Dell Precision 7560 & Precision 7760 pre-release discussion

Found decent motherboard pictures in the manual. The dGPU is also shown.

7560

Spoiler

7550

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Someone want to carefully check shape and screw positions? At a glance, they look the same.
(7560 motherboard has three DGFF data connectors when the dGPU card has two, interesting; 7550 also had an extra one, is that just for the iGPU pass-through board?)

[Edit]
7760

Spoiler

7760 vs 7560 GPU cards look really similar but not quite the same to me, 7760 has larger VRMs and at least the bottom two screw positions look a little different.

7750

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7750/7760 also seem similar but there is an obvious difference in the mounting screw positions for the dGPU on the bottom left of the card. That could possibly be worked around by just not putting a screw in there and taping off the mount on the chassis side to avoid a short. If everything else lines up. A heatsink swap between the two systems wouldn't be possible because the heatsink screw positions around the CPU are completely different.

Even if everything can be made to physically fit, because Ampere cards are PCIe4, Dell might have taken the opportunity to change the DGFF pin-out so they may not work in a 7X50 system. Something obviously happened because they are using one less DGFF connector than before. Backwards compatibility would not be guaranteed like it is with desktop cards.

 

Feel free to start the 7560 / 7760 owner's thread, would love to see some photos + general impressions of the system.
Also I am curious if you go to the BIOS and look in the "drives" section, where you can enable and disable the individual drive slots, are there any SATA connections in the list? (I am hoping to move over a M.2 SATA drive, pretty sure there is still at least one SATA-compatible slot in there but not positive.)

 

Also, does it state which slot handles the Gen 4 drive?

Looking at the 7560 service manual I see:

Slot 3 Primary
Slot 4 Secondary
Slot 5 Primary

"Slot 3 and slot 5 supports PCIe Gen3, Optane, and SATA Solid-state drive."

Slot 4 "This slot supports only M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid-state drive and does not support any Optane, SATA, or M.2 2230 Solid-state drive"

Edit:
7760

Slot 3 Primary
Slot 4 Primary
Slot 5 Primary
Slot 6 Secondary

“Slot 3, slot 4, and slot 5 supports PCIe Gen3, Optane, and SATA Solid-state drive.”

Slot 6 “This slot supports only M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid-state drive and does not support any Optane, SATA, or M.2 2230 Solid-state drive.”

 

I think @Dell-Mano_G stated that the slot under the bottom cover SSD door is the PCIe4 slot.

 

I ordered with 2TB Gen 4 drive, so wonder if it will come in that slot as the boot drive. Or does the boot have to be one of the primary.

 

I suspect that the Precision part number database simply hasn't been updated yet. I'll call again in a month or so to check. In the meantime... I might check if I can get my hands on 7560/7760 DGFFs for cheap. That was a spectacular deal last year.

 

You should be able to boot any slot, doesn't have to be the "primary" one. If only one drive is bootable then the BIOS will automatically figure it out.

 

Thanks. Any reason why the Gen 4 slot is called secondary and the other slots primary and not the other way around?

 

Well I don't know why they put the terminology that way, but internally the PCIe4 NVMe slot would be treated separately than the others. It would have to be attached directly to the CPU's main PCIe bus whereas the other slots would be attached through the PCH. In the last few systems, all of the NVMe slots were attached to the PCH. With Tiger Lake, there is no PCIe4 support at the PCH, so PCIe4 devices have to be attached further up.

 

Oh my.... it's horrible...
PL1 for the CPU is 56W, and GPU's non-boost clock is around 35W. Under a full CPU and GPU load with no thermal modifications, the CPU can only do 25W and the GPU can only do 27W. CPU temps are at 80 degrees and GPU is at 75 degrees.
But after padding VRM's that were overheating, propping up the laptop 0.5 inches, and taking a desk fan and making a cardboard tunnel to cool the bottom case (used as a heat sink with the VRM thermal pads), I can get 35W for CPU and 30W for GPU. CPU temps are 85 degrees and GPU is 75 degrees.