Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Looks like regular bezel pinching to me. Seems like with these new 7530/7730 during assembly they screw bezels on too tight for these particular panel models and lots come with some backlight bleed spots.

 

That's exactly what I thought until they sent a tech with a new panel & it had the same issue before being attached to the back of the lid & front bezel put in place. I'm really just curious if I should expect any better from these displays or if it would be best for me to move on at this point. I've seen 9 panels in 8 different machines & all are unacceptable for any graphics / photo / video work.

 

I totally agree with you. The 4K screen on my P7530 is just disappointing.

Two weeks age, I asked Dell to change my screen because of multiple dead pixels and for what I described as a "privacy filter effect": it had very poor view angle and a ****ty brightness. To be clear, the FHD screen on a Latitude 5570 was far better than the one in my P7530. A totally shame for a very high-end computer and a screen supposed to be of a higher quality!

When I phoned Dell, The support offered me to change the screen. The new one is better than the older one, but it still not worth the extra cost of this screen in my very own opinion. As you described in your previous post, there is also light stain in the lower left side and the brightness is still not totally homogeneous depending on the viewing angle.

Hopefully, I mostly work with external monitors and I'm not a graphist so these defects won't impact the quality of my work. This computer is really good, but the screen is a real disappointment and I would not recommend the 4K screen. Many things are said about Apple, but I must admit that the quality of the screens of their MacBook Pro is just exceptional. I may have set the bar too high, expecting such quality on my P7530 screen...

 

Messing with a custom fan profile on the 7530.



In SpeedFan, "Fan1" is the right fan which is closer to the CPU, and "Fan2" is the left fan which is closer to the GPU.

I put the system under load with Prime95. With the fans running at "100%", the temperature stabilizes a bit above 80. The CPU goes up above 3.2 GHz but ends up drops to 2.9 GHz under a sustained load. The clock behavior is the same as I get with the EC running the fans. (Undervolting could possibly allow it to run above 3.2 GHz for longer.)

I tried shutting off "Fan2" (the fan closer to the GPU), wondering if it was really helping at all. It made no difference in temperature or clock speed cap. So, it seems that running that fan while the system is under CPU load but not GPU load is pointless.

I let the system return to idle with both fans running at "50%" (around 2000 RPM). The CPU idles with temperatures around 40. Fully shutting off "Fan2" didn't change this temperature either. So yes, even though there is a heat pipe there, it seems like a pointless fan (when it comes to CPU cooling). Not that it matters that much. At 2000 RPM the fan is barely audible.

On the GPU side, I had to run Furmark for over a minute before it hit 85C with "Fan2" running at 50%. I have it kick the fan to 100% at that point which kept the temperature stable at around 82/83. The GPU never dropped below the maximum clock speed, a bit over 1.5 GHz. The left fan alone seems to be enough to keep the GPU temperature under control. This is with the Quadro P1000, I imagine the better cards would get hotter faster. I have the GPU fan set to run at 0% when the GPU temperature is below 70C. It stays in 50's for general desktop use (powering three 4K displays with Optimus disabled).


The Precision 7730:



This system is more symmetrical and there doesn't seem to be a single fan specifically suited for either the CPU or GPU. Probably best to run both fans for both components? I'd be interested to see any test results.

 

@Aaron44126, great job on getting the EC controller to play nice with the custom driver. I might try it soon, but before that I have several other projects w.r.t the P7530: a better display, repasting the laptop (but first preparing a benchmark suite), and installing 32 GB of RAM.

At some point I'd also like to try out the Pascal TDP Tweaker, given that nvflash can actually access and dump the VBIOS from the chip onto disk. I'd like to see if I can adjust the voltage curve, too, given that we've got some decent thermal headroom.

 

Also:
Tried changing the threshold from when I have the CPU kick up to max from 85C to 90C. This doesn't work... The temperature never gets this high and the fan never kicks on, because the CPU starts throttling down before it gets to 90C.

 

Just got BIOS 1.6.0 through Windows Updates. Installed without problems, but did not reboot as it said at the end. Powered on and screen stayed black for at least 10s - uhh scary. After that all went well. Used the reboot to switch on c states again and see how USB, Dock and trackpad on battery behave.

 

I have the 7530 4K panel and have to say I do not exactly feel the same as you, maybe I was lucky with the panel lottery. Dell could've used a better panel but compared to the existing high-end laptop competition from Lenovo and HP I think it's a good panel.

My panel has some minor backlight bleed at the bottom edge on the right and left sides, but let's be honest it's impossible to notice in most use cases. The only time I have ever noticed it is at the Dell boot screen when the room I'm in is fairly dark.

I haven't measured the panel brightness directly, but in relative terms given that my previous laptop was an HP ZBook 15 G4 with 4K DreamColor panel listed at 270 nits max brightness I can say the 7530 4K panel is significantly brighter, clearer, and overall better, so I would say the listed 350 nits max brightness is probably pretty accurate. Though I haven't seen the new HP ZBook G5 panels which are rated at 600 nits.

My HP ZBook G4 had the exact same off angle viewing brightness lowering and it was a Sharp panel too. Not sure if it's due to the matte finish which it had too or Sharp actually.

It's true Apple uses a good panel, but for me they are terrible/evil in so many other aspects.