Precision 7510 Owner's Thread

Just dropped by to announce to you, fellow 7510 owners, that Gecube has released a new 1050Ti MXM Type A for $320 @ TaoBao.
I have no experience with Chinese MXM cards, but if the thing works and of good quality, then that's awesome news, since the 1050Ti is also rated at 45W while the M2000M is rated at 55W.
But two questions remain, does Dell pair GPUs to the motherboards \ the BIOS?
and does Pascal need anything "extra"? like a special screen panel?

 

Dell doesn't have a GPU whitelist like some other workstation vendors do. You should be able to install "any" GPU, assuming that it is physically compatible with the heatsink.
NVIDIA Pascal GPUs require eDP displays (LVDS is no longer supported), but I'm rather sure that all 7510 machines have eDP displays, so you should be good there.

There is the chance that the system BIOS and the GPU vBIOS will not work well together. You will know this right away after an install attempt (trouble getting the OS to boot). For the best chance of success it is always recommended that you flash a Dell vBIOS on the GPU, if the GPU was not sourced from a Dell system. This is easy for mobile Quadros because there is always a Dell vBIOS available, but I don't know if you'll be able to find one for a 1050 Ti, so you'll have to take your chances there. HP vBIOS are particularly known to cause issues, but other ones usually work OK.

Another thing is, there are known issues with Pascal GPUs in the two generations prior to this (Precision M?700 and M?800), very early "engineering sample" versions of the vBIOS are needed in order to get the systems to boot with the card. I actually haven't seen many/any Pascal upgrade stories for the 7?10 generation, so I'm not sure if they will also have the issue. If they do, it may not be possible to find the needed vBIOS version for your specific card.

You *will* have to modify the driver INF file and boot Windows with driver signature checking turned off in order to get the NVIDIA driver to load after installing the new card.

I recommend that you switch graphics switching / Optimus on before attempting the upgrade. This way, the Intel GPU will be driving the screen and you will be able to use the laptop in the case that there are issues with the new NVIDIA GPU (i.e. if flashing the vBIOS is needed, it will be hard if you can't see anything!). If you install the new card and are able to get the driver loaded and the card happily working in your machine, you can try turning graphics switching off if that is your preferred configuration.

 

Open Precision_7x10_1.15.4.exe with PhoenixTool.exe and it will do that for you.

 

Does anyone know if M7510 will work without MXM card at all? Supposedly yes, but want to avoid double work when removing mine
Got really tired of throttling when there's high load on both CPU and GPU, so got HP accelerator shell which works like a charm as external GPU and want to get rid of that internal crap completely
as it seems to live it's own life even being disabled + driver uninstalled (HWinfo shows spikes in GPU frequency, etc..)

Another thing related to throttling is most likely dried thermointerface, so will refresh it as well when removing heatsink.

 

Don't recall seeing anyone try this with the 7510 specifically, but other Precisions work fine with the discrete GPU removed (assuming that they are a configuration that can normally run with Optimus/graphics switching turned on), I think that it would be a safe bet.

(7530/7730 will be a different story since the GPU card itself actually has some of the display outputs on it...)

 

Thanks, will try in a couple of days and post the result.
BTW, can certainly recommend Omen shell as better replacement for Dell usbc docks with its usb hub, Ethernet and drive bay. Spent couple hours fiddling with drivers when setting up, but these are steps easy to replicate

 

cool, not a bad price too for the 500w and it acts like a dock too. *edit: I see it's onsale at HP's website for $229 USD until tomorrow.

I was leaning to the Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box. The sonnet is available as 350w 550w 650w variants, but doesn't have the extra space for HDD or SSD storage, doesnt have USB3.1 type A and C ports or the ethernet port that the HP Omen Shell has. They are both about the same size, the Sonnet is a little bigger, but lighter. The Omen is a little flashy/gamer-ish looking but seems like good choice.

Do you know if HP has an eGPU compatibility list? Sonnet has this one, which I like because I don't have to worry if what I purchase will work in it

*the only HP Omen GPU compatibility list I can find is the short list on their ad page. But it covers what I might use, so thats cool.

edit* I was thinking of purchase the Omen today after studying it and especially that tempting $229 price which ends after tomorrow. But after thinking on it some more I may still go with the Sonnet as it has alot of good reviews and strong compatibility list of GPUs, and frankly I like its looks better. I don't really need the extra ports of the Omen and reading it's reviews sounds like the HP drops USB connections sometimes.

I look forward to hearing more about your Omen experience. Which GPU did you choose?

 

He

Hey,
I wasn't really looking into list as I've already had 1050TI and unlikely to updgrade to anything above 1080 in the foreseeable future. But as somebody stated on the Amazon - the whole Omen Shell thing looks like built as small PC and then repurposed to eGPU enclosure due to some marketing shift. So I won't be surprised if it works with RTX just fine.
What I also did as suggested by another guy from reviews is detached it's legs, so now it's just a box lying behind my two monitors and occupying not much space. The looks is good as for me.
USB drops - it's certainly device specific, I've never had an issues since got it one month ago, the only thing keeps losing itself is Logitech webcam, but this crap is famous for it's drivers and I had same issue when I was using PR03X e-port dock. Besides it I have external WD drive, keyboard, USB audio interface, wireless phone charger and Ethernet plugged to it - no issues at all.
So to me it seems like best bang for the buck, but it's surely personal.

For the setup steps in case somebody needs it:
- cleaned up drivers in safe mode with DDU
- removed inf files for nvidia to make sure internal Nvidia is installed as generic "VGA adapter" as suggested on https://egpu.io/forums/ since I initially had driver error 43 with my 1050TI, but don't really think it was necessary
- removed driver and disabled internal Nvidia GPU in Windows device manager
- installed the HP driver and software
- connected box and installed latest Nvidia driver
- [planned still] remove Nvidia MXM at all

And my next laptop won't have discrete graphics, I used it in 7510 not too many times to justify the weight to carry

EDIT: looked into pricing of 7530 since saw it in Aaron44126 signature - looks quite interesting. Had too many issues with Dell drivers though compared to my supereasy 5 year experience with HP Probook before getting 7510, so will think THREE times before getting anything else Dell

 

Pulled out the MXM card, works just fine.
The thermo compound was totally crappy - hard like a stone and in pieces.
I've only had leftovers of some random compound with 10% Ag, put it there and now it's again at 90 even under highest load in Turbo without throttling.

Can totally suggest to replace thermo compound to anyone owning it for more than 1.5 years.

 

I've had computers that I used MX4 and Arctic Silver Céramique 2 on for years. When I went to repaste them everything still looked good and they were easy to clean up.