Are the Precision 7780 fans loud?

[James_uk]

Hi, I am on the look out for a new Laptop.

I currently have a Dell G5 5500 laptop, which has Intel i7 10750H CPU, 16gb Ram, 1TB SSD and Geforce 2070 Max-Q graphics.

When I got the laptop it was mainly for work and occasional gaming (nothing serious).
I have found the whole time I have had it, to be soo loud, even when literally doing nothing.

Its set to balanced mode in the alienware app.
I am not sure if precision laptops have a similar way to set a performance profile? if they do, does it go loud when set to performance?

There are times i am sitting watching the TV and the laptop is just on (doing nothing) and people will say it is raining outside, and i'm like, ha no thats my laptop!

So, I am going to sell that laptop to someone that would want it more for serious gaming, but my real worry is, the newer laptops are more powerful etc, so are they going to be as loud / louder.

Or not as loud due to the precision not being aimed at gamers / newer technology etc..

Or if I am not going to be gaming a lot, and certainly not with any games that need high performance, would i be best with the integrated graphics?

If anyone has this model or similar, are they loud in comparison to the g5 5500?

Regards

James

[Aaron44126]

I had a Precision 7770 and I never thought it was that loud with an "idle" or "office" workload.  I cared more about the very noticeable noise that the CPU fan made when cycling on after having the fan off for a while.  (On an "idle" workload it does tend to cycle the fan off and on periodically.)  I am not sure if Precision 7780 fans still make this noise.

 

Anyway, for years I have been limiting the CPU speed of my laptops to keep the fan speed and thermals under control when I am not using them for serious work.  See the link in my signature about options for quick ways to toggle turbo boost on and off.  You do not need the CPU to be in turbo boost if you are just doing light work or watching videos, and you can just turn it on if you want to use the system for gaming (ideally with ANC headphones!).

[6730b]

If of any remote interest (it's a 15" and some years old now) my Precision 5540 I7 is remarkably silent (highly appreciated).

Even when quite hot (like at the bottom cover), fans won't start until having a very good reason to do so, ie real \ sustained use of cpu\gpu. & no coil whine and that sort of thing.

So "completely silent under light work\internet browsing\picture editing\idle etc" laptops exists, problem, one must usually buy first then find out if lucky or not.
 

[iieeann]

it can be loud under load, and quiet at light work.

Anyway noone buy this laptop just for light work.

It has similar power profiles selection. 

If Internal graphic is enabled, the likelihood of noise is slightly lower.  When discrete graphic card is in active, the noise is back to the same.

If internal graphic is disabled, the laptop has higher chance to become noisy.

 

Battery life is terrible even with light work, will not last more than 1 hr.

[James_uk]

Because I dont really game much, and when i do, integrated graphics would be able to handle because it's not games that require anything major. I was thinking of getting the 7780 without a dedicated graphic card, and maybe just use integrated.

Do you think that would pretty much make it a quiet laptop if that was the case?

Or do you think, for a machine like this, it's a bit of a waste to not get dedicated graphics as well?

 

If you choose just integrated graphics, can some be added later if needed, or would the whole cooling system be different if I chose the integrated model from the start?

 

James

[iieeann]

Dell won't sell this laptop without dedicated graphic card, u need to choose the cheapest card to get it.  the heatsink will not be the same as higher grade card, u will need to look for heatsink separately if u were to buy better graphic card later.

 

This laptop boot 10 times longer than consumer laptop.  If u are fine with that then it is ok.  I simply hate it, I have an XPS side by side, open the lid and windows logon will appear in few seconds.  7780 is 1 min.  The laptops are from complete shutdown, i am anti sleep/hibernate.

 

The heat does not come from GPU, but majority from CPU.  if u want quieter, choose slower CPU. 

[James_uk]

Thanks for your reply, it doesn't have to be a workstation as such,  on the system builder though, it was one of the only systems that actually did let me build it without a dedicated card, and allowed me to just chose integrated graphics. That's why I had been looking at it.

 

How come it takes so long to boot?

 

I just feel really nervous spending money now as I don't know what the fan noise is going to be like, that's why I am trying to get rid of my g5 5500. Never really had this issue when buying laptops before, but they mostly all seem like the newer ones will all be really noisy when fans are running.

 

I didn't really want to buy a slower one as such though.

 

The dell system builder let me build the below:

 

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, iieeann said:

Dell won't sell this laptop without dedicated graphic card

 

Dell has been selling these with an integrated GPU option for a while now, since Precision 7X30...  dGPU is no longer a requirement.

 

If the web site won't let it spec it out how you like, try going through a sales rep, they have a bit more flexibility sometimes.  You can probably get it cheaper that way, anyway.  I saved around 20% off of the web price of my (high-spec) Precision 7770 by going through a sales rep.

 

You can always order the system, check it out, and then return it if you find it unsatisfactory.  I believe there is a 30-day return window.

 

I get the worrying about the fans.  Probably buying a system with an HX-class 55W CPU is not the best if you want it to be quiet.  (And this is one thing I love about my MacBook Pro... I never hear a peep from the fans unless I am doing gaming or video encoding or something intense like that.)

[James_uk]

Well from reading online, this seem to show that the newer geforce gpu's such as rtx 4060 etc run very quiet and even have a silent mode within the settings. I looked at my current nvidia control panel settings on my rtx 2070 maxq angel there was no stuck quiet setting unfortunately.

 

Not sure if that's right?

I could potentially get a lower end rtx card, which is newer than I have now though, so long as it maybe had the option for quiet mode.

 

Not something I knew much about prior to just reading about it just now.

 

Not sure which series of card that option would start at though, if anyone knows?

[iieeann]

oic, nowadays integrated card is acceptable.

About the long boot, precision series is the highest grade business laptop for consumer, rich with the security features. next grade after this might be military grade.

The laptop needs to initialize many things during boot, causing the long delay.  I have not researched on how to disable those features to fast boot it. 

[James_uk]

Do any of you guys run your RTX card in 'quiet' mode then, and if you do does that suppress the noise from the CPU alone?

 

Aaron, you also mentioned about the 55W cpu im looking at also isn't the best for noise, from that aspect, do you know if in i7 13th Gen or even an i7 or i9 from the 12th gen would be better?

Or would an AMD Ryzen be better for this?

 

I know this laptop doesn't have a ryzen option, but i could look at other options maybe if thats the case.

[Aaron44126]

55 minutes ago, James_uk said:

Aaron, you also mentioned about the 55W cpu im looking at also isn't the best for noise, from that aspect, do you know if in i7 13th Gen or even an i7 or i9 from the 12th gen would be better?

 

If you want a lower-powered CPU, you need to avoid HX CPUs.  These are repackaged desktop CPU dies and even the low-end ones will run to the thermal limit in a laptop.  You could look at a system with H series CPUs which are actually designed for laptops (XPS 17, Precision 5680)... or maybe even U series.  Honestly, if your workload isn't CPU demanding and you don't need a high-end dGPU, there are a lot of options and maybe you don't need the absolute fastest laptop CPU?

 

Note — HX CPUs were only a thing starting with 12th gen.  Before that, "H" was the top laptop CPU available (like the one you have in your 10th-gen system).  They basically rebranded 45W H to HX starting with 12th gen, and the 12th/13th-gen H CPUs are lower tier similar to the 35W H from prior generations.

 

Unfortunately I am not able to point to or provide feedback on what the fan behavior is like on any specific models, including AMD systems; I have been using exclusively Precision 7000-series systems for the last many years, until just recently when I got the MacBook Pro.  (I've posted elsewhere about my reasoning for switching but I am largely fed up with the PC/laptop ecosystem, both because of the direction Microsoft is going with Windows 11 and because of the overall direction that laptop hardware is going in general... and your complaints about "idle workload" noise here definitely play into what pushed me off as well.)

[James_uk]

Thanks Aaron and others for your help and advice with this.