Dell Precision 7710 Owner's Review

Dell Precision 7710 Owner's Review

The Dell Precision 7710 is the latest model of their professional 17" mobile workstation.

Uploading chassis pics to get things started. Will be adding to this review...

Overview

Intro to the Precision 7710 (upcoming)
External Chassis and Ports
Configuration Options (upcoming)
Docking Options (upcoming)
​

Display

Options (upcoming)
4K Panel Testing (upcoming)
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Performance Testing

SpecviewPerf Workstation (upcoming)
Gaming (upcoming)
Storage (upcoming)
CPU (Upcoming)
GPU (upcoming)
Heat and Throttle Testing (upcoming)
​

Compared to -

M6700 Covet Edition
Precision 5510 (upcoming)​

Teardown

External Chassis and Ports -


Top View



Right Side - SD Card, Headphone/Mic, 3X USB 3.0 charging ports, K Lock



Right side detail



Back - RJ45 Networking, Power



Detail of left exhaust vent. Note the extra space below the vent for more heat dissipation.



Detail of right exhaust vent, RJ45, and power. Note that heat pipes are visible just above the heat exchanger fins.



Left side - Thunderbolt / USB Type C, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB 3.0.



Front of the system



Status lights for power, drive activity, and charging status.


Bottom of the system.


Compared to the M6700 Covet Edition -
Precision 7710 in black, Precision M6700 in red.
Note - The M6700 has been used heavily for 3 years and has seen extensive travel. It has plenty of scratches, dings and dents but it has never let me down. It has been an exceptional machine.


Tops of the systems compared. They are close to the same size. Dents in the cover of the M6700 courtesy of airport security.



Front of the systems compared. The 7710 is a good bit thinner. I wonder how I bent the bottom of the M6700? Not sure.



Back to back. The 7710 is once again slightly thinner.


The 7710 is slightly deeper than the M6700 if you compare them chassis to chassis. If you count the protruding back hinge on the M6700, they are almost exactly the same.


About the same width.


Another side shot of the two systems. Huge dent on the back corner of the M6700 courtesy of a airport shuttle driver.


Backs of the two machines. More exhaust area on the 7710. I really do hope the 7710 never sees the kind of abuse that the M6700 did, but I really do hope it is as tough if it does.


Bottom of the two systems. Much more ventilation on the 7710.


Keyboards are essentially the same size. The 7710 brings in a long travel chiclet keyboard.


Touchpad is much larger on the 7710. Pointy stick is retained for the one person still using it.


Both screens go to 180.


Precision 7710 Teardown -

Note - The teardown instructions in the Precision 7710 Owner's Manual are excellent. The only thing I wish they had included were the screw sizes for each step.


Starting with the bottom of the system


Battery / 2.5" drive cover removed. The locking latch is clever, but will take getting used to if you are coming from an older Precision. The single latch allows you to remove both the cover and the battery.


Main system cover removed.


Before you can remove the keyboard, you have to remove these 4 ribbon cables under the battery and 2.5" drive. Look very closely at the center widest ribbon - see that tiny bit of white poking out on the right side? That is the guide line for that connector. It shows that I have not quite inserted it all the way on the right hand side. This will cause the system to not boot. Be careful to make sure you seat these properly. Now, flipping the keyboard over....


Remove the trim piece on the keyboard


Now you can see the screws that need to be removed to take out the keyboard. They are TINY.




I mean really tiny. Make sure you have high quality tools. You will strip these screws if you try to use low quality or improper tools.


Keyboard removed. Top.


Keyboard removed. Bottom.


Under the keyboard is the RAM cover.


The cover is ridiculously rigid. This goes a long way to reduce the chance for keyboard flex on the 7710.


A double stack of RAM.


Palmrest with keyboard, RAM, and RAM cover removed. Now, flipping the computer back over....


The two M.2 slots with heat sinks attached.


Heatsinks removed exposing the thermal pads and M.2 drives. Sticklers for continuity will note that the RAM is removed.


But now the RAM is back!! I removed it.


2.5" drive cable.


Cable removed


AC input jack. Note that the end of the cable where the power adapter plugs in is not attached to any kind of PCB board. This means you can easily just replace this cable instead of a whole board! Woot!


The power cable.


Wifi


Everything is removed.


Detail of the 2.5" drive caddy.


Currently equipped with the M.2 to Sata interposer. Cover on...


...and cover off.


Battery.


Top profile of the battery.


Palmrest removed.


Palmreset removed bottom


Bottom of the system with the palmrest removed.


Under the palmrest. Coppertown. So much copper. On the right is the CPU heatsink and fan, on the left is the GPU heatsink and fan. The dual fans that you could lose a fan and the system would still be able to cool the CPU and GPU. It also means that if you have running a heavy asymmetrical load on either the CPU or GPU, both fans could cool the processor while running at lower RPMs and lower noise.


Note the difference in height between the MXM card with the GPU on the left, and the directly mounted CPU on the right. The monolithic heatsink has to bend down to get to the CPU. Nice curve there.


Detail of the GPU side.


Detail of the CPU side.


Shot of the CPU heatsink mounting screws.


One more gratuitous shot of the massively overbuilt cooling system in the Precision 7710.


Here is the bottom panel.


And here is the bottom of the bottom panel. Not sure why someone would want to see all of these covers, but someone might get something out of it.


Battery / 2.5" drive cover


Bottom of the battery / 2.5" drive cover.


The RAM. Sure someone out there really wanted to see this too.

 

Very nice photos. Thanks for doing this.

 

Thanks! Was waiting for someone to post photos of the heatsink... Looks like they did a great job as usual.

 

nice thing about seeing these photos is that it somehow takes away any insecurities I have doing repairs/parts replacement myself. Such as the heatsinks.

The one thing I disliked was when trying to remove the keyboard. There are way more ribbon cables than I would have liked to deal with. They aren't difficult to undo or reattach, but was extra work compared to my old m6500 that had a single hard connector. And having to remove the 2.5" caddy to access those ribbon cables... and having to even access the back when I really wanted to just remove the keyboard on the front. That kind of irked me. And having to remove the island keyboard overlay which I was afraid would snap or break during it's removal.

Overall the structural design is superb and it is beautiful and looks exceptionally good in these photos. And I do appreciate the gratuitous RAM photos and such. I seriously applaud the power cable design. Design like that is what I like to see.

 

There are a ton of design details that were really well thought out. Look at the two fans - they spin in opposite directions which helps (I think) the system cancel out fan noise. It definitely has more of a low pitched whoosh than normal fan noise that the 6500/6600/6700 had.

The cooling system also allows the CPU to run in max turbo mode forever. Seriously.

 

I know what you mean about max turbo mode. My CPU show something like %130 percent max frequency or something crazy high most of the time and with quiet fan operation. sometimes the fans speed up unnecessarily but I shut them down if becomes annoying using dell thermal controls. I've mostly reconciled to just let them do their own thing.

 

great post.
thanks a lot.

 

absolutely fabulous Bokeh, thanks for the great thorough pics!!

I have been chasing various dream configs of the 7710 on ebay but so far no luck winning them. I found out that the UHD screen requires a specific motherboard, so you can't upgrade from FHD, bummer. Has anyone tried swapping video cards in this machine- any caveats or insights?? I did see the M5000M gpu listed on ebay, so thought to ask if it's possible to get a nice machine and swap out the M1000M card for the 5000, and according to my pal Anirban on Dell Chat, it's entirely possible. He also more or less agreed that the thunderbolt would probably support future external GPU. but we shall see.


07/11/2016 03:20:14PM Mark: "I plan to purchase the M7710 precision laptop with M2000M quadro graphics card. Was wondering, is it possible to install the M5000M graphics card in the future? From what I've read they are interchangeable"
07/11/2016 03:20:57PM Agent (Anirban A): "I will certainly assist you with that."
07/11/2016 03:21:05PM Mark: "otherwise, I've also read that the thunderbolt USB-C port will allow an external graphics card to be used in the future- does Dell have any plans to support this?"
07/11/2016 03:21:33PM Agent (Anirban A): "Mark, you can certainly upgrade the video card to M5000M."
07/11/2016 03:24:04PM Agent (Anirban A): "M7710 is a big machine. Hence you dont need to add any external video card on this machine."
07/11/2016 03:24:10PM Mark: "ok, that is great news. I assume that upgrading the card would violate the 3 year pro service warranty, correct..."
07/11/2016 03:24:52PM Agent (Anirban A): "Its true. Therefore all you need to do is to call our technical team for assistance. So that the warranty won't get void."
07/11/2016 03:25:06PM Mark: "haha, yes, it is huge, as you say. I'm just wondering if the external graphics through USB-C is something Dell will support, since the Alienware already has external graphics support, and thunderbolt is supposed to also allow this. for the distant future..."
07/11/2016 03:26:21PM Agent (Anirban A): "Yes, your machine can get support throudh USB - C port as well."

 

You can swap GPUs, but you have to be careful of the heatsink. Dell has provided different heatsinks for AMD vs NVIDIA cards in some generations, not sure about the 7710, I haven't seen detailed photos of the GPU heatsink. (I actually think the GPU and CPU heatsinks are combined as one part now?) Also, the M1000M and M2000M are not normally available in the 7710 and they are smaller size cards, not sure if they would use a different heatsink. If you get one with M3000M, upgrading to M5000M should be no trouble at all (except for taking the whole thing apart).

 

Thank you very much for this information. I have a DELL PRECISION 17 700, I want to maximize the performance of all the drives storage by using M.2 PCIE NVME. Is it possible to install two(1TB M.2 NVME PCI) at each M.2 port, since there are 2 ports available. Then at the bay drive, I will install another 1TB NVME PCIE. So that, I can have a total of 3TB M.2 NVME PCIE drive storage.