Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Hi John


I've tried weekly to install them since they came out. I've downloaded them manually and installed them as well, but the update program keeps showing them.


My Thunderbolt Controller - 1575 shows driverversion 16.2.51.2 - so it's older than the version available for download. But the Firmware won't install.


I'm not sure how to see what firmware I'm on?

 

I continue to be very happy with the rock stability of this 5510, even playing games for hours, I barely can feel a temp rise on the keyboard or palm rest.

Due to its ability to play games however, I am now running quickly out of space in the 256GB SSD. What size/form factor m.2 SSD will be a direct replacement? Having just been black friday/cyber monday I should have invested while good discounts are around, but alas I didn't.

I'll be putting the 256 SSD into an external enclosure as it would be ideal for my goal of having no mechanical parts when I go to work as it does end up in bag transported in holds.

 

Any M.2 2280 SSD should be fine. The Samsung 950 Pro is generally considered the best performer, I believe, but it is only available in sizes up to 512 GB. Samsung is releasing the 960 Pro at the beginning of January in sizes up to 2 TB (but that is pricey).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820147596

If you are OK with a bit less speed you can find them a bit cheaper, but I think Samsung is the only one who has pushed above 1 TB.

 

Windows might be trying to block the firmware updater in case it's malicious. It may be worth trying a right click > Run as Administrator.

I can't see an easy way to check the Thunderbolt firmware version. Is it listed in the BIOS?

I would add that there are two types of M.2 2280 SSDs, SATA and NVMe, and the M5510 will take either.

My M5510 came with a Toshiba 256GB NVMe SSD which has impressive behchmark performance but was quickly replaced with a 1TB Sandisk X400 SATA SSD as I needed much more capacity (and already had the X400 which had been in my Dell E5570). To be honest, I don't notice the difference in performance in everyday usage although Windows probably booted a bit faster with the NVMe SSD.

At the moment the 1TB NVMe M.2 2280 SSDs are around double the cost of the SATA equivalents and it only makes sense to pay that premium if your workflow involves reading / writing large files where the 3x to 5x higher transfer speeds mean that storage I/O is not the bottleneck on system performance. SATA to NVMe is not a performance jump similar to the basic improvement between HDD to SSD where there is not just faster transfer speeds but also the DDS giving near-zero access times (it's the latter which makes SSD systems feel much more responsive).

Another new SSD which has been launched but hasn't properly arrived is the Samsung 960 EVO. It's meant to be cheaper but not quite as fast as the 960 Pro and has a lower TBW (TeraBytes Written) rating. However, 400 TBW is more than most users will write in their lifetime (I think my 1TB 840 EVO mSATA SSD reached about 20 TBW in 2 years usage). I'll be keeping an eye on the price trends but have no plan to buy one at the moment.

John

 

Thank you Aaron and as usual many thanks for the detailed response John, I would imagine that 500GB will be fine for my uses as it stands, and had been looking at something like this

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/525...ology-read-530mb-s-write-510mb-s-92k-83k-iops

At around 2/3 the price of the equivalent samsung 500GB, it looks like a good price, I'll be keeping an eye on them

I agree that I'd be hard pushed to see any real difference between SATA and NVMe, and my everyday uses wouldn't suffer as a result.

 

I recall reading that the 750GB version of the MX300 was on sale for around £130 on Black Friday (perhaps watch ebay for people who bought them just to to sell at a profit). Perhaps there will be some better SSD pricing once Christmas is out of the way but the drop in Sterling vs $ was quickly reflected in SSD pricing - I bought my 1TB X400 for about £210 in April.

Also be aware that it is generally reckoned that SSDs maintain their performance better if at least 10% is left unpartitioned. It's called over-provisioning and helps with the garbage management. So if you think you might fill 500GB then a higher capacity might be a better choice. I know there is a 750GB 2.5" version of the MX300 but it's unclear if there is an M.2 version.

John

 

John, I've also tried to run as administrator, from another local user - maybe I should try from "safe mode".
Firmware says it's up to date, when I install manually - but it still shows in the update app. And well, the controller doesn't show the latests version - what does you?

TheCleanerLeon: About OP (unpartitioned disk space) - make note of the 960 IF you're into highspeed, power hungry NVMe drivers:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-review/2

John, do you know how much performance is improved with only 10% unalocated space vs. 20%?

 

I presume that your firmware updater is starting to run and display the progress bar before stopping and displaying the "already up to date" message.

In theory, you can find out the Thunderbolt firmware version by following the intstructions here. I say "in theory" because I've just done that and can only see the driver version but nothing I can relate to the firmware version number. Of course, Dell's numbering may not be the same as Intel's and the system will report the Intel numbering. Also, I can finding nothing in the BIOS. The other place I have looked is in Device Manager. For SSDs, the last part of the Hardware ID is the firmware version, but my USB 3.1 Host Controller still thinks it is Rev 00.

I don't know the answer to this. The key purpose is to give extra space for garbage management. My gut feeling is that the % unallocated can be reduced as the drive capacity is increased, ie the physical amount of unallocated space can remain the same. So, while 50GB is around 40% of a 128GB SSD it's only 5% of a 1TB drive. The only SSD which has caused me major performance headaches was a 128GB Sandisk U100 which used to cause my Samsung NP900X3B notebook to freeze for a few seconds. With hindsight, I wonder if the underlying problem was that I had that SSD very full so every time it wanted to write anything it had to stop and clear some space.

John

 

Following on from the above, where I had booted the computer with a device connected to the USB 3.1 port, I have discovered another bug - the fans stayed running even after the device (in this case a flash drive) was removed and the system was icy cool.



I know from experience that plugging anything into that port gets the fans spinning but normally they turn off soon after the device is removed.

John

 

Hi all,

Dell is replacing my M3800 with an M5510. They're sending the M5510 with the big 6-cell battery, but I need it with the 3-cell to make room for a 2nd drive. The 3-cell in my M3800 is new. So: any idea if the batteries in the M3800 and M5510 are the same? Can I swap my M3800's 3-cell into the M5510?

Thanks!