S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Issue Investigation

It could also be that whatever it is within the system that distributes power is not set up to deal with much more than 90 watts...

 

so you're saying on the battery L4D2 runs great on high?

ive seen people doing crysis on this thing maybe we're just a sorry lot

 

I just changed out the thermal paste in my 1645 .. VERY easy to do on this laptop. so far this is what i have


Old thermal Paste in Real Temp: 74 ,72, 76, 74 after 2-3 min prime run
New thermal Paste in Real Temp: 73, 72, 75, 73 after 10 min prime run


i still need to burn it in, temps should get lower after an hours burn-in

 

How easy was it to get off the heatpipe assembly, and what TC did you use?

 

One last update. The latest catalyst drivers (9.11?) modded into the system helped out quite a bit with the stuttering graphics... its still there but its better. Interesting.

Battery vs. AC adapter performance is identical for me now at all brightness levels. We're beyond the power draw issue at this point, or at least thats what it feels like to me in my case.

 

very easy, just follow the anandtech artical on how to remove the sides to the battery area.


i got this one..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150080


so far my temps are 78 77 79 78 after 42min..

 

That's with the 130W adapter i suppose?

 

After playing with this watt meter, its obvious these things draw more then 90w. I see the power hit 130+ for a sec before it starts throttling down(repeatable)edit: on furmark + prime95 explains why the 90w shuttoff. It seems the throttling starts around 85w or so, and when it hits a certain limit around 90-95w it hits the 7x mult and keeps it there.

no matter what i do, dim screen or not it like to keep it at around 90w unless ya hit that trip and it just keeps it at 7x mult and drops the power a good bit.

130w adapter isnt going to do to much unless we get a bios update or something to allow the laptop to pull more power. So it seems where all right like ya say, and its in dells hands.

 

whyd it have to happen with this laptop

this thing has the same specs as their alienware line - yet the alienware line gets double the A/C

wasssuppwiththaaaa

 

gee, his post makes me wish I had bought a computer from a big, international company that had enough tech people to work on two issues at once instead of a mom and pop shop . . .

 

i just want a bloody answer

you can only get two responses from them

"never heard of it"

or "yeah its been fixed" "how" "its been fixed"

 

Patience young grasshopper. You don't even have your laptop at this point.

Haha.

 

sorry its just such a big chunk of money and i can be a tad obsessive

least that fred guy on youtube is enjoying his

 

I hate to break it to you (though I don't know if you care) but Shin-Etsu's best paste (which is what I assume you were trying to get) has over 30% better cooling performance.

 

I've noticed, Mr. 48.48 posts a day
I'm sure the problems will be fixed. You just have to wait for Dell to get in motion, which is not the easiest thing.

 

I replicated the furmark+prime95 test and the i7 720 stays at 7x in both cases (battery or charger) under max performance plan with with Powerplay set to max battery. It looks like this combination is more power consuming than the crysis+prime95.
It looks like we have a twofold overlapping problem, a really weak and under powered charger in addition to a buggy BIOS.
The fact that the charger gets too hot to touch indicates that it is indeed insufficient.
The weird continuous throttling for the 130W indicates that there is a power management error.

 

i find elmers works just as well

 

im perfectly confident that they will eventually fix it - i just want to be sure mine isnt left out
im not waiting another month....

actually - if i do get it, and it turns out theres something wrong and i have to send it back, they sometimes do free upgrades and whatnot like MAX got

its alll comin together

 

Yeah the crysis benchmarks wont do any good as it throttles to 7x every time with prime95. I can see it wont pull more the 90w on the adapter so hopefully it is just a bios update and not some hardware limiter.

To note i was watching the power draw a little more closely when running furmark + prime95 and seen peaks 130+watts on the kill o watt meter before dropping to 90 ish. So im wondering on the higher end systems that draw more then mine

 

After further investigation my consensus is enforced and primarily concludes that dell sucks. Furthermore why would you make a laptop that doesn't work when under load! dell, im going to shoot myself now that ive just wasted 2000 dollars on a task i thought was relatively simple. sorry but why the Fword would dell be a company? Seriously! Its like a kiddy company that runs away from its problems after having such "unique ideas." Please. The fact that dell includes a crap version of Stardock Objectdock is completely beyond me and they get recognition for the software. I hope everyone on this forum can go to Dell.ca or .com or whatever, For Home, Support, Drivers and download the Bios Version A02 and see if that works. if not then we should go to dells HQ and be like, you know what i dont like ur laptop cuz it doesnt work the way i want it to and so hundreds of people have a problem now. there doesnt seem to be a A/C adapter listed in the order list so i have no Fing clue of what to expect when they send the system to me. At least i get a month after i get the system to b^tch at the technical support until im satisfied with yelling then talk to his super duper adviser.

Btw mine shipment order is with:
320-8332 - 16.0 1080P FULL HD RGBLED LCD, W/2.0 MP

Will this work? :

http://www.trianglelaptops.com/p-10996-dell-optiplex-sx280-gx620-220w-da-2-ac-adapter-m8811.aspx http://www.trianglelaptops.com/p-10996-dell-optiplex-sx280-gx620-220w-da-2-ac-adapter-m8811.aspx

Gonna wait till next years model of this system because this laptop seemed ok when it launched until it got updated in september with the i7 and 4670.

 

That should be fine, if overkill. As to "next year's model", what guarantee do you have that there will be one?

 

Well eventually all the Core 2 Duos will be off the market and replaced with Core i3, i5, i7 and the manual for the laptop references a 1647 model.

 

The core2's being off the market means there won't be a 1640. The 1647 bit, OTOH...you've got me there!

 

Well Q3 of next year will be the i7 refresh line and new laptops are sure to take advantage of that. Can't see dell not jumping head first into that one.

 

Sorry for Double post but im off to bed cuz its 2 in the morning here. Well what i ment was will it be compatible with the 3prong 3 connector dell has for adapter of the studio 1645. Also does it have the same voltage.

 

Dell's official statement about the Latitude/Precision issue :

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/12/02/dell-on-laptops-and-throttling.aspx

In the comments, the author reply to people asking why the XPS 16 isn't mentioned and it clearly seems it's not the same problem (that's not new) and that Dell is also investigating this one.


EDIT : latest news from France :
A user called Dell and couldn't talk to an XPS tech because all of them were in an extraordinary meeting concerning an XPS issue (they didn't mention the exact model). This user is waiting for the meeting to end and to get some news.
Looks like all the french tech are being breifed about the issue.

 

I can confirm that I am having the same issue with my XPS 16 i7 720qm laptop. I have the RGB LED screen. When just running prime95 on AC with brightness all the way down, I get 12x. At full brightness I get 7-7.5x. On battery with brightness all the way down, I get 12x and on full brightness at 12x. So this looks like a power issue.

- Garrett

 

Just to clear up some of the issues with people being told that there machine will ship with an updated Motherboard / 130W Power Adapter, this is not true.

First of all you are speaking to a Level 1 Technician who more than likely does not even know about the issue yet and if you do reach a supervisor that tells you the same thing, this is also not true as the Dell team that researches the issues has not yet come to a final solution.

I can also state that I have been running my XPS 1645 for 3 weeks at about 10-12 hours a day and it runs perfect, however I am not a Gamer and have played no games.

I have used it for surfing the internet, MS Office, burning, watching movies and various other programs and it has preformed perfectly with no problems at all.

If it was not for this website I would not know it had an issue, so thanks for those that have put in their time and effort in discovering the problem.

It does seem that Dell is working on the issue as I have received emails from the Product Group concerning the adapter/Bios which does testing.

Good luck to all in getting the issue resolved, especially for those that are gamers.

 

Mind telling us what they've said?

 

The questions they asked me were:
1. What version of the Bios was I running?
2. What is the REV of my adapter?
3. What games/applications I was running when the issue occurred
4. Am I running QuickSet and what is the version details
5. Have I used any other adapters other than the 90W.

It was just some basic questions, unfortunately I don't think that this will help you guys in any way. It was just to confirm that at least the problem is being looked into.

 

UPDATE:Ok guys. Issue confirmed in Belgium (so that should apply to all neighboring countries too).

My XPS arrived this morning and immediately I installed updates, installed 3D Mark and started testing.

Drastic benchmark rating differences (700+ points). Will post the results later as I'm out to eat.

My specs btw: 720QM processor, 4GB RAM, RGBLED screen, 256GB SSD

 

What's that suppose to mean, the issue has been confirmed in UK & France already?!!

 

The Shin-Etsu paste I got is the one shown at the bottom here:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...k=view&id=150&Itemid=62&limit=1&limitstart=12

At the bottom of this page they show it’s sold under the mass cool brand at Newegg:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...k=view&id=150&Itemid=62&limit=1&limitstart=13

This is exactly what I got.

 

Just a quick question: If the Battery is a 9cell rated 85W and the charger everyone is getting is the 90W, how is it that people are getting better results on battery alone Vs Charger?!! Am i missing something?

 

A new Engadget post on the topic:

Dell releases bevy of firmware updates to fix most of what ails some of you

 

Another question. I've been confused about my I7 being reported as a single core with two threads whenever I run CPUID, Prime95, CPUZ, OCCT, etc. Am I missing something, or do I have a defective CPU? My 3DMark scores have also been very low (06: 3800, Vantage: 2100)!
Thanks for any ideas.

 

Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I'd like to ask this of someone who has a smoothly running machine, because I've been plagued with random freezes. I don't think its a hardware problem because there was someone else on the Dell forums that had the same problem on two different machines (the second was a replacement). So I think it is a weird conflict in the way a few of us are running our systems.

1) Do you use the modded ATI video drivers (I've been using dell's)?
2) What is your system config?
3) Are you running a clean win7 install (instead of dell's OS image)?
4) Have you removed any bloatware from your machine?
5) Do you run as an administrator or in a standard user account?
6) Do you use IE8 (protected mode)?
7) Do you use a USB external mouse (I use a crappy old one from the win XP days that might be causing a conflict)?
8) What DPI setting do you use (I have mine set at 150% which might be abnormal)?

lol sorry thats a long list but I'd really like to know. These are all potential causes that I can think of

 

The battery being rated at 85W/H means that it will only last 1 hour at max charge if you pull a constant 85W from it, the bios or system board doesn’t allow more than 90w to be used at one time and so at current max load supported by either the bios or system board the battery will only last 1 hour.

If a bios update correctly fixes this issue and allows the system to pull more than 90w then where going to see our battery life fall very short under full load.

 

1) Do you use the modded ATI video drivers (I've been using dell's)?
A) I'm using modded ATI 9.11 video drivers
2) What is your system config?
A) On my sig below
3) Are you running a clean win7 install (instead of dell's OS image)?
A) I'm running a clean win7 ultimate RETAIL install
4) Have you removed any bloatware from your machine?
A) No bloatware on a clean install
5) Do you run as an administrator or in a standard user account?
A) Admin
6) Do you use IE8 (protected mode)?
A) No
7) Do you use a USB external mouse (I use a crappy old one from the win XP days that might be causing a conflict)?
A) I use a Logitech G7 (wireless 2.4 mouse)
8) What DPI setting do you use (I have mine set at 150% which might be abnormal)?
A) Winodws is set to 125%

 

1) I've been using the version from Dell's site.
2) Everything standard except: i7 820QM, RGBLED screen, and PA-4E AC adapter (130W). Although I didn't experience any freezes with the standard AC adapter.
3) Wiped the drive and installed Windows 7 Ultimate.
4) Yes, see (3)
5) Administrator
6) I used IE8 for about five minutes, only to download Firefox and Chrome.
7) Yes, I'm using an ancient (but awesome!) USB mouse as well. It's a Microsoft Optical Trackball.
8) 100%, but 150% was working fine.. and the standard after I reinstalled Windows 7.

 

Thanks for the reply
But how could this explain the improved performance with Battery alone Vs Charger?? The charger allows a Max 90W and Battery allows Max 85W = So the problem is not a Power problem, it is a BIOS issue which is limiting the system to draw 90W max; if this is resolved and a new BIOS allows the system to draw (say 150W just for argument's sake) that will mean that:
1- We need to replace the power adapter anyway (since it's limited to 90w)
2-Under full load the 9cell battery will last just 45min!!!!

Am i right? Or am i just confused

 

How come I only see 1 core and not 4 on my chip? CPUID & CPU-Z show it as a single core!!

 

It’s both,
1 - You have a 1645 being shipped with a 90W adaptor which is inadequate.
2 - You have a system that is currently designed to consume no more than 90W for components that clearly need more wattage to run everything at max without issue.

If just a BIOS update was changed you would find that everything perfectly runs at max on battery alone, which it currently doesn’t. And you would still have the same issue when running on the 90W AC adaptor.

 

It means what it says. Issue also confirmed by a laptop sent to Belgium (and Dell Belgium has the same service as Dell for the Netherlands and Luxembour).

In other words this is likely to be a worldwide issue.

 

If it's happening in the US, Canada, UK, India & France - It's already a worldwide issue.

 

We need the 1st page updated... this issue is not completely fixed with a 130W.

 

1) Do you use the modded ATI video drivers (I've been using dell's)?
Answer: I use Dells Drivers

2) What is your system config?
Answer: SXPS 1645/I7 720QM/16"RBGLED/ATI 4670/500GIG HDD/4GB-MEM/Win7 64

3) Are you running a clean win7 install (instead of dell's OS image)?
Answer: I reformatted my Dell (Clean Install)

4) Have you removed any bloatware from your machine?
Answer:Reformatting will remove the bloatware

5) Do you run as an administrator or in a standard user account?
Answer: Administrator

6) Do you use IE8 (protected mode)?
Answer: No, and I use FireFox

7) Do you use a USB external mouse (I use a crappy old one from the win XP days that might be causing a conflict)?
Answer: No, I use the Mouse Pad

8) What DPI setting do you use (I have mine set at 150% which might be abnormal)?
Answer: 125%

 

Sorry for not being clear -- by "Shin-Etsu's best paste", I meant X23-7783D, not the G751 which is sold at newegg. I pretty much ignored the masscool name, because it gives you Shin-Etsu's product number right after that. I figured it was the distributor or something. X23-7783D and G751 are not even close to the same thing.

 

1) Do you use the modded ATI video drivers (I've been using dell's)?

Dell's

2) What is your system config?

Sig

3) Are you running a clean win7 install (instead of dell's OS image)?

Clean install; got my own disc.

4) Have you removed any bloatware from your machine?

Didn't have any, ^^. I do have the facial recognition and the Dell Webcam software, but did not install Roxio = too bloated for me.

5) Do you run as an administrator or in a standard user account?

Admin.

6) Do you use IE8 (protected mode)?

Only to use My Dell Downloads.

7) Do you use a USB external mouse (I use a crappy old one from the win XP days that might be causing a conflict)?

No.

8) What DPI setting do you use (I have mine set at 150% which might be abnormal)?

100%.

@samzy

I replied to your post in the Owner's thread, I think?

 

They are 2 different products, and per the tests shown there the X-23 7783D doesn’t perform as well as the G751, but the difference is so minor it really doesn’t matter, it’s a difference of .20C in favor of G751