Precision 7560 & 7760 Owners' Thread

The best way to actually test this is to charge the battery to 100%, and discharge it either over light use or not use it at all, and measure the average power draw.

NVIDIA GPUs draw around 6–7 W at idle; if you get around 9-10 hours of battery life or more, it means your entire machine idle power draw is less than 10 W, and hence is okay. If you see around 6 hours, then you have cause for concern.

 

Call me crazy. I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts for various things, but for VS debugging I never got into them and I just use the little buttons on the toolbar, so this didn't really occur to me. But yes, I poked around VS and noticed just in the menus that there are functions mapped to F10 and F11 plus a modifier.

 

There is no mux support for operating on the iGPU only on the Precision at a hardware level. Generally if I followed these steps it would work:

1) Ensure all external displays use USB-C connected to iGPU so transitioning between plugged in and battery states is smooth. Some applications will bind themselves to a specific display adapter if the primary display is detected as driven by it when launched.
2) Only use the Nvidia driver provided by Dell so you know that the driver contains the special Optimus ACPI method that puts the Nvidia GPU/Audio/USB-C/I2C chips into its lowest power state for the Dell-specific Nvidia modules. Also disable windows driver auto-updates so it does not accidentally get replaced
3) Set the Nvidia Optimus Global profile to "iGPU preferred" instead of "Automatic select"
4) Manually configure individual profiles for each app
5) Also setup a whitelist for each app via the new Windows Settings "Graphics settings" panel. This is needed for Windows Store / UWP type apps. Inversely, you may also have to blacklist a few apps like "Microsoft Photos" to force it to use the iGPU. Even viewing a picture in the file explorer can trigger it to active the Nvidia GPU and hold it activated until a reboot unless this is done.

 

Updated list of chargers and batteries tested on the 7760
The following USB-C power measurements are made using a Witrn U2 and Anker e-mark 5A, 1.5ft cables.

Device configuration

• Precision 7760, i7-11800h, 4k120hz (running at 1080p60), 128GB DDR4-3200, RTX A4000, 2TB 970 EVO
• Battery in better performance mode
• Dell power in optimized
• 100% display brightness

TimeSpy Comparison Scores
240W Dell PSU: 10168 (GPU: 10113; CPU: 10496)
Battery Power: 5145 (GPU: 4868; CPU: 7596)

USB-C Chargers
Summary

• Most PD2.0+ 100W USB-C chargers appear to work with the 7760, but only up to 80W. The Dell 130W USB-C charger provides up to 120W.
• Under no condition does the battery drain to support an inadequate charger. If a charger is rated up to 100W, the system is limited to 80W of power. In contrast, a battery-only configuration will discharge the battery at a maximum of ~100W.
• With a USB-C Charger connected (including the 130W Dell), the system prioritizes CPU power and charging the battery. The GPU is heavily throttled.

1 of 4 <100W PD2.0+ chargers I've tried work:

• Success
  • Aukey PA-B6S 90W
• Failure
  • Platinum PT-PAC90C2U 87W
  • Apple 87W
  • Lenovo 65W

4 of 4 100W PD2.0+ chargers I've tried work:

• Success
  • Anker PowerPort Atom PD4
  • Aukey PA-B7; Draws up to 4.2A ([email protected]). TimeSpy score: 1578 (GPU: 1383; CPU: 7982)
  • Aukey PA-B5 (An earlier post I made reported this charger as not working, but it was a faulty charger)
    
  • HyperJuice GaN; Draws up to 4.2A ([email protected]). TimeSpy score: 1581 (GPU: 1386; CPU:7922; On the first attempt, the CPU throttled to 0.18GHz part way through the test resulting in a CPU score of 2402)
• Failure None

Other unique USB-C Chargers:

• Success
  • Dell 130W USB-C; Draws up to 6A ([email protected]). TimeSpy score: 2086 (GPU: 1832; CPU: 9873) GPU is heavily throttled, but CPU power is ~90% of maximum.

Barrel chargers

• Dell 90W (CM889/PA-3E/FA90PE1-00) charges without warning or error. Throttles GPU but still allows CPU to boost. This might be a good option as a compact portable charger for those who do not like USB-C.

Battery banks

• Success
  • None
• Failure
  • Dell PW7018LC ("USB device not recognized", "PC not charging". I didn't expect this to work, but figured I would try since it is a Dell charger.)
• Mixed
  • Zendure Supertank 100w: Success, but the battery must be charged above ~50% to initiate charging.
    
  • OmniCharge Omni20+: USB-C fails but barrel output charges when set to 20V5A. TimeSpy score: Failed. An over current draw condition puts the 7760 into protection mode (0.18Ghz CPU)

 

Do you disconnect the battery before changing/replacing an SSD (if you don't have the SSD door)?

 

Nope. Changing the NVME drives are quite safe; no need. You can see the instructions for this and other things here:

https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/precision-17-7760-laptop_owners-manual2_en-us.pdf

 

OK, thanks. I had brought up the service manual and under primary ssd remove/install, it has Prerequisites: 1... 2... 3. Remove the base cover.
And under Remove the base cover, step 5. is Disconnect the battery cable from the connector on the system board
so I wasn't sure if there was a reason they were including disconnecting the battery cable from the system board as part of the base cover removal.

 

Anyone use this or another USB C to Displayport? I read on some other cheaper products they can fry the system so concerned on what to use.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VN6B5GR/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A2ECQ6PSDL32ED&psc=1

Or this one

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6DT070/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_1?smid=A1AMUYYA3CT6HJ&psc=1

One of the reviews on the cable matters said it fried the apple computer.

 

Update to charging: (I will keep this post updated with new charger findings.)

• 1 of the 4 <100W USB-C chargers I've tried worked.
  • Success: Aukey PA-B6S 90W.
  • Failure: Platinum PT-PAC90C2U 87W, Apple 87W, Lenovo 65W
• 4 of the 4 100W chargers I've tried worked.
  • Success: Anker PowerPort Atom PD4, Aukey PA-B7, Aukey PA-B5
  • Failure: Aukey PA-B5 100W (EDIT: This was a bad charger from Aukey that would not correctly communicate with an e-mark cable to negotiate anything above 3A. A new Aukey PA-B5 charges the 7760 without a problem.)
• A Dell 90W (CM889/PA-3E/FA90PE1-00) charges without warning or error. This might be a good option as a compact portable charger for those who do not like USB-C.
• Zendure Supertank 100w does not charge. (EDIT: The battery bank must be charged above ~50% to initiate charging...odd)

Anecdotally, both of these are great and I use them every week. I use the CableMatters on an iMac and Lenovo thin client and the StarTech on my Area 51m. The CableMatters may state DP 1.4, but the 6ft cable occasionally blanks at 4k120. It does not blank at anything lower bandwidth. The StarTech has been great at 4k120 without a problem. These direct M-M cables are much more reliable than the billboard type USB-C dongles in my experience.

 

Thanks. I ordered the Startech. Do you know if Daisy chain will work using just the he mDP port?