Dell XPS 15 (Skylake) 9550 Owner's Lounge

I'm planning to do the same thing, but in my case it's 850 evo m.2 SSD + 2.5" sata HDD combo. Should I stick with RAID or switch to AHCI?

 

AHCI IMO as you aren't using the M.2 as a cache - I'm reading that you'd install the OS on the M.2 and use the 2.5" for data? I have exactly the same setup in my 9550.

 

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I could play League of Legends @ 4K with high settings on a GTX 960M Asus Zenbook Pro from last year. 3 x 1080p is only 75% of the pixels of 4K. I'm just wondering whether the laptop supports Nvidia Surround to be able to game on 3 monitors, at all.

 

Swapped the broadxom card for the Intel 8260. Voilla, no more Wi-Fi Bluetooth problems.

 

Is it just simple plug&play? Or you had to do something with the wiring?

 

Use the white and black cables only, just tucked the grey under. Make sure you download a functional set of drivers for the card from Dell first. My download got corrupted and I ended up in a bit of a pickle for a while.

 

Thanks!

Could you please try to install this:

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER03426599M/1/Communications_Application_8605K_WN32_6.0.52.0_A01.EXE

Intel Wireless Display Connection Manager Application

Just to see if your laptop is now WiDI compliant... (if it is not it will stop you at the beginning of the installation). I know that now all your components are WiDI compatible, but I also read that it is necessary that laptop manufacturer enable WiDI (|whatever that means) on the specific laptop.

 

It installed

 

Great, thanks a lot!

I am ordering Intel 8260, I am full of this Broadcom BS

 

http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/08/nvidia-graphics-driver-hurts-systems/

FYI for anyone with the NVIDIA graphics card update

 

My review is done: http://www.ultrabookreview.com/10234-dell-xps-15-9550-review/

The XPS 15 9550 has an unrivaled screen, fast hardware, and a killer design. But 5 months after its launch, it seems we're all still Dell's beta testers.

 

Anyone happen to know if Intel is working on an 'ac' card that would take advantage of the 9550's three antennas?

 

i want your version but.. with FHD screen, you know average noise?

 

They have one but it is wider than the laptop can take!

 

My Bluetooth mouse is working pretty well. (Occasionally it is stubborn about the initial connect, but lately it's been really good.) I use a 5GHz wifi connection -- is that why I don't have problems?

 

I suspect so. I also use a bluetooth audio receiver, which may be increasing the complexity.

 

But what's the best card (with same specs) to swap the broadcom card?

Is it possible or, better, is Dell in the position to replace the card with another one and support them?

 

All 9550 have problems?

 

Seems only 2,4ghz wifi and Bluetooth using at same time...
No problems with 5ghz WiFi and BT here

 

But... Al units?

 

What is dell foundation service ? Do I have that ? Where do you get that ?
I have dell bloatware is that the same ? I should try to install that to see if it fixes my earphone problem,
where you down load it ?

 

Check guys new driver updates for wifi released today. Maybe it's fixing issue with BT and WiFi.

 

Well that is just brilliant, there are indeed new WFi drivers for 9550 but only for those with Intel wireless adapter, the one that is already working fine
For the problematic Broadcom BS there is still nothing!

 

Lol. What do they fix?

 

So I changed the thermal paste to pk-3 (after the advice of not using metalpad). The max temperature before was 79c and max temperature after is 71c under load with valley benchmark. 8c difference!!! Even without metalpads.

 

As I mentioned, I changed the stock thermal paste to Prolimatech PK-3. I forgot to take pictures of the procedure. The results before and after changing the thermal paste are shown below. I use the up to date version of CPUID Hardware Monitor. The stress test was done by using Unigine Valley Benchmark (Not the best test software but good enough as a representation of what I do with my laptop). The stress tests were repeated 3 times while running Hardware monitor in the background.

http://imgur.com/a/EVLah

 

As far as I know, there's no other 3x3 option. The Intel 8260 is more reliable but not as fast as the Broadcom.

Not sure what question you're asking exactly, but the Precision 5510 (workstation sibling of the XPS 15) uses the Intel 8260, so they could definitely offer that card instead of the Broadcom. Unfortunately, it's only a 2x2 card and is less impressive on the spec sheet even if it works better in reality.

 

It might not be a true value, you will find it would probably drop more if the test could be done with a fixed fan speed, chance is the fans were not running as fast either so you normally end up with a quieter machine

you need the bb code, we can't see it.
"BBCode (message boards & forums)"

 

Ok My XPS finally arrived today. It's beautiful! What do I need to test? My first impression is that the keyboard is kinda stiff and trackpad is just ok.. Strangely, my XPS 15 is shipped with preinstalled windows 10 on 32gb SSD! Isn't it supposed to be just used as cache?

 

Check the ports are aligned on each side, check for gaps around the case, check for dead pixels/dust under the screen.

Do you see 2 physical drives in file explorer as the 32gb should be the cache drive.

 

Well, I can report progress on my issue with the TB15!

So after contacting Dell Support, they've sent me a new dock and the result was the same: Unknown device.

I had a Dell engineer take over my screen, go through every step I had already done several times then give up and proposed to escalate the ticket.


Then, I thought it was impossible to make the situation worse so I decided to actually UNINSTALL drivers and see what the outcome would be in the device manager.



First thing I've uninstalled was the ASMedia driver. Then I rebooted and... ***!!!!!

Everything installing itself like a charm! Looks like the ASMedia drivers version built into Windows 10 pro actually handles everything without the need for extra drivers

So now I have my TB15 working with USB devices connected to it, and DisplayPort to my Dell monitor.

One thing that still doesn't properly work: NETWORK

The issue seems to be with the way the connections are established between the dock and the laptop, because it doesn't make a difference if I use the built-in ethernet port or an usb3-to-ethernet adapter: it seems to work, connection is established but then if I try to access a network path or an internet page, the adapter resets itself. So basically it's useless... Sometimes it would stay connected for a while but then the download speeds would be way off. When plugging in the usb3-to-ethernet adapter directly on an usb3 port of the laptop itself, it works flawlessly and speeds are gigabit ones.

So definitely there's something wrong with how the dock manages networking.

Any idea for a fix?

 

I got a Dell XPS 15 4K, 16GB, 512GB SSD a couple of days ago. No faults on the screen or keyboard. No coil whine. Pretty happy with this compared to the XPS 13 which had a lot of coil whine and I didn't think it kept that cool.

 

are your ports all lined up?

 

Help guys, so I decided to reinstall window 8.1 my sdcard reader stop working, I know it still work because when I boot into the boot loader I can see the system is still reading the SD card. I guess I'm asking is what driver do I need to download in order to get the sd card working again, thanks.

EDIT: FOUND IT...just download the drivers from dell drivers homepage under window 10 64bit os and it will work for window 8...backward compatible drivers.

 

Yes, every ports seemed to be aligned on each side.
As for the drives, I see two drives (32gb ssd+1tb HDD) on file explorer.
Is this normal?

 

Someones really screwed up your install then. You should see a single 1tb drive the 32gb should be invisible as it is a cache drive. you could backup the c drive using Macrium reflect free edition then setup the cache drive in the BIOS (not sure how as I have a single drive so another member would need to talk you through the BIOS unless you ring Dell support)

 

Thank. Well it shouldn't be a big problem for me as I was going to install new m.2 drive and another SATA drive myself anyways.

I did a ghosting test as well but I'm not sure how bad it is.
What do you think?

 

I think you should ignore it as they all have some and no one seems to set a standard for capturing the image, I won't go into much detail but you can't sync a camera to a frame and shutter speed will give a false reading.
If we could all agree on a set shutter speed and the ability to sync frames (not possible) then people could comment on peoples pictures.

Oh and the test is invalid as Edge does not support v-sync

 

What I did was take a photo with the laptop's screen and another screen at the same time in the same shot for comparison. If you have a monitor you use and don't have a problem with, take a picture with screen mirroring on and compare.

 

Just did a clean install via an external DVD drive and a Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft that I burned to a disc. I just opened the disc in Explorer, ran setup.exe, and told it to keep nothing. Presto, no need to reinstall storage drivers or anything. I ran Windows update and it downloaded some drivers on its own. Should I trust it to pick up all the drivers that I'd want, or are there any I should seek out additionally? For instance, I see that I don't have the latest Nvidia drivers, but this isn't going to be a gaming machine (it'll be going to my 71 year old father as a work laptop), so does that matter for anything? Anything else I should look out for in this fresh install? This is my first experience with Windows 10.

 

Today I opened up my XPS and put in 16gb ram, 850 evo m.2 drive. I've changed the BIOS setting from Raid to AHCI, created GPT UEFI W10 bootable usb by Rufus. However, when I hit F12 on start up screen, USB driver doesn't show up as a bootable option. What am I doing wrong?

 

Try it again with Secure and Fast Boot disabled - you can re enable it later.

 

was it FAT32 (or FAT32Large) ?
on this laptop unlike the last 3 it didn't show until I did a BIOS reset.

It may install that way then become unbootable when secure modes enabled so it's best to find out why.

 

I'll like to save the diagnostic utility accessible from Boot menu via BIOS before to completely reformat the driver SSD 256GB NVMe.
How I can do it ?
thanks

 

Hi Guys - i found problem (for me) in latest dell audio driver from 2 days release. Installed and all DELL MAXX WAVES AUDIO by default turning on - but i don't like and need it - tried turn off in services dell audio - but no help. Then i roll out driver but the same. Problem is that WHEN i turn off all additions for sound - sound is lower by 2 times then before new audio dirver downloads. Very uncovienient because listening on speakers or headphones - so every time im turn off dell maxaudio effects - volume are very low.. How to disable and have audio without any effects all the time?

 

Hi folks,

does the xps 15 9550 support opal2 aka Microsoft edrive (bitlocker hardware encryption)?

 

It's built into the BIOS.

 

Really ?
So if I swap even the SSD the Diagnostic from Boot menu will be present and works.
Well great!

 

I have not been able to get hardware bitlocker working. I think the machine supports it, because it has a TPM module, but I don't think the Samsung PM951 supports edrive.

 

Yes, hence me saying it