XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

If anyone has been suffering backlight bleed on their QHD panel like the image below, get in touch with Dell, they will send out a tech with a new replacement screen, which is actually the whole lid assembly. I didn't have to explain much, the support agent immediately started a service request.



My panel has had the above bleeding issue from the start (I assume). There were noticeable gaps at the top, middle and portion on the left side where the black bezel meets the lid assembly. I didn't notice it for the first few months but came across it one day and its bothered me ever since, and after the right side fan started buzzing more recently as well, I decided to get both sorted.

Got to love NBD, shiny new screen and no more backlight bleeding. I ordered my unit on release day, so I don't know if there was any QC issues with the screen but the replacement doesn't have any gaps. Yay.

 

I just got off the phone after my case was passed to a manager, I have a new system on order that should arrive in 3 weeks. The old one (or new if it is worst) will be collected the week after, so we will see!

 

Agreed, if you've tried everything and the coil whine levels are still unbearable, and you can still get a full refund then I'd say go for it. I've been following this thread for months, the 9530 has been out for 6 months already and if Dell hasn't addressed the issue by now, they not likely going to barring some serious event like all the owners launching a class action lawsuit or something. Sony's never addressed the WiFi issues that plagues their Vaio line, even the first gen Yoga had widespread WiFi issues that Lenovo simply buried and instead of fixing it, they just moved onto the Yoga Pro 2.

I've also been reading through the XPS12 and XPS13 threads here and I'm really amazed at how many problems there are with Dell's flagship XPS line, the XPS12 has serious screen image retention problems (although Dell has admitted to this and are replacing owner's screens at no costs), and the XPS13 has even worst coil whine problems then the XPS15.

Oh well, the MBPr isn't perfect but it probably does have the best hardware build-quality bar-none for laptops, especially if you're okay with Mac OS X. You can get Windows on it via boot camp but from what I've read it takes a bit of work and Apple's support for boot camp Windows drivers are very lackluster (no surprise there though). In the end I decided against it as I didn't see a lot of point paying the extra Apple premium just to get a sub-par Windows performance and experience.

 

Was pretty pumped up to order one of these, until I came to this thread. Seems like people are having so many issues with this laptop. Anyone know if it's safer to buy a refurb from Dell outlet? Seems like there are some good deals to be had there. However, I just can't see myself spending 1200-2000 on a laptop and having so many issues with it. Should I just stay away? I'm also interested in the inspiron 7000, which seems to have fewer, if any issues.

 

I'd say it depends. It's been pointed out in this thread before, you have to keep in mind that most people are going to report issues on the forums here because people with non-problematic system are not that likely to come running here to say their system is fine. Any laptop thread will mostly be dominated by people reporting issues. So in here, it may sound worst then it is, or then again it might not. There have been a few owners here who have reported no coil whine or, like myself, very low levels of coil whine that's not audible unless we put our ears right up against the laptop.

Can you order it from somewhere besides Dell? Dell charges a restock fee unless they determine the item is defective, they'll tend to make you jump through multiple hoops and various repairs first before they're willing to concede the system is defective and offer you a refund, so you're really placing yourself at their mercy. I purchased mine at the Microsoft Store which has a 30 day return policy, they said if I have any issues I can take it back to the store for an exchange or full refund. So I bought it there to minimize my risk, if ordering through Dell was my only option I would have skipped out on this laptop entirely.

 

New BIOS A04 now available from Dell driver site.

 

Thanks. Just installed it. No noticable difference, coil-wise or otherwise.

 

I have coil whine on my system but I still love everything about it. The coil whine doesn't bother me because I've had multiple systems that exhibited the issue, so I consider it normal. Sure it would be better if it didn't exist, but it's not a dealbreaker for me by any means, especially since there's no other system on the market that I feel would be a better fit for me.

However, I've also used the Inspiron 7000 series since my sister and a friend of mine have one (the former a 14" and the latter a 15"), and they're also pretty impressive both in terms of looks and build quality -- especially considering they're in the Inspiron line -- but they're not as nice as the XPSes. Of course they're also a lot less expensive. The keyboard feel isn't nearly as good on the Inspiron (less key travel, mushier, and the keys themselves don't feel as nice), the uniformity of the keyboard backlighting isn't nearly as good (some keys have dark spots), and you lose the quad-core CPU, QHD+ display, Mini-DisplayPort (so you can only have one external digital display), AC WiFi, M.2/NGFF slot (you get Mini-PCIe instead), mSATA (the Inspiron has one but it's apparently not usable), and NFC -- and you only get one PowerShare-enabled USB port rather than four. On the other hand, all 4 USB ports are 3.0 on the Inspiron, you get wired Ethernet, and it's fast once you throw a real SSD in there, which Dell frustratingly doesn't make available from the factory.

But honestly as the above poster said, most people here are going to be complaining, and I'd bet that if you found several hundred pages' worth of forum posts on any other system, you'd read enough to make you think twice about buying that one too. Of course you probably won't because those other systems may not be as sexy and enthusiast-targeted as the XPS 15, which means they won't get as much attention, either positive or negative. But for stuff that DOES get a lot of attention, it will also get a lot of negative attention. This is the problem with having too much information, especially when it's from a place that's going to be biased toward the negative anyway.

As for the Dell Outlet, I bought a system from there once and a few of my friends have, and we've all had perfectly fine experiences. You can get some smoking deals on there (though act fast if you find the spec you want, since the inventory tends not to last very long), and you can add full-length warranties onto those systems. Technically those systems are allowed to show up with minor cosmetic issues since they're classified as refurbs, but that didn't happen to me or any of my friends who ordered there -- and of course if you ever have any functionality issues, you have a warranty you can use. Some Outlet systems actually end up being sold there because the original order got cancelled while the unit was in production but before it actually shipped, so sometimes you can actually end up with a brand new system at a huge discount.

 

According to the release notes, it has non-specific stability fixes, a fix for resumes triggered by Intel Smart Connect or Rapid Start on systems with the hybrid hard drive + cache setup (IFFS = Intel Fast Flash Standby) and support for a new Intel CPU. Looking at ark.intel.com shows that the new CPU is 0.1 GHz faster in both base and maximum turbo clocks than the i7-4702HQ these systems have used thus far, but is otherwise identical even down to lithography and tray price, and will be released in Q2 of this year. Sounds like Intel will just be discontinuing the 4702 after a year (it launched in Q2 of last year) and replacing it with this. Meh. For most people (myself included), 0.1 GHz won't matter because CPU is so rarely the bottleneck -- just take a look at Task Manager sometime. In fact I'd bet that even people who DO routinely perform CPU-intensive tasks wouldn't notice 0.1 GHz in real-world usage as opposed to benchmarks.

 

Received new xps 15 9530 last week. No detectable coil whine, yet. Not trying to make those with the issue feel bad, just reporting. If I had read this forum before ordering 3 weeks ago, might not have bought it. Like it so far...

Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

 

Did the update right after I first posted about it this morning. So far no noticeable change in behaviour, to what was already (luckily for me), a virtually perfect system.

Anyone else notice any of the "non-specific" fixes already mentioned by jphughan? I don't use Smart Connect and only have and SSD vs. a hybrid drive + cache, so this wouldn't apply to me.

Seems like Dell is looking ahead to manufacturing the 9530 with a newer CPU and being proactive with the BIOS.

 

I haven't applied the update, not sure I see any need to. Unless there's promises of performance increases or a critical fix I'll probably bypass any BIOS updates, system is working well and I don't want to run the risk of an update screwing it. Frankly I don't trust Dell a whole lot.

I updated the touchscreen firmware yesterday and so far it's been smooth sailing, no more loss of touch-functionality at random times anymore.

My only complaint is still the keyboard and touchpad texture, it feels very scratchy and rough to me, unlike the extremely smooth control surfaces on my MBP. I'm wondering if I can get some sort of film to apply on the touch pad to make it smoother. I tend to type with my finger tips as well and my fingernails seems to leave scratch marks on the keys, if I rub it they disappear but kind of annoying nonetheless. It might just take some getting used to. Other then that, the silicon palm rest feels great, I like it a lot better then the metal surface of the MBP which tended to get very hot under use, or very cold during the winters here.

 

just bought my XPS 15" top end model with the 512gb SSD and bigger battery and with using it today for about 12 hrs today i have yet to hear the high pitch whine.

i have ran it on battery only, charging and at 100% battery with charging.... perhaps it will show up.

the screen is great, it is the first 15" notebook i have used.... coming from a Lenovo Helix 11" and a Lenovo x220 12" so this is HUGE in comparison.

Bought it to play a little BF4 on it and do lots of editing in Sony Vegas Pro.


Screen is amazing and scaling in W8.1 update 1 is almost perfect.... i barely notice any small text.... only with a couple older programs where I needed to change the compatibility setting to disable scaling with high DPI and then the text is big again.

only gripe i have......

The dell touch pad drivers SUCK

gestures are jerky, i cant get the two finger pan to actually work, scrolling horizontally..... the icon shows up but it doesnt scroll sideways

any insights on making the touchpad more responsive and get horizontal scrolling to work, specifically in chrome

 

Thinking of picking up an XPS 15 (9530) - for work and occasional gaming and I wondered if any of you could advise on the following:-

Is the XPS 15 going to run Crysis 3, MWO and Star Citizen ?? I am OK with Med / Low settings and reduced resolution as it's only for occasional gaming (I have a desktop for the serious stuff)

Is the XPS quiet when not gaming? - my other option is a MSI GS60 but that seems to make noise all of the time.

Are they regularly on sale? - there is a sale on at the moment in the UK which is £ 260 off - here but it ends tonight at midnight so I have to hurry..

Thanks.

 

Agreed, the Dell touchpad drivers are awful, you can play with the sensitivity settings in the touch pad controls but it's still very meh. Responsiveness to multi-finger gestures are iffy at best, no where near as accurate or snappy as on my MBP. I find myself using the touch screen more.

Hi-DPI is kind of hit and miss, seems okay for most apps but Adobe Elements doesn't take to it, so glad that Lightroom has no issues though.

Notebookcheck's XPS 15 review has benchmarks for Crysis 3 at various settings at 1366x768 resolution, seems quite playable at medium settings, and just okay at high settings so you'll probably be fine.

I have no issues maxing out the graphics in Civ 5 at 1080p on this thing and I just started playing Witcher 2 at 1366x768 at high settings and it seems to handle it without any problems. Keep in mind that the system does get a bit loud once it's under load, the fans aren't that quiet and it does run a bit hot but nowhere near the levels of the GS60.

 

Caucasian_Fury - thanks for the response. Is there any point in waiting for a NVidia 800m update to the XPS??

I can't find any information as to whether this is going to happen soon or not.

 

I would be careful with this. It can run the games, but the problem is throttling. For some reason (most likely once it reaches a particular temperature), the laptop throttles down the game to 5-7 fps. For me, it happens only if the laptop is not on a level surface. If its not on a level surface, forcing the FPS to 30 or 40 with nVidia inspector seems to help. The Anandtech reviewer said in the comments that it throttles for him even on level surface (review here and comment here).

 

The most interesting part is that xps15 mud tier is available for £1199 but dell might or might not reduce the price of the top tier one from 1599 to 1399 and this brings it close as the mid tier option would mean that you have to upgrade the mSata at least.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk

 

The price in the Dell us site is £1398 equivalent in $. But it's all too difficult to see the future.

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Tapatalk

 

Mine was already in UEFI mode with Legacy Option ROMs disabled. I tried changing them and reverting to the settings you recommended. Unfortunately didn't make any difference.

 

Good point, I haven't played any games extensively on it yet so haven't exprienced any throttling, but that would make sense.

I wouldn't know, only Dell does. I'm guessing it'll be awhile before it happens, the 800M series is Nvidia's enthusiast-level mobile GPU. Only dedicated gaming laptops uses them, I don't think it's likely Dell will implement them into the XPS line unless Nvidia comes out with lower-powered versions or Apple starts implementing them into their MBPr 15 line. The 800M sucks up a lot of power and outputs a ton of heat and the XPS15 already has enough trouble dissipating the heat the 750M puts out.

 

You can do a few things:

1. Update to the latest Dell touchpad drivers.
2. Disable any gestures you don't actually want, which will minimize unintended gesture detection. Edge Swipe is a particular offender.
3. Install the touchscreen firmware update on support.dell.com, which has been shown to also improve the touchpad, especially gestures.
4. Uninstall the Dell touchpad drivers and install generic Synaptics drivers, which give you a few different options and some users have found improves the overall performance. Same advice about disabling gestures you don't need.

This has been asked and answered several times, so here's what I posted last time:

 

Does anyone know how to use the nfc feature? When I hold my s4 to the xps 15 trackpad it vibrates so I know the nfc works. I do not know how to send files (tried superbeam app) or what else could be done with nfc perhaps tapping in lieu of entering login password? This would be a great topic for the xps 15 wiki too. My xps 15 is a top tier with latest bios and drivers.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

Top tip: if your xps 15 has the ugly green 'refurbished' sticker at the bottom, like mine did, you can remove it with your fingernails as much as possible. Remaining sticker residue comes off nicely with a pencil eraser. I suspect any cleaning solvents will eat into the rubber finish.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

A quick Google search for "NFC Transfer XPS 15 Haswell site:notebookreview.com" turned up a page in this thread with this post:

And Googling "Windows 8 NFC" turned up this page: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20120723/testing-nfc-sharing-between-windows-8-nexus-7/

 

Thanks ill look into those options. Too bad apple has it figured out but the majority of PC touchpads are still lacking.

funny I was just doing the same thing

thanks for the tip

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to order the 1080p version with the 91WH battery?

 

Unless you have access to a Dell Premier account with a customized store, then the only configuration options are the ones you see. You could probably buy the 91 WHr battery separately from Dell Spare Parts, but of course that would cost more since you'd end up with two batteries, and thus far Dell Spare Parts hasn't been able to sell that battery to any of the numerous people from multiple countries who've tried to buy it -- so no ETA (or even a guarantee) on being able to get what you want.

 

I hope we can buy the 91WHr battery at some point. Since I have one in my machine and I would like to replace it in 2-3 years without paying Dell to do it.

Too bad the customization that made dell the place to buy a PC from is now all but gone.... i am guessing competition and low margins ended it

 

I'm sorry if it's been asked before, but why does my screen go blank every so often and can be woken up by my trackpad only? SOmetimes the touchscreen freezes. I have updated the firmware, before firmware update there was no problem like this!

Second question is - anyone wakes up from sleep into a blank screen? THen i press sleep again, wake up again, and all is fine.

I think they are related?

 

Waking up to a blank display seems to affect a lot of people who have Intel Rapid Start enabled. Try disabling that if you haven't already. There's more information about that on the XPS 15 Wiki. Or if you installed an aftermarket SSD that includes built-in hardware encryption and you're using it, I saw a different Dell system (Latitude E7440) that would hang on resume when that feature was enabled by setting the hard drive password. It was fixed with a BIOS update.

As for the system going to sleep, I never noticed the trackpad could wake it up. I always thought it had to be the Power button, or (if you have Wake on USB enabled in the BIOS) an external device. Are you asking why it's going to sleep or why you can only wake it up with the trackpad? If it's the latter, in which case I assume your complaint is that you can't wake it up with the keyboard, I think that's normal for this system.

With respect to the touchscreen, you're the first person I've seen report intermittent non-responsiveness AFTER installing the touchscreen update. Not sure what to suggest there unless you previously played with the "Allow the system to put this device to sleep" option for the touchscreen in Device Manager. If so, try reversing that change. Otherwise, no more ideas at the moment.

 

I have a similar problem - i'll be surfing/reading for a while and suddenly the screen will blank out. Normally I move my finger over trackpad to "wake" it up, don't remember using keyboard, but I think that didn't wake it up. Also, did not just wait to see what happens - will do that next time. I did check event manager - no events recorded for this. Extremely annoying.

Also my screen will suddenly dim or brighten on its without any perceptible change in ambient light - in fact it just happened while typing this line! Maybe I'll just switch off the sensor based auto/adaptive dimming.

Both issues annoying but not deal breaker I guess.

 

Is it possible you have an extremely aggressive power profile set up? For example if you have it set to sleep or even just turn off the display after 1-2 minutes, that could easily happen while you're reading something. Windows also dims the display automatically after a period of inactivity; the brightness level while dimmed can be configured in Power Options, as can the wait period (including disabling it entirely). If on the other hand it's happening while you're working, just disable adaptive brightness. I can't account for why it would change your brightness without a change in ambient lighting, but turning it off would certainly cure it.

 

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to share a bit of news. As some of you are already aware, I work for Dell. I'm not in any department remotely related to their products (I support Dell's own internal IT infrastructure), nor am I authorized to speak on Dell's behalf in any way. But I am notebook enthusiast and an XPS 15 owner. I've used Dell products for many years, long before I started working at Dell, and as a result I've also been one of their harshest critics. Both of those facts remain true even now that I work for them.

When AnandTech's review of the XPS 15 was released a while back, I could tell based on their display impressions that they'd tested with splendid mode enabled. I contacted the author of the review to make him aware of this feature, which resulted in the display being retested and achieving significantly better results. This case of splendid mode tarnishing yet another person's experience of what would otherwise have been considered an outstanding display (after NotebookCheck and several owners had the same experience due to being unaware of splendid mode) finally prompted me to seek out the right people within the organization to see if I could convince them to change the factory default configuration to have splendid mode disabled. Finding the right person in an organization of about 100,000 people can be a bit challenging, but I found the right person, and the ball is now rolling on potentially making that change.

That was all several weeks ago. Just recently I finally decided that, since I've been reading this thread and the M3800 thread from the beginning and seeing the recurring issues that customers were experiencing (in addition to contributing to the XPS 15 Wiki), I may as well prepare a concise write-up of the most common issues I'm reading/Wiki-ing about and send those off to that same person to see whether they could be addressed as well. Obviously Dell gets feedback from lots of other avenues, but I would wager that few if any Dell employees in the right positions have read through 514 pages here and 250 pages on the M3800 thread, so I thought I might be in a unique position to present useful information if I could distill the content of these enormous threads (and what I've observed in my own ownership experience) down to the most widely reported issues.

I sent that write-up yesterday, and it has now been passed to the Product Development team, who will be working with the Validation team and other appropriate parties based on the type of issue.

For those who are curious about the specific issues I called out, I limited them to issues that seem to be fairly widespread, are consistently reproducible, and constitute actual errors, as opposed to things that simply "could be better", e.g. the touchpad. So here are the issues I described in detail, along with solutions or recommendations whenever I had them:

- HDD+cache systems with 16GB of RAM have an 8GB Rapid Start partition, which renders Rapid Start unusable. Since the cache is too small to host Smart Response AND a 16GB Rapid Start partition, I recommended that systems with this hardware configuration be configured at the factory to devote the full capacity of the 32GB cache to Intel Smart Response to make the best use of it.

- Adaptive brightness is enabled by default. Recommended disabling it since it seems to be confusing people, or at least aggravating them.

- Intel Rapid Start is enabled on SSD-only systems. Recommended that such systems ship with Rapid Start disabled since it does not provide any acceleration on SSD-only systems and thus only delivers only one benefit (ability to use Smart Connect and hibernation simultaneously) but creates several drawbacks.

- Audio drivers more recent than the original shipping version downgrade MaxxAudio Pro to MaxxAudio 3, which cannot be rolled back through Device Manager after updating. And since the original audio driver isn't available for download, users doing clean installs can't ever get MaxxAudio Pro. Recommended a new driver release that includes both the latest audio drivers and MaxxAudio Pro.

- On QHD+ systems, some games set to play at sub-native resolution play in 1:1 scaling rather than aspect scaling.

- Rapid Start does not always resume correctly.

- A few minor BIOS issues I've noticed that aren't worth writing up here.

- Coil whine. 'Nuff said.

- QHD+ panels shipping with dead pixels and/or dust under the glass. 'Nuff said.

- Splendid mode management option does not appear in Windows Mobility Center if the system is booted with the built-in panel disabled. Even if the panel is then enabled, the system still has to be rebooted for the option to reappear.

- Motherboard replacements enables splendid mode (even if it was disabled before) AND removes the option to manage it from Windows Mobility Center. The option can be restored by booting once with a specific BIOS configuration (after which the configuration can be reverted and the option will still be preserved), but obviously that shouldn't be necessary.

- Touchscreen firmware update bricking some touchscreens.

I can't make any promises about what will happen from here, but I just wanted you to know that I'm doing what I can to increase the visibility of your posts within Dell.

 

^^ Wow I am glad to see some proactive Dell employees making an effort to send complaints to whomever necessary. As a soon to be owner of a XPS15, I thank you for your efforts. I've been exclusively a Thinkpad/Macbook guy for a long time. I've stopped buying Macs, however, am now going with the XPS15. I never in a million years thought I'd get a Dell, but the XPS15 is right up my alley. I've heard the coil whine and it does not bother me. As long as everything works fine I have no reason to expect I will be disappointed with the computer. I will be posting my own thoughts in this thread when I get my unit.

 

jphughan, that's awesome to hear. We appreciate your efforts, your assistance and input in this thread and your proactive approach to forwarding the concerns of so many owners to other departments of your employer. Not a lot of people would take the time and effort.

I think Dell's got a good thing going in general with their XPS line up, the XPS12, 13 and 15 have all gotten great reviews and in their own right are spectacular machines that are more then competitive with Apple's offerings, it's just a terrible shame that they're ruined or marred by issues like screens with severe image retention problems, coil whine, dead pixels and screens with dust/hair underneath the glass etc., all things that should have been during the QC process. Honestly, the systems are well-designed and engineered, it just seems to be the execution that they can't get right. Hopefully this is something they solve.

BTW, thanks for the suggestion on updating the touchpad drivers, I'm using the Synaptics drivers now and it seems to be more responsive especially the multi-finger gestures. I've disabled the one finger gestures as well which seems to help.

One more thing to note, I've had my laptop for four days now and the coil whine has progressively reduced over this period to the point that it's basically gone now, I can't even hear it most of the time eve if I hold my ear right up to the power cord area. Again, I'll continue to monitor.

 

okay so i must be dumb.... i downloaded the synaptic touchpad drivers from the dell 15 9530 wiki and unzipped them... when i run the "setup" it errors out and says something failed in the install. Redownloaded and it did the same?

I tried the newest dell drivers and they just suck... hoping for something better.

Any guidance?

rep will be given

Thank!

 

okay so i must be dumb.... i downloaded the synaptic touchpad drivers from the dell 15 9530 wiki and unzipped them... when i run the "setup" it errors out and says something failed in the install. Redownloaded and it did the same?

I tried the newest dell drivers and they just suck... hoping for something better.

Any guidance?

rep will be given

Thank!

 

This is awesome, what software did you use to monitor this?

 

You need to google for "install uncertified driver windows 8.1" ... thats all.

 

I find myself getting more and more used to the noise. It's even handy, as it doubles for a sound-based CPU usage monitor! Really, when I hear the noise, I check the task manager to see which process is hung or using a lot of CPU for some reason.

 

Second that.

Sometimes my HDD makes audible noise then I know it's my download tool secretly uploading my files and I need to keep that background process.

 

Does anyone have experience with Linux and how well it works with the QHD screen?

I am thinking about getting the top-tier model (mainly for the larger battery) but I am a bit worried on all the scaling issues I have been reading about. Could you just downscale the resolution to 1080p if there are issues?

 

Apparently newer Synaptics drivers no longer work, at least with this touchpad. I do NOT recommend disabling Windows 8's driver signature checking as recommended above. Instead, just Google "Synaptics drivers 16.3.15.1" to find somewhere hosting that version, which is known to work.

 

There is some information in the Linux wiki: Linux - XPS 15 Wiki

All in all, it works great if you use a recent distribution and desktop environment. Otherwise, some tweaking (detailed in the wiki) will be enough.

Personally I love the HiDPI support of Cinnamon 2.2 (out of the box). 2.1 was fine with a couple of tweaks. I think this screen combined with the edge-tilling is a major productivity boost.

 

The coil whine did flare up for a few minutes this morning while I was streaming 1080p Crunchyroll on battery power, but it go away after awhile. It seems to have something to do with CPU loading but hard to be sure, so it still occasionally pops up for me.

I didn't hear it last night while playing Witcher 2, but the laptop fans were going gangbusters so it may have covered up any whine.

 

Loving the laptop so far, I just have a question I was wondering if anyone could help with.

I usually my laptop for somewhat battery intensive purposes (running a VM, have visual studio open, streaming music) so the battery often lasts 4-5 hrs under these conditions. I was looking at options for getting an external battery/charger, as sometimes the coffee shops that I work in don't have the best access to outlets.

I've looked so far, and the best option looks like it might be the Energizer XP18000 ( Amazon.com: Energizer XP18000 Universal AC Adapter with External Battery for Laptops, Netbooks, and More: Computers & Accessories). The only problem is that I don't know if there are the appropriate adapter tips for the XPS 15 - I looked on the tip finder website ( Tip Finder) and there doesn't seem to be the XPS 15. I was wondering if anyone had an alternative they could recommend, or if I might be able to buy a tip adapter from Dell that would allow me to use the XP18000?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks guys!

 

The world needs more people like you!

Are the thermals being discussed at all? I've gone from a 4 year old Latitude E6500 to Top Tier 9530 and if I do anything remotely intensive with CAD, the fans sound like this thing is going to take off, the E6500 doesn't break a sweat doing the same task (yes I am on a flat surface etc etc). I don't have time for games (how sad), but from the earlier posts, lots of people are having throttling issues.

Thank you!

 

The tip used on this Dell system is rather new because Dell only created it in order to support very thin and light systems. The regular-sized tip has been around on Dell systems for over a decade now. It's unlikely you'll find the tip you need from an aftermarket battery solution for quite a while, but as long as you buy one that includes the standard Dell tip, if you buy this adapter as well, you'll be all set: Dell Cable - DC Power Dongle : Connected Classroom | Dell.

 

Well I would consider the fans coming on while you're doing CAD work pretty normal. Your E6500 doesn't have anywhere near as powerful a GPU, which means that even when it's working at maximum capacity, it wouldn't be generating as much heat. The E6500 is also much thicker than this system (especially in its base), so there's a lot more room for passive cooling, which would reduce the requirement for fans -- and if the fans finally DO have to step in, a larger system means you can have larger diameter fans, which can move a given volume of air at a lower RPM and therefore with less noise. So I imagine that might account for the noise difference as well.

As for the separate issue of actual throttling, I can't speak to whether it's being addressed internally in general, but I didn't mention it in my own list. One of the main reasons is that throttling seems to be hit or miss. Some users (like myself) experience no throttling at all even during multi-hour gaming sessions, whereas others see severe throttling within a few minutes. Some cases have been fixed by users simply adjusting the placement of their systems, and others have been fixed by users getting replacement thermal assemblies. The AnandTech reviewer also found that his throttling was basically solved by a reboot, which implicates software (likely drivers), in which case the fix would likely have to come from Intel and/or NVIDIA (possibly in collaboration with Dell), not Dell directly, as is the case with the other issues I reported. But in any case, as I said above, I wanted to keep my list to issues that were consistently reproducible and (in most cases) had rather straightforward fixes that could be implemented by Dell.

Additionally, even if throttling is a widespread issue (in the general population, not just among people posting here) and it's caused by a hardware issue as opposed to specific use cases or a software problem, my guess is that the fix in that case would likely not be straightforward, or even possible. One possibility MIGHT be adjusting the BIOS thermal maps to trigger the fans earlier, but if that wouldn't do it, the only options I can see would be significantly reducing the CPU/GPU clocks or delivering a more robust cooling assembly. The former likely wouldn't be acceptable to customers (especially those who don't experience throttling at all with the current configuration), and I doubt the latter would even be possible while retaining this system's size and weight targets. As we've seen with other systems (like the rMBP), some amount of throttling seems to be de rigeur in the thin and light performance market; the rMBP can't even draw all of its required POWER from its AC adapter, instead draining the battery when it's under heavy loads. Whether or not it's reasonable to build a thin and light system with high-performance components that might need to throttle when subjected to prolonged workloads that stress the CPU and GPU simultaneously is a separate question and a design decision, but it certainly seems that there's a market for that type of machine. After all, few workloads place prolonged high stress on both the CPU and GPU, so I would imagine that most owners get the benefits of a thin and light system AND the high-performance components without ever encountering throttling. And as I said earlier, with this system in particular, it seems there are several people who never encounter throttling even while playing modern games for several hours uninterrupted.