Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Got my second 5510 today. First thing is that it took about a week for Dell to build and deliver. Yay! Much better than the 6+ weeks it ultimately took when I ordered last November.

Two, it shipped with BIOS 01.01.15. ePSA gave me the same error related to the PCIe. I installed a few of the (seemingly relevant) drivers and the 01.01.19 BIOS update. No more diagnostics error messages.

I have yet to really put this guy to the test, but feels like something of a victory anyway. Doesn't seem as though I'll have to explore the AHCI + Win 7 thing. Slowness after sleep may come up, I guess. But not as bad as my computer telling me it is seriously sick IMO.

Thanks to those of you who held my hand as I waffled about ordering another one.

 

That's what I met before, but I didn't roll back the BIOS and installed win 10 instead.
It's strange because 1.1.09 was supposed to solve the nvme problem.

 

According to my experience, I prefer windows 10 now, because it is easy to be installed into nvme ssd, also the supporting for 4K is much better than win7.

 

Installing windows 10 isn't an option for me right now. At this point I was able to get it running with 1.1.15. I'm just going to wait and see if the TB15 dock will work with this version of the BIOS before I bang my head against the wall trying to get 1.1.19 to work.

 

So I got my docking station in today, and I'm wondering if there is a problem with the USB-C port on my machine. How stable is your dock? Mine will cut in and out every few minutes - it loses sync with the machine for about 2 - 3 seconds, then everything reconnects. I had noticed that my machine was rebooting several times a day, and narrowed it down to what I believe is the USB-C Ethernet adapter. I've been running on wireless all day, running my same suite of programs, and no reboots. 20 minutes after connecting to Ethernet, my machine rebooted.

 

For the record, by chance i got my usb-c to ethernet working on win7. Had to go into safe mode, uninstall everything. reboot. then i installed the latest drivers and magically it worked.

NOOOoooo idea why. To be honest i have a feeling its the USB 3.1 extensible root hub drivers that are causing issues and not uninstalling/repairing/reinstalling correctly.

maybe give that a go if you're running TB15, as there are a few ppl saying its working fine.

My only issue now is that the fans ramp up a little while the usb c is plugged in, as per latest tb firmware.

 

Figure that wouldn't hurt. This was a fresh install that I did on Monday, but I just got the dock yesterday. This morning I removed the drivers and installed them again, and so far its been stable (3+ hours now and no disconnects). Hopefully that fixes it

** Update ** Well that didnt last long. Later in the afternoon, it started freezing and disconnect/reconnect after 2 - 3 seconds. Today, the system recognizes the dock, but no light on the USB connector to the machine, and my monitor, mouse, and Ethernet are not working. Overall, I love the machine, but I think the USB-C needs improvement. Dont know if its more or less driver issues with the devices, or the devices themselves. Going to call Dell on Monday and see what they can figure out, if anything at all.

 

Looks like the Dell US site has added an option to configure the the Precision 5510 with Ubuntu 14.04 SP1 (at a savings of about $100, so even for non-Linuxers it's a good choice if you're bringing your own OS). The support site still isn't showing any downloads for the new OS though.

Under Arch Linux I love everything except for two rather large issues.
First is that the system will randomly not bring the panel on when resuming from suspend. It will resume fine without problems most of the time, but not always - so it's not reliable.
Second is that the Thunderbolt port won't work. All I want out of it is for it to be a USB port, since it's rather pitiful that I otherwise have only two. If I connect my phone (a Nexus 5x - with USB-C) to it, it charges off the port, but Linux doesn't recognize that anything was connected. I likewise can't get it to detect anything when I use a USB-C/USB-A converter, or the USB-C ethernet dongle that Dell shipped with the machine. I tried various BIOS settings related to Thunderbolt, and I also installed the recent Thunderbolt controller updates.

If Dell can get these issues resolved in their official Ubuntu release then I'll be perfectly pleased with the system.

Another thing - I'm still getting the periodic double-keys from the keyboard, where I hit a key once and it registers twice. This happens in Windows and Linux. For any of you who have received replacement boards or newer machines, is this still an issue? I'm wondering if Dell has resolved this with hardware.

 

@andrewmatta That's interesting. As for double keys, I don't seem to have that issue on Windows, and I'm only running linux in vms. It seems like an odd issue, and I'd contact Dell if I were you.

 

Anyway, the keyboard is sux