Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Yes I have. I created a bootable MS-DOS USB drive, but the program wouldn't run in this environment. This is a windows-only program.
Do you guys know if such thing as a windows live cd exist? *edit* found one on malekal.com

 

Modern SSDs can absorb hundreds of TBs of data before starting to wear out. For example, the 1TB Samsung 860 EVO is rated for (and warrantied for) 600 TBW (terabytes written). To approach that number, you would have to write 150 GB per day... every single day, for ten years. You could look into the Samsung 860 EVO M.2 drives, they are not tremendously expensive (compared to PCIe drives, especially what Dell is asking for them), a good balance between cost, speed, and capacity that would allow you to get the larger battery as well.

I used to do the same thing, using a smaller SSD with a larger HDD for data. I switched to a second M.2/SATA SSD for the data drive when I got my 7530 (to get the larger battery) and I'm really loving the speed boost for my SQL databases.

 

So it turns out "C states" was disabled in the BIOS (due to having to use the TB16 dock), and this was preventing my CPU from clocking up to the max 4.8 GHz single core frequency.

Enabling C states has recovered the missing single core Cinebench performance.

 

that's an interesting finding

 

Is my understanding correct, that I can disable the dGPU and iGPU, plug in a eGPU and remove 1/2 of the thermal load?
Since their is a single shared heat pipe, the GPU fan/heatsink will help a little with CPU load... but not much since it is at a > distance from the CPU?

Thanks.

 

The dGPU heatsink isn't really going to be doing anything for you if the dGPU is off. The heatsink's job is to facilitate quick transfer of heat from the hot chip underneath into the heat pipes. If there is no heat coming from the chip, it has no function really. They don't even include this heatsink if you buy the system without a dGPU.

I wouldn't recommend attempting to disable the iGPU. It's not very powerful and doesn't produce much heat, and it would leave you in a pickle if you needed to use the laptop built-in display.

 

I apologize for the lack of clarity in my previous post.

1) If the dGPU is not being used, would the CPU disperse enough heat through the shared heat pipe + left fan, to prevent heavy throttling? (assuming the dGPU/Left fan was running)

2) Disabling the iGPU: Disabling is the wrong word. Is it possible to run the internal display off of the eGPU instead of the iGPU? (Similar to macOS)

3) How do you think this will affect the overall temperatures of the Precision 7530?

Thanks.

 

The Precision 7530 can handle typical CPU-only workloads without throttling the CPU at all; it allows a full 4 GHz Turbo Boost while running the Cinebench R15 multi-threaded test using my Xeon E-2176M CPU.

 

2. You can render apps on the eGPU and have them output to the internal display, however, this works by having the eGPU dump the output into the iGPU's framebuffer for display. The iGPU will still be actually running the display. (This is also how graphics switching works with a dGPU... The dGPU does the work and hands it to the iGPU for output onto the internal display.)

Disabling the the dGPU won't do much to prevent throttling. Several users have reported throttling with CPU-only workloads (I have certainly observed it myself in the 7530). This is to say, the CPU still runs above the "rated" speed but it cannot maintain the maximum turbo speed. The extra heat pipe volume isn't going to help much once everything warms up, that heat is just going to be sitting there. The purpose of the heat pipe is to facilitate the movement of heat from the heatsinks "blocks" on the CPU/GPU to the fins near the fans so that it can leave the system; the heat pipes themselves don't allow much heat to escape passively.

Basically, to reduce the CPU temperature you have to either reduce the heat generated (i.e. CPU undervolting), get the heat out of the system faster (fans running higher), or improve efficiency of heat transfer between components (better thermal paste). Adding extra heat pipe volume would help if the pipes actually ran from the CPU to the fans, but that's not the case here. However, we've had multiple reports of the CPU being able to maintain the maximum turbo speed when CPU undervolting is applied.

Not saying that the dGPU being used won't make things worse, it obviously would add more heat to the entire system that would need to be dissipated and obviously components of the thermal system are shared between the two. I'm just saying that the extra heat pipes that are there for the dGPU are only going to offer negligible help (at best) for cooling the CPU.

 

With BIOS 1.5.2 and dock firmware 1.0.7, I've been running for a few hours with C states turned on and haven't hit the USB stuttering bug. Usually I am able to notice it within 20 or 30 minutes. I'll post back if I hit it again, but I think that it seems to be fixed...
(I didn't check C states in between installing the two updates so I can't say if it was one or the other or both that fixed it.)