Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Stange, that setting is actually not enabled in the BIOS. Wierd how the RH ports behave themselves as well.

Thanks for the suggestion

Update:

The setting to disable the LH side USB-C power upon sleep is in BIOS / Power Management / USB Wake Support and deselect "Wake on Dell USB-C Docks" according to Dell support.

Turns out my BIOS freezes if I try to select / deselect any options and after 2 hours the eventual outcome is that the mainboard needs replacing

 

What are yall using for a docking station these days? Any that fully power the 7730 that isnt the TB18DC pile of poo?

 

WD19DC and WD19DCS are better choices (if you do not need a Thunderbolt port on the dock).

 

In my setup, I have Dell Precision 7530 and 7540. Both are connected via Thunderbolt cables for fast p2p networking. Primary use is Lab with Hyper-V.

Both 7530 and 7540 have 128 gigs memory and 3*1 TB Samsung PM981a with custom copper heatsinks.

I had serious PCH heating issues on my 7530. My 7530 has NFC reader, so there is a flex cable just near PCH chip.
PCH temp generally stays above 60 degree on Idle and so fan would ramp up constantly. There was no thermal pad on the PCH.
Without ASPM power saving, idle temps were around 80-90 degrees. With ASPM power savings, idle temp is around 65-70 but the fan issue on idle is not solved.
After seeing various posts, I added a thermal pad with a touch of GC extreme on top.
The top of the thermal pad/paste touches NFC flex cable and black plastic insulation cover but it solves the heating issues."
Idle temps after mod are between 55-59 degrees with thunderbolt networking.
Without thunderbolt networking, idle PCH temp is between 40-45 degrees. This is even better than 7540.
Thunderbolt controller on 7530 and 7540 is connected via PCH (CannonLake) and so there is rise in temps when PCH links are being used.

I haven't repasted CPU/GPU as their idle/load temps seems rather okay for my use case (Virtualization with intermittent burst of load. No sustained load. With Synthetic sustained load, peaks CPU temp is always below 90 i.e. < PROCHOT).
7530 and 7540 CB MT scores 1000 and 1100 respectively. PL1 and PL2 is set to 65W and 55W respectively on both systems. Undervolting is not possible due to new CPU microcode updates for plundervolt mitigations.







NZXT fans runs in parallel (low rpm/noise) connected to TV usb port. NZXT fans helps to keeps Dell fans off permanently on Idle. Without these NZXT fans, PCH would hit 60 degrees every 5-10 minutes (on both 7530 and 7540) with ambient temp ranging 10-20 degrees.

 

You can undervolt by messing with UEFI variables. See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...60-owners-thread.836381/page-80#post-11114871

 

Thanks. I tried below on 7530 but it doesn't work.

setup_var version:
Disable 'CFG Lock': setup_var Setup 0x5BD 0x0
Disable 'Overclocking Lock': setup_var Setup 0x659 0x0
Enable 'OverClocking Feature': setup_var Setup 0x725 0x1

setup_var_3 version:
Disable 'CFG Lock': setup_var_3 0x5BD 0x0
Disable 'Overclocking Lock': setup_var_3 0x659 0x0
Enable 'OverClocking Feature': setup_var_3 0x725 0x1

none work.

I have attached IRF-Extractor output. Can you please review and assist

 

@Ionising_Radiation Any suggestions?
(Only person I know who has actually tried this, albeit on Precision 7560.)

 

Figured out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/o6edoq/xps_9570_bios_1190change_down_to_150_for/


Since I have Hyper-V enabled, Host OS is running in a different partition and I think it lacks access to CPU MSR registers in this partition.
I duplicated current host OS entries and tested undervolting without Hyper-V role and it worked




Someone already has a recipe for this with fancy name - powermonkey
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...lting-uefi-tool-for-hyper-v-users-etc.836767/

At least, in my use case, it makes sense to do Undervolting from Firmware itself. For example: https://gist.github.com/al3xtjames/e78884e719d7d53fbbf7b752e5db36d1

Has anyone done this on Dell precisions?
Has anyone Unlocked CPU performance options in BIOS or Full BIOS unlock?

 

Since I cannot use ThrottleStop for Undervolting, I have to rely on EFI variables. I have tried the following but the changes are not effective. Any clues?




Disable 'CFG Lock': setup_var Setup 0x5BD 0x0
Disable 'Overclocking Lock': setup_var Setup 0x659 0x0
Enable 'OverClocking Feature': setup_var Setup 0x725 0x1

setup_var_3 version:
Disable 'CFG Lock': setup_var_3 0x5BD 0x0
Disable 'Overclocking Lock': setup_var_3 0x659 0x0
Enable 'OverClocking Feature': setup_var_3 0x725 0x1

setup_var_3 0x72D 0x1 (core voltage offset prefix to -)
setup_var_3 0x72B 0x91 (core voltage offset to -145)

setup_var_3 0x9D2 0x1 (Uncore voltage offset prefix to -)
setup_var_3 0x9D0 0x91 (Uncore voltage offset to -145)

setup_var_3 0x9DA 0x1 (GT voltage offset prefix to -)
setup_var_3 0x9D8 0x23 (GT voltage offset to -35)

setup_var_3 0x9E1 0x1 (GTU voltage offset prefix to -)
setup_var_3 0x9E3 0x23 (GTU voltage offset to -35)

 

new thread posted for this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-precision-7530-undervolting-using-efi-variables.837219/