Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

Thanks a bunch for this tip. I'v been running the m7540 with 99% cpu frequency and no fan noise.
I don't need the 5Ghz for most of what I do in my virtual lab.

 

My Precision 7530 just has the bare minimum NVIDIA GPU (Quadro P1000) and it can run 3× 4K displays without breaking a sweat. If you aren't doing pretty serious 3D work then I don't think that it would be an issue.

 

Jack574, please see following screenshot from HWinfo64. My rig is similar, 7740 with i9-9980HK processor. Following is when running CloneBD in non-hardware acceleration mode (CPU only) which is a pretty good way to max out the CPU. It appears that thermal throttling isn’t the problem, but rather the CPU exceeding the power limit. I’m not exactly sure what this means or what to do to fix it (or if it can be “fixed”). Maybe the gurus on this board can help explain the “power limit exceeded” thing. Overall, I’m otherwise pretty happy with this new rig (which also has the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 card and 4K screen).

 

Didn't see it before, but if you have a WWAN card installed in a Precision 7540, using M.2 Port "#4" will cause a hardware path conflict!

 

This sounds like your FN key is sticking down. You should check whether you have the same problem with other function keys. May need a keyboard replacement.

 

So, on another note, how is everyone holding up with the COVID-19 outbreak? Is Dell Support impacted by this in any means? Do they still send engineers to your home for parts replacement?

 

Thank you for asking this. I was -- literally -- just navigating to the end of the thread to ask the same question.

Since I suspect an audio hardware fault, I have held off submitting a Dell support ticket during the outbreak. My audio issue is annoying and causes failures during work teleconferences, but it's not worth risking someone's health.

 

Have you considered a USB DAC, into which you can plug your earphones/headphones and speakers? I think you can get decent ones for ~$150.

 

Heck. I've been using Anker's USB→Lightning audio adapter ($30) on both my home and work systems for a few months now and I've been quite satisfied with it. There are some basic ones considerably cheaper than $150 that you could try to see if it works better than the regular system audio.

 

I've got a USB headset (with the external ADC and DAC that this implies), but the problem replicates when that is in use. I initially thought this ruled out the internal audio adapter, but with the only common element being "sound is in use when the problem happens", my suspicion is that some part of the internal Realtek hardware is being used for something DSP-related, such as system-wide channel mixing, even if the actual DAC and ADC are external. (Am I off base to think that's possible?)