Dell XPS 15 L501 Thread

Hey Martin, The DELL XPS 15 comes with 2.1 Speakers, while DELL XPS 14 Comes with 2.0 Speakers. XPS 14 = 2x3W = 6W Peak.
XPS 15 = 2 x 4 + 12W sub woofer = 20 W
XPS 17 = 2 x 5 W + 12 W Sub = 22 W.

It is a common typo distributed by none other than DELL... LOL.

 

Thanks for that JKleiss. That answers my question

 

Also another quick question

I have 2.1 speaker system which I used for my last laptop Dell 1520. I just plugged them into the microphone socket. But when I do this with my XPS no sound is coming out. When I go into the Dell Audio by Realtek panel and speaker set up, it will go through all the speakers in sequence even the laptop's speakers. But when I try to play music the sound still comes from the laptop. Any ideas?

 

I think you are supposed to hook them into the middle jack.

 

Downloaded drivers from the Dell site. Working now

 

So, for using the computer for photography, it would be better to have an i7 core to raise the score for better performance? I'm trying to build my case for this system as it was a replacement for the 1530...

 

I think the processor only helps with encoding/decoding, but if anything the i7 would be better for anything photo related because it gives you the better video card. I don't know much beyond basic stuff about digital photography though, so I don't know how much video card power is needed. The i7 does definitely stink for battery life though if that is a factor, too.

 

Would a more powerful i5 make a difference on the video or is it all MB based hardware that runs the 2D?

 

I know the CPU helps with video a little, but does anyone know if the integrated video is any better for better processors?

 

Anybody have a white spot on their 1080p screen when viewing from the right side? From the left side I can't see it. More noticeable in dark scenes on movies or black background.

 

HAI...........
I have xps 15 with core i3, remaining all is same.......
my wei rating is only 4.0...........
It'"s very low ......
can any one tell me what is the problem.....
see the attachment below

 

hey guys wat would ur rating for u lappy in windows rating system
XPS 15 | i5-560M | 1080P | 4GB RAM | 500GB HD | DVD-RW | 6 Cell | GT 420M

kgh00007
it seems u have the same config please tell me wat ur rating is

 

Don't worry about the Intel score. That is just the integrated graphics for the basic graphics tasks. Go by the next lowest score of 5.9.

 

4GB RAM and 7200 RPM drives will be around 5.9. I have a 17, but here are the scores showing what you would get with i7, 8GB and an SSD. It doesn't appear going past 8GB changes anything. Someone with 12GB got the same score as I did, although that wouldn't apply to 15s since they max out at 8GB.

i7 Q740 1.73 GHz - 7.1
8GB 1333MHz RAM - 7.4
NVidia GeForce GT 445M - 6.9 for both
80GB Intel X25 SSD + 500GB 7200 RPM HDD - 7.7
(The two 500GB HDDs got 5.9)

 

Yeah I have that too, can't really notice it though. I had this on my previous Studio 1557 and they replaced the screen for me, but right now there is a shortage of 1080p screens so they might not be able to right away. You should call them.

 

Okay, I will probably do that. Thanks.

 

SATA HDDs max out at 5.9 in WEI. My Dell SSD scores 7.4.

 

just wondering if anyone use anti glare filter or is waste of money ?

 

My $60 +$14 shipping 9-cell battery from China arrived. If it's not a genuine Dell part, it's an excellent fake. The casing is grey, but all the labeling is Dell and it identifies with a Name of Dell and a Battery Identifier of 275SANYODell under Power Options.

Been watching a Blu-ray movie on it unplugged. AnyDVD has the drive set to slow and quiet. Display's at 34% brightness. HDD is an OCZ Vertex 2 240GB. At the 46 minute mark on the movie I still have 74% power left.

 

Here you go:

 

New XPS 15 is excellent, and way better than SXPS 1645... If you want an extensive, and useful and understandable review , pl visit arunshariharan.blogspot.com

 

This is my first time posting here so I hope I have done this right.

I am looking for suggestions for a reliable and reasonably fast 120 gb SSD and how to install it in the XPS 15 L501 that is replacing the HD.

Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it.

 

For reliability Intel, and its pretty fast too.
Look for Intel X-25M 120GB 2nd generation
It will be easy to replace the old hdd, unscrew her, open her up, unscrew the old hdd take it out, put in new one screw in, close her back up.
Then you will need to reinstall windows

 

Thanks for the intel ssd tip.

I unscrewed the door on the bottom of the machine and there is no sign of the drive bay. Is there something else I need to remove?

Since you replaced your hdd drive on the XPS 15 L1501 - how did you access the drive bay because I seem to be missing it?

Thanks.

 

Sorry, i replaced the hdd on SXPS16.

Have a lookie here on how to replace the hdd in an xps 15

If you dont use the optical drive often also consider replacing that with a hdd caddie, so you can have a ssd and a hdd

 

Thanks for the link that's what I am looking for.

You're the best.

Cheers,

 

I took a closer look and I see Dell has deleted all the materials the links should have that tells you how to do it.

The palmrest removal and the HDD removal are what I am still looking for.

If anyone has ideas please let me know.

Thanks.

Does the Dell XPS take a 2.5 inch SATA drive?

 

Start here on the contents page

Click on hard drive

Uunder remove hard drive it has this

1. Follow the instructions in Before You Begin.
2. Remove the battery (see Removing the Battery).
3. Remove the palm-rest assembly (see Removing the Palm-Rest Assembly).
4. Remove the four screws that secure the hard-drive assembly to the computer base.
5. Slide the hard-drive assembly to the side to disconnect it from the system board connector.
6. Lift the hard-drive assembly out of the hard-drive bay.

All the info is there.
You will love the ssd

 

this is even better then I could have imagined.

one more question - Is this correct - I am looking for a 2.5" SSD Sata Drive?

Is there something I am leaving out of the description that I should know about before ordering the drive.

Thanks again.

 

Yep, that's what you are looking for.

2.5"
I think they only come in 9.5mm high so you should be all good there too.
Some come with an adapter for 12.5mm, but as that wont fit it doesn't matter.

 

Dell XPS 15 died 6 days after receiving the inbound delivery. They are shipping a new unit.. hopefully this one actually works..

 

I ordered an XPS 15. It shipped today. I will hopefully have it by the end of the week.

Here's what I got:

Intel Core i7-740QM
6GB RAM
BD-ROM/DVD-RW Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 435M 2GB
750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
FHD Screen
9-Cell Battery

I also ordered a 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 drive which should be here tomorrow. This will be swapped in and I will put the 750GB HD in an external USB case to use as extra storage if needed. 120GB should be plenty. Should reduce power consumption and give a nice boost in speed.

I'm excited!

After reading a lot, I may be stripping the lappy down and putting new thermal paste on the heatsinks.

 

I just ordered an XPS 15 thru aafes epp to replace my aging XPS M1210
Intel Core i7-740QM
8GB RAM
BD-ROM/DVD-RW Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 435M 2GB
500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
1080 Screen
backlit kb
9-Cell Battery

Went back & forth on the 15 vs 17. Figured any bigger screen will eclipse the 12".
That 1210 was a screamer in its day & has ran pretty much flawless in the last 5 yrs replacing only the keyboard once (warranty) & its a external power cube.
Saying that it will probably black screen tonight.
thanks for all the tips here.

 

Hello,

I just got an HP DV6 Quad Edition with the i7 sandybridge but I'm thinking about returning it because of the keyboard and horrible mousepad buttons. Does anyone know when Dell will have the sandybridge i7 available for the XPS 15? I see that they only have it availabe for Allienware. Seems kind of strange since most other manufacturers have the sandybridge out there in the $1000 range.

Thanks

 

Just got my XPS 15 today, replacement for throttling SXPS 1645 - i7 740, geforce 335M, 4gb ram, ssd, 1080p, 9 cell.

Well, at least the throttling and overheating seems to be finally over. Seems to run at around 50c idle, i guess thats pretty much normal? Speakers are pretty good for a laptop and ports are placed better than they were on SXPS. And then theres that USB3. However I'd say thats pretty much it - with everything else, I guess I was more happy with SXPS.

I had the rgbled on my sxps, with that I honestly dont see much difference to this one. My rgbled was starting to be quite worn out though, bleeding like hell.

Design is way ugly compared to SXPS, all the "high end" look is gone. At least its not such a fingerprint magnet anymore. Even comparing the size, this one is actually bigger/thicker and feels somewhat heavier than my SXPS. No backlit keyboard available, starting to miss that already..

And I really liked those touch-sensitive media keys, we'll they're gone and replaced with that clunky Fn/media key switch.

About the keyboard - it feels ok, but makes alot of noise when typing, compared to sxps. Especially on the left side of the keyboard.. anyone else notice the same?

Well anyways, thats my rant and first impressions, guess I'll grow to like this machine eventually

 

heck when i got this as replacement for my m1330 ,i felt the same dissppointment(cylindrical hinges,touch seneitive),but now its gone~

 

I talked to Dell online and they told me they didnt have a date for the XPS 15 Sandy Bridge. The XPS 17 Sandy Bridge releases Feb 1st if that is of interest to you. I thought about the Dv6 because of the Sandy Bridge and all the coupons available, but the touchpad, horrible screen and awkward placement of the short cut keys made me think otherwise.

 

Although the buttons on the touchpad are extremely hard to push down, the touchpad itself is actually really good. In just 2 days I've gotten really good at tapping the touch pad in place of pushing the buttons. Tapping the touchpad and a wireless mouse make the stiff buttons almost non-issue functionally, but then there is the principle of paying $1,000 for a laptop that you can't push the buttons on.

The buttons on the keyboard are nice but I agree the layout of the keyboard is horrible. The media keys on the left just throw the entire thing off. Nothing worse then trying to copy and paste something and having the calculator pop up because the stupid calculator button is where the ctrl key should be. Going to hold down shift for caps and hitting the print button instead. I would like to know who at HP thought that people needed a key to launch the brower so badly that it was worth throwing off the whole layout of the keyboard.

The screen resolution isn't the best for playing games. I've been playing StarCraft 2 and it's like you are too zoomed in all of the time. Can't see enough of the map.

There are plenty of pros on this machine but unfortunatley the cons just hit in some of the most annoying areas.

 

The one in your sig for a m1330? Wow, thats a super up-grade/replacement, congrats!

Makes me appreciate Complete Care even more.

 

@cap
Yep dude,i got offer for Sxps 16 with i7+ati 5730,but as it reached EOL,i gpt an offer for xps 15.Dell roX~~

 

How difficult is it to install an SSD in the XPS 15? I'm considering ordering the XPS 15 but there's no ssd upgrade option available on the dell site in my country. Will I void the warranty by opening it up and replacing the hdd?

 

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forums anyways - I have ordered this laptop dell xps 15 and i'm starting to have doubts (really bad due it to being delivered tomorrow)

i've thread topics on nvidia talking about optimus failing along with driver issues, etc - have this been fixed yet?

also regarding to overclock, I bought an i5-480m 2.66ghz - and i've read topics on overclocking it by 300mhz (or even more) or so, giving it initially 2.7~

with turbo boost due to intel processor, 2.9~, is it possible to run this manually rather than depend on the load? because 2.9ghz is already high and would help so much, and also when overclocking it manually using software, it can give atleast 3.2ghz total (if safe), i was wondering if its possible?

same applies to the gpu , which i ordered 1gb nvidia 420m, overclocking to 435?

thanks if anyone can reply to this because it would very helpful to me.

 

i believe optimus works fine with WQHL drivers from nvidia. like 266.58. if u like trying out every beta driver, then u mite face some problems (so far optimus only works well with the 266.58 and i couldnt get it to work well on the newer quadro drivers =/ ).

also, im not sure where you read this, but you will have trouble overclocking the CPU mainly because it is a dell computer and it's not easy to OC. if u know how, let me know. i wanna OC my i3.

idk how to set it always in turbo boost

and yes the 420m is quite capable of reaching 435m speeds.

 

Fairly simple install for the ssd. I did a fresh install of windows 7 to get rid of the bloatware dell installs from the factory. Significant performance improvement over the cheap seagate hdd's. From power button press to desktop screen (including using fastaccess) takes 15 to 20 seconds on win 7 ultimate.

 

As far as overclocking the i5 460, don't waste your time. Even if it is possible, only a benchmarking utility could ever notice the difference in 300MHz. You would not. Dell makes it very hard to modify factory devices, and it makes sense because they provide the warranty. As far as manually keeping the cpu at turbo speeds, no. There's no option to do it. It would overheat fairly quickly. Intel spent millions in R&D to give the i5 the best balance of performance and power consumption depending on the user's needs at that specific time. You would be not be happy with the drawback's of running it at turbo speeds. That is all considering if it was possible, which it is not. /story

As far as the GPU, you can oc the GT 420 to the 435's specs and beyond. You must download the nvidia driver directly from nvidia to do so. Everyone's card will be different in relation to how much you can oc efficiently, but I have mine set at the specs in my sig and it plays black ops well.

 

what do you mean by downloading the driver? if you overclock?

the last driver i downloaded was this

NVIDIA DRIVERS 266.58 WHQL

because i had some issues such as youtube flickering, etc but it seems fixed now - not sure how exactly anyways.

i used MSI burner after reading topics, including gt 420 to 435.

i made sure carefully i didn't do something random so i looked at other people's screen shot

i ended up with this result



is that right or something? also it seems the gpu doesn't take effect of some games or is it meant to be like that from optimus?

or a better question is if, anyway to force the gpu to work because i don't think the game detects it.

 

I can't explain how to do it all, but you can use nvidia's system monitor and control panel to oc and manage your settings. I have mine set to default clocks. I set a rule that when I load steam or a game my profile with my oc settings gets loaded and I then play with the oc'd settings.

 

I'm not sure but core i3 can't be overclocked as it doesn't qualify the turbo boost. But if possible I wanna do it out when Mine comes to home on 28 feb.

 

Hi guys -I'm new to the forum, and have always used desktop computers and just ordered my first laptop from Dell on Tuesday. I ordered the XPS 15, 720p, 640GB HHD, 4GB DDR3, with bluetooth. So pretty close to the base model other than a HD upgrade, bluetooth and blacklit keyboard. I think I probably have a more simple question than most but it is this:

I did do a lot of research before ordering, and while most say the 1080p screen is fantastic, others say you really can't notice an earth shattering difference between the 1080p and the 720p on a 15.6 inch LCD. However, after ordering a read a few threads that basically said the 720p not only is a huge downgrade, but also a very poor display and most people are disappointed with it.

Does anyone out there have the 720p, and are you disappointed?

 

Does anyones eSATA port for Dell xps 15 work? I bought a caddy and 500gb external HD (7200rpm) and well, it seems to work with a USB but not eSATA cable...

Maybe it could be the external? or just eSATA doesn't work? let me know