Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

We are using these machines out of (tested) spec. I am willing to bet that 95% of notebooks, whether workstation or gaming, or normal notebook, are not tested with simultaneous GPU + CPU workloads. Secondly, the 7530 was also not meant to run with 33% greater GPU power than intended. It could, as we have proven, but Dell didn't specify the machine as being able to do so. Hence the power drop using the 180 W adaptor.

Otherwise, the 180 W would suffice just fine for all other CPU + GPU combinations. The P3200 draws a maximum of ~ 70 W; the non-OC-able hexacores have a 60 W long-term power limit. Going by 70 + 60 = 130 W, there is (according to Dell) sufficient power. But once we start flashing BIOSes, overclocking, etc, we are going out of Dell's specification. I, too, am planning to get a 240 W adaptor for use at home.

 

You are right, it is 720p. That's disappointing, I guess I made a bad assumption. The camera in my M6700 is 1080p so they have taken a step back in that area... *sigh*

It's not unusual for a laptop to discharge the battery under heavy load these days, this would be when the PSU can't provide enough power for everything. (MacBook Pros have been doing this for years.) Ideally, manufacturers would include a PSU large enoguh to run the system under full load (CPU+GPU) without having to rely on additional power from the battery. However, you've increased the power drawn from the P3200 to beyond what Dell intended. I do not believe that there is anything wrong with your laptop or PSU if you were observing this. I guess maybe there's the reason that Dell chose to limit the power draw on this GPU in the 7530...

I suspect that if you were to run the system under load for a *long time* and the battery ran out, the system would simply start power throttling and things would slow down a little bit.

Next step would be confirm that the battery power draw doesn't happen with a larger PSU? If that is the case then this is basically a non-issue, as long as you are fine with using the larger brick.

 

Sorry if I'm not supposed to post here, I'm not a 7730 owner, but I've already searched this thread and found no answer, nor on Dell's website, the specs PDF or google: how many lanes of PCIe are in the Thunderbolt 3 ports?

Bonus question: is the headphone jack a combo jack?

 

The headphone jack is a combo headphone/headset jack (stereo output mono input).

 

As Ionising_Radiation explained to my post on page 197 of this thread, the answer is: 4, about 4GB/second bandwidth that is shared between all USB ports, all thunderbolt ports, all hard drives, basically everything except the video card and the RAM, as there's a single DMI link between the CPU and the chipset, equivalent to 4 PCIe lanes.

 

And this can be generalised not just to the 7730, but to *any* Intel Core CPU, either desktop or notebook (excluding the HEDT Core i9s, of course).

For more dedicated PCIe lanes, one absolutely needs a HEDT CPU—ideally Threadripper.

 

Anyone else having lots of issues with the latest updates to the TB18DC dock?

My 7730 + TB18DC dock were relatively stable before the latest updates. Now if my 7730 goes to sleep, when it comes back from sleep, the dock won't recognize the two daisy-chained Dell monitors (on DP) and often (thought not always) the external speakers I run through the dock. USB peripherals, on the other hand, seem fine.

At this moment, the system audio isn't detecting the speakers through the dock, even though I've power it and the computer off, and also pulled the power cord to the dock.

Grrrrrrrr.

 

Hm, I9s (at least the ones I checked like the the i9-8950HK) they have the same DMI setup like the i7's:
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-8950hk
and that's one of the i7's
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i7/i7-8850h

According these pages, both have 4 Lanes with 8GT/s resulting in 4GB/s.

even the i5 has the same setup ( https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i5/i5-8300h )
and also the XEONS ( https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_e/e-2186m )

 

Are you sure? That seems really low/wrong. That means TB3 can't be anywhere near 40Gbps. In contrast, MacBooks seem to have 16 PCIe lanes and 1 or 2 TB controllers allowing full 40Gbps transfer rate. I checked Intel's specs and both the CPUs i7-8750H and i7-8850H have 16 max PCIe lanes, and the CM246 chipset has 24 max. So why does this computer only have 4? Did Dell have to strip out DMI links to save space or what?

Thanks.

 

Dear TB18DC users,

are you experiencing something like this:


My external screen is connected to the dock via DP. The problem occurs only when the cable/connector is moved vertically (even a tap on the connector is sufficient). Occasionally (approx. once a week) the monitor can go blank for a second or so, but things get back to normal immediately. I contacted Dell and they suggested motherboard exchange. I don't want them to disassemble the device again, previous operations of this kind did aftect the machine already. Also, other USB-C devices using one of these ports do not seem to be affected (i.e. tapping does not result in the device being disconnected). BIOS (laptop, TB18DC) up-to-date. Drivers as well.

Thanks!