Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

I own the ZBook 17 G5 and three of my work colleagues own Dell Precision 7730s. The ZBook is better with respect to the things I value, except in size and weight. The ZBook is enormous. It is also seemingly more reliable out of the gate than the Precisions judging by my colleagues' computers and the various support forums. One colleague had to return his twice for overheating and a trackpad issue, respectively. Another had to have his repaired for a hard drive controller failure. I, personally, never liked the Dell redesign after the M6800. I owned the Dell M6600 and M6800 beforehand: both computers were superb.

The things I value? No coil whine; easy ability to service (no flipping motherboard to repaste), silence, fantastic screen, multiple drive and disk options, good thermals, cool design (the ZBook has that cropped corner aesthetic from Battlestar Galactica, omg), great trackpad, good keyboard, rock-solid system stability and reliability. I can't stress the last value enough.

If you want a tank, buy HP. If you want a more streamlined workstation with less HDD options, or no optical disk, buy the 7730. After my horrible experiences with both the Lenovo P510 desktop and the Lenovo P51 mobile workstation, I wouldn't touch a Lenovo with a barge pole.

 

HP has always valued metal, and lots of it. The thing I admire the most about the HP 17 G5's are the toolless maintenance options - the ability to replace or maintain so much without even a screwdriver. But I bought into the Dell ecosystem and this latest iteration is quite stable for me, so I have to be a little bit of a Dell cheerleader. I used to be a longtime Lenovo user, but an all-plastic exterior that chips away over time is simply not my idea of fun anymore.

 

If HP had offered the Quadro P3200 in the 15" version, I would've absolutely chosen the ZBook 15 G5. It looks absolutely beautiful, and I agree—the toolless construction would be a dream come true, compared to the nearly two dozen screws and three flips I have to do for the Precision 7530...

 

To follow up on the screen quality issues I'm having, I bought a sensor to calibrate the screen (Spyder5PRO).

I ran an analysis of the contrast/brightness of the screen and here are the results:



I have the UHD screen (SHP1430/LQ156D1JW02). According to Dell's specs, it supposed to have a 350 cd/m² luminance. This is clearly not what the sensor measures.

The brightness was even worse (200 cd/m²) when I was on the Intel graphics card (power saving is disabled on the Intel Graphics Control Panel). By disabling the Intel card and running on the Nvidia card, I get a higher brightness. I simply don't understand why.

Does anyone have any idea why I have such brightness differences and how to have a brightness at 350 cd / m² as stated in the specifications?

Thanks

Code:

  Manufacturer............. Sharp
  Plug and Play ID......... SHP1430
  Data string.............. 43N80‚LQ156D1  [*CP437]
  Serial number............ n/a
  Manufacture date......... 2015, ISO week 36
  Filter driver............ None

 

Anyone using the Dell U4919DW monitor together with 7730 & TB18 ? Is my understanding right that I have to use the discrete graphis card to use the resolution of 5120 x 1440 @ 60 Hz?

 

Dell dropped their own version of 419.17 yesterday (https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=JDGFN) so I'm giving that a try. If I get BSOD then I will call in and complain, I guess

[Edit]
I see that this version automatically installed the Windows Store version of the NVIDIA control panel...

 

Updated my 7730 to Win 10 1903 18362.1 (insider slow) without any problems - running smooth. Did hat after updating my old m6800 with insider slow and no problems as well

Hyper-V settings survived - last time the virtual switches were lost and had to be recreated and reassigned.

No GPU driver problems on m6800 (nvidia+intel) and 7730 (intel only). Both machines with "only" FullHD screens.

Will check the TB18 with two more displays (1920x1200 + 2560x1440) tomorrow in the office, hope and expect it to work well as all the other stuff I used so far: Office, VS 2017/2019, HyperV, Precision-Touchpad, WLAN, OpenVPN

Nice update work from MS this time (had no probs with 1809 update as well, but I guess I was just lucky that I did not run into the deleted MyDocs folder content problem) - at least that is what I am currently thinking after using 1903 on the 7730 for 2h

 

Checked it. Same behaviour. So it's definitely a laptop issue. Motherboard exchange it is... :-/

 

I tried 18361 on my M6700 late last week. I immediately ran into an issue where, if I closed the laptop screen/lid, and then opened it again, about 75% of the time it would show a black screen — with the backlight on — instead of the lock screen or whatever I was previously working on. (The laptop is configured to "do nothing" when the lid is shut.) I could recover by putting the system to sleep and waking it again, or using Win+Ctrl+Shift+B to reset the GPU driver. I reverted back to 17763 and the problem went away. I'm not sure if it is the Intel GPU driver or what. I did try reinstalling the GPU driver before reverting. Have you experienced this on either of your systems?

(I always can't help myself and attempt an upgrade when a build that appears to be RTM shows up... and then I always end up running into some stupid issue and regretting it.)

 

Just a file note regarding a successful RAM upgrade for anyone contemplating similar. Have a 7530 delivered with 32GB reported as 2 sticks of Samsung M471A2K43CB1-CTD, upgraded to 64GB with Crucial kit CT2K16G4SFD8266 (2x16GB), works fine.