XPS 15 / Precision 5520 - Processor Choice

Hoping the community can help me out a bit here.

I am choosing between the the XPS 15 and Precision 5520 as per the title. Where things get a little tricky is the processor selection.

I work with AutoCAD, Navisworks and Revit 3D construction programs. Although they do make use of the graphics card for rendering (which I send to the cloud anyway) they do not use it (in Revit anyway) for real time model acceleration. The programs are mostly single threaded and tend to benefit from higher core speeds over multicore performance.

So both machines will be specified with at least 512GB M.2 SSD & 32GB RAM. Where the models differ is the price, processors, GPU and screen.

XPS 15 - £2199 (before any discounts etc)
7700HQ
Nvidia 1050
4K Screen
1TB M.2 SSD

Precision 5520 - £2,572.99 (before any discounts etc)
Xeon E3-1505M v6
Quardo M1200
FHD Screen
512GB M.2 SSD

So my difficulty is obviously there's is fairly large price difference between the two. Is the extra premium over the XPS for what is essentially a worse screen and reduction in real world graphical performance for an extra 200Mhz and 2MB of Cache worth it? Is that processor performance increase really going to be worth the other negatives for my usage case?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

You won't notice the performance difference provided by the extra 200Mhz unless you use a stopwatch.

John

 

That was the answer I was hoping for!

 

Has anyone gone for liquid metal cooling on the CPU/GPU? I always go for XTU undervolt.

 

Here you are:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ures-benchmarks-xps-15-9560-kaby-lake.802345/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...rature-observations-undervolt-repaste.785963/

Mind with 5520/9560 liquid metal paste should not be needed for unthrottled performance under longer heavy loads when the CPU or the GPU are loaded separately. On the other hand, when heavily loading both at once for tens of minutes, liquid metal won't be enough to avoid power-limit throttling - the proposed mod involves active cooling of the VRM mosfets.

 

Thanks for this. I've been doing quite a bit of reading at lunch.
I'm going to go for none conductive paste as it's a work laptop but defo giving the VRM pads a go. I've got quite a nice laptop cooler it will sit on in work which should cool the aluminum bottom well.

Decided to go for the Xeon as our contact at Dell did a rather fantastic deal with the 4k screen.
In my personal time I can steam steam complicated games and in work should get a little bump over my precision 7510.
Thanks to works flexibility and admin rights I'm very excited for this laptop.

 

I don't think VRM pads are a good starting idea. It has been tested quite a few times that good pads heat up the bottom too much, which in turn decreases cooling efficiency. Might work on a cooler, but a laptop is supposed to work without one too And with cheapo pads, the bottom doesn't heat up so much, but they don't stop power limit throttling...

The proposed solution is based on mounting tiny heatsinks with fins on the VRM mosfets, then cooling them with a certain portion of the air diverted from the fans. It might be possible to work out something similar with less effort (though I guess the guy did try simpler options which didn't work). Some other thin & powerful laptop designs with more elaborate cooling address VRM heat with copper plates or heatpipes conducting heat from the VRM mosfets towards the vents; no space for a heatpipe but one could likely fit a copper band.

 

I've just had a thought. Can the xeon be undervolted using XTU or throttle stop or is it only the i7s? Could do with know that before I order.

 

Yes I believe so, based on some comments in the throttlestop thread. IIRC, it works with xeons though the developer doesn't have access to one for testing, rather a forum member with dual Xeons was reporting it worked (for the one CPU he could access). So I think you'll be fine as long as it's not a dual processor server.

But don't take my word for it - post there and ask UncleWebb. He's super responsive and helpful, waaaay above and beyond the call of duty for a freeware software author.


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