Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Hey folks, I am wondering if any one has any suggestions... I have a 5510 running Win10. After a year of smooth operation I received a "Critical System Stopped" BSD on boot. The system would not boot on restart although safe boot worked. From there I did a bunch of troubleshooting but nothing fixed the issue.

I did a restore factory image from the recovery partition and rebuilt the system. After a day, same issue. I did a restore from a saved image (which I took when the system was working) but still BSD on boot.

Next, at the suggestion of dell support, I downloaded a fresh image and rebuilt from that in case the recovery partition was corrupt. Long story - same result: after a day, BSD on boot.

Now Dell wants me to send in the laptop which is problematic for me.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Chris

 

Copy and paste from the HotUKDeals site 30% off Precision M55101 : code DOM55101
(refurbished can be purchased from Dell Outlet. New laptops at Dell UK. Both 30% off)

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

I bought my 5510 with an Intel SSD 256Gb included and it was very silent (fans were running only on video renderings tasks).
But recently I added a Samsung 960 Pro NvME and since then the fans are always ON and the laptop is hotter close to the left Shift key. The NvME temp while idle is about 48 degrees Celsius while the normal SSD is at 38. Also, CPU is at 50 degrees C on average and Intel GPU around 48 degrees C.
A 5 minutes Full HD rendering in AE rises the NvME temp at 62 degrees C and obviously the fan speed and noise increases as it tries to cool it down.
When I opened the back cover to make the NvME upgrade I have noticed that both the NvME or Southbridge (I/O) chip does not have a cooling solution.
Anyone use some cooling system on Southbridge? or a Thermal Pad for NvME?
Thanks

 

A thermal pad is recommended for the NVMe SSD and if you buy a 5510 from Dell with an NVMe SSD then it is fitted. I also added a thermal pad to whatever chip appears to be the Thunderbolt controller (it's near the battery conector) as plugging anything into the USB-C port wakes up that chip and the fans start running after a short delay even if Thunderbolt itself isn't being used.

Have you installed Samsung's SSD driver? There's a link in the hardware forum.

John

 

Thank you for your fast reply, John. May I ask if I should peel off the Samsung copper foil label (warranty will be lost) and/or use also conductive paste (like the one for CPU)?
I found on Amazon various thermal pads, with the exact size ("Phobya", "Therma Grizzly") or larger piece to be cuttet as desired (Arctic) with various thicknes 1mm, 1,5mm, 2mm. Should I buy 2mm or is too much?

Note: yes, I am using the Samsung NVMe driver and it is reported on "Device Manager" as "Samsung NVMe Controller" and "NVMe Samsung SSD..."

 

You should leave the copper foil on the SSD. Dell provide a thermal pad but I'm not completely sure about the thickness and am currently away from my 5510. It might be 1.5mm as the parts list for my 5510 includes "88DJK PLATE, THERMAL, M.2 PCI, 1.5, 5510/9550" and it touches the base of the computer which then serves as the heat sink.

John

 

Hello Everyone,

I have not been out here much but have had a lot of adventures with my two M5510s in the meantime. My major effort has been to get the disk-image backup to work on Acronis. This I seem to have mastered for both an M.2 and standard SSD thanks to those guys (different primary drives on the two machines). If you are interested, there is a lot on the Acronis Forum and look under my name there.

To test the backups I purchased a second 850 EVO and verified that my M5510 with an SSD does backup and restore.

Of interest to me was that i took the SSD and installed it in the same M5510 as my M.2 (Now 2 TB storage). Of further interest is that the SSD had the restored system image from the other M5510 and would boot to the SSD rather than the M.2 partition when it was selected on the custom boot. Thus I have two independent systems which see each other. Not sure what to do with this, but it may be of interest to others.

Best wishes,

Jerryyyyy

 

My friend did a search on Crucial website and it states that it supports precision 5510 supports up to 2400MHz, however as the brand is not readily available he purchased 2pcs of 16GB DDR4 Kingston (32GB). To his horror his system keeps crashing (pixelised screen) and was told that the RAM speed wasn't supported. I been searching and there isn't anyway to slow that RAM speed.

 

As stated in my RAM speed PSA which you quoted, I can personally verify that the 5510 supports at least up to 2666MHz. It is crucial that you factor in what I wrote about PNP profiles when choosing RAM binned higher than 2400MHz. FYI the term "binned" means that each individual RAM module has been tested and confirmed to have stable performance at the "binned" MHz and timings, i.e. the modules are tested and sorted into bins based on their performance characteristics.

Could you give us the specific model number of the Kingston RAM?

Did he buy the two 16GB modules as a set of two in one package or as two individual 16GB modules?

Who told him that the RAM speed wasn't supported? A person? An onscreen message?

Does the 5510 boot up and run for seconds or minutes before crashing? When does it crash? If there's an onscreen warning about the RAM, where does it appear? e.g. in the BIOS splash screen at boot, in the Windows GUI, or upon manually navigating to the BIOS.

There's never a need to slow RAM speeds. As described earlier, for a given product line of RAM, in general, the high speed "overclocked" modules and the cheaper lower speed modules are made on the same assembly line with the same manufacturing process. The only difference between the two is manufacturing tolerances - the "overclocked" module has fewer imperfections allowing it to run at a higher than "standard" clock rate. The only other difference is that the overclocked module may get some additional software profiles loaded onto it with speed and timings for the higher rated speeds. As you are claiming that the RAM speed is too high, you don't need to worry about overclocked software profiles.

There's no way to "slow that RAM speed" because the clock rate (MHz) and timings are ultimately set by the motherboard. The motherboard chooses those parameters based on the software profiles loaded onto the RAM module by the manufacturer. On laptops, the BIOS rarely allows the user to manually set RAM speed and timings. The 5510 BIOS does not even let the user choose between the available pre-set software profiles that the loaded on the RAM module. The 5510 will automatically use the profile with highest clock rate it can support.

Overclocked 2666, 2800, or 3000MHz RAM is usually still loaded with software profiles for the standard speeds - 2133 and 2400MHz. Any DDR4 module that fits should be able to run at one of those speeds.

TLDR: RAM cannot be too fast*. The problem is probably not the RAM speed.

*On a motherboard (usually desktops) where you can manually set the RAM clock rate and timings, it's impossible for RAM to be too fast if it's otherwise compatible. On laptops like the 5510 which do not allow for any manual settings, it's theoretically possible that a RAM module could have only pre-set profiles for clock speed higher than the highest the motherboard supports. I am not sure if such a module exists, but if it does, it's possible that the motherboard would reject it as incompatible. It's also possible that the motherboard would run the RAM at the lowest supported clock rate and conservative timings.

 

New BIOS 1.2.29 marked Urgent. Among the changes is updated processor microcode - would this be the hyperthreading bug?

John