Dell Precision 17 7770 review – its cooling needs a revamp
Temperatures and comfort, Battery Life
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average P-core frequency; Average E-core frequency; CPU temp.; Package Power
Intel Core i7-12850HX (55W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
---|---|---|---|
Dell Precision 17 7770 | 3.18 GHz @ 2.29 GHz @ 89°C @ 101W | 2.82 GHz @ 2.06 GHz @ 90°C @ 90W | 2.77 GHz @ 1.91 GHz @ 82°C @ 85W |
Dell Precision 16 7670 | 3.46 GHz @ 2.88 GHz @ 94°C @ 131W | 3.01 GHz @ 2.66 GHz @ 92°C @ 109W | 2.49 GHz @ 2.17 GHz @ 78°C @ 72W |
Interestingly, the smaller 16-inch notebook delivers a better short-to-medium extreme load performance. However, stuff falls in its right place at the end of the test, where we measured 85W of power draw from the CPU, as opposed to 72W on the smaller unit.
Real-life gaming
NVIDIA RTX A3000 | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan) |
---|---|---|---|
Dell Precision 17 7770 | 1578 MHz @ 83°C @ 114W | 1568 MHz @ 84°C @ 115W | – |
HP ZBook Studio G9 | 1405 MHz @ 63°C @ 80W | 1404 MHz @ 64°C @ 80W | – |
ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (W7600) | 1578 MHz @ 78°C @ 103W | 1589 MHz @ 79°C @ 105W | – |
Unfortunately, all of the additions to the cooling setup of this machine can’t really help it use the full 130W of the RTX A3000’s TGP. As you can see, it not only settles for 115W, but the high temperatures don’t let the clocks go too high. Thus, the Dell Precision 17 7770 gets overtaken by the ASUS ProArt Studionbook 16 OLED (W7600).
Comfort during full load
Fan noise is present, if not a bit loud. Weirdly, the laptop’s keyboard gets warm, but we are almost 100% sure that there is a hot breeze going through the keys, meaning that the airflow is venting from underneath. Usually, manufacturers do the other way round, So that the fans draw cool air through the keyboard, cooling the keyboard in the process.
Battery
Now, we conduct the battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. Our unit is equipped with the larger 93Wh battery, which lasts for 13 hours and 6 minutes of Web browsing, or 10 hours and 22 minutes of video playback.
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.





For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.




