Dell Precision 5510 Owner's Lounge

Hey everyone I have just received my 5510 (E3-1505M, 16G, 256G NVMe+1T HDD) and upgraded my bios to 1.2.10, the newest. I have heard a lot that using AHCI will cause varieties of problem but I prefer to Gentoo Linux so I have to use AHCI, not RAID. It seems after 1.2.10 the problem was gone? Could anyone kind tell me is it true? I have searched a lot and don't find a answer.

 

I think it is a problem with the SATA mode set to AHCI (in other words, Intel RAID is not active), and the Microsoft NVMe driver under Windows. Other NVMe drivers (i.e. Samsung's) do not have a problem. I think you'll be fine under Linux.

 

Thank you for your answering so quickly!!! I means I can't use RAID because it's complex and can't find in Linux. And I want to use Linux first and sometimes need to use windows. I have know that Samsung's NVMe is stable but have a reboot problem. And I'm wondering whether the newest BIOS fixed it already. And I must set SATA mode to AHCI not Disable because I have a SATA HDD...

 

Just got my M5510 a few days ago. Updated the firmware to the latest 1.2.10. I am using a hard disk password on my primary drive and I have enabled the "bypass hard drive password on warm reboot" option, but every time I reboot the system I still have to enter the hard disk password. Is anyone else having the same issue? My older Dell M4600 did not have this problem and it did bypass the drive password on warm reboots.

 

I feel you on the offset keyboard layout. I've honestly never tried to get used to it, but it's perplexing to me that anyone ever thought it was a good idea. Does anyone really need a number pad so much that it's worth having to position the laptop awkwardly while typing? Personally, I think the people who actually need a number pad to work more efficiently are also likely to be bothered by the awkward placement of the offset keyboard. A USB/Bluetooth number pad makes way more sense for them. And the OEMs seem more likely to put num pads on the consumer orientated laptops - those are people who are less likely to need a number pad in the first place. I guess they must have some rationale... You'll rarely see me compliment Apple on anything, but that's one thing they got right. I would guess the data on consumer habits somehow overstated the number pads importance, and Apple doesn't bother itself with what their customers want.

Btw already a long tangent, but it looks like the HP zbook you mentioned also has an offset keyboard. What did you like better about that one?

As far as the dGPU goes - disabling it in device manager as the other guy suggested would probably do the trick.

I'm pretty sure there's no Microsoft driver capable of running the dGPU, so if you clean install Windows and never install the drivers, Windows will default to the integrated GPU 100% of the time. I manually installed the Nvidia drivers, so I'm not sure if Windows Update would find them and try to install them, but I think disabling the dGPU in Device Manager should prevent that regardless.

While you can't disable the dGPU in the BIOS, the above should ensure that it never runs and never requires additional power, so that would clear you to use the smaller power supply. And *there is* a setting in the BIOS to disable warnings about using a different / undersized power supply. Outside of the BIOS, I can't see how a clean Windows install could tell what size PSU is recommended, and with the dGPU effectively disabled, you should never be in a situation where the smaller power supply cannot keep up with current usage demands while still charging the battery. So in theory you won't have to worry about warning messages etc.

If you decide to use Dell's customized Windows install, you might run into more error messages from Dell's utilities, but if you don't need the dGPU, chances are you want a clean install anyway.

 

Haven't been using a hard disk password myself, but I can think of a couple of things that might be related.

1. It could have something to do with fastboot. There's a setting in the BIOS for boot or startup (it's towards the bottom of the left side menu, can't remember the name) which can be set to Minimal, Thorough, or Auto. I think the default setting is Minimal.

I'm actually not sure if this is the same thing as Windows fastboot as I know there is a setting within Windows 10 to disable fastboot. I do know that by default Windows fastboot is always turned off for restarts even when it's activated. Food for thought - the BIOS fastboot option could have something to do with your issue.

2. Is the drive in question (or the Windows Boot Manager for it) listed first in the boot order? If it's not, trying another drive first could potentially disqualify the boot as a reboot for the purpose of entering the password.

3. What exactly do you mean by the hard drive password? Did you set it up in the BIOS? Is it the password for Bitlocker or other hardware encryption used by the drive? You could be using the wrong 'require password on reboot' setting for the specific hard drive password in question.

 

After you get your 5510 you can check in this folder
C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI\
for a command named nvidia-smi. If you run it, it will show your dGPU power consumption. And using the -q option with that command will give a slew of other reported dGPU details. Use that command as you test various solutions to minimize your dGPU usage.

I'm kindof opposite from what you are looking to do in that I've disabled the integrated intel gpu in favor of using the dGPU only. When I run that nvidia-smi command it shows I'm sipping 12w of the 100w power cap for my m5000m dGPU. I'm running a few VMs and chrome, outlook, and other MS office products. It sometimes will climb to 27w though unless I run something to use accelerated gpu in which case it can really climb high.

The dGPU will always be powered even without the driver, so it will always sip some power. But I would probably set it up as such in your case... switchable graphics enabled in bios. Then in Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Preferred Graphics Processor change from "auto-select" to be "integrated graphics". Then, still in Nvidia Control Panel go to --> Set Physx Configuration. Change from "Auto-Select" to be "CPU". Pretty much closest you can get to fully disabling the dGPU.

 

I have the same PM951 256GB. I have yet to try Samsung's NVMe driver. I have the drive set to AHCI in the BIOS (RAID was default) and I've been using Microsoft's default driver since right after a clean Windows 10 install. I don't have a tremendous number of hours on the system yet, but I have used it with the Microsoft NVMe driver before and after the BIOS update. I've had one BSOD before the BIOS update and one BSOD after the BIOS update so far. I think the error each time was "Critical Process Failed" or something similar.

So, I can tell you that it seems unlikely that the BIOS update fixed any issues with the Microsoft NVMe driver. I'm going to wait for it to happen again, but I plan on switching over to the Samsung driver as I have read that it corrects the issue.

From the research I've done the PM951 is a terrible SSD. It uses NVMe, but the underlying NAND memory uses a structure that is cheaper to produce and much slower than the NAND in Samsung's retail SM951. The result is read and write speeds that barely beat SATA drives from a couple of years ago. I'm definitely glad I went with the smallest option. I would've considered Dell's higher tier SSD at the 256GB size had I known, although they're not transparent with the details of either drive before you place the order...

 

Thank you. And so you haven't tried Samsung's driver? It seems Samsung's driver help a lot to stable. But seems Samsung's driver will cause reboot error, this seems have something with the BIOS, could you please test whether Samsung's driver and the newest driver will cause the reboot error? Thank you again.

 

Plus, it seems my SSD is Toshiba, not Samsung. Will it be different?