Dell Precision 7730 – DGFF graphics pin repair

TLDR
Bought workstation laptop with specs that say Intel UHD Graphics (no mention of dGPU).
Dell’s service tag says it has P4200 GPU, but also better RAM/SSD configs different than listing.
Get laptop, reset bios setting to factory, ran windows update, doesn’t recognize dGPU, HWinfo says Intel UHD.
Open laptop to confirm it has GPU, reseated a cable from mobo to GPU.
Restart, no difference on bios or windows.
Fiddled with connectors, updated firmware via Dell’s site.
Removed the 3 DGFF connectors, some plastic was smushed around pins.
Brushed off broken plastic (this may of fixed it but…)
Noticed some of the pins were bent/depressed (like a socketed CPU motherboard)
Carefully lifted the pins upward with a razor blade, system recognized GPU & downloaded drivers.
used NVidia control panel to use dGPU on certain programs.
Played 3 matches of League of Legends, no thermal issues, graphical glitches or noises.
Seems to be working, but yet to test out video out.

May 13th 2023 update: GPU still working well! Plays the ‘new’ Modern Warfare 2 pretty good, although quite loud bc the fans run 100% most of the time.

I needed a new workstation, so I bought an HP Zbook G3 & a Dell Precision 7730, both to replace my Lenovo ThinkPad T460p.

The 7730 I bought as is, and it must of scared other buyers, because it was at a decent price IMO, but as a BIN, not as an 99 cent auction. It was on the market I think November 15th & I bought it on December 10th from swingcomputers, packing & shipping was pretty good, but most importantly, it came with the proper 240W Dell charger. I’ve seen this page’s listings b4 and their price range looks to be about the mid/high end. I’ll put this on the market eventually, but I’m not sure if i’ll make a hefty profit off it.

Looking at it now, there’s some interesting elements about this listing. In the default photo, it’s just a parcel with some words on it. On photos of their other listings, it has a typical photo of the laptop. I’m not sure if this was a missort or intentional, but it’s not out of the ordinary, because some sellers do have a 12th photo that has some info like what the serial is, or what aisle/section their item is in the warehouse.

On the parcel it says “waiting for palmrest”, & upon opening the machine, it seemed as if someone was there before. I don’t know what extent was the damage, but the lid opens strangely, making a scratching sound on the right, which is where there is damage on the exhast… additionally the keyboard feels kind of funky too, specifically the intelli point, it got stuck on the top screen a few times.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, why this machine? Like many laptops by HP, Dell and Lenovo, you can find out the specs by the serial number, MTM, Product ID, Service tag, or MPN… & looking at the BIOS photo, this laptop has a Service Tag of GHBGJR2 (note I wanted to make a Ficticious Biz name called GHB Laptops & Repair). So I looked up the specis via product support for Dell, & it takes me to this page for the 7730. The page is formatted for warranty repair status, but it has a “View Product Specs” tab, & it’s sort of obfuscated. However you can expand all things and download it as a CSV. So far, looking up specs this way without, actually having the machine in your hands is fairly accurate. The only thing is that you don’t know if it has been modified, at worst it’s usually a swapped shitty screen bc the original broke, or removed/downgraded RAM or HDD, because the thing was damaged. On the listing, the CPU matched on Dell’s specs, but the RAM & NVMe drive didnt (i just found this out now). Still, 16GB RAM & 512GB SSD is fairly good, and if it was more, it would of been more expensive. But what piqued my interest the most, was that it has a nVidia Quadro P4200 graphics card w/ 8GB GDDR5! The screen was the FHD IPS type, not the 4K IGZO :/, but at least it wasn’t the TN HD+ one. So I bought it the laptop for $900 after taxes, & bought the frame for $50. I was skeptical about the AC adapter, perhaps they have an older 240W charger, & if you don’t know, Dell likes to be a bit proprietary with their chargers, so they’ll downclock the laptop or even disable the graphics (same happens with Lenovo, & maybe HP laptops).

Upon arrival I plugged in the laptop & was a bit concerned. The machine did not turn on immediately, the power light at the front right lit up, the power button light & the caps lock light stayed a solid white color, but I got nothing. I heard the machine cycle power on and off, the fans spinning, but the screen stayed black, not even a backlight. It must of been 20 seconds, the machine finally turns on, with the Dell logo, it states that the time clock configuration has not been set. So the battery depleted all the way, I go to BIOS, set the time & I reset all to factory settings. I assume something must of been done to disable the dGPU, upon restart I go back to bios, there is nothing said about the quadro graphics anywhere… I didn’t do a clean install, the machine was reset to a windows default settings, this was not the original Dell installation, as it originally came with an 1TB and this is only 512GB, so it must of been clean installed in the past.

I logged into the internet, do updates, yada yada, restart & still no graphics, it didn’t recognize that there was a graphics card. I downloaded HWinfo to check specs, and I shit myself, it only showed the Intel graphics. No way did these fuckers took out the GPU and sold this laptop, I’m pissed at that idea. I assumed that there must be something wrong, so I updated the bios firmware on this laptop. I’m not sure which one it had, 1.16 which was released in July, and I updated to 1.18 released in November 2021. The update took forever, ofc anything takes forever bc I need answers, not buyers remorse that I overpaid on a fucking Intel UHD graphics workstation. If I wanted that, I’d buy a G50 ThinkPad, piece of shit (literally no dock support, iGPU on core duo, but the bios whitelists better Core 2 Duo CPUs lmafo). In the bios settings you can enable bios rollbacks, which is cool I guess? Also there was no bios lock or anything, something about computrace was on, but I’m pretty sure I could turn it off.

Nah, the bios didn’t resolve the problem. So I open up the machine, the bottom rear latch is cracked in some spots, and the frame is broken too… but the bits that broken off are nowhere to be seen, so either the IT crew must of tried fixing this & tossed those bits, or the seller did, all that confirmed to me was that someone opened this machine & might of fucked with the GPU. What is ass is unlike the Precision M6xxx or M4xxx machines I’ve had come across in the past, there isn’t easy access to the motherboard from the bottom, I have to remove the palmrest & keyboard to get to it. Supposedly the 7730 is a slimmer version than the 7720, so maybe that model is quicker to open up to the business. I picked the 7xxx because the Precision 5xxx & 3xxx are based on the XPS, which meant it may not have an MXM Graphics card, but a soldered one. At that point I wouldn’t be able to upgrade, which I might as well get a ThinkPad P73. But Dells are much more cheaper…

To my surprise, you can actually configure a fucking 17″ workstation to have Integrated graphics. Seriously what the fuck. Some guy actually bought their laptop that way (link via dell support forums)…. hahahahaha and then is (((upset))) that it costs NBA 2K for the GPU via Dell’s site… but anyways, there are sellers who have the Intel GPU for like $80 ish as of Dec 2021. I find it kind of stupid, considering they are selling the cheapest AMD card for $180, I would assume the Intel card would be like $50. But if you actually get the laptop configured this way, you would still need to buy the power connector for the GPU.

Annnnyways, I remove the screws on the palmrest, the keyboard & I find that they have 2 RAM slots under the keyboard, like a ThinkPad T4x series. Whack as fuck, especially since the HP Zbook G3 has all 4 slots right there after removing the bottom cover (also that machine feels much more better than this blob). The heatsink has 8 screws, 4 for the CPU and 4 for the graphics. Upon removal of the heatsink, I see it, an nVidia quadro die. What the fuck? it’s not an MXM card though, I see some sort of power cable, so maybe (presuming this laptop fell), that cable got disconnected or dislodged from impact. You have to pick up one end, and then pull out at an angle, think of it like ejecting a beta tape, I botched a connector like this on my Yoga 460… x3 Oh yeah I forgot I thought I was missing a part which made the GPU not work. In the photo below on the top, above the display cable, there’s a little slot. I’m not sure what that is used for, perhaps for the digitizer if it’s a touchscreen model?

But yeah, it wasn’t an MXM card, it has these 3 flat piece connectors with 2 screws on each side to secure the GPU to the mobo. The fuck? It’s news to me, Also the graphics card has a direct HDMI and mini DP port out as well, so if I were to upgrade this card, the whitelist won’t be the only issue, because where the video out ports or types can fuck things up. Recently i was able to cut up a T560’s bottom base cover to retrofit onto a W550s because it was made with CFRP or some shit, but this Precision has a aluminum/brushed metal exterior, so boring it out will harder without the correct $$$ tools. I didn’t remove those three pieces at first but I should have, I placed everything back together & fucked up some of the screws, screw dent in palmrest. Turned the machine on and still no dGPU in Windows, BIOS, or HWinfo, royally what the fuck..

Reopen laptop again, disconnected the GPU this time, now a few things could of happened. Reseating those connectors could of just made it work. But there was a piece of plastic in the connector that got smushed & potentially could of blocked the small gold pins from the mobo/GPU. One of the three “DGFF” (Dell PN NGRJG $20) connectors was perfect, but two required some work. I have done pin repair successfully once, it was an Alienware Aurora 1st gen, which had a socket LGA 1366. I used a razor blade to lift up the pins, no need for clamp them with tweezers as it is fairly sensitive. I lifted maybe 5 pins, one I did a bit excessive and pushed it back a bit. Though it really shouldn’t matter, as it’ll be pushed back down again. The issue is when lifting if you angle it towards other pins, then potentially it can short circuit. Oh yeah and the thermal sticky pad was off on one of those blocks… it’s going to bother me so i’ll have to buy new ones.

Once I did that, the machine didn’t want to boot initially… the RTC is still dead, even when I let the damn thing charge for about an hour. So it did the whole, power light w/ a black screen, but it turned on, & go to bios and boom, it’s there P4200, the 2nd best GPU on this machine. I log in Windows 10, and yup, HWinfo sees it, & manually downloaded the drivers from Dell’s website. The GPU works, I can feel it’s heat, installed League of Legends, played it, and yeah, the machine does it, on max settings no prob.

So on this third one, you can see on the most left row, that it doesn’t align like all the others. I’m not sure if this really reallllllly was the cause of it not working. But given that, no matter what, if I push those pins up, they’ll still get pressed down by the mobo/gpu contacts. So those is what I lifted with a razor blade. It is such a weird thing to come across, I don’t know if it was actually affected by it being dropped, or if a technician had removed these, but somehow dropped it? idk the latter makes no sense, the former, I guess bc of stress chassis flex, but still it makes no sense how those ones are affected, but like, not more of them….

I am so happy with this machine :’)C

I may plop $40 on 2 connectors, I feel it doesn’t need it, but perhaps for reassurance to the buyer when I sell this workstation.