What parts are needed to "add" discrete GPU to 7730 (or maybe 7740 too)

[Goophy69]

Anyone knows what parts needed to add a discrete GPU for Dell Precision 7730?

Any difference between 7730 and 7740, difference between Nvidia and AMD cards?

 

From some brief search, the heat sink appears to be the same.

Machines shipped with only the intel graphic will have a filler/blank board in place of the discrete card; this "blank" board also connects the HDMI and mDP ports on the rear side of the machine.

 

So for the machines shipped with only intel graphic, does the heat sink (the gpu part of it) has thermal paste and pads applied?

 

Pending list of parts needed:

2x interconnect thing with 2 screws (since the filler has 1 already, and the real gpu card needs 3)

potentially some thermal pads and paste.

the power cable by the looks of it?

Anything else?

 

Considering buying an used laptop, which could be a 7730/7740 without discrete GPU;

wanna get a feel of what's needed to add discrete gpu (for future upgrade).

Thanks anyway

[Aaron44126]

Yeah, you have the parts list right, plus I believe a different heatsink/fan assembly is actually needed as well.

I didn't think there are any AMD card options for these systems?  Or maybe it wasn't until Precision 7X50 that Dell dumped AMD GPUs...

 

At the time, there was a fair amount of attention on NBR around using Precision 7540 GPUs in the Precision 7530, which works fine (but does run into NVIDIA driver INF mod issues that you have with any such "unsupported" GPU upgrade).  In Precision 7540, the RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 GPUs use a different heatsink than the lower-end NVIDIA GPUs (which also use a different heatsink than you'd see in an iGPU-only system).  You are able to take the heatsink from the Precision 7540 and install it in the Precision 7530 as well to make those high-end GPUs work.

 

I would think it is a safe bet that Precision 7740 GPUs would work fine in the Precision 7730.

[nforce4max]

7730 and 7740 have the option of using AMD and there is a specific heatsink however it is expensive like $90 from the few I've seen on eBay. For good bang for the buck the RTX 3000 at $130 from the 7740 at least in the US is a solid option however you'll need to find the appropriate heatsink then you should be set. I only learned this over the past day as I've been shopping and was looking into getting an 7730 myself however ended up just getting a 7740 instead.

[Goophy69]

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Yeah, you have the parts list right, plus I believe a different heatsink/fan assembly is actually needed as well.

I didn't think there are any AMD card options for these systems?  Or maybe it wasn't until Precision 7X50 that Dell dumped AMD GPUs...

Didn't know they would use different heat sinks;

with the heatsink added, I better just look for one that came with dGPU since the overall cost of parts likely exceeds the initial savings of buying an iGPU-only machine.

 

I''m only interested in 17" models; dGPUs are compatible between 15" and 17" but from memory I came across a GPU upgrade post that said they use different vBIOS that have different power-limits. Should be an easy fix to flash the 17" vBIOS into a card that came from a 15" machine anyway.

 

1 hour ago, nforce4max said:

7730 and 7740 have the option of using AMD and there is a specific heatsink

I read the specs sheet / service manual, noticed they have AMD options too, didn't really check if they use different heatsink..

(if really desperate, could search various service tag numbers and check their factory configs, lookup the heatsink DPNs etc..)

with the 3+ parts needed for adding or changing(between A and N), I'm leaning toward buying one that came with Nvidia anyway.

At this point I'm looking at either 7720 or 7740 too.

7720 for the old docking port that I already have, 7740 has Turing while 7730 has Pascal..

 

 

Anyway, not an urgent need, somewhat reluctant to spend too much on a computer these days (hardware performance already exceeded my daily needs), just keeping an eye on various auctions 🫠