S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Issue Investigation

Is this issue limited to the xps1645 with i7 or is the issue also found with the xps1640 with core2duo processors? Thanks

 

Try the test and find out, i would

 

Hmm..Maybe i will though I have never run any tests on my laptop and I lack the proper software to test. Has anyone confirmed or denied this being a problem with the xps1640 core2duo configurations yet?

 

Inquiring minds want to know... does it have the Blue LED in the end?

Got my 1645 finally 2 days ago... and I'm LOVING it! Still a very sexy machine, even with these issues (which I beleive will get fixed over time).

 

I wouldnt rule it out for the 1640, problems seem similiar but it seems the i7 pull a bit more power so it shouldnt be as severe if it is the same problem.

There seems to be some mis conceptions. The laptop runs great, its just under special case of high load of the cpu are we seeing problems(such as games and benchmarks). A system with lower end specs such as mine only sees problems under cpu + gpu load. The laptop limits to about 90w only through the adapter, and seems to be able to pull a good deal more through the battery. It very much seems the laptop needs a good deal more than 90w but is being limited through the adapter, so an adapter isnt going to fix it without a bios update hopefully(but can help a smidge such as max420's case).

Im glad we have confirmation outside of the dell support that its being looked into.

 

Yep, it's got a bright blue LED on the right side.

 

Triangle laptops have their new PA-4E sold out...

 

grumblegrumblegrumble....

 

as we get further down the road though more and more things will require "high load"

there may be only a handful of things that max this out right now, but in 5 years most all the games will even at medium settings

GOD this pisses me off

 

Well it has finally happened, Dell has just emailed me and told me that they just have dispatched me the 130W Adapter and should receive it within 2-3 days.

I hope that everybody else gets one as well, good luck.

 

r u in US?

 

Yes, I live in the United States

 

I wish i could assign people mod-status for my thread only, would be nice. I'm at work right now and will give the front post an overhaul later tonight with the updated information.

To be super clear though, the 130watt adapter defiantly helps the issue, its just that Max420 has a lower-power drawing configuration then myself and others do (SSD, WLED, etc)

 

Did you insist in getting the 130W? cuz i was told that Dell had to give out some 130W because "ppl were insisting". If they gave you voluntarily, that's another story.

 

why wouldn't you "insist" on getting something that helps correct hte problem? I dont understand why you would let them tell you no.

I didn't let them tell me no, and I have been very happy with the 130watt. I can at least run it at the brightness setting I want to without issues (half way to full) although at full bright theres issues still, but not nearly as bad as with the 90watt.

If anything do it for the safety concern. The 90watt gets hot enough to burn you. I have no doubt that there will be failures and possibley fires caused by the failures, which is why i submitted a letter to UL.

 

Zlog what's UL? Perhaps if more people take action like you we can put some extra pressure on them.

Apparently a BIOS fix is coming in the next 1-2 weeks too but if this fix ONLY "fixes" the issue by throtting down the laptop whilst on battery too then this is UNACCEPTABLE too.

And besides, what would then be the point in getting the highest specs processor, etc.?

 

I never insisted that they give me the adapter at all I sent them an email explaining the issue and from there it went back and forth with some questions and after my 4th reply to them answering there questions they now have dispatched the adapter to me.

 

If I have time I would love to insist. I have 3 finals next week. and plus, don't wanna disturb my mood by arguing with ppl who donno wut they are talking about... If Dell has really figured out the problem and is sending out 130W voluntarily, that would save everyone some effort. If they are not, then i will probably buy one from places like triangle laptops.

 

great. do u mind PMing me the Dell contact person's email? and do u need to return the 90W? Thanks!

 

I don't have a personal email but here is the general email I have been using:

[email protected]

(It took like a total of 4 days of going back and fourth as it took like 24 hours for each reply.)

 

Hi everyone. Have been following this thread with great interest since I have one on the way (ordered 26/11/09, due 04/01/10) Thanks all for contributing.

I'm in the UK and after forming my first email (basically quoting the threads, asking if they would send me out a 130w adapter now with my order, or will I have to kick up a stink the day I receive the laptop, and waste both their time and mine), I received the following reply TODAY:

"I have reviewed your e-mail and have understood that you wish to know if the 90W a/c adapter power supply is sufficient for system’s requirements.
...
There are no issues related to the 90W a/c adapter and it supplies sufficient power to the system."

Sigh...clearly takes a while for everything to filter through the Dell worldwide consciousness...will write back with updates to the situation!

 

My adapter came in from triangle laptops today. If it was used you cant really tell, to my eyes it looks brand new. It seems to be working great. I was able to run Prime 95 and Furmark without the AC adapter dying now. Still need to try some games.

 

Is there any actual consensus on the 130w Power Supply resolving the issue?

I'm currently waiting on one of these to show up at my door and I'm curious as to what issues I'll be facing.

 

the 130 only fixes part of the issue.

 

And this is the email I plan to send back - if someone would care to confirm I haven't made any stupid mistakes in my layman's terms, and that this consolidates most of the information available (without going into the technical details ie benchmarks used etc), I would appreciate it!

Feel free to edit it and post something revised - perhaps if we could get some kind of form letter (email summary) going that 'worked' to get a replacement, then affected people can use it?

Hello

Thank you, I appreciate your response. However, your understanding of my query is unfortunately incorrect. I believe I may be at fault in this regard owing to my misspelled reference to a 120w adapter instead of a 130w. I apologise and hope you will allow me to better explain:

I was not asking whether or not the 90w adapter was sufficient for the Studio XPS 1645 - in fact, this adapter has already been shown to be insufficient. If you could please check the information in the threads quoted in my original email below, you can see that this problem is repeatable, and such a volume of information has been amassed on the subject that it has been all but confirmed by Dell. For your convenience I will attempt to summarise some of this information:

1. At full load the 1645 draws more power than the 90w adapter can provide, and as a result the CPU is being throttled to a greater extent then when powered by battery. This was first noticed when drops in the FPS of games occurred once the brightness of RGBLED screens was turned up. The throttling has now been shown in a variety of conditions, and is generally indicative of insufficient current being supplied to the motherboard, which intrusively throttles the CPU as a result. The problem is also applicable to different extents to all 1645s, although as my system has an RGBLED screen, apparently I will be particularly prone to this.

2. Current draw testing has shown the 90w adapter is being maxed out under load. A consequence of this is that it is generating dangerous amounts of heat, in some cases cutting out, melting external plastic, and generally creating a burns and fire hazard. At least one letter has been submitted to UL challenging the fire safe rating of this device in this regard.

3. From these sources, it has also emerged through repeatable testing that usage of the Dell 130w slim power adapter PA-4E at least partially fixes this issue. Although this is not an adapter specified directly for use with the Studio XPS 16, it is compatible and will supply the system only with the current it requires at a given time. The validity of this fix is also indirectly reinforced by the fact that most (perhaps all) other Core i7 laptops on the market come with a 130w adapter. Some of these have less power-intensive graphics cards, and none with an RGBLED screen as in my specified 1645, which again consumes higher power.

4. The 130w adapter could even still be insufficient, as some users are still reporting some degree of throttling with a 130w adapter, although significantly less than with the 90w. It could be that a 150w adapter is the cure, although the 130w definitely improves the situation.

5. There may be two or more further issues making this worse. Firstly, Dell has in some cases stated the motherboard has insufficient capacitors to cope with spikes in maximum current draw, and a motherboard revision is in the works. Secondly, there also may be a BIOS fix in the works, to address the fact that the motherboard will not draw more than approximately 95w from the 130w adapter, even though draw initially spikes at values around 130w before being managed down to 95w (with according CPU throttling).

6. However, even given the two potential issues raised in (5.), these could not fully solve the problem as the 90w adapter is still not supplying sufficient current. Therefore the problem can not be fully fixed by correction of the issues in (5) alone, without being combined with the presence of a higher powered adapter.

7. Whilst I appreciate this problem may not apply to all casual users, I will be one of the 'power' users to whom the problem will certainly be relevant.



Based on this information, I now have two questions:

1. Can this issue can be headed off now by sending me a 130w adapter, or do I need to call once the system arrives and ask for an exchange adapter? This solution seems needlessly laborious for both parties, and there is some evidence that Dell is proactively shipping out 130w adapters to avoid people experiencing these problems. For example, some customers in Malaysia (which a 240w power system the same as the UK, ruling out any local variations) have been told that all Studio XPS 16 systems with higher draw RGBLED screens will be sent 130w adapters by default in future. Plus a number of other people who have complained of this issue after they received their laptop have now been sent the appropriate PA-4E 130w adapter. I would personally like to solve the issue now in advance, leaving me free to enjoy my new laptop to the fullest once it arrives.

2. Can you please ensure that I receive a revised version of the motherboard, if indeed the aforementioned work is to be carried out on future systems.

If you are not aware of these problems, could you please forward this email to a supervisor who is - this problem has now been identified by Dell.

Thank you for your time. I am sorry for the long email but I appreciate that I did not make myself very clear the first time, and am anxious to ensure that this very real problem is solved earlier rather than later.

Regards

Daniel Lawrence

 

It definitely helps. I think the consensus right now is that it makes the situation better. I think it will require a bios update to fix completely though.

 

they're gonna make you wait till you get one - then call and complain

im thinking i might ask to delay my order till this has been worked out

merry xmas ryan....

 

They obviously didn't let the 7783D cure then. Before curing, the 7783D has a thermal conductivity of 3.5 W/(m•°C), compared to the 4.5 W/(m•°C) of the G751. After curing, however, the conductivity rises to 6.0 W/(m•°C). Additionally, while uncured, the 7783D has a lower viscosity (200 Pa•s compared to 400 Pa•s), allowing it to be spread more easily, which lets you use less, which improves thermal performance. With the exception of Indigo Extreme, the 7783D is pretty much the best thermal paste that exists.

I know the difference in temps won't be much, but my main home is over at XS, where we try to optimize temperature. A half degree improvement using traditional means is pretty good.

 

Dell will be getting back to me regarding my support case: it has been escalated to level 3 and they are calling me on Sunday.

 

oh and surprise surprise i cant delay the order

PRIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKS

 

If you don't count Dell as part of the consensus, I think you are right.

I talked to someone in Dell's tech support earlier today, they are not yet sending 130 W supplies to those with RGB screens as a standard practice(yet). I am sure if you argue with them long enough they will give in and do so(I wasn't up to the argument today). I would not say they are in agreement with the consensus here.

My personal thoughts, I think the 90W is only part of the problem. 130W does seem to give better results, but I see throttling occurring on and off battery (I only have 90W). With gaming it is definitely worse on AC.

 

lookign around at other laptops of super-power

that asus G51 only comes with a 120Watt and they havent been having any issues

its gotta be all three, mobo + bios + power

 

this is what i hate so much

SOME dell outlets recognize this, apologize and send out adapters - others havent even heard of it!

you'd think there would be some sort of central policy or headquarters that made everyone aware

 

Well.. I dug out my killa-watt to see what it said for power usage during gaming.

I used Demigod as the test game. I set it into single player with a seven AI(nightmare setting) and medium quality video in windowed mode. I also was logging the processor frequency using Windows 7 performance monitor.

Here are my observations
Game Minimized (Window minimized-writing this post) = 100% processor speed, 52W
Spike at task switch prior to processor slow down = 100% processor Speed, 96W
Task Switch back to Game (1 minute wait) = 58% Processor speed, 61W

Time from game minimized to resume full processor speed = 12 seconds (3 seconds each step)

Draw your own conclusions..

Observations while gaming, laggy framerate and sound crakles continously. On Battery there is a slight improvement.

System Specs - I7-720, RGB, 4G Ram, 500GB HD, Bluetooth, DVD

 

so how exactly does this "throttling" affect performance again?

only when it hits max - does it crank down the speed you're saying?

or it just cannot reach full speed period?

so if im playing GTA4 and its giving me 30FPS i could actually be getting more but my processor cant hit max speed?

 

It limits the processors throughput, effective slowing it down close to half speed (53%) About 930Mhz, and since most games are currently single threaded, that's a pretty slow processor. I doubt you will get a consistent 30fps, I don't have FRAPS running, so I couldn't give you a hard number here, but it was not over 30fps.

 

was just an example

dont actually have gta4 here

so what do we do lol i feel like cancelling the thing

 

This cant be fixed by the adapter alone, we are in dells hands now. with the 130w we still get throttling and it only pulls 90w, so its not using the full 130w available.

They seem to be only giving adapters to please people, not because they know the problem. From the official sources(the dell blog) it seems their just looking into it. their not going to fix it over night either so we have to be patient. might be a few weeks even for a final fix, as i would imagine they should do testing and want to be sure it doesnt effect anything else(hopefully thats not to much to ask).

to ryan. It affects games because it throttles to a 7x multiplier, which the cpu runs at 930 mhz when it should be much higher. The laptop for every day use is actually fantastic, and will be even better when issues are fixed.

 

Like I said before, we wait.

 

guess they were clearly on a tight deadline to get this thing out

 

Don't have time to test, finals next week.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071221/extending-mobility-center-tile/

Use this to turn off the monitor. It should stay off during a test, so you can test power consumption without the display and this way you don't need another monitor.

~Ibrahim~

 

can anyone log in to dell US? i can't now... it seems to be down.

 

I really had no problem spreading this stuff out, I only used about 10-15% of it out of 1 tube, that article allowed 1 hour of curing time for all thermal pastes that did not give any form of instruction for curing time, thermal pastes that did have instructions (such as arctic silver 5 "200 hours") where cured for their rated times.

If you know of any sites that have sown any other difference between these 2, please feel free to post a link to it.

 

I'm getting the 210w designed for Alienware 17' in a day or two. It took several calls to Dell Canada support center but it worked.

 

anyone know what kind of power supply a machine like this comes with?

 

I really want dell to step up to the plate. If the bios are "fixed" this can either mean that dell will ship higher wattage power supplies to people with updated bios, or this could also mean that dell has successfully throttled down the cpu so that now... the i7 will no longer work as good as the core 2 duo processors and will no longer be "worth" the upgrade. Money well spent, i would much rather not getting a bios update if i can charge my battery to full and play games for 30 minutes then charge it again then have my performance tip over a peninsular ledge. If the battery makes this Laptop function at MAX performance please let me know so that i dont have to worry about it anymore. Then i would just have to worry when my battery is fully charged. =P

 

there will be uproar if they downclock the i7

 

Yeah I don't think they're that bad, but could prove me wrong.

 

i don't want to but dell makes me wanna ROAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!@!

 

you think they did all this just to save money?

"ahhh they wont notice"

WRONG!

we need to settle down and relax