Aaron44126

I'm running 1.14.0 on the Precision 7560, it has been fine for me. To disable BIOS updates from being applied through Windows Update, go to BIOS setup and turn off the setting for "capsule firmware updates" (under Security I think?). You can disable all driver updates through Windows Update through other ways. I would personally have this replaced, though I doubt a few bent fins will really impact performance much if the air can still get through them. They're right at the end so they might not be getting much airflow from the fan anyway. It would be easy to get that replaced if you show them the photo. You can ask them to send the part only, and they might. They've done it for me before upon request (i.e. keyboard replacements). If you want to repaste and they do end up sending a tech, depending on the tech, they might be willing to let you repaste while performing the heatsink replacement or they might even be willing to repaste for you using the paste that you have on hand. (I've had both of these happen before as well.)

SSD door is apparently required if you got the "performance chassis" and also a SmartCard or fingerprint reader. (They don't offer a performance chassis with the SmartCard reader but without the SSD door. Adding a fingerprint reader automatically forces the SmartCard option.) If you think about it, there would have to be eight versions of the bottom cover so (...given the challenges that they seem to have had just getting this system ready to go...) it makes sense that they're not all immediately available. Thin chassis / no SmartCard reader / no SSD door Thin chassis / SmartCard reader / no SSD door Thin chassis / no SmartCard reader / SSD door Thin chassis / SmartCard reader / SSD door Performance chassis / no SmartCard reader / no SSD door Performance chassis / SmartCard reader / no SSD door Performance chassis / no SmartCard reader / SSD door Performance chassis / SmartCard reader / SSD door Anyway, right, they can't make changes to the system build after the order is put in. You'd have to cancel and reorder to change it.

With screen brightness at 90%, Optimus on, 10+ apps open, and no particular effort to minimize power use (other than using Process Lasso to make sure background tasks stay on E cores as described earlier), I am getting about four hours of battery life. I'm sure that it could do much better with lower screen brightness and some tuning, but I rarely use the system away from power, so four hours is totally fine with me.

BIOS update 1.5.6. https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=D0RFG Fixes: - Firmware updates to address security vulnerabilities including (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - CVE) such as CVE-2022-0778 and CVE-2022-32482. Updated without issue. It did have the scary "black screen with no activity" for a minute or so after the firmware update completed and before the laptop started the normal boot process. (I'm sort of used to this with Dell firmware updates these days.)

Tamper protection just shows a warning in the BIOS to inform you that the case has been opened. You can install whatever SSDs you want without voiding the warranty. But, Dell has the option to require that you put the system in its original configuration before performing warranty service.

Haven't had time to do any more performance testing. I have had a "fun" experience getting my display panel replaced... Got word on Friday (8/5) that my replacement display panel is in and they want to do the replacement on Monday (8/8) — today. But, I'm traveling this week so I'm not at home for the tech to stop by and replace the panel. I asked to delay by one week so that I can have the panel replaced next Monday (8/15) when I am back. But... they're only allowed to hold onto the parts for five days, so the longest that I could delay for would be until Friday (8/12) and then they have to send the part back. Which means, I have to basically cancel the service order and put a new one in. In the meantime, my display panel will be shipped around between warehouses unnecessarily. Hopefully, it's not the only spare one that they have on hand now and there won't be any delay with my second service order. The timing was perfectly bad. If they had the display panel ready one day earlier then I could have had it replaced before I left. If they had it ready one day later then I could have delayed the service until Monday (8/15). Not really Dell's fault (though a slightly longer delay period where they could hold onto the part for cases like this would be welcome...). Still seriously considering a replacement of the heatsink assembly but I would still like to see what some other ones look like "in the wild". I do have my 7770 with me so I might find some time to do some testing while traveling. I want to try an extended load on the GPU and see if it has any trouble sustaining 130W, and a CPU/GPU combo load to see if I can replicate what showed up in the Chinese review (55W cap on GPU).

Should be fine, especially if temps are below mid-80s. Without a custom vBIOS it will not let you overclock that far. I ran Quadro K5000M in M6700 overclocked for years with no issues.

...You can also just copy files via network share like you would with any other two PCs on the same LAN.

Huh. Never seen that one before. I'm going to say it looks like it would "probably" work. Might need some thicker thermal pads for those VRMs ("R15") so that they actually contact the heatsink. Turing requires M6800 with eDP panel (not LVDS) or Optimus enabled at all times.

Think you'll still have the issue. Even though there are only two of those, they are in the "Maxwell positions" and not the "Kepler positions". I have comparison photos here. They just left off one that goes where that yellow sticker is. The issue is going to be with the left-most R22 in this picture. It is scooted too far to the center of the card (compared to Kepler) and will hit a protrusion from the heatsink.

You should be able to just copy/paste files between host and VM as well (while the VM is running). I've done it with both Hyper-V and VMware Workstation. (It does require support software in the guest OS; you might have to install a Hyper-V support package for older versions of Windows running in Hyper-V.)

I'm not able to discern any "stroboscopic effect" waving my hand in front of the 7770 (4K/120Hz) panel at low brightness. I checked with MonInfo; looks like it is an AUO panel. (Seems like it wouldn't be that hard to make an OLED panel without PWM since it doesn't even have a backlight... but I've seen stories of OLED panels that do have it and I'm thinking that you probably know the situation better than me. We'll see once someone actually gets one.)

Did you get the cheapest SSD, 256GB? .....Did most everyone else? I wonder if getting the 512GB instead is part of the reason that my system came early.

A few updates for today. Thermals. Nothing yet. I'm trying a few different avenues to see if I can get information on whether the "bend" that we are seeing in the heatpipe is "normal" or not (without actually opening a support case just yet). Display. I've been given an August 10 date for availability of the replacement display panel. I'll be traveling next week so I won't have it replaced then, but hopefully I can get it on the schedule for August 15. Fans. I've made necessary changes to Dell Fan Management to prevent the fans from powering off. In "consistency mode", you can set an RPM threshold. If the fan speed falls below this threshold, the program will load the CPU to nudge the fan speed up. The CPU load thread is very low priority and shouldn't impact anything else running on the system (...though there should not be much running if it wants to run the fans at such a low speed...), and it stops as soon as the fan speed rises above the threshold. It also won't occur if the system is running on battery power. This effectively prevents the fans from shutting off, at the cost of a little bit of power. I've found that 1010 RPM is adequate to prevent the fans from shutting off, but this value might vary by unit. I'll share this update in the DFM thread in a few days, once I've had a chance to polish it up some. I also want to tweak it to distribute the load between cores more randomly.

Eh. I see where you’re coming from, but I’m afraid they’ll jump straight to wanting to replace components, which I’m thinking probably won’t do any good. Same thing, I guess, I’d like to be able to show that “everyone” is having the same trouble before opening a case (need a bigger sample size) so that they’ll be more willing to engage the engineering team rather than just ship out a new heatsink which is the same as the old one.

A few additional notes. Optimus works; on some prior Precision systems including my M6700 and 7560, there have been issues with the NVIDIA GPU not shutting off appropriately when it is not in use. (Numerous users have complained about this here and at NBR and some tricks have emerged to kick it into working properly.) At least for me so far, in this system, the dGPU seems to be shutting off as expected in every case that I have checked so far. Since I care a lot about fan behavior, this one is interesting to me. I'm seeing cases where only one fan is on, which I've never seen in past Precision systems; they've always run both fans at around the same level. It's not always the same fan either; sometimes the first one is on and the second one is off, and sometimes it's the other way around. Even with the CPU speed unlocked (turbo boost enabled) and the system set to "ultra performance" mode, I'm seeing the fans power off completely from time to time. This is generally a good thing. I just don't like the noise they make when they power back on, so I would prefer that they never power off. To keep the fans from powering off, I'll be updating the Dell Fan Management app to allow for configuring a threshold (say 1100 RPM), and if either fan speed falls below that threshold, it will generate some bogus CPU load to nudge them back up. (Best I can come up with unless someone out there actually discovers a proper BIOS interface for "manual" fan control.) I'll set it up so that this only happens if the system is plugged into power, not when its running on battery.

...I don't see what I posted in the quote above as a negative for the cooling system performance; if anything, it's working well enough under light load for the fans to shut off entirely from time to time. (I'm just complaining about the noise that the fans make when they power on...) I also see what you're saying about the "bending marks near the curve", but the guy who posted the Chinese review has the same thing in his system; it may well be just the way it was designed (for better or for worse). I do understand that there's a potential cooling/thermal snafu here and I'm definitely willing to take steps to improve the situation, but I'm not going to do a "stab in the dark"... I'll still wait and see what other users' systems come back looking like. For now, even if performance is not necessarily "optimal", it's still the fastest PC that I've ever personally used, so I'm fine to wait for more information to be available before deciding on a course of action.

See owner's thread.

Eh, I don't mind repasting but liquid metal is a bit out of my comfort zone. I know that it can be used in laptops but I've heard some bad stories, and since I have no experience with applying that at all, not something that I really want to take a chance with. I'll mention that running the GPU at 130W (without that much of a CPU load) doesn't seem like an issue for me. I haven't gotten to thermal throttling stage with the GPU. I'll try to run it a little harder and see how it behaves sometime today. I don't know why it doesn't boost up to 150W, but I wasn't really expecting it to spend much time at that power level; last year's Precision 7760's seemed to behave similarly with a 115W GPU TDP and 140W boost power level which was rarely/never invoked. ———— I've noticed the fans cycling on and off periodically while on a light "office work" load and that's annoying (because of the fan ramp-up sound it makes when the fans come back on). The M6700 did the same thing and I wrote this fan management software mostly just to avoid that. (M6700 was also very reactive with the fans if the CPU load spiked up a little; 7770 doesn't have that problem, it is pretty slow to react.) There doesn't seem to be any option for fan control options for the Precision 7X60/7X70 at this time. For now, I am going to stop running with turbo boost disabled (something I previously did when I didn't need high CPU power, to keep fan speeds low), and see if that will keep the fans from powering off so often. With background jobs moved to the E cores, it seems like the system is happy to continue to operate at a very low fan speed in this configuration. With turbo boost off I was seeing it hang out around 1000 RPM (and there are no speeds below 1000 RPM really, it just shuts the fans off). With turbo boost on it is hanging out more around 1200-1300 RPM, which is still too quiet to hear. (Yes, yes, I did have turbo boost enabled when running Cinebench.)

I did follow up with the support team on the criteria for panel replacement and got basically an apology for what was relayed over to me on the phone when I first put the request in. They will replace panels with one or more bright subpixels. There is a "possible backlog" on the LCD panel replacement that I need, seems like they can't completely figure out the details or ETA during the weekend. (Makes sense, though... given that there still seems to be supply issues around just getting these things out. I can wait.)

Actually, that is exactly what I expected. Performance between 4000 and 5000-level GPU has been basically the same in the Precision line since Quadro P4200/P5200 in the Precision 7730 in 2018. No reason to spend extra on the 5000-level card unless you need the extra vRAM (...actually that's not even a reason anymore since they both have 16GB this time around). This is basically because both cards have the same power limit and they have no issue hitting it. 5000-level gets a teeny efficiency bonus from spreading out the load more and operating more cores at a lower clock speed, but in practice this is less than a 5% performance gain (for a $1000+ upgrade). This time around, A5500/3080Ti have a slightly higher power limit than A4500, at 150W vs. 140W. However, I suspect that we will see all of these GPUs spend most of their time at 130W without entering boost power states (not sure why this is exactly) so it is the exact same issue as past generations. (In my system, I observed a maximum GPU power draw of 130W during 3DMark runs despite the NVIDIA control panel "system information" thing showing 150W as the max). (Side note — I wonder if the 3080Ti power limit can be bumped up by cross-flashing the vBIOS from a different laptop model? There should be plenty to choose from. Even Dell ones from the Alienware lineup.) Which reminds me... I neglected to comment on the GPU prices in my reply above. RTX 3080 Ti costs about $200 more than A4500 and $800 less than A5500 (USD). I saw that the ZBook has 4× NVMe, however, I rather suspect that a HP workstation will cost more for less performance (and other compromises like those you mention and no 17" option)... and, to my knowledge, they are not shipping systems yet. I am considering a repaste to see if that helps. I have no compunction against doing it; I did it many times with my M6700 whenever I needed to remove the heatsink. I was hoping not to disturb the factory paste job so soon, since Dell is supposedly using a better compound at the factory now. I'd still like to wait and see what other 7770 users experience first. However, when I have the tech come and replace my display panel, there's a chance that he will want to disturb the heatsink (I don't think it should be necessary to remove the heatsink to replace the display panel, but @Ionising_Radiation recently mentioned that a tech did so with his Precision 7560). I will make sure to have some quality paste on hand in case he does and I will just do the repaste right then.

First off, note that the smaller system this time around is Precision 7670 and not 7570 (reflecting its 16" display). I've never been one to recommend upgrading just one generation. ...Seems like we're trying to sort out what's up with the thermals, it's a bit early to know if it is really an improvement. RTX 3080 Ti is not available through the web site but you can get it through a sales rep. (This was also the case for RTX 3080 in the 7X60 systems.) (I did add some specs to the top of the post as you suggested.) Thanks for the feedback. I will say, from my perspective, I've never been one worry that much about eeking out every last bit of performance from a system; I just need it to work for what I need it to do. So, I'm not anywhere near a point where I am "dissatisfied" with the 7770 and it is not in danger of being returned (as long as the display issue gets sorted). It is of course leaps and bounds better than my M6700, and even if these Cinebench scores are "low", they top what can be achieved on the prior-gen 11th gen Precision 7760 by a fair margin (as I understand it, 12500-ish before getting into tweaks). My "requirements" for a new laptop are basically thus: Alder Lake HX (for hybrid architecture) + high-end NVIDIA dGPU 128GB RAM Four NVMe slots 17-inch display panel strongly preferred ...There are remarkably few systems out there that hit all of these marks; I'm only aware of two, this one and MSI GT77. I'd prefer to stay with Dell, I have a long history with them and I know what to expect in terms of support (...and GT77's keyboard layout is even worse than 7770's). Four NVMe slots in particular seems to be hard to come by in the current generation models. If there are other systems out there that run Alder Lake HX better but don't hit my other bullet points, then I'm not interested in them... I'll happily trade a bit of performance for the extra storage capacity. That said, I certainly don't want to be leaving performance on the table and if there is something "wrong" here then I would want to address it. So, what I want to do now is basically wait until some more users have 7770's and we can see if they experience the same thing as me. If not, I'll take steps to get mine fixed. If so, then we're looking at something more systemic and maybe an issue with the thermal design. (...I'll also take a look at benchmark results from other Alder Lake HX models, which some of you guys are probably more aware of than me, just to see if maybe we aren't setting expectations a bit too high.)

3DMark links should work now.

This is what things look like a few minutes into a multi-thread Cinebench run. I'll let you guys help with interpretation, but... CPU (P cores) went up to almost 4.9 GHz but then settled down at around 2.6 GHz. Similar story with E cores, just lower frequencies. Temperatures in the low 90's for most cores, seems like there is a little bit of thermal headroom (but a few cores are up around 100 °C). ...Is "CPU package power" what I want to be looking at for the CPU's power use? It never went much above 75W. (Fans were running full tilt even if it took about a minute for them to get there.)

Thanks for that link. I actually wrote back to the guy who I spoke with earlier and pointed this out. I'll keep this on hand in case they give me grief about a second replacement (if the replacement comes in and still has an issue). Regarding the fan, it is a bit disappointing that this is a "regression" in fan behavior from Precision 7X60, but in reality I doubt it will be much of a problem in practice; the fans likely won't often turn all of the way off unless you are limiting the CPU speed. In any case, I don't know if it could be fixed in firmware but I'm sure that @Dell-Mano_G will stop by eventually and take note of the feedback. [Edit] I submitted a support ticket.