MyPC8MyBrain

tried to mess with that EFI value got my system lagging and slowed down to a crawl for whatever reason, I think the name is misleading and that's some current protection element,

seem to be RW and is unlocked on my system with bios 1.8.0

i do this for every system i receive, no need to remove the drive though just press F12 as soon as system shows sign of life, i use Acronis boot media on usb drive to load a low level backup software, you can backup to external drive, takes 5 min to take a snapshoot regardless of Dell leniency it will not void warranty from any manufacturer. sidenote: read up on the 7X70 line discussion on here before you jump head first,

came across another issue, turned on classic power schema, on ultimate power plan when i unplug my power the entire screen starts flickering, until power is plugged back in the system is unusable, anyone else using classic and can check this? (bios is on cool)

interesting... for the first time ever i wanted to see what modern standby is like so i didn't disable it out of the box, i did disable modern sleep and pagefile functions but kept the one power schema they try to drive all power options under, it functions but far from being smooth and its kind of annoying,

been having issues with system not putting brightness back to where it should, I actually exposed the settings in power management so I can manually set 40 brightness when on power supply and 85 when plugged in, whenever the cycle happens the system ignores the values and places brightness randomly where it wants, each time I plug in and out I have to manually put brightness back to 85, I have auto brightness and presence awareness off in bios and any windows app, I think windows modern standby schema is bugged out, I should be better of with old classic stable power schema for the time being,

anyone is seeing brief rapid brightness flicker across the entire screen? (7770 with 120 refresh and 4k screen option), this is random not very frequent but still happens the entire screen flashes as if increasing brightness to max rapidly then stops back to normal steady brightness, it doesn't go black at any point just flicker brightness to max 100 few times (brightness is set to 85 with blue filter and HDR on, i tried turning them off didn't help), this is mainly happens when i bring up a white blank screen, i hope this is a driver issue not hardware related,

i have to say not impressive at all, the graphs clearly show the heat is ramping that system down its knees half way through the bench, here's one my 3DMARK results from 12950HX with 3080Ti which are not far off, and my score is not even average for the hardware segment, my CPU score is actually better and my unit is still with Dell's crappy paste, this is off a none gaming platform (Dell Precision 7770 with dGpu TGP @ 150 and 240w power supply), benched on my desk with 74c ambiant https://www.3dmark.com/spy/34145892

we get that now on the 7770 and it doesn't sound like a jet taking off at all (not even by longshot), id expect more in the 30k (+) CB23 range out of the box from intel 13xxxHX line,

that's a 20% generational improvement, my current 12950HX can get to 25.5k on CB23 (I'm pretty sure it can be pushed beyond that score with LM TIM),

that driver appears to be a year old, generally speaking you want to stay away from Intel's Dynamic Tuning, especially when undervolting or overclocking (i have the service manually disabled),

is it crucial that we have these for those who cant afford it? or is it so crucial can use the difference to make more modules they can sell?

that is correct, i am on the sixth 12950HX/3080Ti combo unit, the last unit which i decided to keep out of the box was behaving completely different to the point i had to confirm the cpu sku was correct, every unit before was just out of control temp wise doing nothing at idle every single one of them idle at 90-100c out of the box, this unit was idling below 70c on Dells default factory settings and before they issued the latest bios with load line calibration fix, this cpu sample is also able to withhold over -150mV undervolt across Performance, Cache, and Efficiency cores (i run with -125mV very stable), during idle and non heavy tasks temps are in the 30-36c range (images below as i type this), on this system i am still with Dell's original paste job, with every prior cpu i had no choice but to replace Dell's paste (i tested stability with LM TIM on CPU and CPU/GPU), i was not expecting the current unit to perform different then the others did (and today is my last day out of 30), but it totally did to the point that i decided to keep it,

@Aaron44126 there's a connector on the power module that on my system connects to nothing (top left yellow area), on the SC logic board there's also an empty port connected to nothing on my system (bottom center'ish yellow area), if you look closely there are trace marking on the back of the keyboard, and chassis traces around the bottom area where the SC logic board open port is, i think there is another ribbon bridging between the two for full fingerprint functionality with ControlVault keys, if you have both option on your system when you're back in there i think you should be able to spot if there a ribbon up there, edit: found the 7770 service manual here, scanned through it, they elaborate on every part accept for that little logic board which seem to be part of the palm rest itself (as in glued in place, see page 87), the traces I noticed are for the gps antenna cables, also in none of the images in the entire service manual nothing is connected to that open port on the middle logic board where SC connects or to the open port on the power button module,

plausible, i cant recall if something else is interacting with that logic board beside the SC, they are each connected independently to the main board with different ribbon, the blue tab right above your arrow is the ribbon link to the main board when its in place, in the 7670 the fingerprint ribbon is actually routed differently from the 7770 (red poly), but still connect to the board through a separate interface (the 7770 is similar only the tab is more to the left) the yellow denote where the SC is interfacing with main board physically, id think that logically they should be able to operate as individual components regardless of lane sharing driver designation (ControlVault is just a software component), Edit: I think the price in difference is after all justified, there are 3 or 4 different fingerprint models with and without FIPS encryption and other security elements involved in hardening the system and data it holds when needed, the non-FIPS costs $36 while the full FIPS one is at $136 even on Dells site,

i opted to not include fingerprint for my system configuration, i did get the Smart Card Reader option, i think the two components are just sharing the lane, Device by type view device by connection view

indeed i was surprised too, the sku seem to be used across few models, a deeper search on eBay will yield half what you initially found (still outrageous imho), SC has its own dedicated ribbon connected to a separate logic board off the mainboard, what you are looking in the image is below the battery and the plastic cradle that holds the M.2 bays, the two elements appear to be independent (main board is out in the image below, keyboard is still in place),

seems relatively easy to access, its located right under the fans, and above a small removable port module board on the right side,

@craigeryjohn i thought you will need to replace the entire keyboard, looks like the power button is not part of the main keyboard layout, should be fairly easy to swap with fingerprint power button (part number X029X) here is a closeup of the part sku (maybe you could scan the barcode to find the exact part number)

on the topic of CAMM since Dell marketing paid so many influencers recently to promote their CAMM module i did my reading and i cant help but lmao, how is it possible that so many clueless marketing personnel and executives signed off on this campaign blowing Dells money out the windows with a educational campaign why "shorter traces" is key and should be explain to the masses why they should adopt CAMM modules, what a bunch of degenerates, all they needed to explain in layman's terms is that even one physical CAMM module operate at quad channel speed over So-DIMM max dual channel speeds, So-DIMM also requires at least two modules to operate in dual channel speeds. (without even getting into other module benefits, just about everyone can understand these simple perceived benefits)

the traces leg argument this new schema argues it is so-called solving is again (in my view) a big marketing hype keeping away from asking the right question... so what happens to all other board traces if only ram traces are optimized for lower latency and other are not? unless all components operate at these speeds with same "short" traces benefits everything else will bottleneck, we already far surpassed diminishing returns point for what hardware can do in a mobile chassis atm, physics hasn't changed last I checked so where is the heat is going with 16 efficacy cores and 8 performance cores? it is inevitable that intel will shortly release 16 efficiency 16 performance for mobile chips too, i wish manufactures focused on optimizing their hardware little more like apple rather then follow a pointless eye candy hype for a premium,

before everyone panics... this is a factoring limitation when Microsoft Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) feature is enabled (this feature can be disabled manually) some applications might not work properly ( @Aaron44126 the article i read mentions some features will not work properly when this is enabled one of these is "Manual fan speed control might not work."), i think this issues been addressed for us already and why we cannot run virtualization with undervolting atm,

great minds think alike 😉 I will miss the days when Dell was synonymous with quality and Precision meant uncompromised performance.

that will render the 7X70 platform and many other with lackluster cooling solution unusable and pointless. this only effects 12th gen cpu?

you've taken the devils advocate angle more than once now, make me think you're a lawyer or a detective or something in those lines 😄 technically you cannot cause physical component damage when undervolting, even in unskilled hands, overvolt is another story but no one is overvolting an overheating laptop, the trend is to undervolt to make it useable, as for few bad apples, it is no different from one buying a new car and abusing it under warranty, nowhere is mentioned that one is not suppose to open his machine or make adjustment, if they are reading their sales metrics trying to correlate losses/returns they should look inside instead of coming up with nonsense, bottom line is... if Dell did their job in the first place none of this would be necessary.