF certification page.

Not necessarily suggesting that you get one. (I had a Precision 7770 which I was super excited about, but I dumped it in disgust after less than a year.) But a couple of points... Dell Precision 7000-series allows RAID-0 with as many drives as you can connect. Their web GUI might not allow it but once you have the system in hand you can configure it with whatever RAID configuration you want. (You should never buy drives from them anyway, the price is ridiculous. Precision 7000 line includes the hardware that you need to install additional drives whether you buy the drives from them or not.) I personally had three drives in RAID-0 in mine. You can pretty much always get a better price by going through a sales rep than you can get on the web. On my high-end config I saved about 20% over the web price by going through a sales rep.

This was the case in the Precision 7530/7540 so I think that it is a decent bet. I don't have specific recollection of anyone trying the same thing for 7730/7740. I think you could get a pretty good feel by finding some good photos of the heatsink (eBay?) and stacking them to make sure it looks like the screw positions are the same.

These systems come with two different lids (display enclosures) depending on whether or not you have WWAN antennas. The non-WWAN version has an all-aluminum lid. The metal would not be helpful for connectivity if you try to put antennas in there. The WWAN version has a separate (visible) plastic strip at the top where the antennas go. The WWAN version looks like this, note the separate piece with a line across the back/top of the display enclosure. That part is plastic, and the rest is aluminum. If you have the non-WWAN version then I am not sure where you will put the antennas, but if you can find a spot (either in the display enclosure or in the lower chassis) that allows for connectivity then you should be able to just drop in a WWAN card and SIM card and be good to go. You could replace the display enclosure with the WWAN version (Precision 7670 version would probably fit as well), but the display panel is held in by adhesive, not screws. So, getting the display panel aligned in your new display enclosure would require careful measurements and steady hands, or be an exercise in tedium. 😕 If you have the OLED panel, they might not offer that with a WWAN version...?

I spent a fair amount of time with both MS-DOS and Windows 3.x back in the early 90's, but I've never so much as seen a running instance of OS/2. I did notice this article from the other day, a major OS/2 software archive will be going offline. I'm sure there will be mirrors hosted elsewhere, but I went ahead and downloaded the whole thing (...stuffing it right next to my archive of Apple II software that I never use). I am curious to try standing one of these up at some point just to poke around with it and see what it is like. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/after-32-years-one-of-the-nets-oldest-software-archives-is-shutting-down/ I also read that Parallels exists because some bank needed to be able to virtualize OS/2 and VMware couldn't do it at the time. Though I doubt that I can run OS/2 in Parallels on an ARM system... Maybe it is possible to run it in DOSBox-X?

I ran Linux for a few months on the Precision 7770 (Alder Lake 12950HX + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti), with Optimus enabled, and no real issues running emulators or Windows games through Steam+Proton ... other than the dGPU sometimes not wanting to actually power off, or the CPU and dGPU fighting for power causing performance inconsistencies — both problems that I also had on Windows with that system. I think that with Turing and later, NVIDIA support for graphics switching on Linux has improved a good bit. So, try it out if you want, it might be just fine. I don't think there are 64GB SODIMMs out yet, but there are 48GB, so you could probably install two to get 96GB in this thing if you wanted to.

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.