Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Hey folks, I have a Dell 5510 that will no longer boot. I replaced the NVMe SSD drive and gave it a fresh Windows image.

To recover the data, we need to connect it externally via USB.



Unfortunately, I have yet to find an NVMe to USB adapter for the Dell 5510 NVMe SSD on the market. The M.2 PCIe SSD to USB adapters DO NOT work. We have tried 5 brands so far.

Has anyone found one that works yet?

Thanks!

 

If you have a desktop around, there are M.2 PCIe to PCIe-1x-desktop slot adapters around...

 

If the goal is simply to recover the data, rather than find the adapter for future use, you could put the failed drive back in the 5510 and boot into Windows PE from a USB flash drive. Macrium Reflect is available integrated into Windows PE, so you could boot into that and take an image of the failed drive using the 5510. Just be sure you disable "intelligent sector copy," so you will get a forensic image. WinPE 10.0 works best because it includes native driver support for the 5510's M.2 drive, but earlier versions work fine as well if you build WinPE on a working 5510 so it can automatically grab the storage driver. I think there's a way to manually add the driver from another system, but after a couple of failed tries I just switched to WinPE 10.0.

If such an adapter does exist, it's come onto the market very recently. If you're googling for it, I'd suggest restricting your search results to the last month to help surface recently released products.

 

To answer my own question for the use of others, the larger "Row" ISO has a bunch of additional language packs in it. Otherwise the file contents appear pretty much identical.

If I had remembered that there were two different versions of Windows 7 offered in the build configurator, I wouldn't have had to go through the trouble of comparing the ISOs

 

Yeah, I tried that first before going to the FTP site. Unless there's a third download location I'm unaware of, it appears there's no way around DSD specifically for downloading OS restore images. All of the other drivers I tried downloading on that same page do not require DSD. The FTP site doesn't require DSD or a service tag for downloads, but the images aren't on the FTP site at all.

I have yet to actually use precision optimizer, but if it can actually do what Dell claims, I don't think it's a gimmick.

From Dell:

The concept makes lots of sense, especially for an ISV certified system. Different applications benefit from different low-level system and OS settings. Provided you use one of the applications the system is certified for, Dell has done the work for you figuring out which settings work best, and PO can automatically implement those settings when it detects that you're using that application saving you the trouble.

You could probably set up something similar with other tools, but that would likely be a ton of work for potentially minimal benefit. Plus, PO can allegedly change BIOS settings on the fly while Windows is running e.g. to disable hyper-threading. I'm fairly certain that's not something any third party software could do, since changing BIOS settings probably requires code signed by Dell.

For an application like CAD, in theory, it could make a pretty noticeable difference, since unlike many other hardware intensive applications it is largely single threaded. For best performance, you want a single CPU core running at the highest possible clock speed and you might benefit from disabling hyper-threading. Being that such a setup is unique and wouldn't benefit performance in most other applications, I think a normal system would resist distributing resources in that fashion.

How much a difference it'll make, if any, is heavily influenced by the particular software application, but you have nothing to lose giving it a try. I'll reserve judgment for after I've tested it out, but I think it's a great move on Dell's part to add value to their workstations.

 

Row = rest of world, I guess?


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Hi guys.

New to the community so I will try not to derail the thread too much.

I am considering purchasing one of these for work purposes (Autodesk/Adobe). I already own an XPS 15 (i7,4K,16GB), am very happy with the form factor and strangely have become quite fond of the keyboard. I purchased it about a month ago in a rush to complete a last minute project and while it handled it well, I want to keep it as a secondary and upgrade to a more dedicated workstation.

Having just read the whole thread, I am now questioning this purchase since it seems a lot of you have had quite a bit of trouble with these machines. However, I could be wrong with this assumption as I am not an expert on these matters. I experienced one BSOD on the first night I had the XPS, but since then, it hasn't hiccuped once. Given all the updates since they were released, are these now running smoothly?

I am planning on ordering one with the Xeon processor and 4K screen, but beyond that I need some advice regarding options for the SSD and ram. Is the accepted practice just to order the minimum in these specs and upgrade later? What problems am I likely to encounter if I choose to upgrade?

Also any advice regarding the best way to purchase and what %-off list price to expect would be greatly appreciated. Via the online chat yesterday I was immediately offered 15% off and 3 years support included. Is that standard or should I push for better? I'm based in Australia if that makes any difference.

Thanks in advance

 

I haven't used mine enough to give you an answer on that, but it might be worth considering that a different type of customer gravitates to the Precision model over the XPS. On the whole, XPS users are much more likely to run the factory install of Windows and the factory hardware than Precision users. Precision users are more likely to do a clean install of Windows and/or Linux and to upgrade the hardware. They're more likely to be messing around with things in general and to be using heavy professional software. So Precision users will likely have more problems of their own creation.

That being said, it's still entirely possible that the Precision ships with problems that the XPS does not. So let others chime in on that one.

I went with the cheapest 256GB SSD and that's adequate for my local storage needs, so I can't speak on that. The problem is that you can't truly bypass Dell's SSD up-charge because if you order it with an HDD, you have to get the smaller 3-cell battery as the larger 6-cell battery uses the space where a 2.5" drive sits. I doubt Dell would allow you to custom order the system without a storage drive, and such an order would disqualify you from some discounts.

For RAM read my recent post here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...10-owners-lounge.784473/page-75#post-10282564
(It's post #744. I have two posts in a row. You might need to scroll down to the second.)

For RAM, you can save a large chunk of change by buying the minimum and upgrading 3rd party. Dell charges $279 for the bump from 8 to 32GB. You can buy 32GB of significantly faster RAM than Dell offers for ~$150.

I'm in the US and I think things could be very different ordering from Australia, but check out my post on that. You should save 30-35+% off the list price on Dell's website with coupons/discounts, and cash back from Ebates is on top of that. I'm not sure if Ebates operates in Australia or offers cash back on the AU site, but at 15% it might even be worth ordering international.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/index.php?posts/10282359

 

Considering 5510 is already the size of 14" inchers same height as MBP 13. and an inch wider, making it even more compact would hit usability in "work" situations where one would need that extra realestate.

The pattern these days is Apple 'innovates' PC makers follow, whether it comes to styling, specs or thinness. So i'm betting that you are likely to see Iris Pro MBP 14" with no dGPU than someone like Dell coming out with one

*except may be clevo with its insane desktop cpu in 15 incher

 

Apple HAS a 15" MBP with Iris Pro. And they haven't innovated on any of the above since the move to the thinner Retina-screen models several years ago.

Unlike PC makers, Apple doesn't make a full range of sizes -- they jump from 13" to 15" -- and offer only one CPU grade at each size (these days ). All three of the first-tier PC makers have 14" models and at some variation in specs/power grades/quality at each size; I'm not sure about HP, but at 14" both Dell and Lenovo have business models "basic" "midrange" "high power" and "premium" models at 14" (although in Dell's case, the midrange and high power models are different chassis hidden behind the same nominal model)

Dell does offer a 14" with Iris Pro, and a premium build. Sadly, that's only with a ULV (Skylake-U) CPU.