SvenC

We are limited to business laptops with support contracts for quick inhouse repairs in case of HW problems in the company. I would like 17" with 16:10 display ratio. Leaned towards an XPS 17 but those are not available in Germany any more. XPS 16 is crap with that new keyboard with touchbar - so I hoped that 7680 might be the next best choice...

I hardly found reviews on the 7680 and 7780. Some reports on high temperatures and short battery times. How satisfied are the owners of 7680 and 7780 here with thermals and battery time? PS: I am only interested in CPU, so I would go with iGPU or the smallest dGPU - in case that makes the difference when it comes to high thermals.

I used Hyper-V on Windows 10 and was able to undervolt. I switched to Windows 11 about a year ago, so that might have changed. But Windows 10 versions from 2022 and older allowed undervolting with Hyper-V activated.

In my experience its Windows 11 which blocks undervolting, not the BIOS of the 7740. With Windows 10 and Throttlestop or XTU I could undervolt, with Windows 11 I can't. Here are some hints to changed virtualization features of Windows 11 which disable undervolting: Undervolting with hypervisor / virtual machine for WSL2 - Microsoft Community

The slow startups when a charger is plugged seems similar to the behavior I noticed when using a power adapter with less power then recommended. I tried using 90w and130w adapters with my previous 6xxx and the current 7xxx and IIRC they throttled down to 400 Mhz. Booting with a lower wattage adapter took "forever" when throttled that much. Maybe the new BIOS has a bug in determining the connected power adapter?

Yes, both LEDs turn on with my WD19DC after installing BIOS 1.27.0 - installed on 14th of August, no problems so far. So, for me nothing got worse with the Dock, but a "sometimes failure" has not disappeared: when Windows turns of the display after x minutes of inactivity, sometimes (seldom, like once a week or less) only my builtin display awakes when I start using the laptop, but my two external displays connected to the WD19DC stay black. I have to disconnect and reconnect the dock to get the external display working again. I wait a few seconds before reconnecting, as I had BSODs with Windows 11 if I unplug and plug without a delay. Seems some driver is not happy when device changes occur too quickly...

Do you install Linux side by side with Windows with a boot loader to choose the OS or do you switch or enable/disable SSDs to have only one system bootable? I guess using the Windows boot loader with bitlocker and PIN enabled can make it difficult to multi boot Windows and Linux installations?

Is it the 2.5 SSD which disappears sometimes? I had an issue with some Crucial 2.5" SATA SSDs a few years back, which needed a "power cycle" to come back to life, like described here: usb - Power cycling SSD drive - Super User - so it is a bit different than your case, where the SSD comes back without those power cycle steps.

Man, yet another abbreviation in the ever evolving GPU wonderland- "Deep Learning Super Sampling" - deep and super and learn - must be good 🙂 And nice to read that someone else says 1440p is (or should be) enough for gamers to save about 50% GPU load compared to UHD - when the kiddies out there fight for their right to play nothing less than 4K 😉

Do you want "OLED only" or "OLED as a choice"? Is OLED image burn in not an issue any more?

Display resolution for 18" seems debatable but the ratio 16:10 seems to be preferred. Seems that 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1600 and 3840 x 2400 are on the wishlist of people. My preferred one would still be 1920 x 1200 with enough brightness to work outside some of my time and with least power usage if working without direct sunlight. I read multiple times that modern displays with QHD+ and UHD+ hardly use more power than FHD+ - well, I still think that a modern FHD+ will use less power than QHD+ and would have less needs for a more capable GPU - but I guess I would go with that if that gets us 16:10 on 18" 🙂

Will that be a new USB-C power adapter from Dell only, or is that following the USB-C 2.1 spec which supports up to 240W? Any chance to get my WD19DC dock working as 165W power supply for a 5680? Still hoping for a 5880 or 5890 or XPS18 with 1920x1200 or 2560x1600 and brightness above 400 cd/m2 better above 450 for outdoor usage - maybe next time 🙂

I guess you are using Windows 10 to get undervolting working with TS? I was under the impression "Windows 11 blocks undervolting - at least if you need HyperV or any kind of virtualization support" TS shows me -106.4mV (CPU) on the Offset Voltage slider (Unlock Adjustable Voltage is checked). Is that value informational or effective? I am on Win11 22H2 and i7-9750h?

No XPS 18" - that indicates no 5000 Precision 18" as well - too bad - only Alienware m18 which makes no sense if you do not want a dGPU - maybe in 2024 with Meteor Lake and a new chassis generation - hope dies last...

Maybe Dell waits with the anouncement of a redesigned Precision 5600 (XPS 16) and 5800 (XPS 18) with good old 16:10 display ratios 🙂