Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

I know it shouldn't happen. Apparently, it happens if you use the Samsung NVMe controller driver. And the default MS driver for that gives you about half speed.

I've reverted to the MS NVMe driver from 2006, and soft rebooting is working. I might stick to it for the time being. It's not as fast as the Samsung (or so I hear), but overall the machine is quite fast. And most stuff sits nicely in the 32 gigs of RAM. I might benchmark disk performance sometime, and I do hope Microsoft release some updated controller drivers.

 

BSODs, lockups, and slowness with M.2 drives are likely related to re-configuring the BIOS and OS when you install them.

Do NOT switch it out of RAID On mode to AHCI mode. NVMe is the REPLACEMENT for AHCI. Leave RAID ON so that you can get the rapid start tech to work right.

M.2 drives require the system to be UEFI mode.
Win7 should be UEFI + Legacy option rom on
Win8.1 & 10 should be UEFI with Legacy option rom off.

 

I'm running AHCI as I intend to put linux on the machine. With new motherboard, it's working ok with AHCI (haven't benchmarked hard drive though). Fast boot is a UEFI feature (and yes, I'm running UEFI with Windows 10).

 

My M.2 drive is not recognized by the system if I enable UEFI. it will only work if I enable AHCI and turn the Legacy rom On. Then I can boot from it, and see the secondary drive installed as well. I haven't had time to do much troubleshooting of it but I will get to it one of these days.

 

Is your OS on the M.2 drive? If that is the case, you'd need to install Windows under UEFI with GPT partitioning for it to be recognized under UEFI without legacy options enabled. I ran into that while trying to clean install Windows 10 on my XPS.

 

It is, and thanks for the tip. I'll give that a try

 

If you ever plan on reinstalling Windows, you have to make sure your USB install media is also using GPT and UEFI or it'll throw you a Windows can't be installed on this drive/partition error message.

You will also likely need to point the installer to the RST driver which will need to be either on another USB drive on in a directory on the same drive that has the Windows installer. The windows 10 installer is missing the proper NVMe drivers for some reason and you need to tell it what to use. Needless to say the Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 installers are also missing the NVMe drivers. If you ever tried to install Windows XP on a SATA drive, you've been there before.

Also make sure your BIOS is set to Secure Boot disabled, Legacy options enabled and UEFI enabled. The quick option in the one time boot menu where you can choose boot device, entering BIOS, etc. will also disable UEFI. You need secure boot disabled and legacy boot options to be able to boot from USB under UEFI. If UEFI is disabled, and your installer is set to MBR + NTFS, you'll be in the same situation you are currently in. You can keep the BIOS in RAID mode by the way, if no RAID array is setup, it will default to whatever driver is best NVMe or AHCI.

 

I just ran CDM with Windows set to high performance. I'm using the 2006 Microsoft driver, and on AC power. Config wise, it's a Xeon, 32GB DDR4 GSkill, and Samsung PM951 1TB SSD. I got the results below. These numbers are on par or above what's being reported on RAID with the PM951, so I don't think the RAID vs AHCI setting matters that much. I did think of getting the 950 pro, and I still might once the 1TB drive comes out. But I'm hearing the 512 950 pros heat up a bit in laptops, and isn't very good on power consumption (though they're blazingly fast).

 

For those running on Win 7, with a 950 pro. I recommend leaving it on Raid On, as it is super slow until Win 7 loads up the samsung NVME drivers and fixes any issues with hibernation and resume.

I think it'll take a little while until all the drivers settle down. And win 7 i think will not happen any time soon.

Also using the USB C to ethernet dongle is flakey as hell, had 2 dongles sent out, and both have the same issue with it dropping in and out. Maybe its a win 7 driver issue.

and finally my rant, my computer wont POST to bios!.
Cursor on screen, and front led light diagnostic - 7 white, 2 amber blink.

Dell sending tech out to replace mobo. Sigh really upsetting as now i'm worried about the reliability of the machine.

Unfortunately/fortunately its such a DAMN nice computer when its running, and nearly got it all perfect for my workflow!.

Sigh.. /rant.

 

Well, after few weeks I started to get sudden hangs on the system (all freezes, you can only move the cursor)
Taking a look into Windows Error Logs the issue seems to be with ... : C:\WINDOWS\system32\igfxHK.exe = Intel Graphic.
I set up to use NVIDIA in Firefox (and this is when system randomly hangs)

I tried to update drivers from Intel website https://downloadcenter.intel.com/pr...-530-for-6th-Generation-Intel-Core-Processors and it says none is compatible... WTF?

Anyone having this issue? I remember it was NVIDIA driver that caused display crashes, not the Intel's one?