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

[yslalan]

On 4/3/2026 at 1:59 PM, whyshchuck said:

Yes, it did.

No I have my motherboard an gpu replaced by dell technician but it didn't help.

What helped was forcing computer to use GPU for external screens.

But still no ports in TCC:

Do you see yours here?

 

 

 

This control centre has been deprecated. All settings for USB4 device(i.e., USB4 and USB4V2) have been moved to the USB submenu under Windows Settings. 

 

All CPU-integrated Thunderbolt 4 controllers (except for TigerLake CPU), and dedicated Thunderbolt 9000 series(TB4 & TB5) controllers are recognized as USB4/USB4V2 under Windows.

[yslalan]

On 4/10/2026 at 8:29 AM, Aaron44126 said:

Dell hasn't implemented Advanced Optimus into these workstations.

It does support and works pretty well on Pro Max Plus. 

[JRS]

On 4/23/2026 at 11:48 AM, river rocket said:

My Xeon 7760 with RTX5000 died this week, so I replaced it with a Pro Max 18 Plus Ultra 9 285HX RTX PRO 3000.  So far, I'm very happy with the new workstation.   I use it mostly for SolidWorks (small assemblies) and Video editing for a YouTube channel I run.     

 

I pulled the bottom cover off, started looking at the storage, and I’m trying to figure out if anyone is actually running a Gen5 NVMe in one of these.  Which led me to this site and post.   

 

Dell only offers up to 2TB now, no 4TB option anymore (was available). My assumption is that’s thermal-related and not a platform limitation.

 

I moved over three 980 Pros from the 7760, and was originally planning to grab a 2TB 990 Pro for the boot drive. But Gen5, pricing looks much cheaper, so it got me thinking and doing some research.    

 

The boot drive is isolated to the side, but there’s no dedicated heatsink setup for the drive. Looks like you’re relying on airflow and whatever thermal pads Dell is using.

 

So the real question:

• Anyone actually running a Gen5 drive in one of these?
• If so, what drive and what temps are you seeing under sustained load?  I'm leaning towards the 9100 since I have all Samsung now.   
• Any throttling issues?

I’m less concerned about peak speeds and more about real-world behavior, especially longer writes (video/render workloads).

 

Curious what people are seeing before I go experiment on my own.  Thanks in advance.   

I have the Pro Max 16 Plus which came with a Gen5 drive.  Something I discovered by moving the drive around is that one of the NVMe slots is faster than the other two.  Physically it's numbered as the second slot although it's numbered as 1 in the UEFI since the UEFI numbering starts at 0.  The included drive, which is a Samsung PM9E1, will reach 14500 MB/s in that slot but only around 12500-13000 in the other two.

[Aaron44126]

14 hours ago, yslalan said:

It does support and works pretty well on Pro Max Plus.

 

I stand corrected. This must be "new" for this generation, first I've heard of it.

 

3 hours ago, JRS said:

I have the Pro Max 16 Plus which came with a Gen5 drive.  Something I discovered by moving the drive around is that one of the NVMe slots is faster than the other two.  Physically it's numbered as the second slot although it's numbered as 1 in the UEFI since the UEFI numbering starts at 0.  The included drive, which is a Samsung PM9E1, will reach 14500 MB/s in that slot but only around 12500-13000 in the other two.

 

Typically, one of the drive slots has PCIe lanes attached directly to the CPU, and the others all go through the PCH, so this is not a surprise. Though I can't explain why Dell numbered them the way that they did (assuming that this is actually the reason behind what you are experiencing).