Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

That is very helpful @ashic . My development load usually consists of text editing and web work, so nothing too GPU intensive. The only GPU intensive thing I would be working on in Linux would be HD/4K streaming. As long as the HD graphics can handle that, I think they will suit my needs. I will use Windows (dual boot) for all my graphics work. From what you are saying, I gather that the iris pro advantage is not huge and I should go ahead and order, correct?

 

I think that'd work well for you. Streaming video doesn't really need a big fat GPU from what I gather, and is CPU bound. I have a home server that streams 4K from Haswell without any discrete graphics.

Btw, be very careful if you're dual booting, have Windows Fast Boot (or even hibernate) enabled, and are sharing NTFS partitions between Windows and Linux. Latest Ubuntu's will prevent you from mounting hibernated (or Fast Boot shutdowned) partitions, but if you force it, you might see data loss. That's coz file structures are snapshotted during Fast Boot shutdown, and modifications from another OS will leave thee files corrupted. If you disable Fast Boot and Hibernate, or don't share NTFS partitions, things should be fine.

 

Finally my 5510 is dreaded with the black screen of death. It was stable until i did all the recent driver updates, bios, Intel ME and TB3 firmware updates (release dates post mid Jan'16). Now when boot into Windows 10, randomly, the system screen turns black and everything is frozen although the fan and lights are on. Cold restarting is the only way out. I can recreate the issue by playing videos or any graphics intensive clips. Suspecting its the video cards, i updated the Intel and Nvidia drivers to the latest one and it didn't help. Out of frustration I formatted it yesterday and Win10 out of box was fine and stable (no proper Intel and Nvidia drivers loaded, just basic MS display adapter).

I loaded all the Dell drivers and the bam the system became unstable and Black screen of Death was back!. Formatted it again and confirmed Win10 out of box worked fine. Disabled the internet and only loaded the Intel drivers. System was stable with my graphics stress test. At this point Windows didn't have Nvidia drivers loaded so that card was offline to the OS. I now loaded the Nvidia drivers and bam the Black screen issue again. Uninstalled the Nvidia drivers so it only sees the Intel drivers and system is now stable.
So now i narrowed it down to the Nvidia card as the culprit. The frequency of black screen is worse on battery then on AC power. I am beginning to suspect its heat issues? Will attempt to monitor the gfx card temps this evening after installing Nvidia drivers again.

At this point, I don't feel the need to troubleshoot this POS system issues as Dell was just busy trying to get their crap out of the door first without doing proper quality control.I have already told my colleagues to stay put with their precision purchases until Dell gets their act together. I will most likely be wasting my time off tomorrow with my "cousins" at Dell tech support to see if they have a solution or ship me a replacement

 

@Mike F I had similar issues. Things have improved since they replaced the motherboard (which also includes, gpu, etc.). I had a hideous experience with things from Jan 27-ish. The Feb 05 BIOS (1.1.19) is MUCH better. Check out my post a few posts back - that combination of drivers and BIOS is running fine for me.

Many people have noted things working after motherboard replacement, which makes me think there must've been some early batches with faulty hardware.

 

Thanks Ashic, i will dig up your post and arm myself to deal with Tech support. I will have to try to have them replace the motherboard. I did flash bios 1.1.19 few days back along with TB3 controller update & few other driver updates and that's when this black screen issue appeared. I am assuming the Intel gfx is built on the motherboard, but did they change your Nvidia gfx card too?

 

The board is one unit. So, everything gets replaced (well, apart from screen, keyboard, battery, hard drive, etc. One thing to note is the exact sequence of drivers. On Dell's download page, you'll see a tab for Installation Order. I was told to follow that strictly in the future. BIOS goes last.

Dell support are outstanding here in London. It's almost always next day to your door (or office) service. In my case, they didn't have the motherboard in stock, so it took one additional day.

 

Managed to convince the tech to send out a replacement board. Apparently there is a known bulletin issue about the graphics driver but it didn't apply to the 5510. Here's hoping the first replacement will fix the issue.

I did see the sequence on the support site and some are questionable. But I will give that a shot once I do the basic testing of re-loading windows 10 and just installing the graphics drivers.

 

What types of issues were you experincing prior to MB replacement?

What is your BIOS/driver config for the M.2 drive?

I hope my machine doesn't develop anything quirky so far so good.

 

@threeply : I've mentioned the issues earlier on this thread. Random blue screens. Samsung NVMe drivers helped a little, but had the soft reboot drive not found issue. Disabling both graphics cards made things fully stable, but enabling the Intel Graphics in Windows 10 would cause a BSOD within seconds. Reinstall of Windows 10 didn't help. Eventually, laptop became bricked - would power up, but nothing showed up on screen.

Currently, I'm using the 1.1.19 BIOS, with Intel IDE/ATAPI controller driver, adn Microsoft's 2006 NVMe controller. Works fine, and Crystal Disk Mark shows performance on par with Samsung drivers. No BSODs or soft reboot issues. That's of course, after the motherboard replacement.

 

@ashic Concerning the black screen/graphics issue, do you think that the crash/unresponsiveness was caused by driver/BIOS issues, or by a hardware defect on Dell's part?