Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

Based on no feedback from anyone at all, i went for the Crucial option managed to get 128Gb 2666 for a bargain £250. Now I have £150 left in my budget and it's all going on alcohol.

 

I noticed that hyperthreading is disabled in bios by defualt on my 7740 - should I enable it? I notice there's no impact in benchmarking anyways...

 

You absolutely should enable hyperthreading.

 

Has anyone had any issues with a 7740 and docking station, and having the laptop freeze?

I have the AMD 3200 GPU (hopefully not for much longer), and 2 external monitors (1xHD and 1x4K), and until now I've been using no docking station and things were working more or less OK. It was sometimes a bit sluggish, but never actually froze.

I then got a docking station - WD19DC - and after a while it froze once. But then seemed to be a bit more stable.

But then I switched over to 2 4K monitors, and it froze again quite quickly. I moved the monitors to directly connect to the laptop, and everything else on the docking station. Worked for a bit... then froze twice today.

I've now got just 1 monitor connected directly and seeing how it goes.

Docking station firmware and BIOS are up to date.

But has anyone else had freezing issues with the following configuration?
- Precision 7740
- AMD 3200 GPU
- WD19 docking station
- More than one external monitor

 

I have two small issues (I think) with 7740 - which I would like to check. Maybe someone had simillar problem:

1) One is with USB port on the back. It works and with external harddrive etc. I don't have any problems. But when I connect wireless mouse (with connector here) it works ok for 95% of the time but sometimes it starts breaking - like if the signal was lost or weak. I don't really see any dependencies here - it doesn't work for maybe 20-30 seconds and then it's ok again.

I checked with two different mouses (logitech anywhere mx - v1 and 2) and there is the same behaviour. Not the big deal but still I would like to know what can be the reason for this.


2) Second is with audio output. It's ok when I connect headphones but when I use external hi-fi, I can hear some noises when there is no sound. Like if the was some noise on output. If I turn volume down on hi-fi it's quiet but when I turn it up it can be easily hear.

Hi-Fi and cable is ok - I checked it with two other laptops. Is it possible that this is connected with audio settings and drivers?

 

Can you go digital out instead to see if it's a analogue / EMF noise (pollution) issue vs. system (intended) issue? If you're running headphone output voltages vs line out voltage, that could be your issue.

 

Dell is detecting that I need this update for IntelME, but it always fails on installation. Is it worth looking into or just let it go?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/e...de=wt64a&productcode=precision-17-7740-laptop

 

Intel ME is probably locked out on your motherboard. Mine kept doing that and I found out that my 7740's motherboard didn't have the ability to have Intel ME, after a month of trouble shooting with dell. If you can look up your build sheet, it will be specified there. Hope that helps

 

How do I do that? (use digital output)

 

What kind of Hi-Fi system are you using? Does it have a USB digital input? You can run usb-digital on many DAC's on a hifi, like on a https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1
etc. Then click on your system speaker on the desktop and choose your DAC for sound.