XPS 15 9560 owners thread.

same here, you can also do it thru bios

 

Precision 5520 which is an XPS 15 9560 with different code - died earlier today! Had gradually worsening problems, first with an SSD that had the boot sector corrupted and kept BSD'ing. Bios reflash, downgrade, emergency reflash, USB flash, backup reflash, not necessarily in that order...it just kept on giving BSD. That eventually killed an SSD...but I got an RMA on Amazon, so no biggie. [Edit: the second SSD it corrupted since last june]

Next up was the ME getting corrupted when it decided to bluescreen, and during a bios reflash the ME flash crapped out. Oops. Computer would boot with a very small message about the ME upgrade corrupted, and I thought nothing of it.

Hey ho. New SSD arrived today, re-imaged that, up it went and then after an hour or so, the final BSD and it wouldn't even boot.

LED blink messages firstly saying the RAM was invalid, then another worse thing...2 amber, 1 white. Processor fault.

New Mobo ordered. 250GBP seems relatively cheap for a new unopened one. We shall see.

I had initially joined this forum earlier in today, thinking the expertise available could help me out of a bind after finding the WIN-Raid pages about reflashing the ME firmware since that become corrupted during a reflash. However, the situation changed late in the afternoon, so by the time I've got round to posting here, after knowing about and reading the thread for 4 years, I'm right stuffed!

I'm not sure if I just cooked the motherboard using it as a professional workstation for digital content creation, but either way...it's a goner.

Intersting historical note is that this actual laptop came as a direct result of the first Precision 5510 which had some weird automatic screen dimming, and I didn't accept it for obvious reasons...and complained and complained, right to the top of Dell. It's part of my job to be a serious PITA to people in high places, so when it came to complaining about a cruddy screen dimming I wanted a replacement. And, edging my way gradually up the Dell food chain I ensured it landed slap bang on Michael Dell's own personal desk. I have emails to show this, if anyone is that interested....

I got a new 5520 made to order...which was nice. Having got the best part of 3 years out of it, so not bad considering the beasting I gave it.

Just thought I'd add to posterity....now it's beyond recovery. Until Wednesday when the new board arrives anyway.


Tally ho!

 

Where do you get the motherboard so cheaply?

You can see some good thermal mods here to reduce temperatures.

For example, The 7th generation CPUs can undervolt decently so that reduces temps a bit. You have to use an older BIOS that permits undervolting (undervolting was probably disabled late 2019).

There are other mods on the forum. . .

 

On the 'bay! There's one more in the UK right now, sealed new, same price!

Looking at the issue from a thermals POV, I've had all my previous high end dell laptops die from ****ty solder fracturing, so this is probably not any different. It would make sense too, a gradual decay to utter death. Maybe the extended warranty isn't such a bad deal!
M1710, m6600, 5520, all the fastest on the planet at the time, bar none. I seriously do beat the living **** out of them. it's quite surprising how long they last.

Will search thethread for thermal solutions. I have a quantity of fujipoly hanging around as it is!

GB

 

Some ideas beyond undervolting.

Just lifting the back of the laptop with an eraser say 1cm improves air intake and thermals a lot.

Install Dell Command | Power Manager (select cool and fans will run faster).

You may want to run the CPU at a lower speed (lower temps) if you are doing GPU intensive tasks. Enable SpeedShift in BIOS as that is the best CPU control (you can set the CPU power consumption via EPP and I have a thread dedicated to SpeedShift here). EPP=0 max performance, EPP=255 max energy savings, EPP~79 allows max clocks but that EPP will vary a bit by system. Some people see better performance with SpeedShift enabled and Speed STEP disabled.

On some XPS models, (high temperature) electrical tape to seal the out-take side of the fan to the radiator improves thermals. Clean the radiators with canned air. Clean the fans with a q-tip (canned air can overspeed the fans and ruin them).

The grille on the casebottom might restrict air intake so cutting away a few of the metal bars might help thermals. That could expose the internals to physical damage etc. but offer health and safety "issues".

VRM cooling is poor on these. If you can use an external fan "chill mat", you might be able to heatsink the mosfets to the casebottom. If you don't have a good chill mat, the mosfet heat will saturate the casebottom quickly and thermal advantage disappears (also the keyboard gets uncomfortably hot).