Dell Precision 7670 & Dell Precision 7770 owner's thread

[MyPC8MyBrain]

i am baffled by execs and engineers at Dell who whole heartedly believe this is a good design going forward, and its only for the mislay price of a small car,

7x70 are completely redesigned from the ground up and should be future proof, while we are burning hot under Elder lake architecture what will happen with Raptor lake with 16 E cores and 8 P cores in this poorly redesigned chassis,

the sad truth is Dell is not what it used to be, i find myself the past 10 years giving them another chance over and over again (its mainly hope) with lame excuses all because of their "old" reputation and standards they no longer uphold,

if i had to pick a laptop for light load now days i would go with XPS17 which in reality is a sleek design in a 15.6 footprint sized laptop, for heavy workloads I would sadly opt for the Razer Blade 17,

the Razer Blade 17 has similar capabilities and expandability, i had some hands on time with both the Razer 15 and 17 i like the 15 size wise, but the 17 has a vapor chamber design and runs way cooler,

  

On 10/13/2022 at 9:41 AM, win32asmguy said:

The sunon fans on the 7770 heatsink do make a creaking noise when they cycle on

 i wonder if it has to do with some internal layout difference altering acoustics with the 7670 and the 7770, on the 7670 they are whisper quiet to the point it annoys me, most of the time i cant tell if they are spinning, for whatever reason dell went out of their way to not show fan data of any type anywhere,

 

  

19 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

Would you mind doing the 10 minute run, too?

here you go normal run + 10min throttle test,

 

 

 

[Light]

First time opening the chasis, very very carefully, and one of the black teeth that holds it on broke off. Very small black  plastic piece. I guess it's ok without that as it fits very tightly still, but don't like the fact that a small piece broke off already on a brand new several thousand dollar machine.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

17 minutes ago, Light said:

small piece broke off already on a brand new several thousand dollar machine.

call dell customer service and tell them you are having issues with the unit,
they will replace it for you if you're in your first 30 days,

[Light]

It's just one of the small black plastic teeth on the edge of the bottom chasis panel. Probably ok to just live with it, but I found it a bit of a sinking feeling to carefully open a brand new laptop and have a small piece of black plastic left on the desk. It still seems to close fine without the one tab as long as others don't break off, and the 6 screws hold everything in place fine.

[1610ftw]

11 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

here you go normal run + 10min throttle test,

 

 

 

 

Thanks, obviously the heatsink gets saturated very fast, that is a ca. 20% drop even in 10 minutes!

[Aaron44126]

8 hours ago, Light said:

First time opening the chasis, very very carefully, and one of the black teeth that holds it on broke off. Very small black  plastic piece. I guess it's ok without that as it fits very tightly still, but don't like the fact that a small piece broke off already on a brand new several thousand dollar machine.

This happened to me too.  I’ve opened it several times since then and it hasn’t been an issue.  It seems to shut and fit fine so I’m not worried about it.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@Light  & @Aaron44126 
would be nice if you guys could share a visual for reference where these "soft" area are, 

for reference i use guitar pick to pray the front gap open,
slide a wide area in and gently twist like door key,
lift the front up push towards the back gently,
and the back should lift off its pins easily,
close in reverse order, fit the back first,

[Aaron44126]

Mine broke a tab on the right side near the USB-C port.  I used a pry tool (like guitar pick) to open it the first time, but since then I’ve been able to pull from the SmartCard slot opening and just remove it entirely by hand.

[Light]

The tab that broke on mine was on the front. It was very, very tight to get off the first time. I used the "large" plastic pry tool that was in a kit to remove an iphone 5 screen back in the day - about 1.25" wide flat with a slight upcurve on the edge. I went from the smartcard around the corner and then left across the front, but was having trouble with it closing on the right side as I went over towards the left, so I used a business card edge to hold it open as I pried further. Not sure if my technique was bad; I did it the same way on the previous generation precision with no issue, but that one wasn't on quite as tight.

 

I'm not wild about the way the back cover is attached having to pry it off, but it looks great when it's on and hopefully I don't open it that often I suppose.

 

What temp does your SSD run in the main slot of your Precision 7770?

 

Samsung 980 Pro idle reports 50C and says "High" in magician even though the arrow is pointed at the top center of the circle.

 

I did a benchmark all with magician which brought the temp up to 58C which said "Too High" on the meter although it was still in the blue/purple not the red range of the graph. Performance was 6995 sequential read, 5182 sequential read, 405,517 random iops read, 309,814 random iops write.

 

My other precision with a 980 pro runs it idle at under 40C so not sure what to think of the 7770 running it at 50+ C. Is this OK for the samsung 980 pro? It's running at 52C now idle 5 minutes after the benchmark all.

 

Doh - Intel system drivers make a big difference when idle -- I wanted to check that drive was genuine before taking the time to do reinstall, but intel driver makes a huge difference for thermal when system is idle now that all are installed.

 

Samsung 980 pro drive in main slot now running at 44C "Normal" when idle

 

Still gets up to 58C when doing a benchmark all, and samsung reports "Too High". Not sure if that is ok or not, or normal after doing the samsung benchmark all ?

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@Aaron44126
been tinkering around the bios settings, it became apparent to me that there has to be several trip points for each power plan in the bios which we have 4 of them, we are likely looking in the wrong place,
 

some good news... I think I managed to get the system to stop throttling,
currently testing stability under stress and various conditions,
 

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

we are likely looking in the wrong place,

 

Yeah, that's what I've been saying :-P.

The fans are managed by the EC and are entirely independent of anything that you can really get to from the OS/drivers/etc.  Nothing to do with the Intel thermal framework or other Intel drivers that get installed (the behavior is the same whether those drivers are installed or not, or disabled or not).  It is also a very Dell-specific implementation, and a new one to the 2021 systems (and later) as well.  Now, the EC can be updated (there is a phase of the BIOS update that hits it) so there are going to be fan tables somewhere but getting to them or changing them, I don't know how to do that.  I do believe there are likely calls that could be made from the Dell SMBIOS WMI/SMI interface that would change its behavior but I don't know how to "discover" those either.

 

I've been content with the fan behavior, for the most part, I just wish there was a way to keep the fans from turning off on light load.  (I've been managing this so far by throwing up a low-priority artificial load when the fan speed gets too low.)  If I replace the heatsink and am satisfied with the Sunon fans turning on "quietly" then I might stop caring about this.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

Yeah, that's what I've been saying 😛

i'm slow cut me some slack 😄 

 

  

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

so there are going to be fan tables somewhere but getting to them or changing them, I don't know how to do that.

i can see these hives in the bios dump, I can find them with specific keywords, I am able to extract the hive but info appears to be encrypted with newer RSA keys or some sort of tamper protection preventing from IRFExtractor accessing the data behind them,

 

been experimenting with the 4 power plans in bios,
it appears that setting to "Cool" power plan will keep the system from thermal throttling and surfaces from getting hot, all other power plans (Optimized, Quiet, and Performance)will allow power limits into thermal throttling range (PL2 110v and up, or in the event of "Quit" the system remains hot intentionally to keep fans low),
 

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

it appears that setting to "Cool" power plan will keep the system from thermal throttling and surfaces from getting hot, all other power plans (Optimized, Quiet, and Performance)will allow power limits into thermal throttling range (PL2 110v and up, or in the event of "Quit" the system remains hot intentionally to keep fans low),

 

So my observations have been, "Ultra performance" does indeed perform a little bit better than "Optimized" (see benchmarks on second post in this thread) ... and "Quiet" will also impose limits on the NVIDIA GPU (it won't go higher than PL3 power level).

[MyPC8MyBrain]

CB23 result with "Cool" power profile in bios are the same as with "Ultra Performance" -throttling,
in windows i am running "Power Saver", for these tests i switched to "Ultimate Performance",
if i stay on "Power Saver" profile for CB23 run i get 20200 with zero thermal throttling,
(with LM TIM application and undervolt settings posted here + IA AC/DC LoadLine)
idle temps with "Cool" bios profile + win "Power Saver" profile are around 32-36c,
when its sleeping it will idle down to below 20c with all surfaces cold to the touch,
(ACPI S3 Support enabled (setup_var CpuSetup 0xE 0x0) and classic Standby),

 

    

[win32asmguy]

3 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

CB23 result with "Cool" power profile in bios are the same as with "Ultra Performance" -throttling,
in windows i am running "Power Saver", for these tests i switched to "Ultimate Performance",
if i stay on "Power Saver" profile for CB23 run i get 20200 with zero thermal throttling,
(with LM TIM application and undervolt settings posted here + IA AC/DC LoadLine)
idle temps with "Cool" bios profile + win "Power Saver" profile are around 32-36c,
when its sleeping it will idle down to below 20c with all surfaces cold to the touch,
(ACPI S3 Support enabled (setup_var CpuSetup 0xE 0x0) and classic Standby),

 

    

Oh wow can it resume from S3 standby reliably? 7560 had issues with that even if S3 were enabled via hidden options. Although these days with fast ssds I found using block sleep then cold booting was best as having it randomly waking in my backpack while traveling was VERY bad and not worth the risk of it baking itself.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

53 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

Oh wow can it resume from S3 standby reliably?

yes indeed, had no issues with S3 enabled thus far,
 

[Aaron44126]

Tried with "hybrid graphics" disabled for a while.  The system is not reliable.

 

Sometimes I would come back after being away from the machine for a while.  The laptop display would be (appropriately) powered off.  However, upon moving the mouse around, the backlight would power on but the lock screen would never appear.  I had to do a hard reboot to get it going again.

 

This evening, that happened again, but after the reboot, I just got a garbled display (at the initial BIOS boot screens).  I had to hook up an external display to get into the BIOS and switch hybrid graphics back on.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

17 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

I had to hook up an external display to get into the BIOS and switch hybrid graphics back on

maybe something is off with the unit,
are you under 30 days from purchase?

[Aaron44126]

2 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

are you under 30 days from purchase?

 

No, I've had it for almost three months.  It is under warranty so I can have parts replaced if needed.  I will run with graphics switching enabled for now and listen out for more reports...

[SilverAzide]

I've seen the post about setting the IA AC/DC LoadLine, and the many references to this post... but can someone please tell me (and others) exactly how to implement this?  I'm not a total newb, but everyone seems to know what these instructions mean, but there's nothing I can find that says where or how to set these values, or with what.  I'm not too proud to read a "Fixing your LoadLine for Dummies" post...

 

Also, is it official yet that I seem to be the proud owner of the worst-performing 7x70 of anyone here?  😢😣

On the flipside, so far the laptop has been rock-solid... just runs hot.  It's a zillion times faster than my old M8600 beater, so I can't really complain that much.

 

[Aaron44126]

3 minutes ago, SilverAzide said:

I've seen the post about setting the IA AC/DC LoadLine, and the many references to this post... but can someone please tell me (and others) exactly how to implement this?

 

To get to the prompt to enter these commands, visit this tutorial and hop down to step 5.

https://brendangreenley.com/undervolting-2020-dell-laptops-like-the-vostro-7500-and-more-tips-to-improve-thermals-battery-life-and-speed/#cpu-undervolt

[ATAN]

On 10/12/2022 at 4:46 PM, keks2k said:

 

Jep, it's the Delta fan version I received.
Going to drop them a message regarding the different fan suppliers and ask for possibilities / replacement.
Will report back the outcome.

Regarding the iGPU: yes, I did that on purpose as a) I don't need any graphics power and b) were hoping that thermals are better, as the cooling system doesn't have to dissipate extra heat from the separate circuitry (dGPU, VRMs, memory).
Even took care of power draw of the internal graphics during testing by also reducing its voltage - but to no avail: results didn't change, which is what I mostly were hoping for.

As for the internals:
 

All i can think of mod wise is a m.2 heatsink or two on the heatpipes where the GPU would be and that could give a bit more thermal headroom before the heatpipe hit their peak thermal limits but probably to minimal effect. Watercooling the heatpipes would likely not give worthwhile gains and if I had a spare m.2/ram waterblock, rad, pump and time I would test it and normal water-cooling configurations, but I dont. Just enough time for simple, reversable mods.

I just looked at some of their other configurations (ie the alienware stuff) and whilst some skus have lackluster cooling others in THE SAME PRICE BRACKET have MUCH better cooling configurations and not just for the cpu or gpu alone, but both. Most of which relocated alot of the io to the rear of the system allowing heatpipe arrays(6+ heatpipes vs fucking 2) and multiple fans on both the left and right side of the system with better vrm configs/vrm cooling.

 

In the 7670/7770 configuration the second your gpu is running it would basically get ALL cooling priority, and even without a gpu its still not enough for basically any HX sku to hit its power/performance sweet spots to make them worthwhile over any h series or ryzen 8 core processor with any kind of decent cooling config. To add, the fact Dell decided that the top heatpipe no longer needs to extend across all of the heatsink array is even more disrespect, regardless of small percentile gains. And excuse me if that is just a 7670 vs 7770 discrepancy.

Msi even has well cooled gaming laptops with 3 m.2 gen 4 and 1 m.2 gen 5 (could be useful for us egpu folk if signal integrity doesn't just fall off a cliff without a redriver every 5" (4.0 was 10-12")), not that I can configure them without a dgpu which is the 7770s 1st key selling point for me (just makes egpu stuff easier), 2nd being x4 4.0 m.2 slots.

My 7770 has been build complete for nearly a week but the shipping date is still a month out. :(
Even worse is i'm debating if its worth sending back immediately and just dealing with paying for a msi laptop with a dgpu I will disable 95% of the time but has a better cooling configuration that would more likely gain more performance via tweaks rather than needing tweaks to reclaim some of the stock performance at the cost of hot palms. Not my first rodeo but boy do they get annoying.

 

Edit: just randomly on YouTube and guess what got suggested. Intel's 12th gen hx series validation platform gaming demo video. And even it's cooling config for the CPU is a magnitude better. Two big and one small heatpipes going to two heatsink arrays, with plenty of length for extra thermal mass. Not this thin and light style stuff. 7770 shouldn't offer anything above the h series in this cooling configuration. Workstation I think not. Like how many owners will even see this thread and see the hustle made to find the sweet spot to get 90% of the performance offered from that same piece of silicone with better cooling. How many will not see any gains over last gen Intel 8c16th or Ryzen 8c16th offerings from their new 16c24th processor?

 

Sorry for my rant about a laptop I don't even have yet but these results are utterly disappointing.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

there is a serious caveat both CPU and GPU on the same "street/side" of the heat pipe,
when the CPU is working hard it automatically boosts heat level for GPU even if GPU not doing anything,
the minute GPU start working it is already in disposition due to heat buildup from CPU and vice versa,
the two of them on the same pipe side further exacerbate thermal conditions, 

[samatsu]

9 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Tried with "hybrid graphics" disabled for a while.  The system is not reliable.

 

Sometimes I would come back after being away from the machine for a while.  The laptop display would be (appropriately) powered off.  However, upon moving the mouse around, the backlight would power on but the lock screen would never appear.  I had to do a hard reboot to get it going again.

 

This evening, that happened again, but after the reboot, I just got a garbled display (at the initial BIOS boot screens).  I had to hook up an external display to get into the BIOS and switch hybrid graphics back on.

Try closing the cover and opening it again, That will enable the screen lock function.

[TwistedAndy]

12 hours ago, ATAN said:

I just looked at some of their other configurations (ie the alienware stuff) and whilst some skus have lackluster cooling others in THE SAME PRICE BRACKET have MUCH better cooling configurations and not just for the cpu or gpu alone, but both. Most of which relocated alot of the io to the rear of the system allowing heatpipe arrays(6+ heatpipes vs fucking 2) and multiple fans on both the left and right side of the system with better vrm configs/vrm cooling.

 

In the 7670/7770 configuration the second your gpu is running it would basically get ALL cooling priority, and even without a gpu its still not enough for basically any HX sku to hit its power/performance sweet spots to make them worthwhile over any h series or ryzen 8 core processor with any kind of decent cooling config. To add, the fact Dell decided that the top heatpipe no longer needs to extend across all of the heatsink array is even more disrespect, regardless of small percentile gains. And excuse me if that is just a 7670 vs 7770 discrepancy.

 

There are many factors affecting the heat pipe efficiency. The most important ones are thickness, width, amount of bends and the bend radius. Obviously, the straight round heat pipe shows best efficiency. The slim one with one or a few 90 degrees bends can be 2-5 times less efficient

 

In terms of "cooling priority", there is no huge difference between CPU and GPU, because the liquid evaporates in a gas in the heatpipe. Yes, the GPU has a higher priority, but not that much.

 

I've posted a link to a series of interviews with an engineer designing cooling solutions.

 

From my perspective, the heatsink in 7670/7770 might be better, but it's not that bad. I think, it would be better to implement a thicker version of the heatsink from Precision 5770 / XPS 17 with two fans on each side, but I'm not a thermal engineer and don't know all the details.

 

5 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

there is a serious caveat both CPU and GPU on the same "street/side" of the heat pipe,
when the CPU is working hard it automatically boosts heat level for GPU even if GPU not doing anything,
the minute GPU start working it is already in disposition due to heat buildup from CPU and vice versa,
the two of them on the same pipe side further exacerbate thermal conditions, 

 

There's some heat transfer from CPU to GPU and vice-versa, but it is not that big. Gas tends to condense and extract heat on the cooler side of the heat pipe with a radiator.