Precision 7550 & 7750 Owners' Thread

I have. That's why I considered the possibility of removing that bit of plastic since the PCH is directly covered by a metal shim that is attached to the plastic. I think this is too new of a machine to modify like that, and a professional workstation at that.

I'll just let the engineering on this system speak for itself. If it dies one day suddenly I'll just attribute it to a heat related failure and never buy Dell again. As much as I like experimenting with things and finding solutions, I shouldn't have to worry about this on a brand new machine. The whole reason of paying three times as much for compute power as consumer grade products is for two reasons:

1. Compatibility with professional software and workflows
2. Reliability. Arguably this should be #1.

As far as how the machine has held up, let's just say it is nowhere as durable or robust as the 7530. One is built like a tank, the other should be treated extra carefully. The machine does stay stationary for most of the time but I really think they could have done a better job in terms of durability. The upcoming ThinkPad P15 is a prime example of the way Dell should still be doing things: Big, durable, a thick cooling solution, and an internal metal structure frame. The tiny bit of weight savings and narrowing of the bezel is rather useless. I'd have bought an XPS if I cared for that.

Give the people what they really want, Dell.

 

I get what you mean; your images of the teardown overall gave a picture (pun not intended) of cluttered internals, with wires pirouetting over and under heatpipes, etc. For all the pains of the inverted layout of the 7530/40, it is organised much neater on the inside than the 7550 appears to be. The 7530 (and probably the 7730, too) even has a separate PCB for power distribution from the AC adaptor:

The 7530/40 design could have been reused with the separation of the CPU/GPU heatpipes, and the reconfiguration of the CPU heatsink. Ah, well, we'll never know Dell's internal decision-making process.

 

The P15 looks quite appealing... and more similar to the 7530 than the current gen


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I am wary of Lenovo: their cooling on the P52 was not great, see the following comments by @yrekabakery and @Div033 around two years ago in this thread, where I was initially debating between the Precision 7530, the P52 and the ZBook 15 G5:

(I eventually decided to get the Precision 7530 because of the upgradeable GPU, the better cooling, and the ~$1000 cheaper price vis-à-vis the ZBook 15 G5).

Furthermore, Lenovo is a Chinese-owned company, and I have a lot of reservations about companies headquartered in the PRC.

 

They've made several notable improvements. They increased the vents and the heatsink fin area. They drastically increased the GPU fan size and doubled the number of heatpipes for RTX 3000 and above. With the upcoming P15 they've added several mm to the Z height of the machine and made the vents a lot bigger. Oh, and the RTX 4000 and 5000 run at 90W in the 15" chassis compared to 80W for the Dell.

Also brought back MXM, but the extra space is shaped weirdly so it's proprietary.

I understand the concern over Lenovo being a Chinese company but I live in the US and I'm more concerned about my own government spying on me than that of a foreign nation. Thankfully the work that I do isn't critical enough in nature to prohibit using machines from a company headquartered in another country. I've also given up on the fact that there is any concept of privacy at all. Just look at all the data that Microsoft collects. You can disable all the known telemetry using OOSU or any other tool, but install a Windows Update and watch those settings flick back to the default.

Trust me, if another country wants to spy on me, they can and they will. Whether I own a Dell or a Lenovo makes zero difference in the end. The threat of losing my work over an unstable system is far greater than that of any privacy concern. After all, Google already has my data. Apple has my data. XYZ advertiser from site with $1 random domain has my data. I've given up so to speak. As long as my identity or my financial information isn't stolen, I couldn't be bothered.

I liken it to putting up curtains in front of a window to prevent burglaries. It may deter a majority of petty thieves since they can't see what's inside, but someone who knows what they want and what's inside already won't be deterred from breaking in.

That's kind of how I feel about the new P15. It brings a lot more to the table than the Dell offerings in terms of what I actually look for in a mobile workstation. I get that some people would rather "put up the curtains" (referring back to my analogy) and that's valid. Some people definitely have a lot more at stake than others. I'm part of the latter (or I consider myself to be, as of now).

Just trying to stay informed and seeing what is offered on the market.

 

This I was aware of, even in the P52/53;

That's really nice—pretty good improvement from the P52!

I just saw the Reddit thread, but it looks like there's still only one heatpipe for the CPU. Somewhat problematic, given Intel notebook CPUs as of recently run really hot. Furthermore, that one heatpipe comes from the GPU, which would add additional thermal load. That MXM module is the weirdest shaped I have seen, by far—Dell appears to have done a much better job cramming an RTX 5000 into a much smaller space (though admittedly at reduced power limits).

The P15 appears to have one less M.2 slot, but one more USB-C port than the 7550, and certainly a more sane keyboard layout, with the TrackPoint and the second set of keys retained (I don't think Lenovo would get rid of this, it's one of their signature features of their business line). All in all I'd say the two notebooks trade blows rather than concluding that the P15 is certainly better than the 7550.

With respect to curtains, I live in a country where there's a CCTV camera every one hundred metres or so. It's more of a principle thing rather than any earnest attempt to truly hide every trace of my online presence (if so, I should get off this site, given it still doesn't use HTTPS, or better, stop using the Internet altogether).

 

If they make the single pipe large and thick enough, it might not be a problem. I would hope that it could run 62W sustained at least, which is what the Dell does by default.

I think the differences are smaller than they've ever been now that Lenovo has taken some steps to bring their workstation back towards a more proper design. I haven't heard much about HP's lineup, maybe it's time for me to go do my homework.

 

Interesting, where did this new heatsink come from ...?
Dell has been known to use different fans in the same model. Sometimes it depends on what spec you ordered. I haven't looked at the newer ones closely but back before the 7510 (M4700/M6700/M4800/M6800) there were three different vendors for the CPU and GPU fans with three different/distinct levels of quality.

 

Guys, do any of you run linux on your new Precision?

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 and the touchpad right click mechanical button is not working. I booted up Windows 10 and it was working just fine, so this seems like a driver issue.

 

PC World interview with my thermal engineer. Interview