Aaron44126

That would be a normal thing to see if you have graphics switching / Optimus turned on. The display is attached to the Intel GPU in that case and there won't be very many options in NVIDIA control panel.

Any NVMe drive should work. I’ve used a number of modules in multiple Precision systems and never had an issue. So, not sure what to say here. I have not tried this specific model. I do have an issue with the primary slot in my Precision 7560 (the PCIe4 one) failing to consistently recognize drives, so I don’t use it anymore. It’s still problematic after multiple motherboard replacements. It is expected that drives with a built-in heatsink will not fit. You should use a bare drive and the heatsink included with the system.

That "dark" part of the "lid part" of the laptop in the image above is the plastic bezel, which I guess maybe doesn't need to be quite that thick. It has some slightly rubbery material around the edge which I would presume protects the lid if you slam it shut quickly, which also adds 1mm or so to the height. The panel is recessed behind the bezel and only in the "light" part. (And, it doesn't really seem to be as thick as the image shows in person, at least to me...)

I use hibernate when I need to transport the laptop. Regarding the dGPU, you can disable/enable it from the command line with DevManView so a quick batch script will do. If you disable discrete display output in BIOS setup then external displays will attach to the Intel GPU and this will be an issue less often. For my system: DevManView.exe /disable "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU" DevManView.exe /enable "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU"

Precision 7530 and 7540 use the same chassis so I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case. ...Probably more than you want to deal with, but it occurs to me that you could probably install a Precision 7530 "display assembly" on your Precision 7540 with no trouble at all, if it turned out that made it easier to swap around display panels.

The bracket will just have a hole where the screw goes, but it won't help affixing your panel to the chassis unless the chassis itself also has a place for the screw to go in.

Most panels that mount with screws have such brackets on them (the panel itself doesn't have the screw holes); whether it will be compatible with your lid depends on if there are "receptors" for the screws in the right place. (I have pulled panels for Precision 7510, 7530, and 7560 that were all mounted in such a way which is why I was surprised to find that Precision 7540 uses adhesive for the panel.)

This is just accumulated knowledge from this site and also NBR. However, especially if you have done laptop GPU replacements before, you can just look at those DGFF cards and see that there is no way that the Alienware card will work in the Precision. The screws don't go in the same spots. There are no HDMI or DP ports. The shape and size are different (especially accounting for how you'd have to rotate that Alienware card to get the DGFF connectors in the same place). It simply will not fit.

The fans are slightly different sizes and have different enclosures, but the blade design is the same if you have fans from the same manufacturer. If you find a Delta CPU fan beneficial then you'd probably want a Delta GPU fan as well. The system runs the fans at roughly the same speed anyway. (I.e., a load on the CPU only will cause both the CPU and GPU fans to ramp up.)

There is at least this in post #6. Higher CFM will be beneficial as well if you care about noise. The fan can get the same work done at lower speed. Now I changed my cpu fan from the AVC #2 to the Delta fan #3, not only is the fan quieter but also a lot more powerful. The AVC fan ramped its speed to max making a horrible noise while the Delta fan roars off but still has plenty more to give if you manually control the fan speed and if you put your hand in front of the outlet grill you can already feel a hard air flow while the AVC barely tickled your face on full speed.

For information on the types of fans available, see this thread and posts by @unnoticed. Delta fan is generally preferred. It is normal for the CPU to run hotter than the GPU with the same wattage. The CPU is harder to keep cool because it concentrates power in tiny "hot spots" where the CPU cores are (a relatively small portion of the die as a whole), while the GPU distributes power use more-or-less across the entire die. (GPU dies tend to be bigger than CPU dies anyway.)

There is no compatibility between Precision and Alienware DGFF cards. In fact, there is no compatibility between Precision DGFF cards between models with different chassis designs either. The card shape and component layout are completely different even if the connector is the same. The only inter-generational upgrade that has been confirmed to work is using Precision 7X40 cards in a Precision 7X30 system.

The provided AC adapter for the Precision 7680 is not USB-C, it is the standard Dell "barrel"-style power connector and it plugs into the left side. If you don't mind connecting two cables, you are free to connect the stock AC adapter to the system and use a dock at the same time. When you do so, you do not need to rely on power from the dock. You can connect a single-cable dock like WD22TB, or just one of the connectors for the WD19DCS, and the system will still run fine. You only need to connect both of the WD19DCS connectors if you want "single-cable docking" (no standalone AC adapter connected). .....Do note that connecting only one of the WD19DCS connectors might also cause issues if you plan on using a high-bandwidth display setup (i.e. multiple 4K displays). A Thunderbolt dock like the WD22TB should be able to handle this over a single cable, though.

This sort of issue popped up semi-regularly on NBR back when these systems were "old enough to have GPU replacements done" but not yet "really old" (2015-2018 timeframe?). There isn't a whole lot of discussion of the pre-7000 series systems here on NBT.

This is a common problem with an "unsupported GPU" in this system. You should be able to set the brightness level in the BIOS. If you're running with Optimus / graphics switching turned on, it should work but you might have to use the Intel GPU driver package from Dell, not the one built-in to Windows or from Intel's web site. If you're running with Optimus / graphics switching turned off, I don't know if there is really a solution to this. 😕

I have not had this problem on my system since I disabled “c states for discrete GPU” and also enabled “Intel maximum turbo boost 3.0”, which supposedly disables NVIDIA Dynamic Boost 2.0.

Dell has made 330W power adapters for Alienware systems and you can plug one into these systems and it will work… but not provide any performance uplift. (At least, that was the case with Precision 7770.) You can provide feedback but I don’t think Dell wants to push the power envelope higher on these systems. It would require larger size for a bigger cooling system as well — and they have been trying to *shrink* the chassis with each successive generation. In any case, Dell is aware of feedback happening on this site, but they are also aware that the power users that typically visit here don’t represent the majority of Dell’s business customers. (We are due for a chassis refresh next year, and with 18” 16:10 systems starting to become normal to see, I’m hoping we will at least see that…)

This is normal and has been for the past several generations. If you check in NVIDIA control panel "Help->System Information" you will probably see that the power limit is the same between the 4000 and 5000 cards. Performance could be better with the 5000 GPU if you are doing something to take advantage of its extra capabilities (more vRAM, more tensor cores, ...), but otherwise there is no reason to expect it to be much "faster" than the 4000 GPU.

5480 and 5680 are now available for order in the US. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/workstations-isv-certified/precision-5480-workstation/spd/precision-14-5480-laptop https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/workstations-isv-certified/precision-5680-workstation/spd/precision-16-5680-laptop

Dell Precision 5480 and 5680 support pages are up, so those systems are presumably launching soon. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-14-5480-laptop https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-16-5680-laptop

(@Ionising_Radiation) I just realized that Dolphin has a more robust "bookmarks" system that is entirely separate from "places" left bar thing that you can pin things to. It's just sort of hidden away by default. To access it you have to manually configure toolbars and add the "Bookmarks" button. From there you can easily add folders to the bookmarks list (Ctrl+B), and using the "Edit bookmarks" function you can sort them how you like, group them into folders, and even add custom icons. And if you have a folder full of bookmarks, it will let you open them as a set of tabs all at once.

That is not too bad a price as far as new motherboards with a high-end CPU go. Only you can decide if it is "worth it". Motherboard replacement is not a difficult job (if you're already comfortable with a repaste), just a time-consuming one. I replaced the motherboard in my Precision M6700 once and it took me an hour or so. Just follow the steps in the service manual and set up something to keep your screws organized.

Sounds good, then just a matter of finding the motherboard that you want for a not-killer price ...! Of course Dell has the full replacement steps in the service manual and you'll be repasting as well, but it sounds like you're comfortable with that (I see that you've actually done it in this system already).

AFAIK, the only differentiating factor between the different mobo versions is the CPU, so if you drop in a different motherboard everything should "just work". Minor concerns I can think of: Intel vPro may or may not be enabled on your new mobo. There is a one-time process to set up vPro which is done the first time that the motherboard is powered up (typically at the factory, but I've seen techs do it after a motherboard replacement). Probably, you don't use or need vPro, so this doesn't matter. The system service tag will change. The Windows product key is "burned in" to the BIOS, so you might have to jump through hoops to reactivate Windows if you're using the stock OEM install. (You can pull your current Windows product key with ProduKey. Note on antivirus false positives.) One more thing: If your workload is already multi-threaded, you might find that going from six cores to eight cores doesn't help as much as you'd think. You should check and see what your CPU power usage is like and if you are power throttling. The 6-core and 8-core CPUs probably have the same power limit, so if you are already hitting that regularly, then you will find that going from six to eight cores means more threads running but each at a lower speed, so about the same amount of work being done overall in the end. This would be because the system has to spread the same amount of power across more cores, so they can't run as fast. Running at a lower speed is more power-efficient, so there would be a modest performance improvement from adding cores, but we're talking about something in the range of 5% and not like 33%. (If your workload is not multi-threaded then this upgrade probably won't help at all.)

All good. Min quantum 512 still resulted in some dropouts but 1024 seems completely fine. (Can't tell that anything is off from an audio latency test.) No GPU power limit hiccups either, for the third day in a row. Maybe this is finally going to start working properly...