Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

So my port replicator was broken and after a power surge on the laptop and replacement of the port replicator everything is ok again.

 

Currently using the WD19DC dock. The concept is pretty good. but a few issues:

1) System temp holds at a min of 50deg and fan speeds run on med-high 100% of the time when connected. Disconnect, temp drops and fans turn off. Maybe due to the NVIDIA card being used to drive monitors?
2) Occasional system crashes due to igfx drivers. Cant figure this one out, gfx card and tb drivers are all up to date.

Anyone else seeing these issues?

 

If you have graphics switching on, there is a setting in the BIOS along the lines of "discrete display output mode" that you can turn on or off. If it is on then the NVIDIA GPU will drive displays attached to the dock, and if it is off, the Intel GPU will. If you have the NVIDIA GPU engaged all of the time then it would increase the heat output. Maybe toggling that option will make a difference for you?

(Also make sure that you have PCIe "link state power management" set to "maximum power savings" in Windows advanced power settings.)

On the 7530 I haven't had any crashes related to the WD19DC dock but I had display issues when I tried to run two 4K displays through it. I ended up attaching one of them to the system directly.

 

The only way to get two externals monitors @ 2560 x 1440 was to turn on discreet output. I did have it working with 1 monitor on the dock and one plugged into mini-HDMI, but I felt like that defeated the purpose of the dock.

 

I was wondering the same thing, there's mentions of the 1.4.0 on the forum but dell site only has 1.3.3.
Mine was assembled in november and arrived with 1.2.3...

 

Maybe 1.5.1 replaced 1.4.0 as a hot fix? It seems to have most of the same fixes.

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

 

I just installed 1.5.1. Before I had 1.4.0. Be warned!
1st boot after update I got white, red, green, blue cycle few times on the laptop screen when WD19DC was in use.
Windows restart stopped working. I just hear fan start one and then lights go out.
PC starts again from power button but restart fails always.

Without WD19DC same symptoms but after few tryout restart starts to work like it should be.
I did go through the BIOS setting and there was no error in logs.

I tried to go back to 1.4.0 but Windows hangs totally with fans making noise. Power button was only which worked.
I tried to install again 1.5.1 but restart failed and when I got PC up it started back to Windows without flashing anything.

I connect the WD19DC back and restarted the PC one more time (may 10th time totally, I stopped counting) and now It works!
This PC restart seems to be a bit tricky with WD19DC and BIOS 1.5.1. Now it works without showing any colors on laptop screen.

Please remember to download these applications from Microsoft Store

• Intel Graphics Center
• Nvidia Control Panel
• Dell PointStick Assistant

Dell Microsoft Autopilot computers are missing these by default.

Question:
Does your point stick or touch pad work when you are in Windows 10 login screen and WC19DC is connected?
I my case most times not at all. But after several boots its now working....

I have also three external 24" displays It's "fun" to guess which one of these will work when starting the PC.

 

Meanwhile, be careful with the new Nvidia driver for RTX cards (version 26.21.14.3206 ,A06). I tried installing that driver and immediately saw a drop of around 3 hours in battery life. After returning to the previous version, the battery life is ok again.

 

Battery life doesn't really work that way...

If you want to test it, you ought to completely discharge the battery before installing the driver and after installing it.

Instantaneous power draw on a notebook is extremely volatile. One moment you could be drawing 6 W and you could have 16 hours; the next, 12 W and the time left halves to 8 hours.

 

Looks like the crashing igfx driver is actually the onboard Intel Graphics. Finally uninstalled and reinstalled drivers looked to have helped, but then when I undervolted the crashing recommenced until I reinstalled the drivers again. Just some crazy instability with this platform when it comes to external monitors. Not sure if the undervolting is the culprit or not as after the crashing recommenced and I reinstalled the drivers I was missing a few .dll files and had to reinstall a few programs.