Dell Inspiron 15R Special edition (7520)

Dell_Bill, can you comment on the specs for the FHD screen on the 15R SE? I can't get anything useful from the sales chat. Specifically interested in the brightness and viewing angles. I saw an earlier post where it said 200nit, but it was unclear if that was the 1366x768, the 1920x1080 or both.

Thanks so much,

N

 

Hi Bill!
Maybe you can comment on this: I phoned the DELL technical support yesterday, and the guy said, that the Inspiron R SE can't be upgraded with a mSATA SSD (at least not by the costumer).
And second: As someone mentioned before I am not the only one who happens to have driver problems. I found an additional link.
"http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19453219.aspx"
Is there any solution to this problem yet? I really like my new laptop and would hate to return it.
Thanks!

 

People,

i might buy the dell inspiron 17r SE but i need help .
I was wondering what the difference between the Nvidia GT650m 90w and 230w are. Could someone explain me that ?

 

Hi Bill, I have a question, do you know if in future the backlit keyboard will be available in all countries? If the answer is no, I can buy only the backlit keyboard from Dell in England or America? thanks

 

Don't know the viewing angles and color gamut, but my guess is "decent" angles and somewhere around 65% gamut. That's pure speculation, though. Here's what I have on the tech sheet:
15.6” HD Widescreen, 200-nit (1366x768) 720p;
15.6 “ Full HD Widescreen, 200 nit (1900 x 1080) 1080p

OK. A lot to explain about the mSATA implementation for you guys. I'll just lay out the facts followed by my observations/opinions:
-The 15 R S/E uses a daughter board for the mSATA slot.
-If you did not buy it with the mSATA option, you don't have the daughter board.
-The daughter card is not "tech support orderable," which means we can't dispatch the card alone. It is kitted with the motherboard. I would imagine that once the aftermarket guys figure this out, the daughter boards should start popping up on the market.
-The mSATA drive is a cache only drive in a typical hybrid HDD configuration. I'm not even certain you can boot from the drive attached to the daughter board if you add a larger drive.
-You can swap the spinner out for a high capacity SSD.

What I'd do if I owned one of these or were considering one:
Take the one with the mSATA option Dell-installed. Use that as my cache drive, as it ships that way. Buy an aftermarket SSD to swap for the spinner.
Make sure you comb through this white paper I posted on the Dell blog before you do or buy anything.

As long as the wattage rating is at least as high as the one that ships with the system, almost any Dell adapter will do.

Here is all I have from the tech sheet:
17.3” HD+ Widescreen, 200-nit (1600x900) 900p
17.3” FHD Widescreen, 400-nit (1920x1080) 1080p
17.3” 3D* FHD Widescreen, 200-nit (1920x1080) 1080p (*Requires NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses)

You need the daughter board. At this time, there's no way to get it outside of some shady dispatching by someone on our end. Seriously doubt you'd get anywhere trying to work someone in tech support over to get one sent.

I counted 6 between the Whirlpool thread and the one on our forum. I escalated the issue to engineering. What we know right now is there is currently no new driver from AMD in Dell qualification right now. This one will be a problem for a while. It's a mystery to me why reports of this issue are not more widespread. It seems like the issue is pretty replicate-able. If you want to let us capture your system (we send you a new one, then you send yours into us with a different airbill we supply via email once you have the new system in hand), I can ask one of the tech support guys with dispatch rights to get with you in PM. If you want to grab me like the last 3 or 4 minidump files, I can email those over to the engineers for analysis. Just shoot me a PM if you're interested in sending me the dumps and/or want to think about a capture.

If FHD is on the website in any given region, it's available for purchase in that region. Don't know how a rep can look at a website and come back with "nope. not available." If it's a website mistake, you can order it and let us know if you got hosed. They'll have to do something in that case.

Customization is going the way of the dodo. I tried to explain this in a bit more detail on the XPS speculation thread.
I'm going to pass on commenting about the Gigabit Ethernet situation. "If you can't say anything nice..."

The availability of any given option varies by region. You should be able to find backlit keyboards from aftermarket suppliers at some point soon, I'd guess.

 

Hey BILL

below is the basis of my config i ordered
is this the daughter board you are on about ??



N0515S10
INSPIRON 7520 BASE
PROCESSOR : INTEL CORE I7-3612 (UP TO 3.
DISPLAY : 15.6IN FULL HIGH DEFINITION (1
LCD BACK COVER : ALUMINIUM
RESOURCE DVD : INSPIRON 7520 DIAGNOSIS A
SHIP ACCESSORY : EMEA3 MUI DOCS - WEST/S
MEMORY : 8192MB (2X4096) 1600MHZ DDR3
HARD DRIVE : 1TB SERIAL ATA (5400RPM)
BATTERY : PRIMARY 6-CELL 48W/HR LI-ION
GRAPHICS : 2GB AMD RADEON HD 7730M
GAMES : WILD TANGENT GAMES ACCESS PACKAG
WIRELESS : INTEL 2230 WLAN CARD (802.11N
DRIVER : 2230 WIRELESS CARD

DAUGHTER BOARD FOR WLAN:wink:

WIRELESS DISPLAY APPLICATION
KEYBOARD : INTERNAL UK/IRISH QWERTY KEYB
OPERATING SYSTEM : ENGLISH WINDOWS 7 SP1
OS MEDIA : MUI WINDOWS 7 SP1 HOME PREMIU

 

Hahaha.....no, WLAN = wireless network

 

whats so funny ?

 

Bill, it will be great if we could know whether the RAM limit of 8GB is a soft limitation in the BIOS that could change with an update in future, or whether it is a hard limit. And, I'd like to put my vote in to up the sentiment on having the option of upgrade up to 16GB DDR3/DDR3L. Many Thanks!

 

That's the daughter board for the WiFi card. I'm not sure if the daughter board part number would be on any customer facing documentation, but when they hit the aftermarket, you should be able to find them by Googling around for these part numbers:
N7JHH ASSY,PWA,DTRBD,W/MSATA,7520
Y0W97 ASSY,PWA,DTRBD,SD W/CBL,A5

We are waiting for engineering to answer, but the product line manager and I see no reason why we would limit the amount of RAM it will take. I'll hunt the engineer down in IM tonight (she's in Asia). If I miss her, she should reply during her office hours tonight. I'll post back one way or the other.

 

Bill, do you get paid for your engagement in this forum? just to make sure whom to thank (Dell or you)
it's really great having someone that well-informed answering questions and even helping people with specific problems, concerning Dell self or their hardware!
thanks a lot.

as someone above I'd also like to know the difference between he 90W and the 230W version of the GT650... the saleswoman I talked to said she doesn't know, but she guessed it shouldn't cause any difference in performance.
also, I couldn't find any information about Ethernet LAN on my order sheet, where can I find out if it has 10/100 or 10/100/1000?

one last question: as I'm gonna use the laptop mainly as a desktop-replacement, battery doesn't really matter. but I don't want to 'kill' it asap either, so I thought about taking the battery out and only use it like once a month. is that possible with the Inspiron 17R SE? or would the battery leave like a hole in the laptop, without any plastic to cover?
that's the case with my current netbook, I just don't know whether it's normal...

thank you very much in advance, and as I already ordered it (and it will take 3 weeks to arrive...), you don't need to hurry to answer either

 

230W is a website mistake. It should be 130W.
As for the difference beetween them:

90W - GDDR3
130W - GDDR5

 

Engagement is part of my job. It's not a primary function, and technically I could do my job without engaging customers at all. But TBH, I love this forum and this community. So, I'll always be kicking around in some capacity.

I'm not familiar with the 650 as discussed in terms of wattage. I'll have to research and ask around, but I will find something for you.
I believe the 15 has full Gigabit Ethernet, but strangely the 17 is 10/100.
Removing the battery will leave a hole, but there's a way to kill charging. I forget how, but someone posted the steps. You may be able to figure out by clicking around. I am running out the door to pick up the kids right now, but remind me tomorrow in another post, and I'll poke around on my 15 and post the steps.

 

This is the difference between the daughter boards

CONTROLLER CARD - N7JHH
Long Description: Daughter Board, WLAN/RJ45/USB/with MSATA,7520
Unit price: $ 46.1564(+ VAT and delivery costs)

CONTROLLER CARD - MRDMM
Long Description: Daughter Board, WLAN/RJ45/USB,7520
Unit price: $ 45.9244(+ VAT and delivery costs)

 

@Bill, the 17R SE "Gigabit situation" actually doesn't make sense. As you're aware, it and the 15R SE use the HM77 Express Chipset--and it has Gigabit Ethernet. For Dell then to somehow not use that and add some other Ethernet that's only 10/100 is, I think, unlikely. I'm still thinking it's a misprint....

You didn't comment on what size a caching SSD drive can be. The whitepaper you mention actually says "Smart Response is a feature that uses both a traditional hard disk drive (HDD) and a solid state drive (SSD) of greater than 32GB together. Since the one Dell supplies is 32GB, the whitepaper seems to be in error, but is it suggesting that, say, a 64GB one would be OK (not that caching drives get much larger to my knowledge)?

 

Looks like the ethernet card is on the daughter board, probably for positioning and design reasons? But still seems highly unlikely that the card is 100Mbit only... Gigabit has been out for years.

Here is a mSATA drive up to 120GB:
OCZ Nocti mSATA SSD 120GB [OCZ-NOC-MSATA-120G] - $229.00 : PC Case Gear

I dont think we will know until someone bites the bullet and actually buys a larger NON Dell drive and puts it into their 15R SE...

Also how hard is it to get to the daughter board? Will the tear down manual be updated to include instructions for the 15R SE?

Regarding the BSOD, thanks for the answer. I'm hoping my unit does not have this issue, seems to be AMD 7730M related, hardware or driver it's still a shame.

 

Bill-Dell,

I'm new here and I'm considering buying a new 15r SE with the msata option. The 17r SE is way too large and heavy for me. However the graphics card is indeed a bit disappointing with the AMD and I was wondering if it is possible to replace that with an Nvidia one like the one used in the 17r models? Can that part be purchased separately from Dell and will it work?

Also another issue is the 8GB memory limit. I know that there are very good 1600Mhz 16GB laptop memory kits available from Crucial, Patriot and Corsair. I was just hoping that these should be able to work. I've read somewhere that these worked in some of the older 14z, 15z and 17z models but just had to be upgraded to run Win7Pro as a minimum. Has the lady engineer given you any feedback yet if this is possible on the SE versions?

note: I've read on the Crucial website that their 512GB Crucial m4 2.5-inch SATA 6GB/s is "Guaranteed-compatible with the Dell Inspiron 15R (7520)" so for upgrading the HD to a faster SSD is possible. YAY!

Thanks.

 

I personally would not spend a penny on any Msata card unless we could prove the daughter board for the Msata is installed, yet again certainly in the UK it states Msata is optionable!!! but you cannot select to add it, suggesting you as the user have the option to add the msata board later,

but there are no instructions and no proof you have the correct daughter board fitted, along with the fact despite still showing the backlit keyboard is supplied as standard, you can only choose one particular model to able to add it, what is DELL playing at

@ DELL BILL is there anyway other than tearing the laptop apart to find out what daughter board we have,

 

I did it once, and it's not that difficult, just a few minor scratches when I removed the palm-rest. (Or you can get a specialist to tear your laptop down, should cause fewer scratches.)

Dell is sending me a tech today, to replace the mainboard and the graphic card, to make sure that my BSOD is not a hardware failure. I'll post whether it worked.

 

I unboxed my laptop today

1st thoughts are. niice. love the dimpled effect on the palm rest and the cover,

definately solidly built, and does not feel plasticly or flismy

1st thing i did was windows index test. and thought i would compare it to my desktop R3

alienware R3 desktop

index rating 7.7

Processor 7.7
(i7-2600)

memory 7.7
8GB DDR3 1600mhz

graphics desktop 7.8


Gaming graphics 7.9
1GB ATI 6870

disk data 7.9
(CRUCIAL M4 128GB SSD)


15R SE

index rating 5.6

Processor 7.5
(i7 3612QM)

memory 7.8
8GB DDR3 1600mhz

graphics desktop 5.6

Gaming graphics 6.6
2GB AMD 7730M graphics card

disk data 5.9
(WD Scorpio Blue 1TB SATA 5400 rpm Hard Drive)
( being replaced by SAMSUMG 830 256MB SSD)

i think those are resonable scores, the only two let downs where desktop graphics which arent a real blow, and the hard drive which will change when the SSD is fitted later,

i loaded crysis and let it choose the settings, which where all high
was quite impressed it played at around 20-24 fps with no major stuttering, but i lowered all settings to medium and the fps went up to 35-40 fps, and very happy playing on them settings,

also loaded call of duty 4 MW., and all settings maxed out inc 4xAA fps was over 30 fps. but i know COD games are not greatly GPU intensive, and im into COD and battlefied etc so all cool.:wink:

just to add in all three tests there where no BSOD thankgod

also check out the enthernet port and that is definitely gigabit, (thought i would check as someone asked i think

looked in the bois and it states " MSata - not detected " weather that means its setup for it but its not connected (fitted) or its just playing with my mind i have no idea, but when i change the ssd out im gonna have a poke around

 

I received my 15R SE last week. I have one question and it may make me look a bit stupid but how can I confirm (short of pulling the thing apart) that it does in fact have the 32gb msata installed? It doesn't seem to be shown in any of the device configurations.

It is certainly mentioned on the invoice but can't find any reference to it on the system.

 

bananam8nuk, what can you say about the screen and about the laptop heating?

 

well the screen is ok, brightness wise i think 200nits (if thats correct) is about right, on full brightness it wont exactly burn thru your retinas but it certainly is good enough for daylight working etc, so def good enough in darkness,,

temp wise,. i quickly loaded "real temp" on , and it seemed to show the cores idling roughly about 43-45c, playing games it got to about 55c. i cannot seem to locate the temp for the GPU which normally is in the catalyst centre for desktop ATI cards,

i was feeling the air blowing out the side of the case, and it was warm under load but not uncomfortably so you could certainly keep your hand there,

sorry its not an expert review, just calling it as i see it,

 

Did you buy the one with FHD? How are the colors, sharpness and so on?

 

yep i have the FHD screen,

i really cannot say but they look good to me, i have downloaded a couple of 1080P images and they look really good on the screen, i took the pictures of the screen displaying the photos with my iphone so if they dont look great its the phones fault not the 15R

im off the weekend so will get a better chance to try everything out, but im more than happy

 

Tnx. Still looks pretty good

 

The 15R SE is listed with Gigabit, the 17R SE is not...

It looks like your might not have the mSATA card in your laptop? otherwise it would be detected and let you set it as SRT or ATA.

If you dont have the card, you dont have the daughter board to support it.

On my order confirmation it says:
Additional Hard Drive mSATA SSD - 32GB (Intel® SRT enhancement)

So I would expect the mSATA SSD 32GB to definitely be there, and if it wasnt they would have to put it in.

 

Great!
Thanks for the review and info!

Eager to get mine and replace this 5+ year old Inspirion 6400, its struggling these days.

Hope I dont have BSOD issue!

Also those scores are very good, its understandable that the GPU will be much slower than a dedicated desktop GPU (the desktop GPU is almost the size of the laptop!)

The 3612QM does every well in the CPU test, almost as fast as a Sandy Bridge 2600k, top of the line just 1 year ago.

 

A quick question for those who purchased 15R SE or 17R SE:

is there an option in the BIOS to disable Optimus (similar to the one on Latitude E6520)?

 

Hey all i have a question about the track pad on the 15R SE and 17R SE.

how are they? how is the 2 fingers scrolling and gestures? Any differences between the two?

Also any one have a 17R SE with the 1080p screen? How is the 400nit screen? Notice a big difference in brightness?

I was thinking the new XPS but may get the SE instead - they look pretty solid.

Thanks all

 

TBH i guess i will just have to wait for the daughter board etc to be available on the market, and fit it myself if i need it, i just cannot be bothered with another " you cant do that " arguement with DELL,

i had enough bother over the standard keyboard !!

i thought the GPU did well playing crysis, given the difference in scores, the desktop 6870 in gameplay is not alot better, hence tomorrow its being replaced with a 7970 but thats for another forum lol., but youur right they arnt small, if they get muchbigger they will replace the cases themselves

very happy with the cpu,,,

looking forward to tomorrow, gonna thru in the sammy 830 SSD and boot from scratch, and because it comes with a usb to sata/sata power lead hopefully i can completely clone the exsisting hard drive, and then use that for something ellse

i did not see one, but in windows everytime a new application starts you get to choose what kind of graphics power you need for it, I.E high performance or power saving, and you can change them as well,

 

feels quite responsive on my 15R SE , not overly so either, but havent tried gestures, ill have a go tomorrow if iget the chance,

 

Thanks my biggest concern is two fingered scrolling while in a browser - scrolling through a web page

 

The 17 definitely has 10/100, and I have not been looking forward to talking about this. I really have no explanation I can give publicly. Really don't even know how to respond other than to state the facts: the 15 has Gigabit, and the 17 doesn't.
The wording on the white paper could have been better. A 32GB mSATA will work fine for caching. (<-See how conflicted I am? Sorry about that. Duplicitous answer ftl.)

The teardown manual will be updated at some point soon. It's unusual that it's not by now. As far as the set up goes, I would think long and hard about this. At this point, what I'd do is order with the mSATA option (or find the daughter board somewhere and upgrade after), then swap out the primary spinner for a decent SSD. I bet if you skipped the cache drive altogether and went with an SSD only, you'd be fine. I have not seen numbers or tested myself to state for sure whether the cache drive is worth the cost to me. It might be to you, but just yet, I don't know.

The GPU is soldered on the motherboard. The only systems we ship on the consumer side with MXM slots that allow upgrades are the 17" and 18" Alienwares.
As far as max RAM goes, I got an answer, but I'm not clear on it. I sent a note back requesting clarification. I will post about this once I hear back.

The Crucial drive is an example of one I'd probably get and forego the cache drive, but that's me. Not everyone else. Maybe I'll see some numbers that justify the expense of the cache drive (or maybe someone on this thread will convince me), but for now, I'd go with a single SATA III SSD for now. That way, if the cache drive does prove itself of value to me, I can find the daughter board later and an mSATA drive, and do the upgrade myself. These are just my opinions, and I'm not speaking on behalf of Dell specific to setup recommendations.

Can you screenshot or post back the exact verbiage you are seeing on the invoice regarding the mSATA drive? Make sure if you screenshot you remove any personally identifying information before posting.

1. You can upgrade that system all day long with no effect on your warranty. The only exception is if you damage something in so doing, or if any part you add does some damage. If any Dell rep ever tells you anything like "upgrading parts or opening the case voids your warranty," I'd be very keen to find that person's name or rep ID and have a chat with them about the Dell hardware warranty and mis-quoting policy to customers.
2. Did we get you a backlit keyboard at no cost to you?

I'm running through the OOB setup on a 15 R S/E now. I'll post back my observations of two finger scrolling via edit to this post after it gets to the desktop.
Edit: I'd say 2 finger scroll works OK. I'm not blown away by it, but I suspect this is because I never use it, and am not the best judge. I tested it in Adobe Reader, as I don't have an internet connection for this machine here at work. I'll take it home this weekend, update the driver and see how it goes in Chrome and FF.

 

Hey Bill,

sorry i should have added that my last quote was too the two idoits i had to deal with in customer services online, prior to you helping me out ,
I have not recieved it yet, but krishna did email to say he is on vacation and back on monday so should be with me middle of the week.

was was waiting till i got it before saying anything

re the upgrading, im happy to do whats neccessary, but if what you say is right, after i install the SSD tomorrow, i probably wont even need it,

im just hoping it will blow me away, TBH it botts pretty damm quick anyway and thats with the DELL bloatware

 

Thanks again for the answers and details, really helpful.

In regards to SRT, it does help a lot when running the OS from a spinner.

Here is a quick setup/review of SRT:
How to Set Up Intel Smart Response SSD Caching Technology | PCWorld

They noticed 36% improvement.

However in my case I'm already running an SSD in my old Inspirion 6400 (which totally transformed the laptop) and I'm planning on dropping this SSD into the 15R SE when it arrives.
I could not go back to a spinner after using SSD.

The mSATA intrigues me because I want to use it as basically a second hard drive Thats why I was wondering if the size could be upgraded past 32GB, to say 120GB or more!

But for those who will keep the default Dell install setup, the 32GB mSATA drive with SRT configured will make their laptop a lot snappier, I would pay extra to have it.

I'm hoping the 15R SE lets my SSD stretch its legs, the 6400 is only allowing my SSD to run at about 50% speed as its only SATA1, transfers are only at max 120MB/sec, while the drive can do close to 260MB/sec sustained.
The response of loading programs however is still very fast, my 5 year old 6400 boots/loads and runs programs much faster than high end brand new laptops running spinners

 

WOW!! This one line made me your fan
I was following this thread silently for a long time now and registered just to say thanks a lot.

 

For me mSATA only makes sens if I can do RAID 0 with 240GB SSD and 240GB msata. That will give me 480GB of storage with twice the speed of single SSD.

 

is that proven to work thou, not trying to shoot holes in your plan! i have a 4x 2.5 drive bay setup in my desktop, currently running a single crucial m4 SSd and the rest in raid, but have put off raiding two SSDs or similar as the speed gains arnt actually that great over a single SSD, and trim and garbage collection dont work well with raid? again only pointing out what i have picked up,

if it works it works, ill gladly get another SSD and raid them

 

Without TRIM is not good but Intel RST 11.5 which is in beta will support trim on raid. The tests of raid 0 on clean ssd's are amazing.

 

hmmm cool , my M4 curcial cost me £138! but think its raid partner!! will be a bit less!!! and it means i'll get 256 then for the lower price of another 128Gb!! yay!!

thanks for the info, will have aread on the forums, re RST 11.5

 

Hey, guys and gals!

We had a user reporting the bsod issue with the AMD GPU on our forums. A Dell L1 tech (<-most amazing part of the whole thread) was scattershooting basic L1 troubleshooting steps and Googling around. Seems he's stumbled upon what MIGHT be the fix. If I'm following the thread- and I read it very quickly because I'm super busy today- it seems like all he did was uninstall the driver and CCC, etc., then reinstall the driver and used this kb article to get CCC back. The OP marked it as a verified solution, so it may be legit. Try it and let me know how it goes.

 

Have a look at this test of Intel 520 240GB in raid 0

RAID 0 SSD

 

How do you think the PCWorld article compares to the Dell whitepaper? Just curious what you thought.
One thing: I am pretty sure, but I could be wrong, that the mSATA on the 15R S/E is for cache drives only. I don't think you can use it as a boot drive or storage drive.

You are too kind, and thank you very much for the compliment.

 

@DellBill I couldn't tell from the owners manual but I was wondering for the Inspiron 17R SE laptop, does the graphics card contain its own heatsink for the Geforce GT 650M because the owners manual I downloaded from the Dell website kind of looks like the CPU processor only has it? Are the CPU and GPU right next to each other so the heatsink provides cooling for both of them?

 

Hi Dell Bill!
Thank you for all your insights and information!! It's really appreciated!
Do you have some more information about the 17 90W/230W graphics? What's the difference, is the battery life effected by it, etc?
Thanks again!

 

It looks to me like that manual (I downloaded it too) is for a standard 17R and not the S/E at all since it's missing the GPU and the daughter board Bill was talking about completely.

 

very interesting reading very impressive benchmarks, would be good to see how a bunch of raid 0 SSD compare, also did some searching on 11.5 RST, and seems like they are struggling a bit with the trim in raid! but time will tell

but as that test in your link shows, trim is not that neccessary if the drives are gonna idle at some point to allow garbage collection if i read that right!

same the 15R does not have dual HDD bays

 

Concerning the BSOD: I didn't have any of those since my mainboard and my gpu were exchanged. Might be a production failure after all. I played D3 for 90 minutes without crash.

 

Hey has anyone put a 15R SE 1080p 200 nit right beside a 17R SE 1080p 400 nit? I wonder what the difference would mean to overall viewing pleasure. How much better would the 17 be?

Anyone have any experience?