Precision 7560 & 7760 Owners' Thread

I 3rd this database answer! While I know many, I'd wager to say even most, folks out there are purchasing precisions for graphics related work, for me it's all about having a large and fast I/O subsystem to support software development activities involving databases.

 

I took an strip of wood I had around 1" wide x 3/4" high and i put it under the rear foot of the computer just to lift it off the desk. Where the SSD was getting up to 65 degrees is now instead 60 degrees. Lid closed. Same light usage.

 

I do both actually. I'm in marketing/design but I also work with huge Excel databases (CRM stuff).

 

I've done the same thing before...but with two pencils instead...

 

Well after reading above about the SD card blank, I took the one form my 7710 and put in 7760 well, I cannot get out. Any ideas?

Edit 1 : got it out. Slowly got something under it and was able to pull out.

Wonder if something is wring with the slot since I do not feel like there is a spring pushing back like on the 7710.

Should there be a spring that pushes it back out when pressed in?

Edit 2, well the spring must have been stuck. I had another blank i tried. Once I got it all the way in, the spring engaged and now works as expected.

 

Another funny thing. Trying to use a USB mouse in the BIOS setup screen. I can move the cursor vertically but not horizontally. I can use the touchpad in the BIOS fine, and the mouse works fine in Windows. Not a big issue, just strange...

 

OK! New Precision 7760 owner here! I have some first impressions and some findings I wanted to share with you all.

First: For this system, I basically chose max-spec for everything (with the exception of A5000 - the 16GB wasn't especially useful for my use-cases, so A4000 instead), but chose minimum RAM and HDD. I received both the RAM (four sticks of 32GB ECC) and the laptop today. Let me tell you how my day went.

The laptop arrived in a sort of beat-up box, but the biggest indentation next to the power supply, so no big deal. Upgrading from a Precision 7730 with a carbon fiber lid, this thing felt like a big slab of metal - it reminded me more of an HP than a Dell, actually. So, I pulled up the Precision 7760 maintenance guide and proceeded to go through the instructions for removing the cover, removing the battery, and removing the keyboard.

1. Removing the bottom cover - this is actually the one thing I need to do as far as contacting customer support. One of the captive screws is about 1 - 1.5 mm shorter than all of the other captive screws - which means it will spin freely and not engage and close the very tiny gap in the case. Besides for this issue which I immediately noticed, it came off fairly easily.

2. Removing the battery - this was far, far more hard than it needed to be. Let's review the steps listed in the Service Manual:

The easiest thing to do is just pull the little ribbon on the cable where the battery attaches to the PC, and remove it. I tried to disconnect the cable from the battery itself, but it seemed to require more force than I was exerting, and was also starting to bare the wires a little bit. So: You don't have to disconnect the cable from the battery. Just disconnect the cable from the laptop chassis at one specific point, where you can just lift the connector out, very easy. Perhaps I was doing this wrong, but I didn't see any YouTube videos for this specific battery, but what I just spelled out is by far easier to do than following the steps in the manual, and will disconnect the battery just fine.

3. Removing the keyboard - this was actually pretty easy. I very carefully lifted the keyboard lattice, and easily undid the ZIF connectors and pulled out the ribbon cables, then unscrewed the keyboard. I didn't snap or break anything, fortunately. Then, the cover to the RAM slid to the side with one additional screw, and I removed the token 8 GB stick and put in my 2 32GB ECC modules.

4. I reversed the steps. Note that I later had to revisit this step and re-seat the ribbon cable for the keyboard - you have to make sure it fits into the connector very nice and snug before closing the little latch. Watching a video on YouTube on removing a 7730 / 7740 keyboard was pretty helpful for me for these steps.

5. Before sealing everything up, I installed my Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB. It's actually really handy that they left the PCIE 4 slot free - the token 256 GB boot drive is in another slot, so that the full speed drive could just plug right now.

6. After reconnecting everything, and turning it on, I was a bit frustrated by no video signal coming out - just LEDs on the keyboard and no signal. This is actually normal - it takes about a full minute for the Precision to restart to BIOS after you mess with the RAM like me. So if you turn it on and nothing happens, be patient and wait a while for the BIOS to come on, and don't be like me and try to re-seat everything and get frustrated.

I tried testing with RAID turned off but I wasn't able to get the SSD to boot anymore, so I just decided to leave it on.

Here's the results of Crystal Disk Mark:



So now, I will likely open a support ticket for the faulty captive screw, but there's no dead pixels on the display that I can see, and running an old 3D Unigine benchmark was very smooth, even at 4K. The sound is much better than the Precision 7730, at the cost of having a sound grill that will inevitably pick up micro dust specks from now on. The track pad is super smooth, and I was really interested to see BIOS menu is really sophisticated now - really neat!

OK, that's it for now. The 128GB ECC RAM is all installed myself, with no issues, as well as the 980 Pro 2 TB installed very, very easily.

 

Nice writeup.

See this post to switch to AHCI. Only other thing I did first was suspend bitlocker first.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...50-owners-thread.833097/page-77#post-11107520

 

Alright... My system also has PCIe4 slot drive disappearing weirdness.

I previously wrote about my coworker's system. We installed a Samsung 980 Pro in the PCIe4 slot. It keeps "winking out". Sometimes the BIOS will see it and sometimes it will not. And once I had it "disappear" while the system was up and running.

Well, just got mine set up today, and I put a Sabrent Rocket Q4 in the PCIe4 slot. It's not the boot drive, I'm intending to use it for bulk storage (mostly large SQL databases). I checked the BIOS to make sure that the drive was detected. Yep. Booted up Windows and took care of some other stuff. Came back after a while and decided to go ahead and format the Q4 and start copying some data over. Disk Management doesn't see it. Device Manager doesn't see it. Huh?

Rebooted and checked the BIOS again. Drive is there. Booted to Windows. Drive is in Device Manager. Drive is in Disk Management. Tell Disk Management to initialize the drive and it gives me an error about "the device does not exist" or something. The drive then disappeared from the list in Disk Management. Check Device Manager, and it is gone from there too.

I'd really rather prefer to run in AHCI/NVMe mode and not RAID mode, but after this... I'm going to switch over to RAID mode and see if that makes the issue go away.

 

So it sounds like it is not just related to the Samsung 980 Pro since it happened to the Sabrent Rocket Q4 also. Both in the PCIe4 slot. Did you have a chance to reach out to support to see if they have other reports Maybe instead of a drive firmware compatibility issue, it is a bios issue.

I still wonder if AHCI is better than RAID on these newer machines.

Is there anyone running in RAID-on and have a Samsung 980 or 970 and tried the Samsung Magician Software. If in RAID-on, does Magician see the drive to do a firmware update. That is the only reason right now I switched to AHCI for when I add in a second drive which will probably be a Samsung 980 Pro..