Precision 7550 & 7750 Owners' Thread

Control? That's a game I plan on looking into getting!

 

I had to sail the high seas with an eye-patch to find the treasure called Control, if you get what I mean, arrr.

 

"A" in AI = Artificial = Fake

 

Have you tried these guys? I have them in my M18xR2.

Homer

 

Does anyone have any idea whether "fingerprint reader" mean it's on the powerbutton?

When I placed the order, only under palmrest section there are fingerprint reader options: 1. fingerprint reader. 2. FIPS fingerprint reader. There is no option saying fingerprint on power button. Also as far as I know FIPS is just a standard. In dell's manual, there are two types of fingerprint reader: 1. fingerprint reader on power button. 2. fingerprint reader in the palmrest.
https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/precision-17-7750-laptop_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

 

The one that does not say FIPS is the one on the power button.
I'd recommend not getting the FIPS one unless you have particular need for the extra security. It's a very slow reader.

 

I remember probably you mentioned somewhere the FIPS one is extremely slow. So I picked the one without FIPS. But some people mentioned they specially choose the FIPS one. I am just curious the underlying reason why people choose the FIPS one apart from more secure.

 

Trying to avoid any sort of liquid metal anything. I'll stick with traditional non conductive pastes. At the very worst, they'll scratch. Conductonaut after a month on my 7540 ruined the heatsink finish and permanently marred the surfaces of both the CPU and GPU. It was so bad that it is rough when running your fingernail across the surface.

Coincidentally enough I am using Kryonaut. Hoping this wasn't the defective batch that I bought and scratched up another CPU + GPU. I know others on here have said that pump out renders it useless, but I applied so little so thinly that all it is doing is filling in gaps (as it should). This performs about the same as the KPx but it seems to do it better, given that KPx is thick as molasses.... or caulk.

Not worried about pump out. I'm expecting an increase of up to 7C at some point and then stabilization. If it gets worse than that, I will repaste. The whole reposting process now takes 10 minutes for me, including opening up the machine. The most amount of time is spent cleaning the old paste off and applying the new one.





The downside to all of this? The GC-Extreme scratched up my CPU and GPU on this new machine. Not too happy about it but there doesn't seem to be any consequences to it as of now.

In addition, the hinge has developed a loud cracking noise whenever opening it. It's linked to the lower chassis screw holding in the base unit. After taking the screw out and cleaning it with alcohol (it was covered in metal shavings for some reason) the noise seems to have disappeared. However, the entire top quarter of the machine flexes whenever the lid position is changed!

Just as I had feared, the new chassis is flimsy and should be handled with care. The metal side panel surrounding the TB3 ports is by far the weakest part of the machine. The metal measures <1mm thick and it warped a little when I tried to get the cover off. I managed to press it back into shape but jeez, what a terrible oversight.

The 7540 is built like a tank compared to this. I appreciate the far more rugged structure of the old machine but the thing is, I've been confined to desk work the past few months and don't travel anywhere with it. Durability isn't at the forefront. I still expected better given the track record of the mobile Precisions.




The increased cooling, decreased fan noise, and greater creature comforts (nicer keyboard, nicer touchpad, smaller size, etc. are nice improvements, though. I just think the new ones are nowhere near as well built as the 7540 and earlier.

 

I believe what @Homer S linked was just fancy market speak for solid conductive thermal pads made of various materials, typically some graphite subtrate.

Other examples are Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut, Innovation Cooling IC Graphite, and Panasonic Soft PGS (it is believed that IC Graphite is simply a branded version of the latter). I'm actually thinking of picking up a few sheets of the Soft PGS pads (given they're fairly cheap in bulk), and testing them out on my notebook. The non-pump-out quality of these solid pads, as well as the massive increase in maintainability (no need to clean sticky paste) is a big sell, personally.

 

my 7550 arrived yesterday. first dell for me after a long line of macbooks then surface book and (briefly) a razer blade.
Keyboard is much better than razer, possibly as good as/better than the surface book. loving the number keypad.
touchpad is really, really good.
bottom of the machine gets warm - too warm to, say, sit in the garden with it on your lap comfortably, which is a shame. fwiw, using stock settings and windows power control on 'better battery' the power widget is claiming i'm going to get 5.5 hours (I shall be mostly on web/video calling) - hope that turns out to be true!

web cam is frankly bad, bit better than the razer, but that's not saying much. i know a lot of laptops come with 720p cameras, that just makes them all rubbish to me - the microsoft laptops are miles ahead on that particular score.

mine arrived with a big crack in the plastic housing of the power brick, no doubt dell will sort that out.