Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

Hi,
would someone be able to confirm that the laptop will take 4x32 3200MHz RAM? currently I have 2x8 2666MHZ + 2x32 3200MHz but in need of more. There were some restrictions from beginning but now the specification document says it should work. Anyone tried this combination?
Thanks

 

The specification document was saying that this should work from the beginning, but its a hit or miss with all sticks at 3200MHz (even at 4x16GB)

 

So I have finally managed to complete the GPU upgrade, and so far it's working well. But I have some notes for anyone else who is planning to do the same.

A) It does work

B) Don't do it if you can avoid it. Getting the parts is really difficult. In particular the heatsinks for the 7730 do NOT fit the NVidia cards for the 7740. The screws are not in the right place. If I was customising this machine again, I would just start with the graphics card I wanted in the first place and put up with the price difference.

C) I have no idea if the Radeon Pro 7130 is the same as the 3200 - so I haven't included it below.

Here is a summary of what you would need if you are upgrading. Note that the 4000 and 5000 appear to be exactly the same from an upgrade point of view:

• From nothing to the Radeon 3200:
  • Power Cable (CCDPW)
  • 2xDGFF Connectors (NGRJG)
  • Heatsink (69PVF). I do not know if any of the heatsinks for the 7730 (D1HY2, JW9JT, 7JV64) would work
• From nothing to the NVidia 3000:
  • Power Cable (CCDPW)
  • 3xDGFF Connectors (NGRJG)
  • Heatsink (5VCW8). The heatsink for the 4000 (FHD64) will also work (I'm using it). There is a black covering that appears to be providing a protected area around the chip - as far as I can tell this should not generally be needed and would only matter if one of the capacitors was not seated properly. But I guess be careful. The heatsinks for the 7730 will NOT work as the screws are not in the right place
• From nothing to the NVidia 4000 or 5000:
  • Power Cable (CCDPW)
  • 3xDGFF Connectors (NGRJG)
  • Heatsink (FHD64). The heatsink for the 3000 MIGHT work (5VCW8), but you will probably need to remove some of the black protected area. Also check that thermal pads are provided for all the memory chips.
• From the Radeon 3200 to the NVidia 3000:
  • You will need one additional DGFF connector (NGRJG), and an appropriate heatsink (5VCW8 or FHD64 - see above). You will already have the power cable and 2 DGFF connectors
• From the Radeon 3200 to the NVidia 4000 or 5000:
  • One DGFF connector (NGRJG), and heatsink (FHD64 or MAYBE 5VCW8 - see above).
• From the NVidia 3000 to 4000 or 5000
  • You should upgrade the heatsink to the FHD64 but it might be OK with the existing 5VCW8 - see above
• From the NVidia 4000 to 5000
  • Should be no other changes required

Also a final note on the DGFF connectors - they use a slightly unusual screw. They are M2x3.0 screws, but with a larger than normal, flat head. Make sure you have two of those for each additional DGFF connector that you require. I just bought a pack of laptop screws from Amazon which had something close enough.

 

The 90 W VBIOS update posted by Dell_Mano_G in this thread also works well for the 7540 generation's RTX 4000 and 5000. The executable as downloaded from the website may not be directly used (due to the embedded batch file requiring a perfect string match). Instead, one has to open the executable as an archive, and then choose either one of the executables within it (appropriate to the installed GPU):


I observe a ~1600 point uplift in 3DMark Fire Strike Graphics, and an overall 10% increase in performance (link):


More benchmarks incoming, if I have the time. This is very well-received.

 

Hi all.

I've got a 7740 and two WD19DC docks (one at home, one at office). Sometimes (happening more and more often) when I plug a dock in after I've already started the PC, the whole system will freeze. Sometimes it will recover when I unplug the dock again, but often not. In those cases, the only way to recover it is to long hold the power button and force a reboot.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? PC BIOS is up to date, and dock drivers and firmware are all also up to date. According to Dell Command, all other system drivers etc are up to date.

Dell are suggesting a clean OS install but I've got SO much software installed that would be literally days of work and I really can't afford the time.

Thanks guys

 

If you have another empty drive that you could spare for a quick windows install, i'd go for that route, that's what i usually do when they ask for a clean install
Otherwise you could always image the system, try clean install and reimage back.

 

Thanks. That's a really good idea. I don't have a spare drive but I'd rather buy one than have to wipe the one I've already got.

Never used disk image but wouldn't trust that nothing would go wrong...

 

The Samsung 970 EVO and EVO Plus work very well in the 7740. I have three 2 TB NVMe SSDs in mine, and they're a combination of those two models. I can't speak to the PCI 4 option, as I haven't one of those to test, but the 970s I have run everything I throw at them without a hitch, and I haven't noticed them being a bottleneck for my 3D development work.

 

FWIW, I was one of those who removed the Waves MaxxAudio driver a few months ago, because I thought it was causing system instability.

As it turns out, that driver was not the cause of my issues -- they're now fixed, and I'll post separately about that. I had to reinstall the Waves driver when I discovered that without it, the analog output jack was silent on my machine.

 

****ing hell I'm sick of my £4500 laptop (7740) not working properly. Twice today I've locked the desktop, left it for 15 mins or so, come back to it and found it's rebooted itself and is sitting at the BIOS password screen.

Just one thing after another.

I bought it as I needed something reliable for my work. Seriously pissed off.