Precision 7730,5530,7530 (Coffee Lake) pre-release

Hi Aaron, I think you are right.

The Dell service manual shows us these pictures in the sections of "battery" and "hard drive" respectively.

Here we see the big 6 cell battery. We can see an M.2 drive at the bottom, in between the battery and the "2".

In this picture, the 3-cell battery has been removed and we can see a 2.5" hard drive., connected with an adapter cable to an unindentified connector type. We can see an empty M.2 slot in the same position as the previous picture.

 

So a 3 cell battery can fit 2 m.2 and 1 sata drive? Wow that's generous.

 

No. A 3 cell can fit 1x M.2 and 1x 2.5".
A 6-cell can only fit 1x M.2.

If you want more M.2 slots, you need to go to a 7000 series.

 

It's cool that the Dell store when configuring a precision laptop lists an option to add eGPU box. Sounds like eGPU via TB3 is really a thing now that is supported by Dell.

Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 550 – External Graphics Accelerator

 

No empty M.2 in either picture.....different M.2 drives populated into the 1 M.2 slot but not additional slot. The connector for the SATA drive is a proprietary connector for the SATA interposer as they wanted to save space on the motherboard and have more flexibility in how they can connect a full size 2.5" drive. They have used this design for a few generations now (although I would NOT assume the interposers are compatible across them).

 

[Edit]
Nevermind this post, I was replying to something without reading right...

 

Just received a 5530 - unit is very plain...

One has to rely *completely* on Win10 notifications with regard to charging status, WiFi Nic on/off indications, hard drive activity, etc. (all on screen)

Is this acceptable for a "workstation"??

My 7510 has some LED indication lights - don't have it with me right now - but I prefer knowing from hardware than through MS's software! (Especially with Win10 - which I have no knowledge about...)

Also, has anyone successfully installed Win7 on this unit - and would Dell support Win7 for the 5530?

I'm thinking of sending it back as I really don't see any real advantage other than it being very light as compared to the 7510...

Can someone suggest any other workstation-class units (of any brand) which would have a i9 or comparable, can support 2 hard drives (primary HD should be a PCIe) and with a smaller footprint? (Would need at least 32GB of RAM)

 

For better or for worse, the 7530 and 7730 are the same way. No LED indicators except for the battery charge indicator. (If the light on the front of the system is on, the battery is charging. That's not a power light.) Honestly, what else do you need? The disk I/O indicator is going away from systems across the board — as everything transitions to SSD, it's less important.

As for Windows 7, Dell follows Microsoft policy and doesn't support it on systems with 7th gen CPUs and up. Even if you did manage to install it (probably wouldn't be that hard), Microsoft is blocking updates in systems with 7th gen CPUs and up, so you'd have to jump through additional hoops for that. With support for Windows 7 ending in less than 18 months, no one is going to be supporting it for much longer.

 

I just think it's very sad - if this is the current situation....

 

I think there's really nothing much to be excited about the 5530 - footprint is still large and not much hardware benefit for professional use (proper docking station, indicator lights, etc...)

I really want to know what's going on with my machine and want to have a relatively compact (can be thicker than this) unit which is still powerful (quad-core and higher)

Win10 appears to be a mish-mash of things that is not logical whatsoever as well...