Dell XPS 15 L501 *Owner's Lounge*

Anyone have a solution for preventing my color profile to reset after every reset, hibernation, sleep?

 

Thanks for the link, fitted and working, worked like a charm (once l had work out how to fit the led ribbon correctly).

Brand new keyboard, backlit looks great, and if you touch type, no dramas on where the keys are.

Excellent find.

 

Hi!

Is there any ways to change the GT420M graphics card with optimus to GT435M without optimus in L501x and disable the intel HD? My CPU is i5-560M and I want just one discrete graphics card.

Thanks!
Tom

 

From what l can gather the GC is soldered directly onto the motherboard so that will prob be a -ve ghost rider.

 

Hey all

I've searched around but can't seem to find much info on upgrading the CPU.

I have an i5 and would like to go to an i7 - preferably the i7-820QM. I read somewhere that the i7 Quad cores use a different CPU socket and won't work. Intel's spec page on the HM57 chipset shows it as compatible as well as the more basic i7's. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thanks

 

XPS L501 have Nvidia Optimus. Usually on Optimus notebook, upgrading to a quad core processor will render the notebook unbootable. The socket does compatible to quad core processor but the way the motherboard is designed make it unsupported. The video output on Optimus notebook is handle by Intel HD Graphics. If you put a quad core, notebook will failed to boot because it doesn't have Intel HD Graphics.

So, the highest CPU you can put are dual core i7-620M or i7-640M. You should be able to use either of these CPUs because they have Intel HD Graphics.

 

Thanks for the reply - thought as much. Oh well, the i5 is fine for now.

 

I have an L501x and the fans are constantly on.

The CPU and GPU both idle at 85 which I think is extremely high. On a stress test, temperatures reach 99.

So I think that I definitely need to pursue some course of action. From reading on this forum, I have a few options 1) Replace Heatsink 2) Repaste thermal compounds 3) both.

What do you guys recommend, and what thermal compound have you found to work best for you?

Thanks!

 

I just recently upgraded my router to the Linksys 4200 v2 and realized that my wireless card for my dell is outdated and is the intel wifi link 1000 bgn which only runs on 2.4. I'm looking to upgrade my wireless card that will support 2.4/5. What are some good upgrade options out there for the dell L501x? How many antennas does this laptop have?

 

Same. Well not that high idle, usually 70s. But when I play games (ie LoL), the GPU reaches 99 and the CPU gets to low 90s. Wondering what I can do and hopefully won't be problem.

 

Maybe time to open it up and clean out the fans,

Also good time to perform a new thermal paste application on the CPU and GPU if your comfortable doing so.

 

I upgraded mine to the Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300. Had 3 antennas and I get great coverage with my Linksys 4200 v1. My L501x has 3 antennas, so it popped right in. Configuration was a snap with driver set from Intel.

 

Hi
I had a water spill on my xps L150x and did my mother board in, I ordered a replacement board and fitted it with few problems, fitting my i5 cpu off my damaged board into the new board. All went well till boot up and got error message arrandale cpu not supported on discrete platform. please use clarksfield cpu. Ok after checking up on this it appears that dell made a model with the i7 clarksfield core, and this is obviously the board i now have. My question is if i upgrade/buy a new intel Core i7-740QM Mobile Processor (6M cache, 1.73 GHz) SLBQG cpu and fit it to the board will every thing be ok or will i have another problem, ie with the power supply ect.appreciate any comments thanks

 

Temperature wise: Core i7-7xxQM and 8xxQM both have a TDP of 45W, while the Arrandale has either 18W or 35W (depending on model, check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrandale). It might work, depending on how Dell designed the cooling (ie., is the heatpipe setup the same for the i5 and i7?)
That doesn't strictly answer your question, and may cause even more questions. But it's an important point to consider.

 

hi ximinez
the board is identical in all respects and i cant visually see any difference. The heat sink fitted exactly as on my old board. I dont know if my old board or the the replacement came first, i suspect that my old board could be upgraded to the i7 but this board cant be downgraded to an i5 because of multiple reasons graphics been one of them, I will have to splash out another €150 -€200 for one of these cpu's on top of what the new mother board cost me. So I don't want to find out it is just not possible no matter what i do to repair it. thanks

 

Hey everyone. My L501X HD is giving me problems. Won't boot its Win 7 64-bit OS. Won't let me boot into a Ubuntu live until I replace the HD. never would boot a Hiren's disk for any type of repairs. I put the HD into a diff computer but ti just slowed those machines to a crawl. This is my main machine I do (did) everything with it. So, I have a new HD. How do I reload this thing with my "paid for" version of Win 7??? My machine is out of warranty and the recovery partition is... unrecoverable.

 

Contact Dell and ask if they can still provide you with recovery discs, unless you created them yourself.

 

I took the plunge and sold my XPS 15 L501x now and went for Inspiron 17R SE with i5-3230 8GB RAM, 1080p screen and NVIDIA 650M graphics.
L501x was a great machine and it was sad to see it go but it was getting close to being 3 years old.
Will now be active on the Inspiron section of Dell forums

 

Hi SAiLO,
since you used both XPS 15 L501x and Inspiron 17R SE, what can you say about screen quality, is there any noticeable difference.
thanks,

 

The XPS screen was a bit better with the colour reproduction but the screen on 17R SE is also good quality.

 

Hi all, having a few problems with my 3 year old l501x and wondering what people think.

Firstly, the other day I stood on my laptop, cracking the 720p screen. Of course for me this is the perfect oppertunity to buy a 1080p screen, so I go on ebay and buy an AUO (or equivelent as the auction said, I assumed whatever they sent would work). In the mean time I decide to just use a monitor of mine as a screen, however while doing this I noticed that every time I turned on the laptop, after a couple of minutes the fan would begin to feel a little hot and then the laptop would crash. I figured it was something to do with the screen or something and so left it until my replacement screen came. Unfortunately, I got an 'equivalent' not the AUO I ordered, not sure if it would work or not (as the one they sent had HP firmware on it), I put it in and tried to boot up! It looked like it was going to work as got to the 'starting windows' screen but then it went black and backlit (I could hear skype and stuff in the background).

I figured this was probably due to the new screen and I would send it back for a refund and get another, however I left it on while contacting the seller on my other laptop and to my surprise it again died after a couple of minutes.

I then booted up in safe mode (which works on the screen???) but then that died after a couple of minutes to. I then decide to boot into diagnostics and after a couple of minutes that died (I can't diagnose if it's overheating or what, although the fan does get quite warm..). I now think there must be something seriously wrong with my laptop.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I should proceed or should I just move on and get a new laptop, as lovely as it is, it has been a lot of trouble over the last few years!

Any advice would be great,

Thanks.

 

you mention hot air coming from the fan vent. this suggest the fan is still working, despite that, the fan may be faulty and not working at required speed.

I'm Not sure, but to me it seems overheating problem. you can confirm this by letting the laptop to cool off and try booting (calculate the time before shutdown), then try booting it directly, if it shutdown immediately or after a short time then its strongly suggest overheating problem. furthermore, you can turn on A/C unit to see if it last on for a longer period. use HWMonitor whenever you get to windows to see temperature.

 

Definitely an overheating problem as it turns off almost instantly after heating up before. Not really sure how to proceed with this though

 

If you stepped on the laptop then you may have damaged some other components other than the screen and that could be causing the crashes.

 

I have had my L501x sitting waiting to be repaired for a month now awaiting a new motherboard. Has anybody found a reasonably priced option for replacing a dell laptop motherboard?

Looking on the net I stumbled across this:- INTEL non-integration DAGM6BMB8F0 L501X motherboard for dell inspiron laptop - Group1 - Product Catalog - Shenzhen Lihaicheng Technology Co., Ltd.

Do you guys reckon this is worth a punt? The prices I am seeing elsewhere are nearly what the laptop is worth secondhand hence why i've not bothered to fix it.

The motherboard I have now is bricked from trying to flash the bios backwards to an older revision and has been left with even the fail safe bios recovery flash broken so dead as a dodo.

 

To all my friend and my master in dell xps 15 L501x.

i need help , detect driver i have trouble in lenmark 422 please i need help

thx very much

 

Hi,

My XPS L501x has the standard 4GB RAM. I'm going to upgrade to 8GB (4x2) and I've found a couple of sets that I like on NewEgg, both made by Crucial.

I can stay with the "factory spec" speeds of 1333 MHz ( PC3 10600 ) with this set or spend a little more and get this set, which is 1600 (PC3 12800) and is a little faster, I guess.

Is there any benefit to the second, faster set? I've looked for answers but have found conflicting info. Even if the effect is barely noticeable I'd probably do it. But if other hardware (CPU etc) make it so that I can't take advantage of it then I'll just stick to 1333 & 10600. Would there be any extra heat? Voltage for both is the same @ 1.35V, like the original, so I guess not.

I thought about going to 16GB ( this thread says it is possible) but 8GB should be enough. This laptop is aging out and I'll just save the $ for my next rig. I like to use Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom and having Firefox open at the same time doesn't work well. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

I want to clean my laptop's fan and also replace thermal paste. However all the videos I saw show entire disassembly. I don't know why, but I can't seem to find any tutorials/guides which does not follow entire disassembly.

Cos in 2011, I had my laptop serviced under warranty. When technician had come to my home, he did not remove palm rest at all and did not remove the screen also. I don't remember exact procedure though.

appreciate any help. Thank you