After Intel launched the 8th generation Core processor in April this year, Dell updated its Precision mobile workstation product line quickly, and in late May officially launched a new generation of mobile workstation products – the Precision 3530. The workstation has not changed much from the previous generation Precision 3520. The machine uses a 15.6-inch full HD high color gamut screen, equipped with the 8th generation Core Coffee Lake-H processor and NVIDIA Quadro P600 professional graphics card. With a relatively rich ports design, and officially launched the M. 2 2230 SSD solution.
In this guide, I will remove the Precision 3530 bottom case to access the battery, M.2 SSD, RAM, CMOS battery, cooling fan, heatsink, hard drive, Wi-Fi card, and motherboard.
This laptop comes with a 2230 SSD. Currently, there are fewer SSDs in this market. It is recommended that you choose a large-capacity SSD when purchasing a laptop.
1. Remove the bottom case
The bottom of the laptop has a large area dust-proof mesh opening and some dedicated cooling holes for the M.2 2280 SSD. The E-Port has been canceled since the previous generation products to make more room for the motherboard and other components.
The bottom case can be removed by loosening the eight fixing screws. Because there is no snap in the bottom case, you can easily remove it.
2. RAM and HDD upgrade options
Its bottom case is made of plastic material. As a high-end mobile workstation, the plastic body is too low-end.
This is the internal structure after the removal of the back cover. The notebook is equipped with a solid-state hard disk and a mechanical hard disk. The battery can only choose 4-core 68Wh. The M.2230 SSD is installed in the WWAN slot, but the WWAN antenna is still reserved. If you choose a large capacity battery, a 2280 SSD can be installed at the hard drive bay.
The laptop has two RAM slots and comes with an 8GB RAM. I have installed an 8GB RAM on the free RAM slot.
It uses a single fan, dual copper tube heat sink, and two copper tubes cover both the Intel i7-8750H processor and the QUADRO P600 graphics card.
3. Remove the M.2 SSD
Now, let us unveil the M.2 2230 SSD step by step. Remove two screws and take out the SSD heatsink. The bottom of the picture is the M.2-2280 slot since the laptop has a mechanical hard disk occupying M.2 2280 slot, it is impossible to install another SSD here.
After removing the heatsink, it was found to be a 2230 SSD. Since the WWAN slot is 2242, Dell made a special bracket for it. The laptop comes with a 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD from Samsung. The model is PM971.