Dell Precision 7560 & Precision 7760 pre-release discussion

Hello,

I ordered a 7760 which is on its way for delivery (w11955M/64GB memory/4TB disk Gen4/A3000/Ubuntu installed/Pro support plus).

I'd like to make a dual boot windows/linux on it and have a few questions :
- if I delete ubuntu and install windows 10/RHEL on the 7760, will Pro support plus still be available? Hardware and software?
- I ordered a second SSD (gen4 WD SN850) to install it in the 7760 before I read somewhere there is only one gen4 pcie. Will the gen4 ssd still work on a pcie gen3 slot? If not I will return it.


Thanks for your help.

 

I have ProSupport for my 7530, just replaced with a 7560. Both systems dual boot Ubuntu & Windows 10. I encountered no issues when I needed hardware support. Early in the 7530's life the P1000 video card blew a chip. A chip literally exploded! The next day the tech showed up at my office and replaced both the P1000 and the motherboard. He explained that given the way the P1000 failed he didn't trust that the motherboard was OK even though it looked undamaged. When he finished we booted the machine into Windows (the default was Ubuntu) to run diagnostics. He never said anything about the dual boot setup.

As long as the technician can run diagnostics I expect he'll be happy.

I ordered a "SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3c" that did NOT work in slot 3 or 5, but works fine in slot 4 (the one under the door). I don't yet understand why it failed.

YMMV!

Edit: I forgot to mention that the Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX210 chip the 7X60 uses for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth isn't yet supported in some Linux distributions, including the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS I installed. I consider this a short term aggravation, not a major issue, but something to know about.

 

You'll still have hardware warranty but I don't think Dell will support you software-wise with RHEL. It won't void your warranty or anything but you'll be on your own to figure out how to make it work on your system.

PCIe4 drives "should" work in PCIe3 slots (at PCIe3 speed), but @rwzeitgeist above says he tried it and it didn't. Hmm. Try it when you get the drive in and return it if it doesn't work? (Unless the time to get your system is too long for your drive's return window.)

 

I installed 4 new Samsung 980 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4 drives into my 7760 and all are working fine. I did noticed after installing that none of them had the latest firmware so I upgraded it on all drives but other than that, all worked without me needing to make any changes or load any specific drivers. Here's a pic of the drive details as reported by Magician for one that in the Gen 3 slot. Note the "recommendation" that to realize the drive's optimal speed, it would need to be in a Gen 4 slot.

 

Do you have AHCI on in the bios? I recall on the 7710 I had an issue with the Samsung Drives and the controller set it RAID and I had to change the AHCI. That was a long time ago so wondering if the Samsung Magician works of the controller is RAID. Every Samsung SSD I've owned I had to update the firmware.

 

I almost went with 4 x Samsung 980 PRO 2TB drives. Instead I opted for 1 x Samsung 980 PRO 2TB and 3 x Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB drives. Have you noticed any, even slight, performance improvements in running a gen 4 drive in a gen 3 slot? Or is this more for future proofing if you decide to migrate the drives to a new laptop?

 

Thanks all for answering.

Ok, it's good to know that installing other OS than the one ordered won't avoid the hardware warranty. For software warranty, it's understandable.

Indeed, the delivery is planned on august 12, i'll give the SN850 a try. If it doesn't work i'll buy a gen3 drive and the SN850 will be an external drive ;-).

Edit: the RedHat HCL says that the Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) is supported on 7760 with the RHEL 8.4 but i know RHEL 8 comes with version 4.1x kernel so i'll have to try that too.
https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware...oy?product=Red Hat Enterprise Linux&version=8

 

It's not just any Wi-Fi 6 card; Intel's AX200 Wi-Fi 6 card has been around for a while so it should be widely supported in Linux. The AX210 card in this system is still pretty new. (Intel contributes the driver code to the kernel, so, you just basically need to be on a kernel that's new enough to have the AX210 driver included.)

 

Thanks for pointing that out.
I'll give RHEL 8.4 a try and if the AX210 does'nt work i'll go with another distro.

 

Yes. Even though I only ordered 1 small drive (left the default selection) and explicitly said no RAID, it arrived with RAID enabled which I immediately switched to AHCI.