Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Normally, you'd hit a CPU or RAM limitation before you have to worry about disk I/O. It kinda sounds like you had a faulty drive to be honest given the errors you were getting.

 

I think this is for me, even though I'm not quite sure what disk I/O is.

If so, thanks! I guess there's always the possibility I just got a bum drive.

Maybe I am just nervous about dealing with dell again, because the whole experience of getting/ troubleshooting/ returning this system was ridiculously miserable. I am told I am crazy for going for it again. But I was pretty pleased with the laptop in and of itself, aside from the alarming diagnostics. Performance was quite snappy with multiple CAD apps running.

 

@skp: "... the Could not send DST Short" message just pops up in diagnostics if you are on RAID. Had 2 different units here, an XPS and a Precision 5510, same message for both. Seems as if diagnostics can't deal with the RAID setting for PCIe SSDs.
Anyway, BIOS 1.1.9 seems to solve the issues that came up when switching to AHCI.
I changed the SSD to a Samsung 950 pro, which works fine in any case. For Database Performance (SQL Server), it was also a good enhancement. Reindexing, for example, is now nearly three times as fast as it was with the PM951 previously (both 512GB).

 

Doing a clean install of Windows 7 was a PITA, but I got it working.

Note: I bought mine with a 500gb 2.5" HDD. I've read posts in this and other forums about how difficult it was to install drivers for the M.2 nvme SSD, I was concerned about the heat that comes from it, and I wanted to save money (I had a 2.5" SSD already, and it's fast enough).

First, I created the Windows 7 USB using Rufus (I chose the GPT partition scheme for UEFI option). I also copied the SATA drivers (downloaded from Dell) onto the USB. Then, on the BIOS, I disabled Secure Boot, changed SATA mode to AHCI, and enabled Legacy Option ROMs.

On my first attempt at installing, I got the usual "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing" error. Setup could not see my Windows 7 USB. Two suggestions I found from Googling -- (1) turn off USB 3.0 functionality in the BIOS, and (2) inject drivers into the ISO (extract to hard drive beforehand). There was no option to do (1), and I was too lazy to refresh my memory as to how to do (2).

So I did something else instead: I connected my 2.5" SSD to another computer and set-up a GPT disk. In Windows 7, you need a minimum of 3 partitions: an EFI partition (100+ mb), a MS-reserved partition (128mb), and the big partition for everything else. Still on the other computer, I formatted the EFI partition to FAT32 and and big partition to NTFS. I created a directory (X:\Drivers) on the big partition and copied the USB 3.0 drivers (downloaded from Dell) there.

I turned off the other computer, disconnected my 2.5" SSD, and put it into my 5510. Started Windows 7 Setup, and got to the "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing" error. Here, I browsed to the directory where I put the USB 3.0 driver. I selected "USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller." It loaded the driver, but then I get a "no devices found" error. Hit "Rescan", and a 2nd driver appeared: "USB Root Hub". I selected that, the driver loads, and finally, I was able to continue with the installation. When I was prompted to select the partition to install Windows 7, I clicked on "Load Driver", browsed to the root of the USB driver, and selected the SATA driver.

Another note: IIRC, among all of the Windows 7 drivers and software and I downloaded from Dell, there were two (or three?) that requires .NET 4 (Windows 7 only comes with .NET 3.5): the nVidia video driver and the Dell Command Power Manager. Fortunately, the nVidia video driver comes with .NET 4, so make sure you install that before the Dell Command Power Manager. (I'm guessing that you could instead run Windows Update and get .NET 4.5 first.)

Yes, what I did was most likely very inefficient, but I got it to work in the end. Now I'm running Windows Update (another PITA).

 

Disk input/output or basically how fast the data can be read from and written to the disk.

 

Yes, but:

I guess what I'm asking is: how likely am to have this same problem if I order the same PCIe SSD and leave it on RAID? Do I have a better chance of avoiding this conflict given the updated BIOS?

I would love to install my own SSD, but this would be like trying to read Finnegans Wake with 5th grade reading skills.

 

Thanks for this post. Good to have the tips in one place should a clean install become necessary.

Thanks, tijo. In this case, were you saying a SATA SSD should serve just fine?

 

So, these are my observations (Precision received about a week ago):
- Received it with 512GB SSD, BIOS was set to RAID. Diagnostics have shown the mentioned error.
- Switched to AHCI, no error in Diagnostics (so my assumption is that Diagnostics cannot handle RAID, I've seen the same on an XPS before)
- Stability (BSOD) was not an issue; but when restarting in Windows, the notebook was stuck each time. This, as far as I've read in the XPS forums, was solved with BIOS version 1.1.19 - but not for me at this time

I swapped the SSD for performance reasons, stability should be ok by now (with the latest BIOS installed).

With the current BIOS and a stock PM951, you should expect:
- RAID -> no stability issues or anything, but error in Diagnostics and half performance after standby
- AHCI -> should work fine since BIOS 1.1.19, but it still might make sence to install the Samsung SSD drivers of the 950 pro

Installing your own SSD is not a big deal, but you might need to buy a T5 screwdriver. I started with this guide, and it was quite simple:
The only question might be if it makes sense from a commercial point of view for a high-priced device like a precision...

P.S.: for me, the Precision IS the second attempt, just like you had (my first was the XPS "twin"). Thought I might be crazy, just like you did, but I'm quite happy with the decision - most of the annoying bugs are worked out with the new BIOS versions, except lower performance of the SSD after sleep in RAID mode and various thunderbolt-related issues (adapters don't work, cooling ramps up as soon as anything is connected,...).

 

Yes. Although, I'd advocate getting the NVMe one with the 84 Whr battery purely because of the bigger battery capacity.

 

Thank you a ton. One question for clarification- when you say "stock PM951," do you mean the M.2 PCIe NVMe with which the Precision ships, or is this one of the Samsung SSDs which can be bought from a different vendor?

You'd advocate the NVMe with AHCI mode? I'll have to go back and study what you said on this issue earlier.