Kitje

The CPU fan has its dreaded rattling again. Is it possible for the rotor of the fan to lose its magnetism? And also when I cleaned it with a swab, black residue came off and I wasn't sure what it really was.

Yes, but the problem I was facing at the time was being unable if at all source an M2200, since the price for a card was too high. It didn't occur to me about the Polaris BIOS Editor, until recently being the point of this post/topic.

Just bought a new 6 cell battery direct from Dell, which is the first step of getting this laptop more capable being off the mains. Next up a new 500GB SSD. 😄 I'll probably give the Dell OS Recovery utility thing a go, too. Just to give it the OEM treatment. EDIT: Yikes, just moments after checking out I'm given a different part number and the battery itself is different from the one I added to cart. Can't cancel it now, and it's not a good look directly from Dell either. I'm gonna have to figure out what to do now because this isn't normal.

Speaking of fan control, has anyone tried adjusting the fan settings in Polaris BIOS editor for a WX4150? My GPU keeps hitting 90c and the fans kick in then... But I want it to happen much earlier than 75c otherwise I'm constantly having to wait until it kicks in properly. I looked at Polaris BIOS editor and the threshold for the fans seem to be at 90. EDIT: Been toying with the Polaris editor and now got the fan to kick in earlier... I'm still tuning it until it fully kicks in at 75C. So far it's still functioning just fine with the current parameters at 80C, at least it's not 90 anymore.

And maybe the other benefit that if the GPU you have dies, you don't have the replace the entire board. I have 3 laptops that use MXM: My M4800, my Zbook 15 G2 and my MSI GT640 (which I need to get it running with an M5100).

So it's been a while... After attempting once to get the bezel off, it's not really that feasible without having to remove the assembly and that may be the only way to actually replace the screen. I'm going to put in the ZBook's current IPS panel into it, and reinstall what the Zbook originally had, since I don't really do critical stuff on it now. I also have found screws that seem to fit the screwholes for the palmrest assembly and battery, not the same colour but still there's some assurance it won't fall apart now.

A used Dell Precision 7540. Needs more work done to it but it's in decent shape despite the missing screws and heavily worn SSD and battery.

I own a Zbook 15 G2 in conjunction with 2 Dell Precisions, and the initial upgrade I made to the Zbook was installing an HP branded AMD Radeon Pro WX4150. I ran into problems, though. Mainly because fan control was non-existent and would keep it at max unless you run NotebookFanControl. Now the Zbook has an M2000M it's running fine. A while later I put it into the M4800, and before flashing the Dell version, I dumped the original VBIOS. I didn't have a utility to view but PolarisBiosEditor allowed me to and in the fan section I saw this: Fan control doesn't look right does it? Might be the reason why the fan wasn't behaving as it should but I've never tried adjusting what's there to work properly with the EC in the HP back then. Maybe someday I'll put the WX4150 back in and try flashing with modifications to the fan control yet I might not be successful getting anywhere.

Oh dear, seems whoever was in this laptop last forgot plenty of screws... Especially for a laptop of this calibre. Time to hunt replacements. There are sets, but I think I need a specific type, and I know Dell lists them on the maintenance manual. What's missing seems to be for the palmrest, and battery. Some seemed quite tightly fastened too so that was a bit difficult but they're not too bad. There were two screws that didn't look like they belonged to the laptop, but I got those ones out. This is quite a first for me from a refurbisher.

That's strange. The 7530 manual says doing it completely and the 7540 as much as possible. But alright. I am worried about causing some discharge and damaging the mainboard as a result, since it's not simply just releasing from the lock mechanism on the older Precisions.

Ah alright. And since the battery needs to be apparently discharged before disconnecting, how far should it be until its safe to do so?

The manual states that I need to discharge the battery as much as possible before disconnecting it. You don't need to in the M4800 but in the 7540, is it still necessary? Also I'm not sure if you can remove the bezel without having to take the display assembly off.

Yeah it doesn't look like it'll be as easy as the M4800, or Zbook 15 G2... Although it's reminiscent of removing the Zbook's though. Secondhand images show some adhesive around it. Even then, the bezel of my Zbook reattached fine despite a cut finger or two.

Sorry for the bump, a newcomer for a recently acquired 7540. Finding the LCD in mine quite dim and lifeless, especially for an IPS. I was reading the maintenance guide and saw this: Disposable? Really? Does that mean it intentionally breaks?

I've bought a panel from Screenarama before and was sent the panel I was looking for. I think it was either luck or they do stock the panels they list on Amazon. The panel in my M4800 is an Innolux N156HHE-GA1 was what I was looking for due to specs, and works fine.

Those are X-brackets. Some new or used GPUs don't come with one meaning you have to take the one from your old card off or getting a new one with some adhesive to attach it with. I think my WX-4150 did not come with a bracket so I had to purchase one from eBay and upon discovering it had no adhesive I also bought a roll to adhere to the card. Fiddly process...

I ended up going with an i7 9750H RTX 3000 Precision 7540, and it seems that I'll be working on yet another laptop. It's in better condition than I thought it'd be but now it means there are three items needing to be replaced. It'll be LCD, SSD and a new battery over time. Since it has USB-C Thunderbolt 3, and while it has something akin to an RTX 3060, docking with an eGPU won't be so difficult. Although I wouldn't recommend doing what I do, it's a learning experience either way. Not perfect, but at least it has some benefits I wanted. Feels just as solid as my current two machines.

So I've been looking on eBay for second hand units and stumbled on a RTX 3000 Dell Precision 7540. It's tempting but unsure if anyone has compared it to an RTX 2070/3060/3050. It's almost perfect except I'm unsure of anyone's experience with them.

Looked into the Legion 5 Pro 16in, but discovered the fan noise emission is too high for me. Looked into the Dell G15, the reviews weren't positive on Dell's site and build quality doesn't seem great. The Dell G16 looks enticing but Dell isn't selling it in the UK. Ugh. I looked into the ThinkPad T15g second hand but for some reason the price is overinflated for such a model that doesn't have anything other than gaming orientated specifications, even a last gen RTX... This is silly, it shouldn't be this difficult to filter out the good systems that don't outright deny you on repairability and the artificial price hike. Considering what I'm doing now with Unreal Engine 5 the system I'm currently on is definitely showing its age.

Drivers updated? Also, you haven't taken off the bezel of your unit when you checked what kind of LCD you have, no? It could be something slightly loose where the camera is plugged into above the LCD. That could be a culprit.

I think it should work with hybrid, because then the iGPU would be driving the LCD. Output should be fine via DP and HDMI though.

They're slightly tinnier than the M4800, and not as great, but still listenable. Man I'd actually appreciate a raytracing GPU in the M4800. Shame there's no type-A MXM that does such a thing.

In my case the M4800 has a 120Hz panel in it and is a little flaky with the BIOS settings if they're defaulted. I have to leave CSM on and SecureBoot off otherwise while it does POST, there's no output until it's in Windows.

There's some pro and cons about it. It might be quite a list, might not but: Pros: Thunderbolt 2 eDP models, none of the LVDS transition to eDP like Dell Uses the later NGFF/M.2 format More BIOS security on some models, even BIOS recovery Doesn't use the rubber coating on the palmrest Cons: Servicing requires more disassembling, even for replacing a fan Fewer GPU support (anything newer AMD cards causes the fan to be 100% unlike Nvidia) Single fan Uses 2260 size drives, harder to find MUX with any new "unsupported" GPU results in black screen, always need Hybrid graphics on and secureboot off, might be the same for the M4800) Buying a Zbook that came with i5 dual core resulted in 2 memory banks instead of 4, I don't think Dell did this with the M4800 (?) Initially, the WX-4150 thats in the Dell now was for the Zbook, but discovered a setback with the thermal management. It wouldn't control the fan, resulting in 100% all the time. Now I don't know if it's a result of the VBIOS, because fan control in the Polaris BIOS Editor had flaky looking settings there... NotebookFanControl would've been needed but at the same time it wasn't worth it. I ended up with an M2000M in place of its original K610M. So the WX4150 was flashed with the Dell VBIOS and drivers installed without a hiccup. When I bought the machine, thinking "oh, 8GB RAM, no big deal" since it said on the listing on eBay, I got more than that. I booted to the BIOS and found out it was populated with 24GB RAM and a 4G LTE WWAN card. Needed a new lid and a new heatsink for a GPU upgrade and a new battery too, so it's almost fully upgraded.