Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

Why would you do this? Your I/O will be impacted by the fact that the CPU will take the hit here as everything will pass through the Raid controller, so you'll be getting one extra layer of computing time.

I have Samsung NVMe 960 Pro and I have set the mode to AHCI in BIOS. Using RAID will impact with at least 10% performance hit as well as increased latency. Using RAID is also unoptimal for power if you actually have a RAID system as it will keep the whole array of drives pumped with electricity due to the fact that it will write to them concurrently (RAID-0 writes concurrent, RAID-1 will write exact copy).

The idea here is not to use the generic driver from Microsoft, so I have installed the drivers from Samsung. Over this, the Samsung Magician software will not recognize my NVMe drives if I have RAID set to ON, because, surprise, it's using the Intel drivers.

On another note, below are my options for SATA Operation:
- RAID On: Will pass I/O through the RAID controller, using the Intel Raid Controller Driver instead of the manufacturer's driver. Will cause NVMe drives to not be recognized properly. Unoptimal
- AHCI: Will make use of the AHCI controller but since it's NVMe, it will be directly seen by the OS and manufacturer's driver is being used instead of something else. AHCI controller is built into the slot. Optimal
- Off: Will directly use the manufacturer's driver as well as the controller embedded on the NVMe. In theory this should be the best option for NVMe, but for some reason computer won't resume from sleep if I use this. Unoptimal

Unless you use RAID (which is slower by the way, in terms of latency, not necessarily I/O throughput if you use RAID-0) then it makes sense to use the RAID controller, but keep in mind that any I/O operation will wake up the CPU and keep it hot. This makes more sense for a Desktop PC or a server, but not for a laptop. There is no logic to use Hardware RAID on a laptop, given that it should be power and thermal efficient at first.

 

Your BIOS seems very old, def need to update, not least because it will be the first thing you will be asked to do if you contact support.

The conventional wisdom is that Raid mode tends to be more stable (particularly in comparison to AHCI using OEM drivers), although I've never had any issues with Ahci, using either the default MS driver of Samsung's. Sabrent is a bit on the budget side of things, so the advice had merit IMHO.

 

Yesterday and last week it was:


Today, nothing critical logged (crash was at 11:59am, during the SupportAssist driver update installation)

 

True, but it really doesn't make sense to use RAID on a laptop. That's not what laptops are built for.

Have you tried this option? It's supposed to make things more stable with regards to the explorer.exe process.

 

Thanks. Have updated it now. It seemed to update a lot of different components one by one. Maybe one of them will fix the freezing....??

 

As per earlier, if you try to run the same driver installer twice, it will tend to just offer the repair option. Safe to cancel, since corruption is unlikely.

 

No, but will have a look now. Thanks!

Edit - have enabled it now.

I have noticed that before the PC completely hangs, Explorer (i.e. the taskbar, start button, and all apps) freezes but I can still move the mouse for a few seconds. Then, the mouse also freezes. So maybe Explorer is somehow related...

 

I understood the advice to be aimed at the immediate troubleshooting.
RAID0 is pointless with modern NVMe drives, since a single drive is enough to saturate the controller bandwidth (although users of old SATA drives would see their throughput doubled).
RAID1 might be an option if the increase in reliability was worth the cost to someone.

I benchmarked my Samsung 970 plus in both modes and got identical results, however, in retrospect, I did not adjust for CPU utilisation, and just switched to AHCI to be able to use the Samsung driver and the Magician.

 

To me this really sounds like a bad driver causing this. It could also be something you installed as a software, but the drivers are more prone to cause such a thing.

Check if this happens again after the BIOS update and maybe just install Windows 10 CLEAN ISO (Downloaded from Microsoft) from scratch and manually install the drivers one by one.

Make sure you check here for your NVMe drive manufacturer driver, or just download it from the manufacturer's website. The list is updated quite frequently there.

 

Hopefully. If not, before you start reinstalling the OS, check out the specific advice from MS in the link I posted earlier (there is a link within you have to follow to get to the actual advice). If this fails to help, I would contact Dell (they will probably ask you to reinstall the OS first anyway, though).