Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Anyone had any luck with a dock or travel dock for this laptop?

I am want to get one that uses the displayport mode on the USB c port.

I currently have a D200 VGA/HDMI/Ethernet/USB travel dock, but the Ethernet and USB become flaky after several hours.

Also, the Ethernet on that adapter and the one that came with the laptop don't work after the laptop wakes up from sleep. After the laptop wakes, the Ethernet driver keeps on loading and unloading. The other weird thing is that both adapters show the same Mac address in ipconfig /all.

Other than those issues, I really love this laptop (at least for work stuff). Not having a smart card reader is a bit of a drag though.

 

Anybody with the 6820HK? Can you explore its potential?

 

Have a few of these at the office using the Dell WD15 dock and it's working fine.

 

New drivers for Thunberbolt, Dock and P530 out. Also new BIOS
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...t/product/precision-m5510-workstation/drivers

Damn I hope this fixes the Dock issues!

Intel_TBT3_FW_UPDATE_NVM16_A04_2.16.01.003 says my drivers are already up to date. Huh?!

Anyone using Dell Command | Update?

 

I tried the Thunderbolt firmware update on a 5510 and it also told me that the firmware was already up to date. I had already installed the new BIOS released the day before, not sure if it was somehow captured in there.

On my 7510, the very same Thunderbolt firmware update worked as expected. It went through the whole process, momentarily disconnected my dock, and asked me to reboot at the end.

 

Make sure to plug in power from the AC adapter in addition to the TB dock plug when updating the FW.

 

I've started to have flicker on my screen at both lvl0 and lvl1 brightness adjustment. Unsure if it's BIOS update or P530 update. It seems if there's no visible difference between the lowest setting and the first anymore, and we've always seen flicker at lvl0.

Power on worked with TB15 connected today, Ethernet has been stable for 2 hours now (used to drop after 5 min). Was able to transfer 3 gb file to USB, would have dropped before.

 

After over two months usage I've concluded that my fingers and hands don't want to adjust to my Latitude E5570's offset keyboard so I have been exploring other options. I liked the keyboard layout of the HP ZBook 15 G3 but didn't like the relatively small battery or the UK pricing. Dell UK Outlet listed over 20 Precision 5510 (why so many - are the Thunderbolt issues causing a lot of returns?). One had the 84Whr battery and, after discovering that there was currently a Dell UK Outlet coupon code for 15% off Precisions, I pulled the trigger.

Spoiler

Precision M5510
Windows 10 Pro (64bit)
Processor: Intel® Core i7-6820HQ Processor (Quad-Core, 8MB Cache 2.70 GHz)
15.6" UltraSharp FHD IPS(1920x1080) Wide View Anti- Glare with LED backlit display
NVIDIA Quadro M1000M 2GB GDDR5
256GB PCIe Solid State Drive
Thermal Pad for M.2 PCIE SSD
16GB (2x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 Non-ECC
Intel 8260 2x2 802.11ac 2.4/5GHz + Bluetooth 4.1
Internal Qwerty Backlit Keyboard
Primary 6-cell 84W/HR Battery
Power Supply: 130W AC Adapter
Certified Refurbished

The price of £927 is about 47% of the price indicated if I configure a new machine (my rule of thumb is that Outlet prices are usually about 60% of a new configuration).

As discussed previously, I don't need the dGPU and wonder if I can disable it in the BIOS thereby enabling the machine to run happily on a lower rated PSU. I noticed that Dell UK lists an iGPU configuration option which doesn't change the price. I also hope the 5510 will accept my 1TB Sandisk X400 M.2 SATA SSD until such time as the NVMe SSDs become reasonably priced. I'm also a little concerned by the possible fan noise (I'm very happy with the E5570 in that respect) and hope that the twin fans can quietly handle the CPU heat.

Dell say that it will show up by the 27th. If my experience with the E5570 is an indication then it will arrive about a week earlier.

John

 

SATA M.2 drives work in the 5510. There is no option in the BIOS to disable the dGPU, however, it will be powered off when not in use. You can set "Integrated graphics" as the preferred for all applications in the NVIDIA control panel, or just disable the NVIDIA GPU in Device Manager, and it should stay powered off all of the time.

 

Thanks for confirming that a SATA M.2 SSD will work. I had hoped that a dGPU switch in the BIOS was available and be used to signal that it was safe to use a lower rated PSU (my E5570 with the 6440HQ CPU but no dGPU will happily run on a 65W PSU and even run on a 45W PSU if not trying to charge the battery when the CPU is under load).

John