Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

I noticed a color alteration on HDMI since this BIOS update I installed a couple of weeks ago. Using Movies & TV or VLC, blacks are too dark and whites are too bright, and grays aren't accurate on my TV.

Is discrete graphic controller the NVidia one? If so, I don't understand why I'm able to change contrast or saturation on the TV from Intel Graphics control panel.

 

Please note that audio latencies on 7530 seem to be fixed since some Dell or Windows update.

 

What is "discrete graphics controller direct output mode" set to in the BIOS? (Try toggling it and see if it fixes your issue.)

 

Figured out what happened - created a cheat sheet for the bulletin board at the assembly plant. Not sure how important grounding the SSD is in this case, but mine is now. Easy to see why it gets torn during assembly.

 

Thanks! I feel like a total doofus not realizing it was just above. Maybe I'll still give it a shot despite my CPU issues; can only help!

You haven't noticed any issues with it yet, have you?

Edit:
I seem to be having trouble flashing using nvflash. I keep getting a Board ID mismatch error. This is the command I use:

nvflash64 -6 GP104.rom

Mind sharing what you used? Thanks!

Edit 2:
Seems I had to use a version of nvflash with the board id mismatch error patched out. Worked great!

 

I just received my Precision 7730 yesterday, and I am (mostly) quite happy with it. It's E-2186M, 64GB ECC RAM, P4200, backlit keyboard + FIPS sensor, 4K IGZO screen. Naturally, the first thing I did was to run a bunch of benchmarks on it before I put it to work:

Time Spy (first run): 5438 (GFX 5355, CPU 5965)
Intel XTU w/ -.1V underclock, and TimeSpy crashed.
Intel XTU w/ -.05V underclock:
Time Spy (second run): 5510 (GFX 5384, CPU 6358)

The power brick compared to the 7720 is much more elegant, smaller with rounded edges and more sleek looking. The FIPS finger print reader is unusable - no matter how I pressed down on the gold contact surface, it would register my finger with the absolute greatest of reluctance. Also, there's a single green "Always On" pixel when I view a black background - I might take advantage of the "Premium Panel" guarantee at a later time, but with these tiny pixels it's barely visible even with a solid black screen. It seemed to take some knocks during shipment, so it may very well have started out in mint condition.

The fans are engineered a little differently compared to the 7720, but even when benchmarking I struggled to hear them - they sure seem quiet.

It shipped with a Toshiba Class 40 NVMe 512GB device, and according to Crystal Disk Mark, it's not bad: (KXG60ZNV512G):



Also, I noticed that the heat sink adhesive "sticker" was not applied directly to the SSD. This makes it easier for me to replace it, but for people who are using the machine as shipped, they should check that as it would likely improve heat dissipation.

However, as I intend to fill up the NVMe slots with 2TB drives, it's gotta go. Here's the specs for the Samsung 970 EVO drive - very nice performance:


Later, I'll edit this and post the results for three 970 EVO's in a stripe - because why wouldn't you do this on a workstation? Just kidding though - because I want to run VMs on this thing, the simplest thing to do is simply park the VM VHDXs on different drives, and then they don't contend with each other for a single shared resource.

My aging Samsung 960 Pro is my boot drive but still has lots of life remaining - I'm posting here for completeness:



The display, aside from the single pixel issue, is simply gorgeous. The keyboard now has the Page Up / Down keys right next to the arrow keys, which is a bonus.

 

Did you have any previous systems with FIPS readers? It took some getting used to but I'm used to it now (been using them going back to 2012), but really you have to put your finger on there (not pressing hard) and keep it still for about three seconds for it to register, it is definitely not as fast as some other readers.

 

Actually, with this advice, I got it to work. I'm used to the swipe fingerprint reader, which worked very quickly - I both have to press down firmly and leave it there for over two seconds, and now I can log in with it. Thanks for your help!

 

@Ionising_Radiation I have experienced a massive improvement with the 7730 vBIOs!

BEFORE:


AFTER:


Despite my CPU throttling woes, this was a massive success! Thank you!!!

 

Using three 970 EVO 2 TB drives, I did all sorts of things to them with Storage Spaces on my 7730. I'm wondering if the NVME data bus is shared between all drives - there doesn't seem to be any performance advantage for striping, mirroring, anything. I used Storage Spaces for all of these scenarios.

3 NVME Striped:

3 NVME Parity:


3 NVME Two-Way Mirror (2.7 TB usable):