The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Do the fans calm down when the battery is fully charged? It's normal for the fans to spin up when charging the battery but if they continue after it's done then that may be abnormal.
Called Dell for an exchange and they now ask for an audio recording in order to proceed -- they did however mention vaguely that machines post a certain date (didn't say exactly what date though) do not have coil whine, so there might be something to hope for for those who would like a coil whine free laptop.
The fan problem I presume should be fixable via driver/bios updates -- just a waiting game I reckon...
bro those guys don't know anything. They talking about coil whine on the older xps13, they did an update motherboard but everyone still complaining about coil whine.
9370 just came out this month and still in first run/production. In any manufacturing process it takes minimum 3 months to setup new update production so i can bs on that one.
Anyways i've come to the conclusion that the bios is messed up somewhere. who knows when it will be fixed.
Yep, was suspecting that would be the case since the guy sounded rather hand-waving when he mentioned coil whine being fixed, i.e., without specifics.
Good that your traced down the problem to the bios, so theoretically fixable, but could take forever knowing this is Dell and their track record on 9350...
ps: 3rd visit from the Dell engineer to fix my colleague's 9350 today, 1st visit they managed to break 3 keys on the keyboard, 2nd visit they broke the SSD!!, today they coming back to completely resemble the laptop since quite a few screws were missing already, the heatsink was bent after the 1st visit, and the LED charging indicator was left out!!
The recent 3 generations of XPS 13 & 15 have been on similar platforms and chipsets. They all have some coil whine in normal use. Some are worse than others. This is price of thin chassis and recycled design decisions.
Some people don't hear coil whine due to ambient noise, personal hearing characterisitics, use case. Coil whine might be emphasized by charging, speedstep schemes, scrolling, etc.
Dell's phone techs are paid to close complaints ASAP and will typically say "fix is on the way", we can have a tech will look at system, upcoming new revision boards will eliminate all whine. All fiction.
Frankly Dell's recent noisy fan schemes are more irritating than coil whine on my systems/
They do calm down when reaching ~90% in my case, but the behavior is still weird for the following reasons:
-Fan will kick in nearly at full speed, even though there are no tasks running and CPU temps are around 35C. As soon as I unplug the laptop, fan noise will cease after 30sec
-I uninstalled Dell utilties on Windows, the behavior still persists but fans are less noisy
-On Ubunutu, this doesn't always happen (more like 2 times out of 3, and not immediately after plugging in). Also fan speeds are much less pronounced, and it would usually stop at some point. CPU temps are still around 35C-40C.
Using this machine on linux has been a real pleasure as most of the time it is completely silent and stays cool (for now). I hope the new unit you get is coil whine free, I experienced that with my old laptop and it was annoying...
Received a top of the line 9370 with too much fan activity for my liking. Tried to play with the Dell Power Manager options, recommended power settings, etc, but not enough change. The notebook is just too slim for all that power and those vents at the bottom don't look like a good design, "thin chassis and recycled design decisions" like someone mentioned before.
Mostly use the computer connected to thunderbolt hub with monitor, keyboard, etc. so need to be more quiet. Gonna give it a couple more weeks before deciding wether to return it or not.
Does the Macbook Pro have the same issues ? I was seriously considering one before deciding to give Windows and Dell another chance.
Dell seems to have finally sorted out a way to deal with coil whine!
... and I quote:
"As you are asking for a replacement we will require a video (recorded from
25-30 cm away from the system) of the issue to understand the issue and only then we will be able to request a replacement."
So we just have to shut up and stop complaining if the 25-30cm rule is not met -- very fair if you ask me!
Not having any of this, and escalated the problem to one of their supervisors, who said and I quote "on this particular machine, i.e., the 9370, we have not had any reports of coil whine what-so-ever, so unless you sent us a video showing the problem, we can not go ahead with the exchange"
So either I am the only unlucky one with coil whine here, or Dell is telling a lie!! Anyhow, will just have to be a refund and never Dell again.
Just to add my 2 cents - No issues here either.
I got mine a week ago and I have 0 coil-whine. The only noise I heard was when I closed the lid on standby while on charge, the charger block was emitting a high-pitch sound but that also just vanished.
I can't believe that. I would recommend just returning and rebuying. My first unit had a bad fan but I purchased from the microsoft store, so I just did an in-store exchange. I've gathered that Dell has the absolute worst support in the world so I'll avoid them at all costs.
That being said, I like the fact that the 9370 can pull a full 24w, so this is by far and away the fastest kaby lake-r laptop on the market.
I would really recommend HP if you are interested in good service, I've had a few HP laptops in the past and the service was always exceptional. Once getting past level 1 support, the US-based support was always exceptional.
Then you haven't experienced Asus, Razer, or Gigabyte, lol. The only thing keeping me from picking up an Aero is the support that comes along with it...
I've had crazy terrible experiences with all three. I've waited for 9 months for an Asus motherboard for a customer, and 3 months for a gigabyte laptop for a customer, lol. That's with calling often and trying to pressure them into actually taking care of the customer. I have had less than stellar dealings with Dell, but nothing quite like the craziness of the Asus or Gigabyte.
Correct me if wrong but that should not be even possible? In the EU the consumer protection laws can be evoked if an RMA takes longer than a month and you can just get a refund. Additionally, service centres here are paid for each repaired RMAed device meaning the service centre only gets paid when RMAs go through. I don't understand why the US and UK systems are so broken.
I mean not only is it possible, but it's pretty normal in my experience in the US. I wish I would have kept my RMA tracker from work but my guess is my average wait time for Asus RMAs was probably 2-3 months, Gigabyte 1-2 months, and my limited experience with Razer was probably similar (when they wanted to acknowledge the problem existed).
Meanwhile, in eastern europe Lenovo and Asus take 6-7 days and you don't even have to call. Dell took about 14 but that was a wonky monitor so I can excuse them.
My dell RMAs are usually 5-7 days when I have to ship stuff to them, or next day if they have premium support (but then again I usually have to fix everything those dorks mess up).
Yeah, I'd say that is mostly attributed to the way they have the fan profile setup, which, in real world usage makes sense. The cold heatpipe can take a fair amount of load for about 15 seconds before it becomes heat soaked and the temp spikes. After that, the fans start to ramp and then the temps settle.
If you just pull a constant load of 24w, you can see that it hovers around 3GHz steady. In gaming scenarios where you don't pull the full 100%, you can get 3.5ghz+ - that's pretty unbelievable out of a laptop this size.
The only reason why I care is because I use eGPU, so CPU performance in a portable is very important to me.
Otherwise, the HP Spectre 13-ae x360 is a nicer machine in just about every way. I'd recommend anyone that doesn't use this for eGPU get that. It's a better price, better value, and an extremely well built machine (the 13-ae with kabylake-r, not the prior gen).
The XPS 13 is just a beast for allowing the TDP that it does; it just destroys the competition in that regard but the compromise is really wonky fan controls. The HP fan profiles are much better tuned and MUCH MUCH quieter.
Was looking at this Spectre 13-ae x360 over the weekend, fairly impressed, only problem is people seem to complain about quite bad coil whine there as well
Yeah, I read that but the cynic in me thinks it might be UPS's fault. It just makes no sense - error code 00 usually refers to no CPU detected so the socket was likely the issue - that or the CMOS got messed up and needed fixing. In any case, service centres that handle OEM RMAs get paid per each fulfilled RMA (at least in europe) so them ruining a product is basically nonsensical since they don't get paid at all if they do that but get a decent sum for fixing the board and returning it to the user. So yeah, I am more inclined to believe UPS dropped it or someone from UPS decided to **** with the OP (we've seen some pretty wacky stories from delivery services so it wouldn't surprise me)
UPS dropping a motherboard with the slot cover on wouldn't damage the cpu pins. Service centers here get paid to fix a product and send it back, in this case they want extra money from this user to fix the pins that are now magically bent. Also in looking at photos it may be an entirely different board. Either way in dealing with Asus I have no doubts in their inability to do their jobs.
*on edit* looks like an asus rep saw that thread and contacted the poster asking him to remove his pictures. Something shady is going down, my guess is they realized they were busted and had to "make it right" with the customer. Hah for sure never buying another Asus product again.
Anyway sorry I totally derailed this thread. I'm curious if the new 9370 users are having coil wine? Also curious if anyone has done some undervolting and maybe a repaste...
In this case - I fee like a full consumer protection bureau investigation is required. I've been around long enough to not believe everyone's story but I've also seen my fair share of malpractice by companies so it's time authorities got involved. In any case, this won't really change my opinion on anything.
Too much noise and degraded performance because of the heat, just sent it back. Coming from Windows 7, I found Windows 10 to be somehow better, but it still sucks, after a couple of weeks of use it was already starting to get slow for no reason. Gonna give the Macbook Pro a try.
Thanks for the link to the new BIOS. I was just about to pack it up and return it because of the loud and persistent fan noise when plugged in. I installed the new firmware and it's much better now. It did spin up loud for a minute but for the most part when the fan is on is like a whisper. Yesterday when I was charging it, it was loud and continuous the entire time it was plugged in.
I've been using the Macbook Pro for a few days (i7, 16gb ram, 512gb SSD) and it certainly feels slower, still not sure by how much. Whisper quiet, though. Will give it a few more days but I have the feeling it might also be going back ...
I read on the Dell site that the BIOS update has had mixed results with the fan noise. Has it worked for anybody here ?
Had my XPS 13 (9370, 8550u, 16gb Ram, 512GB SSD, UHD) for about a week now. Perfect machine. It's fast as hell and very quiet. No coil whine. Updated the bios yesterday. Before the update the fans would run very often plugged in. It's far better now.
Had a Macbook Pro 13 Touchbar 2017 before and it's far slower and not much quieter.
a couple of 9360 are bad talking about coil whine and then MS store tried me selling surface book 2 and boy its more worst. my 9370 dont have coil whine at all
Don't think it will help. The cooling system on the dell is really good i think. I did a repaste on the cpu which brought down the temps about 5° degrees. I'm also using Throttlestop to undervolt the CPU /GPU.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
