Precision 7560 & 7760 Owners' Thread

Wondering if someone could test out this program on a 7560 or 7760 and tell me if it works. This is attempting a new method of manual fan control. I discovered a new interface that uses SMI calls passed through the WMI/ACPI interface (since Precision 7X60 does not seem to support the old SMM interface). Yes, acronym soup. Anyway, the new method works with my Precision 7530. And, unlike the previous established method of manual fan control, this one does not require a custom driver.

This is a proof-of-concept / test to confirm that the interface works before I work on integrating it into Dell Fan Management.

Requirements:
* .NET Framework 4.8 (should be already installed with current versions of Windows 10)
* NO admin or boot password set in the BIOS. (This can be worked around later but it will require providing your BIOS password to the app.)
* MAYBE - "SMM security mitigation" option disabled in the BIOS.
* Must be run "as administrator".

Unzip, open command prompt "as administrator", and run the .exe.

The program will first do some adjustments to the keyboard backlight (my first test of the BIOS interface) and then try to make adjustments to the fan levels. If will set fans back to automatic when it is done.

Note that the fan levels that appear in the console might not match up with the fan levels that actually occur. I found the codes in this table from Dell. On my Precision 7530, using the "low" code actually sets the fan speed to max, and "medium high" turns the fans off.

 

I'd think it is a problem, no? The CPU is throttling at 2.6 GHz; even an 8-core Skylake refresh CPU managed to maintain more than 3 GHz across all cores on Cinebench. Tiger Lake is a 10 nm refresh, and should be more efficient and be able to maintain higher all-core clocks. I think we need to run the benchmark with ThrottleStop/HWiNFO monitoring in the background.

 

Yes, I guess I should say we need more information. We need to see what amount of power the CPU is pulling when throttling. (Heck, the GPU too, since they share a "power budget". He could have been using screen recording software that was gobbling up some GPU power?)

 

I have the Samsung PM9A1 2TB that came with my 7760. It is to RAID in the bios and I have not switched to AHCI. I ran Crystal Disk Info 8.12.4. It did see the drive and shows it running at 63 degrees C. Is this hot?

I just checked my 7710 (set to AHCI) and Samsung 970 Pro (Boot) is 39 degrees and the 960 pro is 37 degrees. No external monitors and CPU is reported at 5% hovering around 3.6 GHz.

I have the 7760 lid closed and hooked to two external monitors. Power is set to Optimized in the Dell Power Manager and Best Performance on the Windows Power Mode. I do not hear the fans. Windows Task Manager shows the CPU hovering around 4 GHz and using around 12% of CPU. I am not doing much. MS Windows Search Indexer is running and using around 6% of the CPU (by Dropbox finished syncing) and I am running an Acronis True Image cloud backup (Task Manager shows around 1% CPU use total on the acronis processes). Would Running the Power Manager in Ultra Performance cool it down?

Also, I have 64GB or RAM. The Hyberfil.sys is 26,509,876 KB. Should this be bigger due to memory?

For Hibernation, the Windows Balanced Power Settings Default Sleep / Hibernate on battery is set at 35791394 minutes or I guess Never! Critical Battery is set to Hibernate so I guess it will Hibernate when the battery hits critical which is default 2%. I do not plan on using Hibernate but am ok having it enabled in the event I forget to plug it in or power off. I plan on shutting down and power up when I back and forth from home to the office.

Also, under the power settings, the Turn on Fast Startup is unchecked (not on) by default. I plan on leaving that off.

Thanks,

Mike

EDIT: Do the Dell Power Manager settings override similar settings in the Bios? I assume so.

EDIT 2: Windows Task Manager shows the A5000 GPU Temp at 51 decrees C.

EDIT 3: I changed the setting to Cool in the Dell Power Manager and it has since dropped to 59 C. GPU is still 51 C.

 

It is normal for the hibernate file to be smaller than the RAM size. I think Windows assumes that it will be able to get good compression.

Dell Power Manager thermal mode and the similar option in the BIOS are the same thing. Setting it in one place will change it in the other.

 

I've never had any stuttering et al issues in this config myself, but I always disable the igpu from bios. I am currently running two external 1440p monitors at a different res and refresh than the built in screen.

 

Yeah, I normally don't have an issue like this except for cases where multiple GPUs are driving the separate screens (which wouldn't be the case if the iGPU is disabled).

 

Irrelevant post*

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was taught that the difference between "et cetera" and "et al" is that the latter is used when naming a list of people (Joe, Bob, et al), and everything else gets "et cetera".

 

Thanks again for all your work with this. The keyboard backlight changed with the messages in the console, but the fans didn't run up as far as I could tell. This is on a 7560. Sorry it's not better news

 

Apologies if this has come up already - I might have missed it.
Just went to re-map keys on the 7560. I have the Function keys active, so want to remap:
F10 to become 'Print Screen'
F11 to become 'Home'
F12 to become 'End'
CE (above the numeric keypad) to become 'Page Up'
+/- (above the numeric keypad) to become 'Page Down'

To my horror, it appears that the 'CE' key is coded the same as the 'Delete' key (so there are effectively two Delete keys on the machine and Windows can't tell the difference between them, and the same with +/- key and F9 - there are two F9 on there as well. That means that when I try to map 'CE' to Page Up, the proper Delete key becomes Page Up as well.

Has anyone else encountered this (just to check I'm not going mad), and is there a way around it? I can cope with daft keyboard layouts as long as I can remap them (on my 7520 the media control keys were re-mapped to Home and End), but this is lunacy...