New XPS 15z

[ewils19]

Honestly, other than this USB issue, I REALLY love the laptop. Its fast, it looks good, and its lighter than my last one. I haven't had any of the other problems that people here have had besides the USB. I only use it for light gaming as well and it works for that.
I think an important thing to keep in mind when reading forums like these is that people are more likely to take the time to post online when they are having issues with a computer than when they're not having issues. There are probably tons of people who have a 15z who aren't having any issues at all.

[rktek]

Just curious... what is your Dell XPS 15z's Windows Experience Index ?

Mine got Base score - 5.5

Processor: 6.9
Memory: 7.6
Graphics: 5.5
Gaming Graphics: 6.6
Primary HD: 5.9

[NIGHTMARE]

Just curious... what is your Dell XPS 15z's Windows Experience Index ?

Mine got Base score - 5.5

Processor: 6.9
Memory: 7.6
Graphics: 5.5
Gaming Graphics: 6.6
Primary HD: 5.9

Mine rating is - 5.9


Processor: 6.9
Memory: 7.4
Graphics: 6.6
Gaming Graphics: 6.6
Primary HD: 5.9

[ewils19]

The dell technician was finally able to come yesterday to fix my crashing problem. It turns out that when he replaced my motherboard, he hadn't screwed the heat sink on correctly (one of the screws wasn't in at all) so it was not making contact with the CPU at all. So whenever I tried to do anything that would've heated the CPU up it crashed the computer to protect itself.

The technician said he didn't think that the CPU would have suffered any damage from this, what do you guys think?

Last night I did a factory reinstall of windows to see if that would help with the USB issue. Its definitely helped but I do still have some problems with my toshiba canvio external hard drive.

As far as my Windows Experience Index, mine is a 5.8.

[Dell-Bill_B]

I've had an interesting weekend with my 15z. I'm still having issues with the USB ports that Dell was not able to resolve through driver updates so they decided to send a technician out to replace the motherboard. He came on Friday and replaced it with no problems. I browsed the web for a couple hours after he left, and then I decided to play a game. I loaded it up and about 2 minutes later my computer completely crashed. No unusual noises or anything, just the screen went black and all the lights went out.
It turned on again fine so I started a dell chat support session. They told me to try a factory reinstall of Windows. I tried but my computer crashed again in the middle of it. This happened twice. So Dell decided to send another technician with a new motherboard, heat sink, and a new power adapter.
Hopefully that fixes it! I'm guessing that either the first replacement motherboard they gave me was faulty (which has happened to me before on my last laptop) or the technician connected something wrong. I don't know enough about the internal workings of a computer to guess at anything beyond that.
I am grateful that it still runs doing low level stuff-- yesterday I was able to browse the web and watch videos with no problems.

The dell technician was finally able to come yesterday to fix my crashing problem. It turns out that when he replaced my motherboard, he hadn't screwed the heat sink on correctly (one of the screws wasn't in at all) so it was not making contact with the CPU at all. So whenever I tried to do anything that would've heated the CPU up it crashed the computer to protect itself.

The technician said he didn't think that the CPU would have suffered any damage from this, what do you guys think?

Last night I did a factory reinstall of windows to see if that would help with the USB issue. Its definitely helped but I do still have some problems with my toshiba canvio external hard drive.

As far as my Windows Experience Index, mine is a 5.8.

Your USB issue is a curious one. I hope it's sorted now. I knew right off the cause of the sudden shutdown. When you see that happen- especially after a mobo, heatsink, or CPU replacement- 9 times out of 10, that's heat related. Sometimes they forget to reconnect the fan power cable. Sometimes they don't torque the heatsink screws down right, or at all in your case (oy vey). As far as long term damage, it should not be an issue. Intel implements a sudden shutdown like that before the CPU enters into any kind of dangerous heat range.

[ewils19]

Your USB issue is a curious one. I hope it's sorted now. I knew right off the cause of the sudden shutdown. When you see that happen- especially after a mobo, heatsink, or CPU replacement- 9 times out of 10, that's heat related. Sometimes they forget to reconnect the fan power cable. Sometimes they don't torque the heatsink screws down right, or at all in your case (oy vey). As far as long term damage, it should not be an issue. Intel implements a sudden shutdown like that before the CPU enters into any kind of dangerous heat range.

Thanks for the reply, Bill. My USB issue is DEFINITELY better. When I first got the laptop, the ports didn't work at all until I updated the drivers. Then it wouldn't recognize devices (such as my wireless Microsoft mouse) till I unplugged and replugged them a few times. I'm not having any issues with the mouse anymore, just with the Toshiba hard drive. When I first plugged it in last night after my restore, it told me several times that the device needed to be formatted (when I know it doesn't). I have read that the power cord may not be able to draw enough power from the computer and that if I buy a USB y cable and use that instead the problem will be fixed (As per this blog post: techieNetizen's Web Log: XPS15z: USB 3.0 incompatibility and problem with external hard disks) I'm planning on ordering one from Amazon and trying that out.

As of now, with that Toshiba hard drive I'm averaging speeds of around 30 mb/s when transferring data. I know it should be operating faster than that.

I'm glad to hear there won't be any long-term damage. One thing I have noticed since the replacement is that sometimes the fan will cycle between a high speed and medium speed every few seconds. I didn't notice this before the motherboard replacement/heat sink issues but it may be that it was happening and I just didn't notice. Thoughts?

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, I really appreciate it.

[Dell-Bill_B]

The fan cycling is most likely because the replacement mobo has a more recent BIOS where the thermal algorithms were modified. If you prefer a different fan behavior, you might try flashing back a version or two. The thing to watch if you do that is what happens with the USB ports. Unfortunately our change logs are written by excellent engineers whose primary language is not English, so we tend not to publish them under the "fixes and enhancements" section when they are too full of engineering jargon. So, you won't know if one version breaks USB again until you find out the hard way. It's like software troubleshooting in a way- just keep installing versions until you break something, then revert to the last one that worked.

EDIT:

Didn't read the blog post you linked to, but one thing I can contribute is there are inherent issues with various devices, USB 3.0 and this chipset. For whatever reason, Intel did not bake 3.0 support in fully until the recently released Panther Point chipset. Any USB 3.0 port you see on any PC running a pre-Panther chipset will have implemented a daughter board to connect the 3.0 ports to the mobo. The main problem you run into here, besides random devices having problems, is those ports are not bootable. You have to boot from a 2.0 port. Panther Point fixes that with full 3.0 chipset and mobo support.

[ewils19]

The fan cycling is most likely because the replacement mobo has a more recent BIOS where the thermal algorithms were modified. If you prefer a different fan behavior, you might try flashing back a version or two. The thing to watch if you do that is what happens with the USB ports. Unfortunately our change logs are written by excellent engineers whose primary language is not English, so we tend not to publish them under the "fixes and enhancements" section when they are too full of engineering jargon. So, you won't know if one version breaks USB again until you find out the hard way. It's like software troubleshooting in a way- just keep installing versions until you break something, then revert to the last one that worked.

I think I can get used to the fan cycling, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't abnormal. If it does annoy me too much I'll try your suggestion. Where would I find the previous versions of Bios to try out?

[Dell-Bill_B]

A06 and A10 are posted here. If you click on either one of those, you can get to "other versions" toward the bottom of the page. Funny thing is all you can get to is A08 that way. Strange we don't have all previous versions available. If you look at the naming convention of the files, you might be able to poke around on the FTP site and figure out where the other 8 are. FTP.Dell.com/BIOS (navigation in Chrome is a little wonky, so use IE)

[ewils19]

A06 and A10 are posted here. If you click on either one of those, you can get to "other versions" toward the bottom of the page. Funny thing is all you can get to is A08 that way. Strange we don't have all previous versions available. If you look at the naming convention of the files, you might be able to poke around on the FTP site and figure out where the other 8 are. FTP.Dell.com/BIOS (navigation in Chrome is a little wonky, so use IE)

Thanks! I'm not very familiar with doing things with BIOS but I'm learning!