Dell Pro Max 16/18 Plus (2025 model) pre-release discussion — MB16250, MB18250

[AL123]

5 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

The GPU card fits in the top-right area (viewing from the bottom), a custom form factor DGFF card like they've been doing for several years now. It can be seen in the manual. (Tossed some pictures from the manual in the spoiler block below.)

 

The only new thing here to me is that it appears to be double-stacked over part of the motherboard (but not directly above the CPU). You can see the double-stacking best in the second-to-last image in @AL123's post above. Stacking the dGPU card on top of the motherboard is not that new, it was standard design when Dell was using MXM cards (2017 systems and earlier), but this is the first time that I have seen it since they switched to DGFF.

 

When the Qualcomm AI thing is available, my understanding is that it will also be a DGFF card fitting in the same space, so you'll have to pick between it or an NVIDIA GPU.

 

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I’d certainly like a better idea of how this stacking is arranged, not brave enough to take these apart any further though! 
 

I can try and take some more pictures around that area when I am back in the office though. 

[AL123]

5 hours ago, yslalan said:

Well, it’s kind of hard to say. Those AI Chips are not a new model (advertised as dNPUs). In the Pro Max-Plus series, Dell is using the solution from Qualcomm shipped in H1 2021 (a pair of AI 100 Pro chips), but four years have already passed, and there hasn’t been much presence in industrial usage.

ah didn’t realise it was that old,  perhaps the first gen might be a bit limited but hopefully a sign dell are looking to innovate.

 

i think the NVIDIA spark / Dell Pro Max GB10 will make more sense, 128GB or 256 if you join two together 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/products/workstations/dgx-spark/
 

so small you could jsut pop in your bag,

 

5 hours ago, yslalan said:

Well, it’s kind of hard to say. Those AI Chips are not a new model (advertised as dNPUs). In the Pro Max-Plus series, Dell is using the solution from Qualcomm shipped in H1 2021 (a pair of AI 100 Pro chips), but four years have already passed, and there hasn’t been much presence in industrial usage.

 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

40 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

they made a decision of function over form here

I’m not sold on the idea that this form will hold up under sustained heavy loads. Mobile chassis designs already have minimal wiggle room, and if the trade-off here is improve latency over optimizing thermals, I’d take optimizing thermals—because once temps spike, latency will happen anyway. Lower latency isn’t much of a win if the rest of the system is cooking itself. That’s not just counterproductive, it’s self-defeating in the long run.

[yslalan]

7 hours ago, AL123 said:

small you could jsut pop in your bag

Yea, I am awaiting news about the Nvidia N1x SoC, which is based on the same architecture as GB10 but targeted towards the laptop market. Hopefully, it's Linux and Windows on Arm compatible. 

[AL123]

14 hours ago, yslalan said:

Yea, I am awaiting news about the Nvidia N1x SoC, which is based on the same architecture as GB10 but targeted towards the laptop market. Hopefully, it's Linux and Windows on Arm compatible. 

Ah I hadn’t heard about that one, would be more aligned with the dominance NVIDIA have in that market along with partnership Dell have with them.

 

perhaps the focus on AI will also mean we will see a mid life increase in graphics memory per ampere mobile where they doubled many of the capacities of the range IIRC. just not sure if the memory density will allow for that in such a small space to cram them in and cool the chips.