Precision 7550 & 7750 Owners' Thread

i second all of this. I have a 7750 with 128GB Ram and 9TB storage. I elected to go with the RTX4000 because the difference in performance between the 4000 and 5000 was very small and wasn’t worth the extra 1000 plus dollars.

I also got a Xeon only because I wanted ECC Ram. I am a trial lawyer and I keep all my cases in my system and then use a resource intensive program to present in court. The ECC Ram gives me a little extra assurance in front of a jury.

for my storage I got the base 1TB class 40 and then purchased two (2) 2 TB evo 970 plus sticks and a 4TB Sab Rocket. I use one evo for my windows drive, and the other for my active cases. The rocket is a little bit slower so I use that for older data I store and I also have the extra 1 TB drive. I considered getting the 980 but that is very expensive due to it being pcie 4. The 7750 is only pcie 3. The 980 works with the 7750 but it doesn’t get the advertised speeds. So unless you plan on keeping it for a future system it’s not worth the price increase.

As far as RAM there are a few options you can buy aftermarket and save money. I didn’t want to deal with that because of the setup of having to rip the system apart to put in the other two slots.

but I love it, best system I’ve ever owned.

 

@rinconmike, some additional notes to add on to @Aaron44126's:

1. If you're even more tech-savvy, you can buy the Precision with just the CPU that you need, and upgrade the graphics card second-hand. You can get a decent discount off the Quadro RTX 5000 on eBay. The heatsink is also available.
2. Although I just checked the prices, and if you want to go the official route, I would still recommend the Quadro RTX 5000 because it is not that much more expensive than the RTX 4000 (it used to be something like +$1000 and +$2500, and the difference is a lot less now). This is because if your son would like to game with a 1440p monitor (even on the 90 W version of the card, the RTX 5000 handles games at 1440p 60 FPS at pretty decent settings, just fine) games are quite heavy on the memory pressure, especially with texture settings at maximum (which is one great advantage of having huge amounts of GPU memory). Furthermore, that 16 GB VRAM would also really help when storing giant CAD models directly on the GPU.
3. I would also recommend a cheaper, previous-generation SSD (Samsung 970 Evo Plus, for instance) over the 980 Pro (which supports PCIe 4.0), because the Intel 10th-generation mobile platform only supports PCIe 3.0.
4. Also consider buying memory aftermarket: Dell charges 2x the retail price for the memory. These modules should work OK: they are 3200 MHz with JEDEC timings.
5. Consider getting the palmrest with the non-FIPS fingerprint reader with all that savings you might make from above: a good QoL upgrade over having to type a password.
6. Strongly agreed on the Windows Pro for Workstations issue: it's a rip-off my Microsoft to make more money from server systems. Your son, once he enters college, should have access to Windows 10 Education (typically for free), so you can buy the notebook with Linux (another $100 savings), install Windows 10 Education, and save on the cost there, too. Education is basically Enterprise rebranded, so you get all the nice, juicy stuff like no Candy Crush Saga, Cortana disabled by default, no advertisements, and Group Policy editor.

 

@Ionising_Radiation, @Aaron44126, @vagrantsense

Thanks for the comments. The RTX5000 is $283 more than the RTX3000 and $178 more than the RTX4000 so for the price I may just do the RTX5000. I need to review the pricing on drives more. I might go with the 1TB Class 40 and can swap that out later. I have done that a few times on my 7710. I just need to make sure we have time to to it. The 1TB Class 50 is around $340 more than the Class 40 and the 2TB 2280 is $650 more than the 1TB Class 40. Samsung 980 Pro 2TB looks to be around $350.

The decision now is wait for the 7560 or go with the 7550. We would like the system by end of July so we have it for a few weeks before school which is end of August.

thanks,

Mike

 

I was actually in your son's situation 3 years ago: I ordered the 7530 in the first week of July, and it arrived the first week of August, so I could enter college pretty nicely with the notebook. If the 7560's release time is similar to past notebooks', then you should be able to buy them from mid-late May onwards. I do suggest you consider waiting.

 

Man, is this just through the education store? Those prices are way lower than ordinary. I would totally go for the RTX 5000 if that's the difference.

And I should have thought harder about the SSD that I suggested. Samsung 970 EVO Plus is probably a better choice. It is available in 2TB and also a bit cheaper than the 980 Pro. It won't make much of a difference on a system that doesn't have PCIe4 support. (Note: 7560 is expected to have PCIe4 support but probably only on one of the NVMe slots.)

I'm thinking that is going to be a bit later than May this year. It really depends on Intel and not so much Dell. Everything that I'm seeing is pointing towards later in Q2 for the Tiger Lake-H (45W) CPUs launching... and the Precision is not going to be first out of the gate with the new CPUs, as Xeons are typically not available until some weeks after the i7's and i9's.

Still... Maybe we will have an official announcement from Dell in May or early June with the release timing, and that would help with the decision making. For the last few cycles they have made the announcement a few weeks before the systems go on sale. (You can expect to wait about 3 weeks from when the systems first go on sale before you actually receive it, though...)

 

Normal store, I think. See the screenshot I posted above. With the 7730, the Quadro P3200 was +$600 from the base price, and the P5200 was +$2500 or so...

 

The RTX price i noted was from the school pricing.

 

OK, they've definitely changed the price considerably since these systems launched. Looks like current 7750 prices are similar. I haven't been poking in to keep an eye on them, so I don't know when they changed. But I wrote down the 7750 GPU prices at launch and they were...
Upgrade from Intel GFX to RTX 3000: $715.38
Upgrade from Intel GFX to RTX 4000: $1,135.25
Upgrade from Intel GFX to RTX 5000: $2,373.20

...So you'd see why I'd be hesitant to recommend a RTX 5000 upgrade.
This is sort of new, I feel like I've never seen them slash GPU prices by this much before (before the next system launched). Kind of funny because you'd think that in this day and age of GPU shortages and tight supply, reducing prices wouldn't be the first thing on their mind...

 

Looking at that, I guess I need to also think about the price of the 7560 when released. Maxing out might wind up being a considerable amount more than the 7550 is now with student pricing.

 

At least it can be expected that 7550 and 7560 will both be available for sale for at least a few months.