BBB complaints against DELL

I have been talking about BBB complaints in a thread with a few people but as I have said in that thread, we need people to hear about BBB complaints. DELL has released these laptops 9 months ago but there are still many people with throttling CPUs. This cannot be accepted considering most of us paid over $2000 for these machines. My CPU throttles to 799 MHz. That means I only get the 23.5% of the advertised speed. In DELL's defense they want me to use the warranty but I can't because I am not the original buyer, this laptop came to me as a gift from US. I am not even in US. But you have to understand that this is not my problem. Since unboxing the laptop this machine is crippled. I can't believe DELL. They literally stole $2300. We should be doing something and that something is to file BBB complaints or maybe filing lawsuits! I recently found out that BBB complaints can hurt a company very much.

Anyways, even if nobody files a complaint or I don't get anything I don't care that much since I haven't paid a cent to this machine but what DELL did to me was to completely push me from themselves. I grew up with a wish of an Alienware laptop and DELL s!#t on that wish. I was even considering to get an Alienware 18 in following months but I realised if I do that then DELL would just get away with their robbery. Unless DELL fixes our problems (I don't care how they do that, replacements or maybe giving AW 17 r3 or refund after 21 days INTERNATIONALLY) soon I will never buy a DELL product and I'll do my best to discourage people from buying DELL products by telling them about Early 2015 line of these laptops and how irresponsible DELL behaved. I assure DELL they will lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands just because of me. I hope there are people like me or at least there will be people like me after reading this so maybe, just maybe DELL can realise what they've done.

I am completely sick of dealing with this laptops problems since its arrival. I haven't slept the night of the arrival day because of my excitement on the laptop but instead of enjoying my dream laptop, I was forced trying to fix this crappy laptop.

 

Explore the threads on the throttling issue or prema's bios mod may help you.

 

Believe me, I explored more than enough. I started exploring before a month this laptop came to me and I just hoped my machine won't have throttling issues. Silly gamble, you could say. Today I still search for fixes. My only hope now is the 240W adapter. Why the heck do I have to deal with these stuff? $2300 HAVE BEEN PAID FOR THIS MACHINE! Just wow. Even if 240W fixes the problems I still don't forgive DELL.

(BTW please don't get me wrong, I am not mad at you. I am mad at DELL!)

 

Warranty's are based on Service Tag and you should be able to transfer the ownership of the system so you can get support overseas.

https://www.dell.com/support/assets-transfer/us/en/19#/Identify

 

This is finally good news. That dumb woman on the phone didn't tell me any of this. I really appreciate your help. I will obtain the original buyer's name ASAP and do what's necessary. I'd like to thank you one more time because this info really is the best thing I've came up since I've got the laptop

 

Legitimate BBB complaints against Dell works. They have an A+ rating and do not want to lose that so they will resolve any legit claim.
The main focus would be to prove there is an issue. Back when the M15x had a throttling issue it took several months but eventually after pressing the issue I got to a point where the engineering team was sending me MXM cards to test the throttling... They then concluded that it was simply a design flaw and sent me a M17xR3 (brand spanking new).
Anyone remember that? You might remember the throttling on the M15x but not the resolution. Thats because technology moves so fast its cheaper to just make a refresh and keep quiet. The amount of people that actually stand up for this or even notice is so small that its cheaper for them. That doesn't make it right or make it so people like us are just going to stop caring.

Bottom line: If there are legit issues, then the first thing is identifying how to recreate these issues should be done.
Then one should Call tech support... have them replace parts... show that the issue continues to happen.
Then do a BBB complaint.. If multiple people did this then something would be done for sure.
Also find out if this is happening on the 15 R2. If the R2 does not have this issue then the best case scenario would be they see & acknowledge the issues that the 15 R1 model has.

This comes down to people actually following through with it. I will do it! Who else is on board?

 

As far as I'm concerned, the Alienware 17 R1 and R2 as well as the Alienware 18 have broken fan tables that make it impossible to hold turbo clock speeds, in addition to ridiculous heat in the case of the Alienware 17 R2, with no fix in sight. Really rather sad if you ask me.

 

How does one recreate this issue. I need to show the big picture of the problem.

 

I filed a BBB complaint just now. Please everyone follow suit.

 

I will create a youtube video on throttling issue and share it here.

 

Here is the video:


You can fast forward the video to 4:49 in order to see 800 MHz

 

I have no issues so I wont do it. Even though the PSU 180 vs 240 should be dealt with. For the people with these issues.

Not extremely sure what I am seeing. The throttling issue is very strange. It should happen directly and not after a while if it is a PSU issue I would think. For a long time in the benchmark things are quite okay and suddenly very, but really very weird drops. I almost would expect that the PSU itself isn't okay not just because of the wattage.

You already reinstalledt the machine a few times right? The temps are okay but turbo boost disappears when its hitting 95c.

 

If you have no issues I don't expect you to file a BBB complaint. I will try the 240W adapter in a week so I can't say anything about that. I am not sure about what you mean by "You already reinstalledt the machine a few times right?" but if you meant if I have reinstalled windows then yes, I did. Also XTU doesn't report thermal throttling. It constantly reports power throttling.

 

Yeah thats indeed what I ment. It is really strange about XTU though because i see temperature throttling happening in the benchmark where it goes from 3ghz+ to the baseclock of 2.6ghz. But not sure if that is considered temperature throttling by Intel because it runs within their specs. But Power throttling should be just there when you stress the machine too much and there is no power left to run it at full speed anymore. I would expect this to happen from the moment you start the benchmark and not halfway trough while hardly anything in the scene changed that causes the power draw to become larger than it already was.

a test you can do is underclocking your GPU and see if it still drops to 800. Try to keep the machine under the 180watt load with this. If it still drops to 800, then something different is happening.

 

Get a 240w. If you dont have a 240w then the system will throttle. Its systems with the 240w and still throttling that is the issue.

 

I downclocked the CPU @ 2.8 GHz for all usages (1,2,3,4 cores) and I also maxed the fans via HWiNFO 64 and ran unigine heaven again. This time throttling started immediately from the beginning which I was very surprised. However when I stopped heaven and started again during recording it didn't happen immediately. This is 2 mins longer than the previous video but I also opened XTU monitoring to let fast forwarding easily. I am currently uploading the video to youtube and I will share the link here.

 

Allright I will try out the 240W adapter in a week. I will be meeting a friend who has one. After that I will buy one if it works.

 

Downclocked stress test added:

Throttling issue still persists.

 

I honestly do not know what is happening there. Very strange that it only kicks in after a while. Maybe some others here know what is causing this. I hope you have some more luck with the 240watt psu.

 

My guess is that the hybrid thing isn't working properly. Battery is being used for a while then the BIOS gets the battery charged for a while then the battery gets used again... I don't know, maybe it's totally wrong but that's just my guess.

 

delayed throttling issues are mostly heating related. I see that your temps on the video are fine but just in case, have you repasted the CPU thermal paste? Try running it in a very cold room with the AC pointed at it or in a very Hot room. It might help identify the problem if the times go up or down based on this. Also does it happen at the same time everytime or is it random?

I am sure you might have tried some of these but would like to mention them just incase:
Reinstalling the Bios
Reinstalling the Intel chipset drivers
Reinstalling the OS (doubt this will help but what the hell)

I don't know what also could be causing this, but one last thing could be a bad cpu chip and it if so, you have to deal with Dell.

 

I haven't tried reinstalling the chipset drivers. Will do that right now and also I don't think I have a bad CPU chip. When I ran a CPU-only stress test (on XTU) I don't get throttling. I ran memory and cpu stress tests for 30 mins and 0 problem. However when both CPU and GPU are stressed BAM! throttling.

 

This is an odd problem. It looks and sounds like a heat related throttling problem but your cpuz and gpuz temps don't say so. I would suggest doing/getting a thermal paste done. It might solve your problem. Dell might do it (though some people have had mixed results). If not you can try it yourself or get it done.

I really don't know what else could be the problem. That cold/hot room test might help identify if its heating related before you go through the repaste.

 

I will definitely try cold-room/hot-room test but I don't have access to an air conditioner in my home so I'll try that when I go to college.