Precision 7530: multiple problems

Question

The battery life does not improve when on Hybrid Graphics mode, and merely browsing the internet, or typing documents gives roughly five to six hours of battery life... with the 97 W hr battery. Oddly enough, even when running the laptop in discrete-only mode, the battery life does not worsen. This leads me to believe that Dell have a firmware issue, and the Nvidia GPU is idling and drawing power even in Optimus mode. Note that I have checked this out with several different tools and utilities. They all report that the Quadro is sleeping and not running, but I've done some power calculations here, and there is a clear 7 W discrepancy between power draw as reported by HWiNFO.Before anyone else says it: yes; I've checked the taskbar GPU Activity indicator—it is greyed out, i.e. no background programs are using the dGPU. Compare to the XPS 15 (or the Precision 5530), which achieve runtimes exceeding 10 hours on the 97 W hr battery, even though those machines were also tested with the 8750H and GTX 1050 Tis. That image also shows periodic CPU spikes every few seconds or so. Nothing was done to the notebook while these readings were logged. Related to the GPU, the backlight control is locked at the maximum upon first boot with the Nvidia GPU. Besides myself, there is at least one other user on the NotebookReview forum who has experienced this, and we've had to resort to odd workarounds to fix it. Next, the touchpad polls at an extremely high rate, leading to CPU spikes every time a touch/swipe/scroll action is performed. This effect is so exacerbated that when the machine enters power-saving mode when the battery is low, there is a noticeably ~1 second latency between touches and display updates. Sometimes the cursor stutters, too. This issue is limited to my personal machine, but the contactless smart card reader has stopped working after updating my notebook to Windows 10 1809. I receive this error in the Dell Contactless Smart Card application after trying to re-enrol my smart-card: Finally, there is absolutely terrible display quality control on these notebooks. My first display began randomly blacking out, and then at one point the backlight simply stopped working. Several others on the NotebookReview forum have experienced poor quality control, like dust under the display, fingerprint smears, dead pixels, backlight bleed, etc. I am in half a mind to install an aftermarket display, namely the Chi Mei N156HHE-GA1. We are paying multiple thousands for these notebooks, and we generally expect some measure of quality control. Points 1 to 5 are software/firmware issues that can be solved by pushing bug fixes and firmware updates.I really hope Dell can get to the bottom of these issues.

SRSR333 · Answer

Bump? Are there any Dell reps/technicians here?

JimiScott · Answer

Screen Black Out - Could it be the display drivers crashing? I saw this on my old 7520 (which has now been returned & refunded...**bleep** spawn it was), but also on my new 7530 though much, much less frequently.

SRSR333 · Answer

The screen blank-out has been solved for me by a display replacement. Driver reinstalls did not help. I brought it up because several other users have encountered the same problem.

mathew71 · Answer

Hi all, I had multiple different blue screen death (bsd) since new. I have 64 gb ram, 8750 cpu, with Nvidia quadro p2000. With TB18, it was a nightmare. Loss of connections etc. TB18 was replaced. Problems continued. Loss of connections. The power on the TB18 is not sufficient to drive the 7530 plus peripherals. I am currently using a second separate ps to run the laptop. The double usb-c connectors is very weak. The cabling from the TB18 is too heavy and the female usb-c connectors on the laptop is too weak for this type of connection. I am surprised none of the PC reviewers picked this up. Very poor engineering. The motherboard was replaced, 1 of the 2 ssd hard-drives was replaced and 1 of the 4 16 gb modules was replaced randomly. After many updates, the bsd ( driver_verifier_dma_violation) still comes up unexpectedly. I can't get any physics simulations done. A total waste of my money. Can't even watch a complete movie sometimes. And no one buys this type of machine for movies. Dell has said they will replace motherboard again plus memory, usb-c hub and TB18 and 1 hard-drive. I wanted to get the entire machine replaced, upgraded or replaced to 7730. Willing to pay the extra costs. But Dell appears settled to wasting my time.

sfortin · Answer

FWIW - I have a 7730 with TB18DC dock, driving 3 monitors with HDMI to DVI, a DP to DVI, and a mDP to DVI dongles. I have ethernet, a dell mouse, and a dell keyboard connector. There is no problem powering the dock and the laptop with a 240W p.s. that should have come with the dock if you purchased the correct one.

You must remove the mechanical strain / coil memory on the Thunderbolt 3 cable. Possibly lay it out as flat as you can, and warm it slightly with a hair-dryer, or maybe leave it in the sun for a bit. Then make 1 coil in it and fix the coil with a set of twist-ties or velcro marshalling strips so that the connector is at the proper height to mate with the USB-C female ports on the side of the laptop. Now position the dock and the TB3 connector so that it will mate with the laptop in a more natural manner. Slide the laptop into the connector.

Agreed, the dual USB-C connectors on the TB3 connector do not mate as securely with the laptop that a USB-C charging cable would on a cellular phone. Also you'll not the TB3 connector never really contacts the laptop body, which further allows it to move up/down, and left right.

Also when booting up, if there's a message indicating that not enough power is being supplied to the laptop, merely accept the message so it isn't generated again. The TB18DC can easily drive my connections and the laptop I have.

Stabilize your connection to the TB18DC cable and your experience will be better.

pscherer89 · Answer

Having this exact same BSOD issue with 7530s. Have this issue currently on two 7530s. Have run the advanced driver restore and have the most up to date drivers. These machines are also on TB18 docks. Were you able to figure anything out on the BSOD errors?

LenFitz · Answer

We are having ALOT of issues with these docks in my environment as well. We have alot of engineers who use them throughout NA and between my company and it's subsidiaries we have all had several that caused BSODs, that would not update with the provided firmware update utility (Not detected), and require driver updates for basic functionality to remain consistent (USB/Ethernet/Display drops out).

A coworker was working with Dell about the firmware utility and when attempting to fix this with them somehow the utility caused an issue with the actual laptop (Precision 7530) which required it to be sent to Dell Advanced Repair.

Even the ones that basically work have issues occasionally and the cable/connector are the single worst design choices I have seen in a docking device.

We are unable to purchase precisions that use the old E port Replicator docks, as our 7510s and 7520s use any longer, at least that's what I've been told. So we are stuck with these Dual USB C thunderbolt devices, Im not too eager to give our users these new laptops because of the quality of these docks. It **bleep**, is there any kind of solution? Does Dell have any comments about these devices? Has anyone gotten anywhere with these devices?

Thanks,

Lenny

SRSR333 · Answer

Can we also discuss the battery life issues? I have escalated these problems to Dell's customer service, but haven't received any updates yet.

olee22 · Answer

Thanks for the summary! I have the same issues with the battery drain, it seems that the power settings don't affect at all the battery life. I have the smaller battery, and I can do only 4h of work, no matter what I do on the laptop. I have struggled a lot with the TB18DC dock, and I have sent it back after a few weeks of trying. I just plug everything directly into the laptop, without a dock. Not ideal, but still less time wasted than troubleshooting the dock. I have one further issue: when I plug unplug an HDMI screen, the movie playback stutters. I have to reboot the machine to remove this problem.

TheOriginalDon · Answer

Same abundance of issues here. Have a user that has one external monitor and the dock (TB18 -240W) using dock for a few usb devices (all of them work), ethernet and for the display. User would like to close the lid of their precision 7530 without the computer going to sleep and just work off one lone monitor. However, when he closes the lid of the precision the computer will either sleep, or the laptop screen will go black and not be recoverable without a reboot. Also, when connecting to the dock to boot the computer will take about 2-3mins to boot up, I have seen slow boot times but this is wayyyyy to long. It will maybe work with the lid closed 10% of the time.

Steps taken: Ran almost every conceivable driver for this computer, thunderbolt controller, BIOS, ethernet, graphics, USB. Have all power settings set to, "Do Nothing". I have also ran every Windows Update known to man.

753o · Answer

I received a Precision 7530 and within days the screen would go to sleep and not wake up. Ran diagnostics: no problems reported. Dell sent a tech to replace the motherboard. After this procedure the machine totally failed.
Dell sent a new 7530, but without fingerprint reader. First thing I did was run diagnostics. No issues. The machine functioned for one day then totally failed. Now they want to send me a 3rd machine.
I have never experienced anything like this. Have owned dozens of computers some Dell but mostly HP. Continuing to use the 5 year old HP I was trying to replace....

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Precision 7530: multiple problems

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