Dell Precision 7560 & Precision 7760 pre-release discussion

Anyone who can give advice on the below topics?
1.Stylus pen compatible with the 7550/7560 touchscreen
2.If to add the NVMe quick access door on the 7560 with its Pros and Cons. Currently I can only see the drawback of having one NVMe in a less secured space because of its easy accessibility
3.For NVMe backup (e.g. backup of current operating system and software), is it significantly faster to transfer data "from internal NVMe to internal NVMe (which is easily applicable via the quick access door)" rather than "from internal NVMe to external NVMe via Thunderbolt 3/4 interface"?
4.Which of the two methods of point 3 would you prefer for system backup?

Even a feedback on individual points is very appreciated

Thanks a lot in advance

 

I have no personal experience on it but I read from the user comments that:
-Since it is double sided it needs more allocated space than a standard single-sided NVMe. So, depending on the laptop it might fit or not
-It tends to overheat
-According to a review on amazon: "Only buy if you are going to copy less than 700 GB, if you are going to copy files of this size or bigger, the drive dies, this also happens with the 4 TB ones, the customer support told me that you have to make 100 GB copies, I bought exactly to make a backup of my video files, and I killed two 8 TB and 4 TB drives, but I believe that for smaller files there should be no problem."

Also there is a thread where this topic was discussed for the 7550
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/upgrading-storage-of-dell-precision-7550.836227/

 

Regarding #3: if you look at real backup software then this wont really matter. I use veeam windows agent to backup all and do this to a default external 2.5 hdd.... backing up 3 SSDs (256, 512 and 1024) takes about 15 to 60 mins based upon if its incremental or not and then your fine. If you mean by using windows explorer and copy n paste (like I do with 100GB VMs every day at least once) you might see some increased speed with internal nvme but this is more on a very small scale. Remember: going from HD to SSD is like 100MB to 2500MB -> factor 25 ; going from 2500MB to 4000MB is even 1500MB more but only a factor of 1.6, so a 15 mins backup only needs 9,3 mins - a 3 minute copy job only needs 1,8min... not sure if this is worth it. Beside, using real backup software you let the software do the job and just use the system without even noticing any notable slow

my 2c

 

Guys, its QLC nand.... the biggest crap you can get in any kind of SSD. Stay away of it! I really just can warn you not to go for QLC! TLC as max, and even thats a crap compared to MLC. If you need speed reliable over the whole drive even at high fill get some kind of MLC drive. pSLC is even better in terms of speed and write guarantees and we use this as USB stick for our servers to have esxi on. SLC sadly is non existing in bigger sizes... and dont ask for the cost :X

 

Thanks for the advice, wasn't aware of the QLC problems. Here is a nice article with more details: https://blog.synology.com/tlc-vs-qlc-ssds-what-are-the-differences

Do you know what type (QLC or TLC) the 4TB SSD is which one can choose in the customization of the the 7560 on the Dell website?

The largest TLC SSDs (m2) seem to be 4TB. What do you think of this one?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08VF99PV8/ref=emc_b_5_t?th=1
Interestingly, the QLC version of that drive has a better customer rating than the TLC version:
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Maximum-Performance-SB-RKTQ4-4TB/dp/B08D28X4HW/

One option would also be to get a smaller MLC drive for the OS, and a second larger SSD for data storage, what do you think?

 

I've had a 4TB QLC in my M6700 for over two years and it has given me no trouble at all. It's had 123 TB written to it. I think that the "QLC issue" is somewhat overblown... Endurance is lower than TLC, sure, but it's still high enough that you can write hundreds of GB per day to the drive and not hit the TBW limit before the warranty runs out. If "all QLC drives" were lemons then you'd be hearing a whole lot more complaints. Yeah, if you have the choice between TLC and QLC and the cost difference is minimal, then you should choose TLC... but high-capacity drives are all going to be QLC.

 

The problem comes to write performance when already has been once more than 80% full and usually the QLC ones have inferior controllers to them since they are just low budget lines. The TBW is of course always worse on QLC than on TLC, but this can be ignored if you dont intent to hold it very long. If you look at the Samsung 870 QVO 1TB you get good speeds as long as the SLC caching works (a QLC written in a SLC manner so forming a pSLC cache), but as soon as this is full the write speed drops to around a 100MB/s, making it slower on a steady write as even a mechanical disk. Now, that model is SATA, but on nvme its not so much different. QLC needs very very much work from the controller and depending on the workload this is bad. In my case I still prefer a Samsung 970 Pro over a 980 Pro. Why? The 970 has real MLC and the 980 3-bit MLC (marketing ******** -> its TLC!). If you look at the 2nd chart here:
https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.p...980-pro-im-test-mehr-evo-als-pro.html?start=1
you see that the write speed of the 980 starts at 4000MB/s for the first and then drops to only 700MB/s after around 45GB written. The 970 on the other hand starts at 2300MB/s and only gets slower to 2200MB/s over time. Since I need to fast copy 150GB VMs at least once a day the new tech would give me worse performance even the old one has PCIe 3.x vs 4.x of new - because of the flash and controller.

Now if you look at what samsung does to their premium line and remember that samsung is a real manufacturer of all (nand+controller) while sabrent and most other are just putting parts from different oems/manufacturer together you get the idea what to expect. Also regarding amazing review stating: that's usually private user talk and most is just fake.

If you need a best in breed nvme disk then you need to look for tech reviews on sites like hardwarelux, anandtech and so on - websites and computer magazines that go tech deep.

If you need just space: go for it - if you need the performance as expected from the top precision mobile line you need to check the datasheets and reviews.

Regarding the SSD on dell website: I don't know for mobile precisions, but when I buy a power edge I then can ask for a document called "PowerEdge Flash Performance Specifications" - there you get the TBW, SEQ, IOPs and so on and even the OEM brand and type of the SSD named for the exact part number of Dell. And the part number is not visible on the website but on the quote.

 

Dang... I am considering the 980 (non pro), I will look into it and see if the speeds drop after the drive is partially full.

 

Turns out the 980 non-pro runs out of dram extremely quickly.... Ouch I almost wasted a few hundred dollars on that drive.... many thanks for pointing that out

 

A trade-off (like anything in computing). I wouldn't recommend a QLC drive as the main system/programs/boot drive or a drive that you need to be really fast, or where stuff will be continually written randomly (Windows doing random logging, search index maintenance, etc.). QLC makes more sense for bulk storage drives where you read way more than you write. Personally for me... Something like Samsung Pro series for the boot & main working space drive, and then QLC for high-capacity bulk storage drives that don't necessarily need to have fast write speed. (My home system QLC drive is mostly full of game installs and family photos & videos.) If you work with large amounts of data and you need the drive to be consistently fast (...video editing, VMs, database work...) then you'd want to evaluate the available options in-depth.