Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

How to do a clean install Windows 10 Pro on upgraded SSD?

My M7510 came with a mechanical hard drive only, so I installed a Samsung 950 Pro NVM SSD and downloaded W10 OS install (setup it on USB drive) from Dell based on the service tag. I followed Dell's instruction for booting OS install from USB drive, but Dell's instruction seems to be for recovering OS to the original mechanical drive. Because it didn't give me the option to choose which drive I want to install W10, now I can hear mechanical hard drive is working hard and display says "Recovering this PC 12%". I'm pretty sure it is doing recovering on the original mechanical drive instead of SSD.

I'm new to W10, do I need to install driver for NVM SSD first or remove mechanical drive before booting from USB OS installer? I couldn't find step by a step instruction for M7510, can someone point me to a step by step instruction?

Am I right to assume the Windows 10 installer that I've downloaded from Dell based on my M7510 service tag would have all the necessary drivers for it?

Thanks in advance.

 

If you are not running raid, switch the sata operation in the bios to ACHI. Use the Microsoft tool to create the USB install drive and you will be set.

 

Abnormal FHD display

So while my M7510 is doing its recovering thing, I'm noticing some light bleeds on its FHD. Can you guys with M7510 FHD confirm this is not normal? Thanks.

 

Well, got mine yesterday. With the UltraSharp FHD panel.
Will report a feedback later. But I can confirm this light bleeding issue is present on my 7510 too.
And build quality as a whole is not really up to my expectations.

 

So got mine yesterday.
Initial impressions are kind of mixed :
+ I like the design, colors and dimensions, as well as weight repartition
+/- Keyboard feeling is not that bad
+/- Back covers have this "plastic" Fermont yet still seem rather resistant. They are super lightweight and easy to remove and put back in place
+/- Screen cover being touted as "carbon" set my expectations high. Well. I like it, but it's covered with a soft touch layer. Not sure how this will age... By the way, this soft touch material is also used for the palmrest area... would have preferred aluminum here.
- Touchpad keys are so loose I thought they were broken
- Like I reported earlier, screen is bleeding mighty a bit. And viewing angles are not impressive at all.
- Power adaptor is huge

So time to turn it on. Before switching RAM and storage, I checked that everything was working ok (ram, usb ports, sd card, hdd, network...).
Good news is everything works ok indeed. And no whine coil But it's really a pain to go back to slow mechanical drives...

Upgrade time then.
- RAM Nothing special
- HDD to M.2 SSD : VERY IMPORTANT thing to note, the now famous M.2 slot screw was here in place So nothing special about SSD upgrade at this point either.

Boot, setup, M.2 is found by the BIOS. So changed sata mode to AHCI. Plugged the usb key with Win10 and .. Install is fast And reboot fails :'(
Turned out this UEFI thing is not as simple as I expected it to be. usb key was made using linux live usb creator. And this had installed Win10 in legacy mbr mode.
So, remade the usb key using microsoft tool. New install now boots ok

And that's pretty much all. Win10 updates went smoothly (I first installed video drivers manually, then wifi drivers manually, then let windows set everything else up).
Now the PC is up and running and it's super fast . And I'm quite happy with it, save for those few "cons" listed above.

There is also an important thing for me : there is a BIOS option that will prevent the battery to be always on charge when A/C adaptor is plugged. This is important as I use my PC mostly plugged to AC. And in this configuration, all PCs I had to this date simply keep the battery charge level to its max. This stupid behaviour kills the battery in one year, a bit more when lucky...
With this option, the battery should stay in good status for many years

 

I too received my 7510 today. This is the second one after the first I received a couple of weeks ago was DOA. One of the selling points for me was the presence of a Thunderbolt port. I use a Thunderbolt drive on my Macbook and I wanted to be able to move it to the 7510 to retrieve files. This may have been a poor assumption on my part, but I expected all Thunderbolt parts to be common, similar to USB. I found that the port that looks similar to my Mac's Thunderbolt port is actually display port. So when I plugged the drive into it, it didn't work. I called tech support and they couldn't help me. They "thought" the Thunderbolt port was the rear most port on the left side with the lightning bolt. So it appears Thunderbolt 3 is different than my current Apple thunderbolt connection. So I guess I'll have to switch to a USB 3.0 cable when I move to the Dell. The only adapter I found online was $100. Not worth that.

Dennis

 

Thunderbolt 3 uses a USB-C connector, while Thunderbolt 1 and 2 use a mini-DisplayPort connector. Newer MacBooks use the same port that you see on your 7510.
Confusing, sure... But yes, adapters seem rather pricey.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I had hoped to also be able to use a firewire to Thunderbolt adapter to enable me to capture SD video on the 7510. Maybe not.

 

Quick questions to owners:

- how many dell's got issue with winny coils that came with 6820HQ CPU ?
- how long battery life is with AMD card and NVIDIA ?
- can you turn off (in bios) complety dGPU ? (Firepro or Quadro)?

 

Double, delete this please.