Dell Latitude E5570

I ordered two of them today. I was looking at the manual and it says the following:

Memory specifications
Feature Specification
Memory connector: Two SODIMM slots
Memory capacity: 4 GB and 8 GB
Memory type: DDR4 SDRAM
Speed: 2133 MHz
Minimum memory: 4 GB
Maximum memory: 8 GB

I'm fairly sure that the maximum memory is a typographical error because the Dell configurator allows you to purchase 16 GB (8GBx2).

 

Care to give us a quick review?

 

jarhead steered me in the direction of the Latitude because of its build and it's a very solid animal. I bought it with 4 GB RAM and immediately upgraded to 8 without any hitch. The keyboard has the number pad and as a result the keys are a little bit of an adjustment. The keys are very soft and don't give you a satisfying click like my old Inspiron 1545.

I also bought a 2nd one, as I mentioned, and I tried to install an after-purchase M.2 PCIe. That did not go well. The motherboard doesn't come with a bracket that you need to hold down the card. Since this is a newer computer, it took 10 days for Dell to figure out which part I needed and when it arrived, they had neglected to send screws and the bracket cover, so my card is exposed. The next problem is that the Latitude BIOS does not recognize the drive. I will be posting about that in another thread. I boot to a USB with a Windows 10 ISO. I go to the command prompt to listdisk and get only the USB. However, when I initially installed the PCIe and started up the computer, booting to the USB, the Latitude Setup recognized the hardware.

I would say that a system like this is good for office work, but it's so expensive if you buy it with the M.2, 16 GB RAM, and Office. I bought those separately and am finding it a bit painful to get up and running.

Interestingly, the Latitude is VERY easy to add and remove component. SO much more than the old Inspiron 15s in which you have to take out the battery and the then the keyboard and basically remove the entire machine. The Latitude E5570 puts everything in front of you and just remove and plug in.

 

I received a "scratch and dent" E5570 from Dell Outlet a few days ago. The spec is i5-6440HQ, 16GB RAM, Liteon 256GB M.2 SSD , AUO FHD display, Intel 8260AC WLAN, Dell 5811e WWAN, backlit keyboard and the 6 cell 84Whr battery.

My initial impressions were positive. The "scratch and dent" appeared to be a few very small paint chips on the lid but, after a few hours, the screen froze, turned a steadily darkening beetroot colour and ending in black after about 10 seconds while the rest of the computer appeared to stay on.

A hard reset with the power button got the computer back into life. I updated the BIOS and graphics driver and it kept running for a few hours before turning beetroot again. I then phoned Dell support and we agreed to try a new display and display cable. However, next day I had the inspiration to connect a VGA monitor to see if that stayed functioning. It didn't, and immediately lost signal when the next incidence of the bootroot colour appeared. This pointed a mainboard problem so it was on the phone again to Dell to request that a new mainboard be added to the parts list. The parts are on the way to the service agent but the "next business day" service is likely to be two days.

I suspect that this problem is why the computer went back to Dell and, because it is erratic (can appear anywhere between a few minutes and several hours) it hadn't been identified when the computer was checked before sending to me. Anyway, one way or another we will get to the bottom of this or it will have to go back and I get another one.

So what are, setting aside this hardware problem, my impressions? It's a bit heavier than I expected at 2.35kg but the big battery managed nearly 8 hours of mp3 video playback with the display at half brightness so it should be good for at least 10 hours of light usage. Whether I will get the benefit of the quad core CPU remains to be seen but 3.1GHz with 4 cores loaded is a useful boost to my current i5-5300U. Under light usage the CPU is quite frugal.

My eyes definitely appreciate the larger display (the reason for up-sizing from my E7450) and the 15.6" AUO doesn't have any hint of the screen door effect which was noticeable on the 14" screen of my E7440. I can't hear any whining from CPU or other sources. The fan does get moderately loud when the CPU is under load. I hope that the screen and mainboard replacements don't leave me worse off.

One minor detail I have noticed that opening the computer requires at least two hands: The front edge of both the display and the chassis are straight with no noticeable bevel (unlike my E7450) and consequently there is no convenient finger-hold for lifting the display (E7450 on top of E5570 in this photo).


John

 

**** Update****
The technician came with the parts on Monday morning and about an hour later the computer had a new mainboard, display cable and display. There were a lot of screws to take out but there were none left over at the end so they probably all went back in.

I have left the computer running for over two days and it has behaved itself so the problem appears to be fixed and this encounter with Dell support appears to have had a positive outcome. I can't hear any whine from the new board (but maybe my ears are too old to hear it) and the new display is AUO (like the one which it replaced) and looks just as good.

I've got a 1TB Sandisk X400 M.2 on the way and then I can set about getting the new computer into use. At the moment it is running on battery at 1/4 brightness with a few web pages open to see the battery drain rate (less than 5W most of the time but with occasional spikes of higher power consumption). However, the quad core CPU doesn't need much encouragement to guzzle power.

John

 

Thanks for the update @John Ratsey , i'm glad your problems are solved.
I think i'll get myself a E5570 after all, with a HDD and get a 2242 SSD and mount it myself.
I am, however, a bit afraid of coil whine and other stuff, i'll ask on the online store if they can check it before sending it to me.

 

Congratz!
Z3n0mal4- if possible tell them to check for overheating as well.. i have the same configuration as john. mine has the same overheating problem that is described in the laptopmag review - "after streaming fhd movie for 15 min, the bottom of the laptop becomes hot... can't put it on your lap". in my case streaming for 15 min and working with multiple tabs open for about 20-30 min will cause the bottom of the laptop to overheat.

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/dell-latitude-e5570

 

I've been trying to understand the heating problem. It appears to be a consequence of the fan trigger settings. When only one or two cores are loaded the CPU temperature stays low enough (low 70's C) that the fan speed stabilises at 2200 or 2500 rpm (which is barely audible). However, the reduced airflow at this fan speed compared to when the CPU is fully loaded results in greater warming of the computer base (and if used on a lap with the airflow further restricted may increase this warming).

The fix I would suggest is to turn off turbo mode when running on battery which substantially reduces the CPU power and heat. The place to change this is Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change advanced power settings > Processor power management > Maximum CPU state > On battery. My quick observations on my E5570 (i5-6440HQ, no dGPU) running wPrime 1024 (4 threads) are:

100% = 3100 MHz, CPU package power = 27.4W
99% = 2500 MHz, CPU package power = 16.5W
95% = 2400 MHz, CPU package power = 15.4W
90% = 2300 MHz, CPU package power = 14.1W
85% = 2200 MHz, CPU package power = 13.1W
80% = 2000 MHz, CPU package power = 11.1W
70% = 1800 MHz, CPU package power = 9.5W
60% = 1500 MHz, CPU package power = 7.4W
50% = 1300 MHz, CPU package power = 6.6W

These numbers clearly show that turbo mode is inefficient in terms of power: 24% faster speed but over 60% more power used. some notebook manufacturers set their BIOS to disable turbo mode when running on battery. Dell don't but I would recommend you do.

John

 

thanks john! i have to say that reducing the cpu power to 90% didn't make much of a different.
i would still like to try reducing the cpu power, but I don't really understand how reducing the cpu power for more than 90% will affect the single core performance, and if i'll even notice it when doing light tasks (web browsing, streaming/ kodi).

I'm considering to replace mine to the e5570 with i5-6300u and no dgpu. I wonder if reducing the cpu power in the i5-6440hq will be almost as good a solution as buying this model with the uv processor (otherwise i'll have to compromise on the dgpu, due to the limited range of configurations that are offered in my country).

What about undervolting? Is it worth looking into?

 

I wonder whether the dGPU (which I don't have) is one cause of the heating you are observing. It's another chip radiating heat towards the underside. It might even be the longer heat pipe which serves the dGPU which is radiating heat.

If you don't need the dGPU then it's best not to have it. You can see a performance comparison between some of the CPUs here. The Cinebench results demonstrate the difference under both single core workload (not much - depends on CPU speed) and multithreaded workload (where the extra cores make a significant difference at the expense of more power used and heat generated).

John