**The Official Studio XPS 1647 Intel Core i5/i7 "Owners' Lounge"**

oh yeah, you just fire up the Windows or ATI display control panel and find the colour controls. you can just change the colours from there

 

It shows you the charge on the battery without having to turn on the laptop.

 

Lol, better late than never right? That is the battery charge indicator. If you simply press it and 5 lights come up, your battery is fully charged (or almost fully charged, maybe 90% to about 100% charged). As you use the battery, the charge decreases and the number of lights that show up during subsequent presses is less and less until you run out of charge.

Then the button can also indicate your battery health if it is pressed and held down until the first set of lights disappears and another set appears. If you do it now, you might not see a second set of light appear because your battery is still in good health but I'll give you an example. Let's say you press and hold the button, the first set of lights appears showing 4 lights. After a couple more seconds of holding it, a second set of lights appears but only 1 or 2 show. That will indicate that your battery health has degraded a little and it no longer holds as much charge as it used to (not sure exactly how much degradation one light corresponds to). So, the more lights that show in the second set of lights the worse your battery health is. So you want no lights (second set) to show for as long possible. Hope that makes sense.

EDT: Dammit seeker...Ninja'd

 

oh,right,..... yeah i knew that,just making sure lol,thx alot pple.

 

Lol, I didn't know the part about the battery life though.

 

great! i'll be back once i get the laptop. the never ending wait has begun and really it doesn't seem like it's ever going to end...

the funny thing is that 30 minutes before ordering it showed an EDD of 2th Dec and the moment i ordered, they bumped it up to 2 more weeks away.. damn

it's because of the WLED i'm guessing!

anyway, suggest something that i could do while waiting for the laptop hahah

 

Any drop in temperatures would be nice. I watched a movie two days ago with laptop laying on the bed and even with 9-cell battery (bottom didn't touch the blanket) it was very very hot after that. I was hardly able to touch it. If it droped even these 5 degrees it's always something.

One more thing - do I lose warranty when aplying new past?

I would like to buy SSD in future but they are still very expensive. I don't need much space so even 128GB would work for me, so maybe in some time I will consider such purchase.

As for the cooler - Zalman seems to be the best option that I could find.

 

hi,does anyone know what the pll of the xps 1647 with i5 is?

 

So my 1647's wifi just quits even though my router still shows a connection and other wifi devices are fine. I use a Apple Airport Extreme Base Station dual band router, so my laptop see's both 2.4 & 5ghz connections. If the wifi drops on one band I can connect to the other manually. Is this something wrong with my laptop? Also i just started to have this issue where if I push the Caps Lock button while typing the cursor leaves the input screen and i have to move it bck with mouse or trackpad, very annoying - how do I fix that?

 

Hi,

Can anyone tell me what the specs of the WDH9C motherboard for a 1645? I have a dead 1647 (with a 65C2K mobo) and am hoping to drop in the WDH9C in its place. Any reason why this won't work (with i5-450m)? Thanks.

 

What is the 130 watt power supply part number? I called Dell and told them my 90w was overheating and they just sent me the same model! i5 540 SXPS 1647

 

What are you doing that the PSU is overheating? I have the same laptop, with the core i5 m540, Radeon 5730, and a 90 watt PSU.

When I got the system I ran a program called Burn-In Test Pro for six hours to check for instability. I ran the CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, and graphics card at 90% for the entire six hours. The laptop itself was hot, something I was able to fix by removing the dust "filters" from the baseplate and applying some better thermal paste than what came with the 1647. Even though the PSU was warm, I wouldn't call it hot. And I discovered later that I had goofed and was using the 90 watt "brick" adapter that came with my XPS 1530 and not the 90 watt "slim" adapter that actually came with my 1647.

Now, having said that, I make sure I don't put my PSU on any insulating surface such as carpet or clothing. I've noticed some minor throttling, especially in Dragon Age and Black Ops, but I've not run into any issues with the PSU overheating.

 

Hello everyone. I recently aquired a Studio XPS 16, core i7 (720) computer after my previous XPS m1330 broke for the 10000000 time. When I rang up tech support they offered to "buy back" the machine for £500, and I could put this money towards a new (dell) computer. Anyway off the bat i very quickly read a few reviews and went for the XPS 16.

A month in and I'm very impressed with it so far, its super quick! And I really like Windows 7 (after the travesty that was vista). Also, for the first time in a few years I can play some fairly recent games (Farcry 2, Civ 5, Empire total war etc).

My only reservation is the fact I said I would NEVER get a dell again after the problems I had with my m1330. I had the motherboard replaced 7 times and now the case is pretty battered and would never want to go through that again, considering im giving them about £900 of my money. Ive been happy with the system performance so far but have been reading loads about THROTTLING, which seems like bad design and engineering rearing their ugly heads again, exactly the same problem with the m1330. I DO NOT want to find myself getting the motherboard replaced continually in about 6 months time.

So my question is this: Does throttling become an issue as the computer ages (short term aging - 6months etc) or is it an issue from day 1? Is throttling an issue for everyone? Or are some people magically exempt from it? If throttling is an issue - do you reccommend I get a replacement for a new system? (i can legally justify a replacement with Dell) And if you do, which laptops currently compete with the SXPS16? In your professional oppinions....

 

You could start reading the threads regarding throttling and understand, what it means...
Its nothing that comes with the time. Its simply hardware-related and you cannot do anything against ist.
Actually I never notices any throttling on my system...

 

throttling doesn't happen any longer in the 1645 systems. i have not seen any new members complaining about throttling. seems that Dell finally got it right in the last iterations of the 16xx machines.

my friend has the m1330 with the GeForce 8400 GPU, and he never had any major problems with it. Not even the GeForce chip issue (never had to pull out the hairdryer at least).

so the problems you had are likely an isolated issue, further aggravated by perhaps poor support from Dell. i mean "isolated" in that maybe 1 in 200 customers were having such poor satisfaction with their laptop, similar to your situation. maybe you'll find that you love the 1645 so much you're willing to consider getting a Dell again in the future. or you'll hate it so much you'll pull out a book on witchcraft and curse and burn it for eternity. either way, i wouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly

 

Ahh cheers. I kinda know what throttling is, was just wondering what peoples personal experiences of it were and if it got noticeably worse over time (component wear, dust buildup etc).

And the one good thing I could say about Dell (and the only reason i agreed to the whole thing) is their customer service was always brilliant. Sometimes the companies they outsource to repair the computer were not great, but Dell always held up their end pretty well. Shame the GFX chip problem happened, because that was the beginning of trouble. Anyway reassurance is good, the other thing that had me bugged is the fact they discontinued the line right after I bought it, but I only just realised they been doing the SXPS since 2009 with diff processors.

 

Yeah, but the problems with the 8400m / 8600m Nvidia chips had nothing to do with Dell, they were all defective from Nvidia. I needed to have my ASUS's motherboard (8600m GS) replaced a few times because of it, and other manufacturers like HP were no better off either.

 

just as seeker_moc says, your problems with your M1330 was not really Dell's fault. the subsequent repairs/replacements were just bad luck on both yours and Dell's part.

I have only had my 1645 for 3+ months now, and I have not had a single problem. Both times my only issue was with the AC adapter, and in both cases they were promptly replaced. i only have praises for Dell up to this point.

anyways, glad you're satisfied with your new replacement Dell

my bad if i sounded like i was pointing my finger at Dell, regarding my friend's M1330. i was just saying that even though he had a "defective" laptop (in the eyes of the consumers), he never had the problems that the problematic Geforce 8x00 series GPUs were causing. he's not a heavy gamer, but he's a frequent player of WoW, so the GPU was still getting its fair share of long-term use.

 

hi ppl,

im wnt to replace the thermal paste on my 1647,but dont know what is the best one for laptops.coz i heard AS5 shorts or something since its conductive,so which one would u recommend? i also heard of mx-3,is that good?

plus,i just got my mobo replaced about a month ago so it also came with new thermal paste already applied, is it too soon to apply it agian? thx alot

 

AS5 isn't conductive, though it is (very slightly) capacitive; it shouldn't be a problem unless you're really messy with it. MX-3 is also good, as is G-751 (which is what I use). They're all significantly better than the stock crap, and the differences between the after market pastes (performance wise) is minimal, so use whatever you want or whatever you get for cheap.

 

ill go for the mx-3, just 2 b on the safe side.i never heard of g-75,look into it.thx!

 

hi

anyone know what cpus are compatible with this ( 1647 ) laptop? i want to upgrade to a faster c2d with higher ghz.

 

you cant go core2duo series
onli arrandale i3,15, i7
best you can do is i7640m but look for a i5 580M as they are near but cheaper

 

I read the last 50 or so pages and while it was nice to see seeker moc grow from a new user to helpful pro, I couldn't find anything that really answered my quetion, so I figured I'd start a new post.

My 1647 came new last month and has an i5-460, 1600x900 screen, and the 5730 card. My big concern is with the heat output of the unit. I knew going in that a fairly powerful CPU/GPU in a fairly small package would put out some heat, but the numbers I'm getting seem really high.

In a relatively cool room, CPUID says my CPU idles around 65C and so far tonight has reached 95C doing nothing but using the web to research this problem. The GPU idles around 65C as well and has reached 85C tonight. While playing Dawn of War II earlier this week the computer shut itself off, which I'm guessing was heat related. I feel like I'm cooking the internals just browsing the web and I'm afraid to play any more games for fear of another shutdown. I ended up aiming a fan at it to cool it after it shut itself off.

I read the suggestions about using a cooler and replacing the thermal paste, and while I wouldn't have a problem doing either of those things, it just feels like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

Any suggestions on what type of diagnostics I should look to run to see what might be causing the heat? I've also experienced some problems with the CPU kicking up to 100% usage under very light loads. I have a feeling I might have gotten a lemon, which would be a shame because I really like the look and feel of it and I doubt they'd be able to find a new one to replace it with considering the line has been discontinued.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Edit: I reread my post and even though it might sound like it, I wasn't trying to be trite with my comment about seeing seeker_moc evolve from someone with no experience to being a very helpful contributor to the thread. Posters like that are a great resource and the main reason message boards like this function.

 

Hey y'all. Just quickly wondering if the 1647/1645 mobo is a direct drop in for the old 1640. I'm starting to feel that the graphics and processor are getting a little out of date and the whole DX11/win7 thing is starting to sound pretty nice. Most of you would probably say "why not just get a new computer?", well the screen is fantastic, build quality is something you won't often find etc. so I'd like to stick with this computer if possible.

Secondly, would I be able to order it from dell or would I have to go to some third party vendor? I remember hearing something about the part numbers for these mobos (if anything I'd like the one with the latest ati on it... 5730 or something like that?), if I give them the part number then would they ship it to me?

 

I don't know for sure, but I think I remember someone before saying that they weren't interchangeable. Something about the board layout being different, so the screw holes didn't line up, and the heatsink didn't fit.

 

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My 1647 is identical to yours except that I have an i5-m540. My temps vary between 40C while idle and 65-70C while playing a game.

I did a few things to help with heat transfer. The first one was to remove the "dust filters" from the baseplate of my 1647. It's pretty east to do, you just unscrew the screws on the baseplate which is the large metal piece on the bottom of your 1647. The screws will stay attached to the plate. The "dust filters" are really nothing more than thin plastic strips with holes poked in them that are then glued to the inside of the 1647 baseplate. Removing them will increase air flow through the case as a whole, helping to lower your temps a few degrees.

The second thing you can do is to replace the thermal paste on the heat sinks of your 1647. I personally used a thin strip of Artic Silver which worked very well once it cured properly.

The third thing you can do is make sure the C-State and thermal management options are enabled in your BIOS. This will allow your 1647 to shut down major parts of both the CPU and the GPU when they are not in use. However, if you are using a SSD, leave your C-State and Advanced Thermal Management disabled as turning these on will have a detrimental effect on the performance of your SSD.

I also plan to modify the exhaust mantlet on my 1647 once my warranty expires to allow air to flow upwards along the lcd as well as downwards to allow the heat to be dissipated more rapidly.

 

Those temps are kinda crazy. My CPU idles at 48-49C, after upgrading the thermal paste and removing the fan filter, but I also have a hotter running i7.

Sometimes I think people get a bit too worked up over temps, but yours truly are way too high. Unless you have some kind of high-load program running that you're unaware of, there's no reason you should be idling at 65C or hitting 95C at all. Try running ThrottleStop in monitoring only mode, and see what kind of load % your CPUs are at when your temps are up. If you're not locked at 100% load for some reason, the only thing that I can think of, besides a hardware defect, is that your heatsink is loose. If you're willing to try it, reseating the heatsink (which will require replacement of the thermal paste) may fix the problem. If that is not it, or if you don't want to try it, you need to call Dell and get it replaced. Even though they don't sell them anymore, they should have replacement motherboards/heatsink assemblies to fix yours.

 

Firesyde and seeker_moc, thanks for your replies. I'll pop off the cover tonight and take off the dust filters and check out the heat sinks. I don't have a problem doing a little bit of work under the hood. I'm heading to MicroCenter tomorrow to pick up a router so I'll pick up some thermal paste.

How would I go about finding out if C-State and thermal management options are enabled in my BIOS? I'm not really familiar with BIOS at all.

My old computer was a HP zx5000 with a P4 2.8GHz processor and a 128MB Mobility 9800 and that thing was a flamethrower itself. I used a Logitech Alto to get it elevated and bring the laptop closer to eye level since I work at home on occassion and put in 10 hours or so a day on it. That worked wonders on lowering the heat on that machine, but didn't seem to help at all on this one. It was on the Alto when it shut itself off. I was looking around for something similar, but with a powered fan and found the Cooler Master NotePal ErgoStand. Has anyone had any experience with the ErgoStand?

I'll report back later with what I find out.

Thanks again.

Wes

 

Your system supports all Penryn CPUs like T9900, X9100, and so on. You must be having P8700 which is standard with the SXPS C2D option. There won't be much of a significant performance gain you're expecting. Anyways, if you really want a cpu, here are the cpus supporting your laptop ( Products (Formerly Penryn))

I'd recommend you to keep your cpu or buy a new computer with a good processor.

 

The 1647's sport the PM55 chipset(Socket PGA 998) which is not pin compatibile with the Penryn CPU's(Socket PGA 478). The 1647's use Arrandale CPU's from the list located here.

 

A couple of updates/items of interest on my heat problem.

1. Dust filters. I removed them without much trouble. If worst comes to worst and they have to send someone out to work on it, should I put them back on? If so, what is the best way to reapply them? It looks like the existing adhesive would be enough to get them stuck back on for a little while.

2. Throttling. I ran ThrottleStop and it is indeed throttling. It kicks down to 12.5% clock modulation when it starts to heat up. I turned a fan on and watched Throttlestop and HWMonitor and modulation went back to 100% at around 62C.

3. GPU fan. If I'm reading it correctly, Everest tells me that the GPU fan never goes above 30% even though temperatures reached 90C. The highest I saw on the RPMs was 327. I don't know if that is normal or not. While I had the back cover off, I noticed that a screw was missing on the fan housing. It was the one that is towards the center of the laptop and is elevated a little. It is also a scuffed up in that area a bit. I don't know if that means anything or not.

4. Thermal paste. I didn't make it to MicroCenter today because of some bad weather. I did find a video on the site of someone doing it to their 1645 and it seemed like it wouldn't be too difficult to do. The guy in the video used q-tips to remove the old paste, used Arctic Cooler thermal material remover and surface purifier to prep the surface and then added the new paste. He didn't spread it around, just pressed down on the assembly once it was back in place. Does that sound right?

Sorry for the litany of questions. I don't want someone from Dell working on it if they don't have to.

 

What you have isn't a C2D, but anyway... Your laptop can upgrade any of the i5 4xxM, 5xxM or i7 6xxM CPUs. Firesyde was mostly correct, but you can only use CPUs on his list that are listed as 35W TDP, as the 1647 wasn't designed to work with any of the low or ultra-low voltage CPUs (the ones labeled as 4/5/7xxLM or 4/5/7xxUM). A more refined list would be http://ark.intel.com/MySearch.aspx?...e&MarketSegment=MBL&MaxTDPMin=35&MaxTDPMax=35 any of which would be an upgrade from what you have.

 

1. Yeah, just stick them back on if you need to exchange it, or apply a drop of superglue just in case.

2. That sucks, but it's not surprising given the temps you're reaching.

3. It always says 30% because there is no GPU fan, it shares the fan with the CPU, and 30% is just the default that it shows, it means nothing.

4. Use rubbing alcohol and q-tips to clean both the CPU and heatsink. Use canned air to spray off any flecks of dust or cotton residue. Put a thin line of thermal paste lengthwise along the top of the CPU. Reapply the heatsink/fan and screw it on as tight as you can without breaking anything.

 

Thanks for the quick response.

Seems like my next step is to try the thermal paste. I've got my fingers crossed, but I'm not all that hopeful. Just sitting here typing it is sitting at 74C. What should a normal idle/light work temperature be?

 

I usually browse the net somewhere between 48 and 52 CPU, with the GPU a degree or 2 lower.

 

When I got my 1647, the temps were quite a bit higher than I have now, somewhere around 55-60C idle. I'm wondering if the thermal paste Dell uses is crap. In any case, 74C while idle is still way too hot. I saw in an earlier post you had 90C GPU temps under load and that is seriously high, to the point that I would have concerns about the stability and reliability of your system at those temperatures.

I've ran my 1647 using BurnIn Test Pro with my test sliders at 95% for the CPU, GPU, RAM, Hard Drive, 2D, and 3D graphics. Under that load, with the entire system running almost flat out in a way that you likely never would be able to do by yourself even playing a decent game, my temps never went above 70C.

It's important to keep airflow running properly through your laptop case. Make sure that you aren't blocking the intake port with your knee or anything like that.

As far as the Everest software, I think it isn't reading the fan data points correctly. I am using Everest(AIDA64) as well and no matter how fast my fan is actually spinning, the software always reports it is running at 30% or 327 RPM.

 

Those GPU temps were with the computer sitting on my desk in a relatively cool room running nothing but Dawn of War II. It has the 9 cell battery to keep the back portion raised as well.

My hope is that the thermal paste is just really bad, or installed poorly, or heck, not there at all and that putting new stuff on will fix it.

Going back to one of your suggestions in an earlier post, how do I check to see if the C-State and thermal management options are enabled in my BIOS?

 

Good question. I tried to upgrade my 1647 to a quad core i7 a while back and got some help in another thread from Kizwan to modify my BIOS. The upgrade didn't work, but I still have the modified BIOS on my system so I'm not sure if it would be in the same place for you. For me, it is in the CPU Control subsection of my BIOS. Just make sure anything that says C-State or has a C and a number after it(Mine has C3 and C6) is enabled.

Again, if you are running a SSD(I have an 80 GB Intel XM25 in mine), you will take a significant performance hit on the order of 10 to 20% with the C-States enabled.

 

I did a little research and it looks like the c-states just control what happens while in a power-saving mode (sleep, deep power down, etc.). I can't imagine that would have any bearing on the problem.

Since turning the computer on this morning it has reached 87C on one of the cores and 85C on the GPU doing nothing but browsing the web and using my Citrix account for work. It is stuck at 12.5% modulation since the temperature isn't going down at all, even with the throttling.

I ordered some AS5 and will apply that when it arrives, but I can't imagine it will cause a 30C drop in temps. Seems like this is something more than your run-of-the-mill heat problem.

 

Dumb question. How do I tell if/how fast the fan is currently running? I restarted earlier and it sounded like the fan was blowing fairly loudly during startup. Since then, I really haven't heard it much at all even though it is sitting at 75C. I don't remember hearing it come on when it starts to throttle either. Is the fan just that quiet or is it possible that it isn't working properly?

I was reading other threads about throttling problems and almost always it would include cycling. (e.g. heat up, throttle, cool down, stop throttle, heat up, etc.) Mine never cools itself off to the point that it stops throttling. That's what made me wonder if the fan was running at all or not running fast enough to cool the computer.

Any suggestions on where I could find info on the fan speed and maybe some diagnostic I could run?

Thanks!

 

Read this for a short explanation of CPU C-States.

In short, enabling them allows the computer to shutdown unused sections of your CPU. I went into my BIOS and checked. Make sure your "CX States," Enhanced C-States," and "C6" entries are enabled. This likely won't help much when your computer is sitting idle, but every little bit can help.

When your computer is running hot is the exhaust also hot? At 80C, the exhaust should almost be too hot for you to hold your hand there for more than a few seconds.

 

Thanks for the link. The articles I read earlier made it sound like I wouldn't be gaining any advantage while I was actually using the computer, but it sounds like I might be able to gain a little bit. I'll give it a shot later.

Here's the rub on the exhaust... I can't really feel a stream of air coming out of the unit. Which way should the exhaust be coming out of it? The chassis gets super hot on the left side, to the point that I really can't pick it up on that side once it heats up, so I'm guessing it should be coming from over there. Another reason to make me suspect something is up with the fan.

I realize that an oscillating fan puts out a lot more air than a CPU fan does, but the temps drop dramatically when I aim my stand fan towards the computer. The fan is on medium about 8 feet away and I'm guessing the temps dropped 30 degrees in less than 2 minutes.

 

It is quite possible that your fan is broken, that would explain it.

 

do you know what temperature your fan is kicking in? I believe mine kicks to high speed at 70C.

 

How would I go about checking that? Is there a log or another way of tracking it or should I just pay attention and check it with HWMonitor?

It would be awesome if it was something as simple as replacing the fan.

 

When your fan becomes audible, check hw monitor to see what temp your cpu and gpu are at.

 

I can't seem to make my fan run at all. At least I don't hear anything. I would think that at the temperatures I'd been getting that it would be running loud enough to hear. Are there any programs out there you can use to manually crank up the fan?

I went in to Device Manager and under System Devices there are two entries for "ACPI Fan" and both say "This device is working properly".

Any thoughts?

 

If you run Prime95, and the fan doesn't kick on within seconds, then there's something wrong.

Another way to test is to upgrade your BIOS. The flash program forces your fan to 100%. If your fan doesn't turn on then, then either the fan or the motherboard is broken.

 

Well, sounds like we have a winner. I ran Prime95 for about 15 seconds and watched the CPU temps soar into the 90s without the fan kicking on, so something is obviously wrong. Time to contact Dell. I hope getting technical support isn't as difficult as some people say it is.

I think the reason I am seeing elevated GPU temps even when I'm only web surfing is that the heatsink was actually sending heat that direction since there wasn't any air forcing it out.