Modding the $600.00 Inspiron 5402

Ok, if you are an AMD fan boy please keep your mouth shut

Here is the major list of what I ordered.
The parts that are with an * are to be replaced with the items within ( ).

Inspiron 14 5000 Series ( 5402 )
Dell Cinema Color ( 74% effective colour reproduction )
Silver Palmrest With Fingerprint Reader
Stereo speakers professionally tuned with Waves MaxxAudio(R) Pro
English Palmrest
System driver for Windows
Wireless Driver for 9462/AX201
65 Watt AC Adapter
Silver Backlit Keyboard
4-Cell Battery, 53WHr
Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 2x2 (Gig+) and Bluetooth 5.1 (2.4gbps wifi)
14" FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-glare LED Backlight WVA Display (300nits)
*512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD ( Option - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 512GB & 980 Pro 512GB )
*8GB, 1x8GB, DDR4, 3200MHz ( Option - 2x8GB DDR4-3200 )
Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics with shared graphics memory ( Allocate up to 16GB )
Windows 10 Home (64bit) English
11th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 Processor (8MB Cache, up to 4.2 GHz)
3x N.2 PCI-E 3.0 ( 2 slots will accept either 2230 or 2280 card lengths )

2x USB 3.2
HDMI 1.4a
USB 3.0 compatibility through Thunderbolt 3 USB-C
The Samsung 980 Pro 500 SSD card was a Monday sale item on Amazon, $120.00.
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 SSD card was purchased on Samsung store.

NOTE: I had searched high and low for various specs, about half are in the service pdf, for this laptop. The other bits are from other manufacturers that have designs based around the platform, and are within the same price structure. I will temporarily add another 8GB stick to allow dual port ram configuration to kick in. Dell has screwed the pooch by only a single 4GB, and or 8GB in the build configs. Which limits ram to be single port. Also it seems the second M.2 port is best for cooling. I will test speeds of the 980 Pro on both ports. Seeing if heat makes a difference. Dell specifically states Intel Optane card must go in the second M.2 port. Assuming space tollarance, in fitment or by lack of cooling, at the first M.2 port, which seems cramped. Won't know until my laptop is delivered.

All else everything beats the AMD Ryzen 5 & 7 optioned 5000 series, even if the two items I am replacing are swapped into it. Plus the AMD mobile options for the start of the year only address up to 32GB. While 11th Generation Intel i5 and i7 address up to 64GB. So if you do video editing 64 GB with 16GB allocated to Intel video through shared memory is impossible for AMD. I see no budget friendly AMD laptop worth owning when Intel takes the cake.

 

I have it's older 2 in 1 brother. It's an awesome notebook. I put a kingston 1tb ssd in mine with 16gb of ballistix ram. I am going with 64gb of ram soon however, for video editing work. I love the 5000 series computers from dell because they give a great compromise of performance to cost. I am sure you will enjoy yours.

 

Thanks! Glad you like your older 2in1. My main concern or reason to post this thread is on the lack of tech info on this particular model. In some ways many manufacturers making tiger lake products are hiding away important features that make the budget friendly laptop as good, if not better, than laptops twice their cost. Gone are the days of customizing a new build with Dell ordering. Some of the cost could have been greatly lowered, if dell would have allowed a minimum order of 256GB SSD, and two 4GB ram modules. Right now I pushed my $600 new laptop into the $750 price range. Which some will say I could have found something better. Honestly I would have to modify the build anyway because manufacturers will limit some areas to lower end performance. So far only a small handful of reviewers have dug down into the Tiger Lake chipsets, in truly showing their potential. Mostly because Intel is a head of the game, when you go with all Intel components. The India version was first to offer Nvidia discrete video option. Which a lot have chosen, because they like gaming. Unfortunately it sucks power and barely is a match in gaming respect to the newer Intel chipsets. Next year check out the new 2in1, and compare... Intel has upped the game on speed, light wieght, and gaming performance to rival AMD. The main reason why I chose to keep with Intel, is because Netflix, and PCI-E 4.0, and the fact that AMD chipsets does not make good for laptops. Haven't found an AMD laptop I am happy with since 2000. Probably never will. In all honesty at the time of ordering, the Intel option covered a lot of wee areas that did not need touched. Example, wifi 6, which until now was given to some AMD optioned 5000 series builds. I noticed as of recent some now have that option. But as shown in my updated list of features and tech details, you can now see much more clearly how Tiger Lake beats the AMD optioned mid range offerings.

 

As an added note... I see many manufacturers that offer a choice between AMD and Intel, use the same information in limited details, unless there is key differences with video spec and CPU. Being lazy not to be specific, as to what you actually get. Plus technical write up may specify a standard that is more compatible for upgrades, for the time of writing. Example no LDDR4X-4266 SODIMM existed on the market, so why bring up any compatibility? Another point is the chipsets used may not have had data sheets at the time of the write up. Setting a particular standard to guarantee without knowing of any hardware revision requirements. I have seen many devices state one thing and end up being more capable than what was stated. So if you think I am dreaming, well I may be wrong on some accounts, but years of knowing better, there is a good reason not to take the basic details and some technical details in the service documents as facts.

I dug deeper into Thunderbolt and because of the dual 4K display spec, the Intel chipset should be Thunderbolt 4. While AMD uses Thunderbolt 3, mostly because Intel issued it as royalty free. So chalk one more up on manufacturers hiding details, proving AMD is paying big money now to push their old tech as better than Intel's improved new tech. I will update my specs to reflect what should be seen in the systems configuration by using Windows based hardware inspection tools.

So far, the hidden specs that beat AMD, on Tiger Lake mid range systems are as follows.

PCI-E 4.0
Thinderbolt 4
USB 4.0 compatibility
64 GB max memory
16GB max video memory

Both AMD and Intel use LDDR4X-4266 Ram. That is the only hidden feature shared between them.

 

I take ALL claims using synthetic benchmarks and manufacturers with a massive grain of salt. I have used machines that, on synthetic benchmarks cleaned clocks, be absolute garbage in the real world and vice versa.

 

Yep, it's just bragging rights. Most numbers are hardly noticable in some cases, in figuring differences. It's all about implementation of your hardware. AMD has too many bottle necks on mid level systems. Intel standards are tight knit with chipsets. AMD has always allowed cross compatibility. Hard not to when Intel has so much tied within their chipsets. Back in the early 90s years, I would blow away system builders with stuff they never seen. The first dual GPU graphics adapter, Nakamichi 6 CD changer, and NT4.0 on a raid0 for my home built system that ran on 50Mhz bus. While Pentiums ran at 33. The killer CPU at the time was called a NexGen. It was head to head against Cirex and Intel, the only difference is that it did not have the floating point subsystem of the Intel chip. IBM ended up buying NexGen. The last NexGen I saw was in mid 90 in the last of the PS model line. It had a blue glass Diamond over the center. Out side of the Rare P90 (Intel was destroying them after exchange) with bad co-processor floating point system. It may be a sought after collectors item for hardware geeks like my old 90's Diamond dual Wytek GPU graphics card, it was before ATI had made their first gamers card.

 

Now you're speaking my language. the golden age of PC modding!

 

Ha, the first ever mod I did was for a defence contracted part of TRW, in 86. I installed a math co-processor on a 286 system. It had a cemented heat sink and it's own clock driver. The first removable hard drive I came across was with Ford Aero Space. While installing an Intel above board. What it does is makes an old system newer. In this case converting a 286 system into a 386 by popping in a card into the bus. The engineer had slammed in a hard disk, that used a 32 pin D shell connector for SCSI mounted on a custom board. There was no offerings like that on consumer level. Though the Richo removable (a mini Bernoulli) 10MB disk was portable, and could be made into a 20MB disk by using an RLL interface when formating.

Life was good back then, seen some interesting setups and was a hot shot installer. Always dealing with latest and greatest before general public. I think the coolest setup in 86 was a Wyse Paper White display. It had its own priority video card. The test image was a white Tiger head in black back ground. The hairs were well defind. The best display ever for its time. Soon came out was the Mac pro which killed all Intel based video offerings. Though Omiga was soon after. Talk about macintosh. I got tired with them buggers. Always having to clean the contacts from installers finger prints. Loved installing the Big Picture. It made the wee 10" screen into 30 inches, using a piggy back socket on the main board. You had to fish the external display connection through the security door on the back side.

 

I could never get into mac. My friend had one back in around 1992, I think it was a quadra tower, The only cool thing it did was the voice output. Type something and it will read it back to you. I am sure my PC at the time could have software at the time to do the same thing, but Hey....I had sk8 or die, so that beat the silly talking computer.

 

Oh, Keep us informed on how that new "cheapy" dell is rocking too!

 

Now for why I chose the Samsung 980 Pro over the rest that's available. Over WD's top performer, the Samsung was less costly and was about as good. Though the main reason, from an engineering stand point is if for some odd reason Dell and other manufacturers skimp out on specs, the Samsung SSD should still prove better with limited cooling. Since there is a possibility of PCI-E being 3.0 on any given make and model laptop, using 50% duty cycle on a device made to run faster, will out perform a device that rates half the speed at full duty cycle. Think about that for a bit, most reviewing sites don't tell you that.

A second runner up was the WD Black

As for speed increase for video editing one could Mirror using Raid 0 or for every day use the second SSD for swap and secondary apps, like monitoring tools and back ground proceasing apps, that are not part of the Windows OS, and primary apps you task from. You may not see reason, but your allowing the system to truly multitask by splitting background caching and apps that launch with os to run on their own data channels. Depending on how much of a multitasker you are, it does make a difference.

I believe there will be LDDR4X-4266 ram modules in the near future, it all depends on 3rd party, like Crucial, Kingston and others to fill the void. Then there can be Chinese options as well. Since both AMD and Intel both allow the ram option with their mobile CPU line, it's something beyond niche market. A cheap and effective option to build faster and power efficient laptops and convertables.

Until I obtain the RAM, my only option is to add one more module into the system to allow the full potential of the laptop's overall performance. It's not the ram size that counts, it's mostly how the ram was configured. Ram size is only effective with apps that are memory intensive, or video requirements, such as dual displays and games. Most will say but increased ram size and it was faster. Well, most likely you only had one module in the system to begin with. A 2 x 4GB is faster than a 1 x 8, with its overall performance.

So that's that... will share more on the laptop configuration as I go. Right now my SSD, will be the first thing at my door.

 

Oh, I decided to obtain a Samsung 970 Evo Pro to make some speed comparisons, for both dual drive and mirrored drive setups. The combo is the same price as one 1TB SSD, but you can't break a SSD in half and make it run. Ha! Both SSD cards are about the same on a PCI-E 3.0 system. With the Pro variant being more capable to push the limit of PCI-E 3.0, under extremes.

For PCI-E 4.0 having the plus SSD would not be beneficial. I figure since it's 50/50 on the PCI-E outcome, rather be safe on the 3.0 side as to dump extra money for nothing gained. If it's 4.0 I can still break even by selling 512GB oem drive and the 500 GB Evo plus being new.

The Evo Plus SSD will be used for OS, and most programs. The Pro SSD will be cache, video editing and memory resident apps that load during boot. I think the best mode for this laptop is with dual drives. If I had two 1TB SSD modules they would be mirrored. The tests is just for the fun of comparison with the system setup.

 

I am using a kingston a400 SSD, I really can see paying a crap load more for not a huge bump in real world performance. I have 3 of these in systems now and all are working fast and reliably.

 

Yep, that's why I took advantage of the discounts Samsung had on their SSD. It's always been since the begining. One large storage is a bottle neck. Glad that my laptop is ordered has 2 full sized M.2 slots. Back in the late 90s, it was common to see just about every detail on ordering. Now it's a freaking find Waldo. Unlike Android, Windows gives you the freedom to install a program anywhere, large enough to store it. So if you have multiple M.2 slots, use them.

Outside of the 50/50 hit or miss with PCI-E 4.0, there is not much one needs to do with this laptop for alleviating speed bottle necks. Just dump the weak SSD drive and build with good performing SSD for the speed you need. Ram is an option on the low power higher speed version. The easiest part of the way Dell setup memory is adding another ram module. For what ever reason they thought 12GB was the best option on the higher rated CPU, must have been selected by a 10 year old. Mixing 4 and 8 is a joke, both in memory requirements and slowing the memory down to just a single channel.

I guess 10 yeas from now, there will be thinner and lighter 2in1 systems to put this to shame. At least it will do better in the long run than the laptop I had between 2006 and 2017.

 

I don't have a M2 slot. Just Sata. But hey, works and it's fast so there's that.

 

LPDDR4X is soldered memory ...there wouldn't be such a module released as a standalone purchase.

Laptops are going to run the memory at the factory-set speeds. If Dell sells the laptop with DDR4-3200, that is what you need to buy to replace it. Even if you buy faster memory, it will still run at DDR4-3200.

Charles

 

All ram is soldered on a board. So just because it's a bga ram does not mean it cannot be done on a sodimm module. Back when there was ram shortages, various types of packaging was used on DDR modules made for the particular package. I have seen some rams with their own discrete voltage supply on the ram module. It's not that complicated. The old IBM AT had piggy back rams in dip packages. Oddly enough they got around memory limitations at the time.

As for changing the speed of the ram on the bus, there are utilities that may allow changing for ram speeds, and voltages. I used one on my old laptop to speed up the limitation set in the bios.

Another thing is, Intel has one chip set for laptops in the 400 series that allows overclocking. Won't know what chipset is used until I do a system hardware check.

 

Ok so you are going to change ram soldiered to the board? let me know how it goes. I would love to do that with this 11 3000. I have a friend who is an x ray machine technician and professional solider'er.

 

No its about a 3rd party like Crucial to make custom ram modules. Not me... I am not that tallented. I figure if more devices have the capability there will be memory made. Just a matter of time.

 

I have found a laptop that has LDDR4X-4266 ram with the 11th gen i5. You can check out the Acer Swift 5 14". Problem is it's about $1,000. A bit more than I am willing to pay to mod. The bad news is they only give you a lousy 256GB drive for the price. The good news is that it has a 350nit display with 75% colour reproduction. That price must be for the display. After finding a review, that laptop is toast for any mods, outside of ssd. The one thing the ram does show well, is the speed improvement. Just a matter of time for modules to be made.

 

Ahhh Ok. My buddy is. But if you can't buy the modules then meh. no point. Cool.

 

To see memory modules for upgrades, the best bet is having the gamer dudes, and AMD fan boys start being active in demanding cooler and faster memory. I have been overclocking my android devices on both CPU and memory for some time.

I bet these LDDR4X modules can kick some arse over clocked with a wee voltage bump. Just have to use very good multi layer memory cards to keep cross talk noise to a minimum. It's probably one reason why they are mounted on main boards.

As for some higher priced laptops, like the Acer that state Thunderbolt 4 and LPDDR4X, probably have the 400 series chip set that can be overclocked. Crossing fingers that most of the mid range laptops with 11th gen Intel i5 and i7 have them overclocking chipsets as well.

Also the LPDDR4X uses the same voltages, but has an extra lower voltage option for standby. Though can be run without the standby voltage. They are efficient within their design not by voltage limits. I assume, DDR5 or LDDR5X may be another option if cross compatible, being designed around the LDDR4X. Problem is bios detection. On speed setting and acceptance. Speed can be adjusted, but acceptance another story.

Bios are too smart for their own good. Gone are the days where jumpers controlled just about everything on a mother board. Though when Abit introduced a smart bios, it was user adjusted, so jumpers were obsolete.

 

I don't think you're going to see LPDDR4X-4266 memory modules ever. First most laptops won't support those speeds, and those that do already have the BGA ram soldered to their motherboard. Second DDR5 is only a few months away, no one is going to go down this rabbit hole when that is happening.

Your quest for 4266mhz memory will likely not work anyway. Dell bioses are locked and encrypted, you're not going to do any modding there. Gone are the old days of setting FSB speeds through tools.

Not sure what you have against people who like AMD, but you stating in every post things about AMD fanboys when they aren't even commenting is curious.

 

Well LDDR4X is cheap and tonnes available, DDR5 will be expensive and limited to higher range laptops. As for need to solder on main boards, it's not a requirement, unless there is issues with speeds on the bus. I noticed that the soldered rams are close to the cpu. But that could just be board layout.

I think low to mid range laptops will have LDDRX4, while the more robust ones will have DDR5. Look at how old Celeron development has gone. I doubt LDDR4X will just fall of the market any time soon, when low cost handhelds are so pentiful, and CPUs have the capabilities for it. The only thing that may not pan out, is the possibility for LDDR5 variants to be cross compatible for early design requirements.

 

You wont really get 4266Mhz out of modules rated for 3200Mhz, laptops motherboard aren't made with the goal of having the best eye pattern on the RAM interface, they are made to meet the minimum spec and be as small as possible, and if you want faster RAM, find if there is an external EEPROM with SPD timings and mod that, or hire a guru, reverse the Dell BIOS and OC the RAM, no point in having faster rated memory if your CPU will run them at what the BIOS tells it to run..

 

That's what I am learning. After further review of all the laptop's that carry LDDR4X ram, that they are too expensive for what they are. Not one has full potential abilities, even though they are Thunderbolt 4.

Only one PCI-E slot for NVME. Only PCI-E 3.0 spec, even though Thunderbolt 4 requires PCI-E 4.0. Either typo or fudging the spec.

No ram upgrade options, though you do get a nicer keyboard and display. So if one wants full Thunderbolt 4 capabilities it will be done on the next Intel release slated next year.

At least I have two PCI-E slots, and ram upgrade options. Even though I can't get any further than SSD upgrades to maximize disk speeds, and adjust ram for dual channel, I doubt having the faster ram option would bring much more to be happy with on this product.

I searched through many other models and found no reason to change my plan. A wee disappointed but, for the price for starters, and the few expected upgrades, made the overall purchase worth while.

I did manage to knock off some cost on my purchase. Dell released a 10% off on select models, so I canceled my original order, and reordered it. With the 5% discount on Dell's credit, which I will pay before my 6 months. It knocks it down to $556. Tax pops it back up a wee bit over the 5% discount, around $589.00

Wil probably sell the Evo Plus after testing. I have a funny feeling it will be a bit warm in its location. The 980 Pro should stay cool, since it is not over driven with PCI-E 3.0.

Oddly enough Samsung direct sells the two NVME drives, still on sale, and is faster than Amazon. Free Fedex.

Well that's it in a nut shell... must wait it out for my Laptop to arrive, around the 11th.

 

Dell shipped my laptop today, and the nice thing is they are located in Tennessee. Smack daub in the midwest. So it's a matter of a day or two, since Fedex takes that to deliver to me from there. I guess Fedex is standard shipping. Ha!

I also got my Evo Plus in today, from Samsung. They too are using Fedex as standard shipping. Now I wish I just went to Samsung online to order the 980 Pro. I would have gotten it 3 days ago.

At least I can do the stock base tests done sooner, to compare each mod with newer tech installed. This way we see how much difference the mods make.

I presume memory being on dual channel will make the biggest difference. Since memory is the bottle neck.

For apps that move data around as primary use, the ssd changes will be a major change. So together all around performance should be a major pickup.

Also the big mod that is visible will be the keyboard. I will swap the top bezel and keyboard from a 5401 with finger print option. I prefer having a nice layout, the mini full sized don't cut it, with offset touch pad.

Here are my procedures as I go through the mods on my laptop.

Testing the initial oem setup, with optimized SSD system settings, and removed bloat applications & limited background startups.

1st test, stock hardware (initial base speed tests).

2nd test, 8GB added to enable dual channel memory.

3rd test, added 500GB 980 Pro as secondary drive. (work folder, cache and temp file location)

4th test, 500GB 970 Evo Plus Fresh install of OS, reconfigured for dual SSD optimization

 

I received my Inspiron 5402 today. Just had enough time to check out the overall appearance. Having a thin frame and narrow bezel, makes the laptop smaller in foot print and overall size. You would think it is a 13" model. Though a 13" is for kids not work related stuff. It's actually the minimum for any modern techy work to be done.

I did obtain the Samsung 870 Evo Plus, as well. Still waiting on my automotive DDR4 RAM, and Samsung 980 Pro, along with a USB-3 external enclosure for my thin tray RW Blu-ray.

The only issue I have as for finish is aluminum. Had that, been there and it sort of sucks. Once you use it for travel or portable work, you will know what I mean. Time to obtain laptop skins. Ha!

Its funny to hear reviews and trolls state aluminum is high end. If you want high end, its titanium baby! Well done plastics and polymers wear better. Frame structure being rigid helps keep cracks from forming.

This laptop seems more rigid than the 17 heavy weight I once had. The lid is solid and is fluid in opening and closing.

If you have a plastics company near by, you can have them vacuum form a clear poly covering like how the old Mac G3 was made.

One great thing is that the power plug is a standard barrel type. Beats HP multi-prong barrel on the G6. Gone through 3 power supplies now, as they all fail at the plug after time. At least I can replace the plug if the wire breaks from stress.

I will eventually replace the keyboard or swap keys with the grey version used on like Dell laptops of similar builds.

I decided to end this thread here, as it's goes in various directions, and start a new. More or less about its performance and enhanced features, like Linux, which Dell seems to support in the support documentation. I bet it would sell more if they advertised it as Linux ready. It should have some config in the BIOS, once I go into it.

 

I beg to differ. My 13 inch version of your computer makes me income every month. From photo, video and website creation and editing to selling and designing products that I sell.

I agree the build quality of the 5000 series inspirons are awesome considering it's "plastic". My son's "premium aluminium ipad air" is scratched to crap and has dents, chunks and other dings in it, my dell has been all over north america, via plane, tossed in the back of jeeps, atvs and more and still looks brand new. Also, my notebook is "space grey" which looks much better than lighter silver aluminum color.

Hell, I am even getting work done on my wife's inspiron 11 3000 2 in 1, so size don't matter.

 

To button up this end of my mod thread, I have disabled just about everything relating to cache and system speedup from page file.

The only thing running cache wise is image, font and thumbnail.

As it sounds true system speed is 10 seconds from Dell image pop up from blank screen startup to desktop, without a login or lock screen enabled. It took 60 seconds for CPU to idle from boot, using performance counters.

As for memory and disk IO, I see no hindrance, in fact seems very calm cool and collected with booting up fresh to desktop.

I may enable prefetch, as the system will corrupt the thumbnail cache when removing shortcut arrows on shortcuts. Prefetch enabled should keep it in check, if not, I may swap by disabling and enable write cache buffer clearing. I think windows is relying too much on cache in its subsystem. Some where there seems to be a wee bottleneck within writes to SSD. Maybe once Samsung releases a driver for its PCI-e 4.0 devices, that may clear up.

Anyway, I am to obtain my second 980 Pro today, so sometime this week I will be moving system files and folders to the secondary SSD.

Here is a list of system files and folders being moved.

Prefetch folder
Temp folders
Hibernation
Pagefile
Roaming profile

I assume when I make various options permanent, my boot from Dell logo to desktop will be around 3 seconds or less. Seems that prefetch has more to do with boot and application speed up than anything, when 16GB of ram is available.

 

Why enable hibernation if your system boots in 10 seconds. That will be faster than hibernation, and no sense in writing to your SSD (TLC) when you don't have to.

 

All my testing is for understanding Windows 10 and NVME, when all I have known is 10 and 15 year old tech, being retired now.

When I am done selecting what works best, it will be based on allowing memory to function well without need to hit the SSD as much. Though some activities will require hits to the SSD. As for hibernation, without it, there is no power saving when traveling with laptop in suspend. I did a test early with out hibernation, and processes kept running in background while lid was closed. It took until the background processes completed, allowing battery to run down. Not sure if it is Dell's power management with AC mode is active, that limits suspend without hibernation active.

Anyway, it seems that disabling everything is not required, even though the SSD is fast enough to make Windows fast without cache.

Actually I do like having the system speed to boot much like as if it was suspended when powering up. What's 5 seconds or what ever worth? It's all about not adding any unnecessary work on SSD, when ram can be utilized efficiently to balance it all out.

Tweakers will not look deep enough, all they see is speed improvement, not reliability. I am too old to play on the edge anymore. Just making everything as efficient as possible, when breaking down the components of operation. So it all can be assessed for better judgment in emplementation when enabled or kept disabled.

After all I have noticed with thumbnail cache a corruption can happen with keeping everything dissbled. So there is cause and effect. So far nobody has any info on what really works and why. It's all based on just turn this or that off, from Windows 7 days with hard drives. Now we are with Windows 10 and very fast NVME drives. What worked then, may not be the best now. It's all about give and take, a balance to make things efficient.