Dell XPS 9560 VRM Thermal Insanity As Seen Through FLIR

Wow that heatsink looks amazing. Would love to have one for the 9560

For my modded hestaink, the dual pipe stack makes slight contact with the bottom cover as you can see it making a slight impression on the copper sheet on the bottom panel.

Have you tried using shorter screws without the springs?

 

Very nice looking sink! Impressive! Cant wait to see how it fares in action.

Since copper is heavy: how much weight do you think it added to the laptop?

 

When I first checked it the other day, the shorter screws were fine. Would just prefer to use the spring ones to get slightly better (and more even) mounting pressure. If it comes to it, I'll take off the copper sheet and replace parts with kapton tape. Also don't mine using a normal screw for the GPU side.

The plate, fins, and heatpipes come to 150g. Adds about 100g to the total weight.

 

How are temperatures compared to the stock heatsink?

 

And that sir is why I don't have CAD anymore and access to a CNC machine.... freaking awesome! I hope you have crazy results! Crazy good results!

 

Cool project!

You may run into limitations of the radiator size and fan output, especially given that the exhaust is limited because it is blown straight into the screen.

A few ideas that have been well tested on the nearly identical 9550 & 9560 models:​

- The fan exhaust is not well directed. So some of that heat is just blown around into the case. A few of us used some 105*C 3m electrical tape to seal the exhaust. This makes sure all the hot exhaust is directed outside the case. You may be able to use Kapton tape. There are plenty of photos in the 9560 threads.

- The intake slots on the case bottom are limiting airflow. Cut the slats under the fans. On a different computer I used a non conductive flexible fiberglass mesh for minimal protection.

- If you can slightly raise the computer, the fans will be able to intake more air. You need to maintain the long rubber foot else the intake will suck in hot exhaust (thanks @GoNz0 ).

- Use soft thermal pads to link the vram & mosfets to your custom heatsink; you don't need much heat sinking. Denser, high-performance thermal pads will prevent the heatsink from making good contact with the CPU & GPU. Make sure you are not transferring heat to these components and triggering some unknown Dell throttle gate.

- Be careful clamping down the heatsink if you are using the Dell mounting solution. They don't take much torque before yielding. A few people have ripped the 9550 and 9560 boards apart (I can't remember if any 9570 boards were wrecked but you have the lousy tripod system unfortunately so are at a significant disadvantage regarding clamping force & clamping evenness).

More extreme options:

- @GoNz0 noted 3rd heatpipe could step up cooling potential.

- You could change to a small battery and using the extra real estate (where the HDD used to go) for a third blower fan & radiator scheme. Not sure if you could run a third heatpipe there without modifying the casebottom.

 

Got it all together, and done some "testing". Looks good, but I'm going to fiddle with mounting to see if I can do any better.

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/pro...on-fire-custom-heatsink-mod/135326/89?u=zavar

 

I wasn't really surprised at your results. The thermal limits are constrained by the actual size of the heatpipes and cooling fins and fans... Really the only thing that might be a viable solution is either bigger fins which I'd think you'd have to mod the case or a bigger fan somehow...

 

Another 9560 fireworks report
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Dell-xps-15-flames-and-sparks/m-p/7252770

 

I've seen a few reports of that. Hope it's not too common.

 

Hey fellas,

This is my first post ever on this forum. I'm impressed by the ingenuity showcased in your initiatives to properly cool this hot mess of a performance laptop. I'm about to attempt modding my 9560 (waiting for everything I need to be delivered) and would therefore like to hear your thoughts.

I have already done the following things:
1. Repasted the CPU and GPU with Gelid GC Extreme
2. Undervolted the CPU using Throttlestop (~115mv)
3. Slightly Undervolted/underclocked the GPU using MSI Afterburner (curve)
4. Added thermal pads between the DRMs and the Bottom Case
5. Added thermal pads to a small ambient (I think) sensor that lies between the 2 ram slots.
6. Added electric tape to gap between the heatsink fins and the exhaust points in order to better direct hot air out of the laptop.

The results of this were great. I was throttling terribly when gaming (especially Battlefield 4 and 1 64 players) and the aforementioned mods completely stopped the throttling, or at least reduced it to a non-noticeable amount. I could play relatively intensive games at 1080p medium-high settings (E.g. Metro, Battlefield, PUBG, Witcher 3) capped at 60 fps for HOURS without any noticeable decrease in performance.

I thought my throttling problem was fixed, until I traveled to my home country last summer. There, the climate is much warmer during with summer and outside temperatures of 40-45 degrees Celsius are not unusual. There, even 720p gaming was a nightmare as my XPS constantly throttled if I didn't crank up the AC. Pre-throttle CPU and GPU temps were in the low 80s and very low 70s respectively, so I concluded that the throttling was probably caused by the VRMs being too hot. I'm planning on repatriating home indefinitely the next summer and would like to not throttle when occasionally playing games on my laptop and have therefore made a plan to slightly mod my XPS. As you'll see, my plan is inspired by some of what has been posted on here and other forums about modding the XPS 15.

Step 1 - Repasting my CPU and GPU yet again with a relatively competent and supposedly longer lasting (around 5 years of guaranteed operating effectiveness) thermal compound - Noctua NTH2


Step 2 - Adding mini-heatsinks to VRMs in an attempt to spread the heat. Similar to the image below (using the 9570, credits to robwillis.info).




Step 3 - Cutting a 1-1.5 centimeters-wide strip out of the copper sheet on the XPS's bottom cover. Instead of the cut being on the bottom-end of the part of the copper sheet that lies between the fan intakes as showcased in the image below, it will be on the top end, meaning as close as possible to the heat-sinked VRMs. (credit to robwillis.info)




Step 4 (optional) - Covering the cutout with some protective mesh that will still allow air to come in while providing minimal protection. I'll use the mesh that came with my previous laptop, the dell inspiron 7537.

Step 5 (optional) - Again to minimize the risk of dust, water or anything coming into the laptop via the cutout and damaging something, I'll apply some accrylic conformal coating to the board in exposed areas as well as surrounding areas. I'll of course be careful so as to not apply the coating on parts that shouldn't be covered e.g. connectors.

Step 6 - Buy a decent laptop cooling pad that will push air directly into the cutout and also cool the laptop. I've already ordered the Coolermaster notepal XL.



The overall logic is to introduce the additional airflow from the cooler into the laptop, with the wanted outcome being some of that air making it's way to the heatsinked VRMs and cooling them. I don't know if this will work so I'm asking for your thoughts before I go through with this. If it doesn't, I can tape the cutout back in place of course, so it isn't as risky as it seems.I'm also thinking of adding thermal pads between the heatsink and the bottom case in a way that they will direct the air coming through the cutout to the vrm area.


So, that's my plan. Thank you for reading and your thoughts are very much needed!

 

Htaige I hope that you see this I found a way to buy the custom heatsink. It's working great but now the botton plate is heating up like crazy, I assume that is because the heatsink is making contact with the backplate. I see that you say that I should use kapton tape where the heatsink makes contact, so you say like the acrylic brown one that I can buy on amazon or is rubber electrical tape equally as good or better. Do you find that doing these isolate the heat enough so the bottom plate doesn't heat that much and therefore I can use it, you know, as a lap-top?. I hope that you see this message and can guide me so I can finally be 100% happy with this laptop after months of trying to get the heat under control. To others that are interested I will explain how I buyed the custom heatsink and got it shipped outside of China:

Hello, I know that's been a long time since you posted this but I actually saw about the custom heatsink in taobao and I was so interested that I found a way to buy it and shipping it my country(I live in the Dominican Republic). I have an XPS 15 7590 with the i7 processor, so the seller that you linked(htaige) made a heatsink for these model too, not only the i7 but the i9 too which have the same motherboard but added heatsinks to not only half the vrm but all of them, so i bought the upgraded heatsink for the i9 for my laptop, because the motherboard layout is the same. I used this site called yoybuy you send them the link and specifications of the item in taobao that you want to buy and they buy it for you and ship it to you, I shipped it to a courier in the U.S and they shipped it to me, that took like 3 months, but yesterday it finally arrived and I installed it, it fit perfectly and I saw great results. I'm an architecture student so I do a lot of heavy rendering of image, videos, and 3D modelling, and when I rendered with vray I had to changed the maximum watt for 6 cores from 40 to 30 just so my XPS don't fry itself to death. It went from 80-90 degrees only reaching 3.1 ghz and after 30 minutes throttling to like 2.8 to 75-85 maintaining 3.6 ghz and occasional bursts up to 3.9 ghz which is AMAZING giving the hot mess that this laptop is thermally(This is with setting things to default so 40 watts like advertised) oh and I have a -0.140 undervolt in Throttlestop(For gods sake don't update the Bios, they disabled undervolting and I had the scare of my life, I just set the Bios to default and disabled automatic updates) . This explanation was for anyone that is interested in getting this heatsink, I highly recommend it, really good quality, just change the thermal paste that comes with it for something like Grizzly Kryonaut.

 

Reddit removed my post so I'm leaving it here:

Hello, I just made this account to help other people that are desperately trying to make their XPS's 15 reach their max potential possible given how thin and light but powerful it is. To give context I have an XPS 15 7590, FHD display, 97 watt battery, i7 processor, Nvidia Gtx 1650, 16 gb Ram and 512 gb SSD. I am an architecture student and do a lot of 3D modelling in Revit, Sketchup, Rendering in Vray, Enscape and Lumion, apart from the usual Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere edit, those are pretty demanding programs. I'm not a gamer so I can't speak on performance on that unless you think that Sims 4 and Age of Empire II are good references.My father bought me this laptop without asking me, so don't come saying "Why you buyed this laptop for such demanding apps when there's cheaper options".

So, the point is, like all the other XPS 15 users I had the experience of this laptop being more a frying pan than a laptop. And I knew that since before my laptop was delivered to me. I watched reviews and saw a lot of posts about the overheating issues, so I was prepared for war and to for the first time in my life open a laptop and fix it myself. I tried EVERYTHING, I don't want to bother you with the journey so I'm going to say what worked, and what I have that the majority of XPS users don't:

*Overheating Solutions*

• -0.140 and -0.100 iGpu undervolt in ThrottleStop 128 EPP but can reach 126 for more performance, just a little bit hotter(Do yourself a favor and don't update the Bios and block automatic updates, Dell disable undervolting and I almost died, I'm furious about it. If you already updated this links will help you :https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/fr0j8v/xps_15_7590_psa_undervolting_gone_in_bios_160/
  

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/fxfcos/how_to_get_undervolting_back_after_g3/ )

• Repaste thermal paste with Grizzly Kryonaut
  
  
• Tape mod in the exhaust of the heatsink(I don't know if this helps, but it doesn't hurt)
  
  
• Grizzly thermal pads in the ram(I don't know if it helps, but it doesn't hurt)
  

AAAAND MOST IMPORTANTLY(The thing that helped the most)

• Custom heatsink with 4 heatpipes(2 additional on top of the original ones) with heatsinks in all the vrm's(like in the i9 model)(This only applies for 7590 users). This is just prove that chinese people are geniuses. So, here's the thing, there is a chinese seller that made custom heatsinks with 4 heatpipes instead of 2, it makes the heatsink taller but it fits just right. Like many i7 7590 users I was pissed that they only included half heatsink coverage for i7's, well the motherboard in both i7 and i9 are the same so I buyed the upgraded version of the heatsink for the i9, IT FITS PERFECTLY, so now I have 4 heatpipes and full vrm coverage. Unfortunately this only applies for the 7590 model, but the seller has custom heatsinks with the 4 pipes for all the models 9550/9560/9570/7590, and they all have great reviews.
  

I don't have a record of all the testing and before and afters but I can tell you, out of the box it reached 100-105 degrees under full load using xtu, cinebench, cpu-z and Vray(For reference for architects and digital artists), literal hell and it throttled to 2.8-3.2 ghz after like 1 minute. After all the modifications+Custom heatsinks full load in cinebench and cpu-z can do 3.7-3.8 ghz 75-80 degrees in Vray rendering with cpu and gpu at the same time 3.5-3.6 ghz 80-85 degrees stable for like an hour(I just tested that long) with occasional bursts to 4.0, no thermal throttling, just power limit throttling sometimes(If you have a solution, I would appreciate it), but it isn't that bad.

I want to give credit to htaige and this post in this forum that is where I learned about the heatsink: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...l-insanity-as-seen-through-flir.826949/page-2




Now I'm going to explain how to buy it because the seller and page(taobao) technically does not ship outside of china:

First this are the links to the heatsinks for each model, they cost around 35 dollars, use the google translate tool so you can kind of understand because the site is completely in chinese:

9550: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z10.3-c.w4002-10211233977.10.74655ea5Yk6t3x&id=582050811598




9560/9570: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.w4004-10211233962.3.5eff5b45ZFFtUL&id=574377546102




7590: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...2IYhB&scm=1007.13066.127283.0&id=600940821726




As I said, they don't ship outside of china, so I used a service that can ship the package from china to U.S or whatever country you're from, it's called yoybuy( https://www.yoybuy.com/en/


). Basically you send them the link of the item in taobao that you want to buy, tell them specifically what option you want and they will buy it for you, so you pay them for the item, then you wait for the item to arrived to their warehouse, when it arrives they will weight in the package and then, based on your location will say how much shipping will cost(It depends on what mail service you choose, ups, fedex and more are available but are really expensive, more than the item, so i tried my luck and used epacket, it arrived just fine just took more time).


I hope this post helps other users, this is the most effective modification that I found, and I am really happy with the results, if you have any questions I will gladly answer them.



Note: The only "downside" of the custom heatsink is that because it is taller it makes contact with the bottom plate and it heats, it doesn't burn, but it's a little uncomfortable. I asked htaige in the forum if I should use kapton tape or rubber electrical tape to isolate or diminish the heat transfer, that's what he suggested, but I would like to have a specific answer. If he respond I will update this post.

 

As @GoNz0 noted, heating the bottom case should be avoided. It heats the fan intake air, making the cooling less efficient.

It also can make keyboard uncomfortable.

Maybe some thick 3m electrical tape could help insulate the case bottom without blocking the intake ducts.

With the added heatpiping, larger intake ducts via holes or killing some of the slits might improve thermals.

 

Did you complain? Once happened to me and it looked like they didn't allow modding anymore, odd because there used to be all sorts of mods there. But then the admin wrote it was a mistake.

 

I didn't complain, but it looks as if it's no longer removed. Today two people replied to my post and seemed to be accesible through link again

 

There is also a even better version of the heatsink which I discovered is made for the 9560, 9570 and the 7590 which has two heatpipes but they are thicker and have more vapor inside of them. This should be in theory be more efficient than the double stacks of 4 heatpipes. I was contemplating on purchasing it, but the seller did not have the 9560 version at the time. I also decided at that point to not put another dollar into this laptop.

I could not find the 7590 version, but recall seeing them. Link is for the 9560/9570 version:
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=591210904051

As for managing the temperature of the backplate after the 2+2 heatpipes have been installed, I recommend cutting out the copper pad on the bottom panel as shown as the extra thickness will cause the backplate to contact the heatpipes. I also layered 3 layers of electrical tape to act as a spacer so that the heatpipes have less of a chance of contacting the bottom panel.


Here is my current bottom panel with the the black copper tape removed. It was pretty easy to score and cut with an craft knife a ruler. Don't cut all the way through to avoid scoring the aluminum. Just bend along the scored line over and over gave me relatively clean cuts. I'm not sure if the kapton tape is helping in this case, but i left it there since I only have a 9560 and I still have to pad my VRMS to the bottom panel : (


Here you can see the thickness and size of the triple stacked electrical tape used to space the bottom cover away from the taller heatpipes.

Here you can see my thermal pad setup for the VRMS and the location of the two electrical tape spacers.


I have also padded this to the shield above. There are two mosfets under here. Not sure if it helps but I padded it anyways. : /


I found that using kapton tape for the tape mod was more difficult, but made that area of the laptop cooler to the touch. Might have something to do with it being thinner than the electrical tape I was using before.


I also noticed that some of my ram chips were contacting the bottom panel which made my DIMM temperatures rise quicker. I still DIMM throttle occasionally but I have used a business card to press the ram down so it doesn't contact the bottom cover anymore.


Here you can see where I have padded the power delivery chips next to the battery which get extremely hot during charging and heavy usage. I also cut a small hole in the plastic cover to expose the thunderbolt controller which I also padded due to its high temperatures. Please ignore the misaligned pad on that coil.


I have also located the position of some of the other thermal sensors located on the XPS 9560 by inspecting the motherboard, locating the small thermal-couples on the motherboard, and then blowing on them to see the temperature reading change. You can see how I have labeled them above. The only one I am not sure about are the thunderbolt controller and charging circuit sensor as they were kind of close together. Kind of jank, but it kind of works I guess. I think there was also another sensor that I couldn't locate. I only realized that these other ( other than the VRM and DIMM) thermal-couples on the motherboard existed after inspecting the schematic for the 9550.

 

Awesome post @htaige

@GoNz0 identified the thermal sensors using canned air as the cooling is recognized quickly. Also AIDA64 free can provide labels of many (all?) the temp sensors (which were wrong years ago but GoNz0 corrected that).

Free ThrottleStop software has a few tricks you might enjoy to bump up performance. Thanks @unclewebb

1. New feature to increase PROCHOT to 100*C.

2. Best performance will be with SpeedShift enabled and EPP=0. More recent 9560 BIOS might allow you to enable SpeedShift but I can't remember. There is also a trick posted here to hack that switch to on. Alternatively, ThrottleStop has a simple checkbox.

Once SpeedShift is enabled, there is an EPP dropdown menu you can enable in Windows Power Options but you need to print out the registers to ensure your choice is not being ignored. Throttlestop allows you to set the EPP easily and confirms the EPP setting in the FIVR window.

Set Windows Power Options at "High Performance" and if you want to reduce heat set EPP higher (~78 will keep max turbos, 255 is lowest performance).

3. You can undervolt CPU core & cache maybe to -120mv but there is a lot of data on this site for reasonable ranges for your 7th gen CPU. Likely you need to set both at the same setting. The newest Dell BIOS are locking out undervolting; there are tricks to undo Plundervolt "fix".

4. "Disable and lock turbo power limits" in the FIVR window of ThrottleStop disables a lot of the throttling schemes. I think this can disable 2 of the 3 main register types; the third apparently is locked by Dell and not identified. Not perfect but every bit counts.

5. Dell Command | Power Manager - allows you to set thermal management > "Ultra Performance". That accesses some registers we can't otherwise touch; more aggressive fans and some power settings.

EDIT- Where can one find the 9550 schematics for personal use?

 

OMG thank you so much for replying I will try padding the power delivery chip cause the left palm rest sometimes heats like crazy if I'm doing some intensives task while connected, maybe that will help. I will check out the other heatsink and search the one for 7590. I won't buy it anytime soon though, I just receive this one and as you said, I find it ridiculous to spend so much money on top of such an expensive laptop. I bought electrical tape and kapton tape on amazon, but with this coronavirus issue it's going to take a month to ship.