Dell Precision (w/M1000M)

[Twizzle]

Hey all,

I'm looking into getting a new laptop for on-site testing, that is, away from the office. To that end, we are looking at the Dell Precision workstations, chuck a load of ram in it, SSD - mainly so that I can run a few VMs at the same time and swap between them with little aggro.

A thought struck me, after using our old friend responder.py, it may be really handy to run some cracks against the netNTLM network hashes you (generally) gather. Checking out the Quadro 2GB DDR5 M1000M on notebookcheck has this to say:

1st generation Maxwell
512 shaders running @ 993 - 1072 MHz
128-bit bus.

they conclude: "As the exact clock speed is not known, we can only speculate on the performance. However, it is a lower mid-range model from 2015 from the Quadro line. It should be slower than the GTX 950M in 3D gaming, but easily outperform the Quadro K1100M"

That being said, I know it's a mobile card, and a Quadro one to boot, as it's for CAD guys with the certified drivers. I know you're all about the 970 and above here (and for good reason it seems).

So, whilst I know this isn't a great card, is it even worth running hashcat on this, on site, if I'm there for a day or so, against a common hashtype that I'm likely to find (netNTLMv2)?

Does anyone have experience running Dell Precision laptops with this kind of abuse? I saw epixoip made sure to buy a laptop with good heat transfer; however, hashcat isn't the primary reason for this machine, would just be a 'nice to have' or am I better off just not using something substandard.

Cheers.

[epixoip]

I wouldn't run oclHashcat on that laptop for two reasons: one, that GPU is terrible, especially for slow hashes like NetNTLM (it is Maxwell, but it will be ~2.3x slower than a GTX 960 -- even a GTX 750 Ti will be faster); and two, that chassis doesn't have sufficient cooling to cope with compute workloads.

You didn't exactly say which Precision model this is, but every Precision I've torn down / seen torn down have all had the same basic configuration: a single heat pipe for both CPU + GPU, with a teeny-tiny little heatsink with a shitty fan on each end of the heatpipe. So the CPU + GPU are in the same thermal zone, and the GPU is already at a disadvantage from the start because it's being pre-heated by the CPU, and then the heatpipe and those minuscule heatsinks have to cope with the load of both the CPU + GPU simultaneously, which of course it can't.

So yeah, if you tried to run oclHashcat on this laptop you would be sorely disappointed. It will be very slow, very hot, and very noisy.

About a year ago I desperately needed a new laptop (my Samsung Ultrabook was literally falling apart at the seams), and I was entirely fed up with the mediocre selection of piss-poor laptop designs from all the major name-brand retailers. Everything I looked at from Dell, HP, Asus, etc. was pure garbage. So I sought out buying a laptop directly from an ODM.

That led me to Clevo, and their staggering selection of systems (I think last I looked, they had like 130+ different chassis available?) I ended up going with the Clevo P650SE, which has a discrete GTX 970M in a separate thermal zone from the CPU, with a dedicated cooling solution (three dedicated heatpipes into two fans), so it can actually handle high GPU load without being pre-heated by the CPU. It also is thin, lightweight, and doesn't look like some big goofy gamer laptop -- it just looks like a nice, normal laptop. The laptop also has a Core i7-4720HQ, 32GB RAM, and 2x 1TB SSDs (with room for two more SSDs!) And it has an IPS display, backlit keyboard, finperprint reader, etc. so it really has all the bells and whistles. It is hands-down the best laptop I've ever seen, let alone owned. But the best part? All of this was only $2100. That's like half the price of anything even remotely comparable from the big retailers. So I decided that I will never again own another name-brand laptop.

Just my $0.02, but forget Dell and all the other retailers and buy a real laptop.

EDIT: Just want to make it clear I am not affiliated with Clevo nor any of their associates both domestic or abroad, just an extremely satisfied customer. Knowing this world is out there was a serious game changer for me. Seriously, just look at this fucking thing: http://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_prodetail....35&lang=en

[Twizzle]

Hey epixoip, I kind of hoped that you would reply, so thank you.

What you say makes sense, and even if it turned out that I didn't use the Clevo laptop for hashcat, I still would have a pretty good laptop with which to run VMs quickly on, a powerful machine with no arseing around. If we could actually get some use out of it whilst on site as well, that would make the company happy - I've just started at a new place and they're keen to build the security function up, and the firm feels that being able to offer captured hashes and in addition a cracked hash would be a very strong message. Not to mention fun to learn more about.

Clevo still do the P650 series - can I assume that the thermal zones you mention will hold across that range? A very competitive price too:

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/7977/

Now I just need to convince everyone that it's a good idea. Haha.

[epixoip]

Indeed even if you don't use it for Hashcat very often, it still makes a very solid workstation. I don't even have a desktop, I use this laptop for everything. And yes the price is extremely competitive, especially when you try to spec out a similar system from Dell or HP or someone.

Yep the chassis is the same, the board has just been updated for Broadwell & DDR4. Glad you were able to find a reseller in your area.

[Twizzle]

Well, the boss is up for it, so have given him a price matrix, lower/higher speed i7 and 970m/980m so he can make the choice on how much to spend. Clearly I recommended the top spec , but will leave it up to him.

Thank you for the advice, will be much better than Dell rubbish.

[epixoip]

Good deal, you'll be much happier with either of those