Have the latest Dell bios solved your fan issues?

The latest XPS line has been know for an over zealous fan that ramps up even when opening web pages or iTunes for example. In the last week or so they have released new bios for XPS 13, 15, 17 and 15Z. All of which when browsing through the forums seemed to have a significant effect on fan behaviour in a very positive way.

For me, the laptop is now almost perfect. Great sound, very fast and runs reasonably cool. I just need to get round to upgrading the screen to 1080P.

 

My cooler is working a lot better now!

l502x

 

No

My XPS 17's fan comes on more often and stays on longer then before. Before it seemed to only come on every 4-5 minutes while just viewing webpages and only lasted 30-40 seconds at most. Now it can come on at random while just loading webpages. Sometimes it will come on ever couple minutes and stay on longer then a minute while just viewing sites.

No bloatware is on my XPS. No resources are being hogged and processor usage can be 1 percent while viewing a page and the fan will still come on while CPU temp is 48-50. I have an I7 so I can understand it being hot considering it's quad-core but before the A16 BIO update it never seemed to come on. I regret updating to that BIO but I even regret updating to A17 even more.

It's not the end of the world having it run like that because with my stats my XPS is a powerhouse so the benefits outway the fan running more often then I'd like. However I'd still like Dell to keep the fan from acting a fool.

 

Yes bios a10 fixed my xps 15 fan issues. Good job Dell.

 

Never had any fan issues since I bought it (L702X) with stock bios A10. I believe it is absolutely normal when the fan starts to spin up while watching 'Youtube' or doing any intensive tasks. The only thing I find a bit annoying is when it starts to run at full blast, but hopefully I experiencing this only while running games or doing video/audio converting.

 

There is a difference between a fan spinning, and a fan ramping in short bursts. I open and close a lot of apps, I also surf the web a lot, having the fan come on full blast for a couple of seconds everytime I executed one of these was tremendously annoying. Not only that but it would get stuck on, and the only way to turn it off was change the power plan.

Anyway, the consensus is that it seems to be fixed for the XPS 13 and 15, the 17 is still buggered and the 15Z had no issues in the first place. Keep the voting coming, I am hoping someone from Dell sees that so their next line of laptops ship with similar fan profiles.

 

I see, thank you for explanation. Gee, I had none of those issues with the fan. It stays quiet for most of the time.

 

Same here. There are many XPS owners who never experienced the fan issue, which is why we suspect that it may not be the BIOS that causes or fixes it.

 

On my original XPS 17 from last year (returned with mobo hardware trouble) I had the crazy schizophrenic fan issue. The one I've had for 10 months now has been fine, no problems with the fan. It comes on when hot, cools things off for a while, and spools down. None of the dancing on and off constantly that the first system had, and a lot of people here have reported. I never updated the BIOS, I believe it is running A10 as well.

 

I have the XPS 17 I got in September 2011. It came with A12 where the fans would keep spinning up and down with just web surfing.

Then I tried A14 which caused other problems with USB hubs and the fan issue was still here.

Then A16 came out and it fixed the fan issues most of the time. It did not keep coming on only when doing intensive things.

Now I have A17 and it back to the spin up spin down annoying problem. Everytime I open Chrome it spins up in full force but it usually spins up much longer though and stays on. The thing is you can't even get A16 off the Dell site anymore. All they have for old BIOS is A11.

 

tonyr6, I uploaded A16 for you, enjoy.

 

It didn't solve it completely but it has helped a lot compared to the A09. My L502X came with A09 from the factory and I upgraded to A10 right when it came out. Before the A09 would spin the fan up loud, like I was playing games even when the laptop was idling at night while I was sleeping so I had to put the laptop to sleep or just turn it off. With A10, it still spun up during idle, just not as loud but bearable to where I can leave it on. Capitankasar (Thanks!) released the modified A10 0.83v/0.85v so I waited a day and flashed to that. It ran the same as the unmodifed A10 but I liked the idea of it being undervolted to help with heat. Thinking about flashing his 0.83v/0.83v and try that out.