Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

Don’t wanna inflate bubbles before popping ‘em—Dell might just up the price by 15x overnight, which happened the last time I did this.

That said, I’ve already pre-emptively asked for about four cards each; the rep is likely to reply tomorrow or so. Once again, I’ve barely got the cash for a single RTX 5000, so I may need pre-payment. I’ve asked them to ‘hold’ the orders for some cards as well.

To clarify: both cards go in the 7530/7540; they will not work in the 7730 nor the 7740 because the cards are physically incompatible (too small).

The one costing S$210 without tax is the Quadro RTX 4000 (N19E-Q3); the one costing S$265 is the Quadro RTX 5000 (N19E-Q5). Also note that these have VBIOSes that lock the power limit to 80W, and going higher will likely require a cross-flash from the 7740’s GPUs.

 

I'm also interested in as well. But how do you manage the payment and everything, suppose that they don't fix the prices?

 

I've had a chat. For now, just put me down for one RTX 5000 card. My coworkers are interested but only if the office pays for it, and because of the backchannel nature of this deal (and the fact that we don't really "need" them ) I don't think that is likely.

 

You pre-pay for the cards, including shipping, which has to be determined somewhat arbitrarily. I wish I could pay in advance to avoid this hassle, but I haven’t really got ~1.2K in the bank—it refuses to exceed $800. And you trust that I directly send a portion of your money to Dell, and they ship the card to me, and thence I to you. I agree this is very iffy, which is why I’m detailing it to you right now.

If Dell increases the prices halfway, you get your money back. Simple as that.

Fair point. Between us, I presume four cards are enough. Any more and Dell is likely to suspect I am reselling them.

Once I get my RTX 5000, I will have a slightly used RTX 3000. Is anyone interested? I need the money, so I will be selling it at a slight profit

 

Forgive my ignorance in case I'm missing something. @Ionising_Radiation offers RTX5000 for several hundred bucks, while the retail price for it goes north of $2K. This seems either like a scam or cards are not genuine quality. I'm glad to be proven wrong.
Also, if I were to order this card separately, is it feasible to swap the one inside 7540 with the new card like you can with RAM? Or is it soldered and requires much more effort?

 

Dell Singapore has messed up the price for the standalone parts and @Ionising_Radiation is capitalizing on it. They will likely correct it in a short time. The same thing happened before this past summer, when the 7540/7740 series first launched; he managed to buy a RTX 3000 from them for cheap. The quote from Dell was posted here when that went down (somewhere in the 7530/7730 thread probably). ---Edit, found it, in this post (inside the spoiler tag). If you follow the thread you will see that we tried to get an order together for more cards but Dell ended up correcting the price.

 

Thanks @Ionising_Radiation. This is very tricky though, as I believe it will take some time so that everyone's money reaches your account - and by that time, the prices have been fixed. It will be better for you to simply get the cards with your current budget, and sell them here - I'm sure many people have interest in these cards. Keep us updated though!

 

@Aaron44126, thanks for vouching for me.

@JustAnApprentice, totally understood—I would think twice myself if I were buying a card off me.

I’ll see if I can scrounge together some cash, and pre-pay, get the cards on hand, and then we can settle things more normally.

 

Thanks for clarification! Having read the thread, it does look like huge luck!
So if there is a chance I can buy cheapest graphics card config for 7540 and then swap it with RTX5000 (given it is the right form factor), I'll be happy to stand in line for one @Ionising_Radiation. I can pay upfront too. If you still have any left, that is.

 

You can swap the dGPU out in the 7530/7540... The cards are starting to show up on eBay, but the price is... exorbitant.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/333338977094
The Dell Singapore price slip-up is a lucky break. (In the U.S., Dell will not sell the GPU cards standalone, or at least everyone who has tried to ask them for one has been told that the part is not available in stock AFAIK.)

It is a little bit more involved than swapping out the RAM, as you actually have to fully remove the keyboard/palmrest and the heatsink assmebly (which also requires cleaning off and reapplying thermal paste to the CPU and GPU), but it is doable. All of the directions are in the service manual available from support.dell.com. However you will want to have a system that already came with a discrete GPU in it. If you buy a system with Intel graphics only, you will get a heatsink that doesn't cover the discrete GPU, you won't have the discrete GPU power cable, and you won't have the discrete GPU "PCI express screw connector" things, so you would have to somehow source those separately to perform the upgrade.