Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

If only I knew this some months ago. I tried HyperX in my machine and it went from rock solid to having odd OS instability. It all went away with the OEM RAM. Yeah, so this happens on the HP workstations as well as the Dells', I guess.

 

I'm currently sitting at a flat 7 W of power draw.

A little more detail for anyone willing to reproduce this behaviour: I have a Quadro P3200, with graphics switching enabled, driver version 431.02 (R430 U4), with power settings set to Optimal Power. Adobe Lightroom Classic CC version 8.2 is in the Develop mode, and is minimised.

 

Ok I took another stab at this and discovered it was definitely the graphics card power setting that was preventing it from sleeping when minimized. Setting it to optimal power resolved that.

However, through doing this, I quickly realized that my GPU was having no issue sleeping on its own without the help of Lightroom. When closed, HWInfo reports that the P3200 is consuming 0 watts, but I am hovering around 10-12 watts of power draw, even with the GPU totally asleep. I'm unsure why my power draw is so much higher, but have a few ideas.

• I do have the 1080p touchscreen option. This might draw more idle power. It definitely draws more power during use than the touchpad.
• I use 2 M.2 nvme drives: the 256GB toshiba it came with and a WD black 512. I've heard certain drives can be more power hungry than others.
• I purchased the machine with 8GB of ram and added another 8 GB aftermarket. I've never had an issue doing this in the past, but it's worth mentioning.
• I use the MaxxAudio enhancements. I think this uses more power, but unsure if it affects idle.

I also recently received a mainboard + GPU replacement, and while I don't think this has anything to do with power draw, it could explain why my GPU is able to sleep on its own. Regardless, in addition to my signature, here's some additional info on my system:

• Windows 10 Pro 1803
• 431.02 ODE drivers from Nvidia's website (unsure where to confirm if it's R430 U4)
• 7730 P3200 bios flashed

 

Hello, sorry for bothering you, do you mind sharing your Hackintosh EFI directory?
I have the same laptop and I'm trying to boot/install macOS Mojave (10.14.5) on it without success..

 

I'm self-employed. I pay for everything (my 7730 and TB18DC) out of my own pocket, so when things don't work the way they should, it costs ME time and money and makes me cranky.

The TB18DC has been especially bad in the last 3-4 weeks. Half the time I boot up my computer in the morning and the dock doesn't work (except for the daisy-chained DP monitors). It seems the only way I can get it work again is to follow a process like this:

1) Power down 7730.
2) Unplug TB18DC from 7730.
3) Pull power cord from TB18DC.
4) Unplug EVERYTHING from TB18DC. (Network cable, monitors, USB devices, external audio.)
5) Wait a minute.
6) Power TB18DC back up.
7) Plug back into 7730.
8) Wait for Windows to boot.
9) Power off 7730.
10) Plug everything back into the TB18DC.
11) Power the 7730 back up.

This is the only sequence that seems to make the TB18DC recover from it's #$@*(&#$ issues.

I paid how much for this bloody #%(&^#@$ dock to waste my time like this???

 

Whatever the culprit, it's an expensive flaky dog rather than the productivity tool I was willing to pay for.

Anyone know what Dell's return policy is on this? I've had it with this.

 

Pretty sure that it is just 30 days to return. The warranty is longer but that just entitles you to a "fix" / "replacement". (Maybe you could talk them into trading you a WD19DC. I think its cheaper? Anyway, I still haven't heard from anyone who has one; I suspect it will be much better but have nothing hard to go off of for that.)

I had an interesting TB18DC fail this week. I left my laptop in the office Wednesday afternoon (powered on, connected to the dock). I walked into the office on Friday morning and found my laptop running on battery power (about 40% remaining) with all of the external stuff appearing to be disconnected. The dock cable was still plugged in. It seems that a few hours earlier, the dock had decided to just stop working, and the system switched to battery power. I unplugged the dock cable and plugged it back in, and everything started to work again. What are the chances that I caught it during the few hours between it "failed" and before the battery died? Anyway, I do rely on the machine being on for remote access. Now I have to be worried about the dock deciding to randomly poop out.

 

I just tried getting on an online chat with Dell support but the "4 minutes expected" message turned into half an hour before I gave up getting through to an agent. I'll try again in a few days if I have time.

 

Looking for owners of 7730 with P5200. I wanted to ask to do a dump vbios in via GPU-Z. I will help explain how to do it. Thank

 

Maybe you could sell the TB18DC and buy another (non-Dell) TB3 dock.