Precision 7510/7520 Owners Thread

[M4980]

 

Dell Precision 7510 (2015)

The Dell Precision 7510 is the successor to the Precision M4800, based on the Skylake architecture.

 

Review:

Dell Precision 7510 (4K IGZO) Mobile Workstation Review (Notebookcheck)

 

Owners manual:

Dell Precision 15 7000 series (7510) Owner's Manual

 

Changes from M4800:

Spoiler

• Laptop CPUs no longer use a socket as of Skylake and mainboard swap is now required to replace a failed CPU
• Keyboard has changed to chiclet style and dedicated volume/mute buttons removed
• Optical drive bay and ExpressCard slot removed in favor of slimmer front profile, replaced with smartcard reader
• NVMe drives are supported with PCIe 3.0 x4
• Some models could have been configured with Thunderbolt 3
• Separate 3.5mm audio jacks replaced with single combo jack
• UHD/4K models now work with Optimus, which was not possible on the M4800
• Overall battery life improvements
• Full sized DisplayPort replaced with mini-DisplayPort and VGA port removed
• Speakers have changed from upwards firing at the top of the palmrest to downwards firing at the front of the laptop (sound reflects from table)
• CPU and dGPU heatsinks are now joined together rather than separate
• Platform supports DDR4 and up to 128GB RAM rather than 32GB DDR3 max in M4800
• Status indicator LEDs moved from top of palmrest to front of chassis

 

Factory CPU options (soldered):

Spoiler

• Intel Core i5-6300HQ
• Intel Core i7-6820HQ
• Intel Core i7-6920HQ
• Intel Xeon E3-1505M
• Intel Xeon E3-1535M
• Intel Xeon E3-1545M
• Intel Xeon E3-1575M

 

Factory GPU options (MXM type-A):

Spoiler

• AMD FirePro W5170M (2GB GDDR5)
• NVIDIA Quadro M1000M (4GB GDDR5)
• NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (4GB GDDR5)

 

Dell Precision 7520 (Mar 2017)

The Precision 7520 appears to be a Kaby-Lake refresh of the 7510 with no other changes other than better factory GPU options. It marks the last Dell Precision workstation made with MXM GPU support, also the last to feature the Dell E-Port docking connector

 

Review:

Dell Precision 7520 Review (Laptopmag)

 

Owners Manual:

Dell Precision 7520 Owner's Manual

 

Factory CPU options (soldered):

Spoiler

• Intel Core i5-7300HQ
• Intel Core i5-7440HQ
• Intel Core i7-7700HQ
• Intel Core i7-7820HQ
• Intel Core i7-7920HQ
• Intel Xeon E3-1505M v6
• Intel Xeon E3-1535M v6

 

Factory GPU options (MXM type-A):

Spoiler

• Radeon Pro WX 4130 (2 GB GDDR5)
• Radeon Pro WX 4150 (4 GB GDDR5)
• NVIDIA Quadro M1200 (4 GB GDDR5)
• NVIDIA Quadro M2200 (4 GB GDDR5)

 

NBR archived Precision 7510/7520 Owner's Thread:

https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-7510-owners-thread.783108/index.html

[M4980]

Tested the Quadro T1000 on 7520, works fine but just like in the M4800, it doesn't seem to work in dedicated mode.

Will post thermal differences soon in M4800 vs 7520

 

[M4980]

 

QHD LP156QHG from Alienware X15 R1/R2 confirmed working in 7520 with brightness control

[M4980]

On 12/9/2022 at 12:36 AM, M4980 said:

Will post thermal differences soon in M4800 vs 7520

 

Forgot to update this but ill leave some thoughts after all this time

 

The 7520 can handle the quadro T1000 better than the M4800 because of the joined heatsink, I'm pretty much always GPU limited at 1440p so it's better to run the CPU at 3.10GHz to improve GPU temps, imo this makes it a better choice in the niche of mxm 15 inch workstation laptops

I'm stable with -125mv undervolt on the 7920HQ, far better than the -20mv I could get on the 4810MQ so I can now do 4GHz all core within the stock power limit

just need to get my hands on a future Ada A2000 8GB for the 7520 😈 

[Atrax0]

Hello, I have the 7510 with former AMD FirePro W5170M. A while ago the Amd discrete gpu died, so i am planing to install a new dgpu.

 

I want to install the Quadro T1000. Will the AMD Heatsink fit?

Do i have to flash the Quadro T1000 with a Dell Bios?

Will the Displayport work?

Where ist the cheapest place to find a Quadro T1000?

 

best regards

[M4980]

On 6/23/2023 at 10:39 AM, Atrax0 said:

Hello, I have the 7510 with former AMD FirePro W5170M. A while ago the Amd discrete gpu died, so i am planing to install a new dgpu.

 

I want to install the Quadro T1000. Will the AMD Heatsink fit?

Do i have to flash the Quadro T1000 with a Dell Bios?

Will the Displayport work?

Where ist the cheapest place to find a Quadro T1000?

 

best regards

 

Not sure if the 7510 AMD heatsink will fit as I have no experience with it. My T1000 was previously installed in an M4800 that has an Nvidia heatsink (before the T1000, I used the AMD FirePro M5100 on that same heatsink). My 7520 that currently has the T1000 had a Quadro M1200 before this, so it also has the Nvidia heatsink.

 

You don't have to flash the T1000 with a Dell BIOS, you just need to install the card and follow these instructions from another member of this forum: https://youtu.be/DgUCE_K69H4

 

 

DisplayPort should work fine, I think I've only tested HDMI but I heard from someone else that they both work.

 

Cheapest place would probably be finding one on Taobao or Xianyu, they are Chinese markets so require a shipping forwarder to get it to your country. That's where I got mine from quite a while ago. I paid around 980 yuan ($110 usd~) at the time for the card but I think I got pretty lucky with the listing to be honest.

 

It'd probably be much easier to get them from one of the Aliexpress sellers, I believe @MELOCODIbought his from K-Tech Laptop Accessories store (second link)

Original T1000 4GB N19P Q1 A1 VGA Video Graphics Card Working Perfectly for Dell M4800| | - AliExpress

Original T1000 4gb N19p-q1-a1 Vga Video Graphics Card Fast Shipping - Add On Cards & Controller Panels - AliExpress 

 

😀

[Chalybion]

UPGRADE TIME!!!

When I bought my Precision 7520 five years ago, part of the appeal was that the MXM slot would allow for GPU upgrades down the line.  My laptop had the 7440HQ and M2200, which have been competent.  But when I saw the GTX 1650 MXM Type A listed on eBay for $270, I thought - now or never?  (Honestly, the T1000 is almost as good, and worth it when it is listed in the $150-200 price range).    So, I bought it, along with a new Xeon E3-1535m v6 mobo for $90, 32 GB of CL15 RAM, an AX1675 wireless card, PTM 7950, and thermal pads.

 

When I finally got a free weekend to tinker, I set out to upgrade my laptop to its full potential and clean/refurbish parts I didn't replace.  I haven't torn apart a computer in years, so there were several hiccups.  Here are some things I learned, of the type that are not-easily-looked-up or require trial and error.

 

Hardware

- GPU:  This appears to be manufactured by Aetina.  The voltage controls are locked, and I haven't been brave/knowledgeable enough to attempt flashing another BIOS that may unlock voltage

 

- Thermal pads:  The GPU uses 1.0 mm pads everywhere except the rear VRM, which uses 1.5 mm pads.  By design, the heatsink only covers half of the two VRAM modules on top.  (It works, I guess, but best to stick to stock speeds?).  For the VRMs by the CPU, I stacked two 1.0 mm pads (for 2.0 mm total)

 

- MXM X bracket:  The Precision 7520 uses a non-standard low-height bracket.  The MXM standard bracket creates a ~2.0 mm gap between the heatsink and GPU.  So, I had to transfer the X bracket from the M2200 to the GTX 1650.

 

- Removing the MXM X bracket:  Online tutorials suggested using a hairdryer to soften the glue.  I didn't have a hair dryer, so used my oven instead.  I set it to the lowest heat setting of 170 °F / 77 °C, and placed the graphics card in the center rack on a piece of cardboard.  I doubt my oven's temperature control is precise, so I turned off the oven as soon as the setpoint was reached, and let the graphics card sit in the warmth for ~10 min.  After that, the bracket came off very easily with the aid of a small screwdriver to push through the screw holes.

 

- Applying PTM 7950:   I refrigerated it for ~30 min, so that the plastic layer separates easily.  I cut it to size with a pair of scissors, and had luck separating each plastic layer by sliding my fingernail under one corner.

 

Software/Configuration

- Operating System:  Windows 11 is decent with Start 11 to fix the Start Menu, and OOSU10++ to shutdown telemetry, nagware, advertisements, and bloat.  Opting out of the remaining bloat and disabling core isolation/virtualization features (to enable undervolting) remains a pain.

 

- BIOS:  I stupidly upgraded to v1.33, thinking that I could simply re-enable the Overclocking Feature to allow undervolting.  Really bad idea!  Undervolting is enabled for one boot, and then the Overclocking Feature bit automatically flips back to "Disabled" on reboot.  Adding insult, BIOS downgrades below v1.31 are "BIOS Update blocked due to unsupported downgrade".  To the rescue: https://github.com/vuquangtrong/Dell-PFS-BIOS-Assembler.  I had to downgrade to 1.15.1 to get persistent undervolting

 

- EFI variables:  Overclocking Lock - setup_var Setup 0x59C 0x0; CFG Lock - setup_var Setup 0x4ED 0x0.

 

- Undervolt:  Seems to be stable at -110 mV cache, -145 mV core.  With the undervolt, all threads will boost to the max frequency of 3.9 GHz while remaining within the 60W PL1.

 

- Graphics Driver:  I downloaded the latest driver from NVIDIA, and nvcleaninstall made it really easy to strip out unnecessary driver components and mod the INF.

 

Performance

 

- Cinebench:

 

- Fire Strike:

 

 

[M4980]

Quote

- GPU:  This appears to be manufactured by Aetina.  The voltage controls are locked, and I haven't been brave/knowledgeable enough to attempt flashing another BIOS that may unlock voltage

 

Epic build and post thanks for sharing. Would be nice if we could get undervolting enabled on the GPU too. Don't think it's possible with my T1000 as there's not much to crossflash to, and the Adlink vbios I've got appears to be the best one. Maybe possible with your 1650 though?

 

Curious to see what your geekbench results are if you have them, these are my best:

Geekbench 5 (7920HQ) Dell Inc. Precision 7520 - Geekbench 

Geekbench 5 CUDA compute Dell Inc. Precision 7520 - Geekbench

 

[Chalybion]

Here are my Geekbench 5 results:

CPU:  https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/22143989

GPU:  https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/6707649

 

The possible appeal of the GTX card is greater tunability, but the reality is that in a 15" laptop with a single GPU heatpipe, thermals limit any tweaking to a few% at most.  The card's temperature limit is 87 °C.  Under stress testing, the temperature slowly creeps up to low 80s, before the fans finally kick up to full speed and stabilize around 77 °C.  Having voltage control to undervolt would be amazing, but that's probably out of the questions.  I tried Afterburner's voltage graph, but it didn't play well with Optimus, constantly polling the GPU and consuming 15% CPU.  Trading off 1% performance for a more robust Quadro seems like the better option for this laptop.

[M4980]

On 1/17/2024 at 4:06 PM, Chalybion said:

Here are my Geekbench 5 results:

CPU:  https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/22143989

GPU:  https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/6707649

 

The possible appeal of the GTX card is greater tunability, but the reality is that in a 15" laptop with a single GPU heatpipe, thermals limit any tweaking to a few% at most.  The card's temperature limit is 87 °C.  Under stress testing, the temperature slowly creeps up to low 80s, before the fans finally kick up to full speed and stabilize around 77 °C.  Having voltage control to undervolt would be amazing, but that's probably out of the questions.  I tried Afterburner's voltage graph, but it didn't play well with Optimus, constantly polling the GPU and consuming 15% CPU.  Trading off 1% performance for a more robust Quadro seems like the better option for this laptop.

Nice results and yea maybe it could be worth attaching another pipe between the GPU heatsink and CPU fan. I asked cicichen if they'd sell an improved 7520 heatsink and they said "so sorry. Precision 7520 can not upgrade, There are not enough places to upgrade". Not sure if they meant not enough demand or if there's not enough room inside the laptop but I think its the former

 

 

For some reason my T1000 has held the top spot on time spy and firestrike for a while. Not sure why the clock speed goes so high in the M4800, beyond what Adlink say 

I should check if it does the same in the 7520, it would explain why both laptops reach their thermal limit with this GPU

[Chalybion]

26 minutes ago, M4980 said:

For some reason my T1000 has held the top spot on time spy and firestrike for a while. Not sure why the clock speed goes so high in the M4800, beyond what Adlink say 

I should check if it does the same in the 7520, it would explain why both laptops reach their thermal limit with this GPU

You've got the golden T1000 😂 and by quite a large margin!  The VRAM running at 9000 MHz makes a huge difference.  I have a T1000 in a different laptop, and it only reaches 3200 Timespy graphics.  I also noticed that your 7920HQ is giving +100 MHz over the specification in Intel ARK 🙃:

[M4980]

18 hours ago, Chalybion said:

You've got the golden T1000 😂 and by quite a large margin!  The VRAM running at 9000 MHz makes a huge difference.  I have a T1000 in a different laptop, and it only reaches 3200 Timespy graphics.  I also noticed that your 7920HQ is giving +100 MHz over the specification in Intel ARK 🙃:

 

Anyone want to trade an MXM-A RTX 2000 Ada for the rare "golden T1000" 🤣 in all serious though I wonder why it's doing this, the same occurs in the 7520 so it must be the card

The power draw is reported as 3w maybe that has something to do with it or perhaps my VBIOS is bugged/unrestricted?

And yeah, I manually overclocked the 7920HQ in ThrottleStop after doing those EFI variable unlocks, I usually just run it on 3.1GHz all core though as it allows the GPU to throttle less and I'm rarely CPU bound in anything. If I need more CPU power I switch to my TS config for 4GHz all core with an -77mv undervolt

[petrolcan]

Bit late to the party but I scored a 7520 for not much money on ebay.

 

Came with a standard 2.5" 256GB ssd and just 8GB RAM but it is the i7-7820HQ processor. Even came with the correct power supply.

 

Upgrades done since:

Added 32GB RAM (16GB x 2)

Stuck in a 500GB NVMe drive as the boot drive and a 2.5" 1000GB (both WD Blue)

Installed Win11 (with the help of Rufus)

Swapped out the keyboard for a backlit one (remapped two media keys for the Home/End issue)

Ordered a further 32GB of RAM

 

Cost so far (aside from the 7520 itself) is a shade over £50 so all in I'm in for about £215.

 

There's definite upsides to hoarding 😄

Edited November 14 by petrolcan
speeling :)

[Chalybion]

Welcome to the party!  Feel free to ask questions if you get the upgrade bug again.  What tool did you use to remap the media keys?