Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

You are correct. Either dock will provide the full 130 watts as long as you have a large enough power adapter plugged into the dock. For the Precision 5510, I would get the one offered with the 180w power adapter. The dock has charging ports and other things that can use the additional power.

 

A few questions for the community:

#1. There are two different Windows 7 64-bit recovery images for the Precision 5510 on Dell's support site. Can anybody tell me the difference between the two? Dell provides no description whatsoever of either. The two downloads have the exact same hyperlink anchor text, and Dell makes no mention of two different options, so many people probably assume the two are duplicates of the same file due to an HTML error or something like that.

The two images have different file names, and one is about 2GB larger than the other.

File name [File size]
Windows7_PROFESSIONAL_64bit_EM.iso [5.519GB]
Windows7_PROFESSIONAL_64bit_Row.iso [7.327GB]

Perhaps the "Row" image includes a recovery partition while the "EM" one does not? I'll try inspecting the images with Macrium Reflect to see what I can find out. I just figured someone here might have already come across the same thing.

I'm actually planning on going straight to a clean install of Windows 10, but I ordered the system with Windows 7 to ensure I'd have the ability to downgrade to 7 if need be for software compatibility and/or stability. I now have a feeling that I'd still have downgrade rights to 7 if I ordered it with 10, but at the time of the order it was easier than taking the time to research it, and always planned to clean install 10 anyway.

#2. I was unable to find a way to download recovery images from Dell without installing "Dell System Detect." Is this possible at all? I found Dell's FTP site, but while drivers for the 5510 are available there, recovery images are not. I'd guess Dell is trying to make more of an effort to authenticate users before allowing those downloads for copyright or bandwidth reasons? All they require is a valid service tag, so it's not too secure.

I want to avoid connecting the 5510 to the internet until it's all setup, so I planned to have my NAS download server do the downloads. That didn't work out because Dell doesn't offer direct access to the download URLs without "Dell System Detect" as a intermediary. Oddly enough, I was able to install DSD on my non-Dell Windows 10 Mini PC and to my surprise it installed and allowed the downloads without the need to spoof Dell hardware in any way.

I would love to bypass DSD in the future though, as it is much more convenient to have my NAS handle large downloads without bogging down a PC. In all its greatness, DSD doesn't allow you to resume interrupted downloads, so it ended up taking 4 attempts to get the larger .iso to download in full starting over from scratch even when I already had 5GB. It probably took 25GB of data to download 7.5GB.

#3. I'll do some searching in the thread, but has anyone here clean installed Windows 10 from a Microsoft supplied image and then installed the necessary Dell drivers without the bloatware? I still plan to install Precision Optimizer, but I'd prefer to have no traces of Dell's proprietary backup and update software on the system, hence a clean install. Is there anything I should be aware of? I'd appreciate even just a link to existing info! Sorry if this has been discussed over and over. I figured I'd throw it in with my other questions.

Thanks!

 

Btw, in the interest of giving back to the community...

I have some info on supported RAM speeds for the 5510 that I was not able to find here or anywhere else. Hopefully I can save others the hassle of buying 32GB of 3000MHz RAM assuming that worst case scenario it will run at 2666MHz, possibly with tighter timings, only to find out that it runs at 2400MHz with terrible timings for that speed.

I contacted both Dell and G.Skill beforehand to try to avoid this and neither provided any useful information. G.Skill told me the RAM will run at the highest speed supported by the hardware, and I can confirm that that is false. The one rep who had any further knowledge affirmed my assumption that 2666MHz was the worst case scenario. That is NOT the reality!

Through my own research and trial/error, I have made the following inferences. G.Skill's 3000MHz RAM *does not* have a PnP profile for 2666MHz or higher loaded into its SPD, and since the frequency and timings cannot be manually configured in the 5510's BIOS, it drops the RAM speed down to 2400MHz while using the timings for 3000MHz (I guess bc it's the only info provided), resulting in RAM that runs significantly slower (higher latency) than even G.Skills cheaper 2400MHz binned RAM.

Another user on this forum confirmed that 32GB of G.Skill's 2666MHz binned RAM runs at 2666MHz. So, it's unintuitive, but that is a much better choice than the higher binned RAM for *this* system. G.Skill doesn't release the technical datasheets for its SODIMM RAM, and I never would have bought it if I had the chance to see the datasheet. When in doubt only buy RAM if the PnP profiles are explicitly listed on the datasheet. Otherwise it's a gamble.

I'm pretty sure I now know what's going on. I read on another RAM manufacturer's website (couldn't find it again) that their RAM can "auto-overclock" to 2666MHz and speeds beyond that require manually enabling an XMP profile in the BIOS. On systems like the 5510, the BIOS will not even enable you to use a pre-installed XMP profile (oddly enough an Intel standard on Intel hardware), so XMP profiles are irrelevant in this context.

"Auto-overclocking" seems to refer to the use of "PnP" profiles. Kingston refers to these as "JEDEC/PnP timing parameters" This may in fact be EPP or something else, haven't looked into it, but it is surely distinct from XMP in that XMP requires manual activation in the BIOS and PnP does not. I didn't see this fact about XMP made explicitly clear anywhere, since most of the information out there is for custom desktop builds where the BIOS is configurable. For reasons I'm not privy to, it seems that PnP profiles are capped at 2666MHz regardless of how much higher the ram may be binned.

TLDR: For the 5510, ignore XMP profiles as they cannot be activated and are irrelevant. Choose RAM that the manufacturer explicitly states has a PnP profile for the speed and timings you want the RAM to run at. Without this, it doesn't matter how high the RAM is binned. It won't give you any benefit and may very well perform WORSE than lower binned (slower/cheaper) RAM that DOES have a designated PnP profile for its rated speed.

 

I have a few 5510's set up with Windows 10 Enterprise. I installed the latest image from Microsoft, ran Windows Update one time (using included USB-C Ethernet adapter), and the device manager came up clean --- all drivers accounted for. The only things that I installed from Dell are the updated BIOS, and the Thunderbolt drivers and firmware. I have the disk set up using AHCI so I also installed the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drivers (works with other Samsung NVMe SSDs), otherwise I get constant BSODs saying "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED", apparently this is a known thing that happens on both the 5510 and latest XPS 15 with AHCI. System running fine in this configuration.

 

FWIW, I've never seen the need for precision optimizer app, seems gimmicky. Have you tried going to dells driver and download page (the normal one, not the ftp page) and putting your service tag in? This may allow you to download the image without DSD.


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Yeah, that's the same one as the M3800. The smaller power plug both the male on the adapter and the socket on the M3800 have been nothing but trouble for me (replaced socket several times in 2 years, and replaced a total of 3 PSUs for bad connection and "wattage can't be determined errors"); I was disappointed to see it continue on the M5510; I basically use the M5510 from work as a desktop powered by the TB15 so it should last quite a bit longer than the M3800 plugs did for me.

I just weighed a couple of the recent alternatives power supplies, and I got the following weights (rounded to the nearest 10g):

Slim-line 65W (E6400) : 260g
Square 65W (E7440/E6230) : 240g
Slim-line 90W (E6500/E6510) : 340g
Rounded/small-tip 130W (M3800) : 350g
Older-style 130W (E-docks) : 510g

Feels heavy compared to the 65W, but for 130W that's pretty good.

My newer rounded 65W from the E5470 is in at work, and I can't find one of the square 90W from the E6420/E6430. I can dig up a D-series 65W/90W if anyone is curious.

 

I just dome some weighing for the rounded 65W and 90W PSUs (style as in photos above) and without mains cable:
Rounded 65W PSU: 210g
Rounded 90W PSU: 270g
For comparison the Latitude XT 45W PSUis 165g.

While my non-dGPU E5570 came with a 90W PSU it's quite happy with a 65W part and, after the A05 BIOS update it will actually run on the 45W PSU. However, under either high CPU load or battery charging it's pulling the full 45W and the PSU gets somewhat warm.

A non-dGPU M5510 which would ran happily on a 65W PSU would get my closer attention.

John

 

iris pro m5510 would be killer workstation laptop

 

Had the same issue after my M3800 fell on the power cable connection. The system was fine, but it bent the end of the power adapter cable and I would get intermittent wattage not determined errors. The issue was completely my fault and came from me dropping the system onto carpet.

What I ended up doing was buying this dongle so that I could use full sized power adapter with the M3800. It is listed as "Dell Cable - DC Power Dongle" and has these part numbers - Manufacturer Part# : 57J49 | Dell Part# : 331-9319

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...ven1=331-9319:101952148149:901pdb6671:c&ven2=:

 

The combination of the M5510 at work (and not terribly mobile) and an almost-equally-powerful E5470 has done pretty well for me. What I'd really love to see is a premium 14" quad core with no dGPU (perhaps Iris Pro?) in a 13" chassis; Sony did it with a 13" screen with a Vaio Z years ago, and the screen would basically be the infinity edge treatment... so it's theoretically possible.

Yeah, it would.

I've got several of those, both to get the thing to work at all with the 90W Auto/Air adapter (although it throttles pretty heavily, and seemingly more so on more recent BIOS although it may be that the present software I have is heavier) and to reuse some old E-dock 130W supplies I had. Several of them have gone bad, just as the real adapters have.

I need to call Dell again as the connection is intermittent (although I'm only using the two newer machines day to day); the one thing I'll say for them is despite the fragility of the connection, they've been very good about replacing them under warranty.