XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

I played with similar things in Linux, for me the loadest whine can be eliminated if I disable turbo boost. (and forcing the cpu running at the lowest frequency saves about 0.5 W). There is still continuous whine when the battery is fully charged and AC connected, which does not seem related to cpu. There are other even fainter whine I noticed when using battery, the pitch is very high and seems change with the charge lefted in the battery, this kind of noise is almost impossible to notice if there are other sound, but is hard to ignore when I read book in otherwise dead silence.

I also checked the bios. I am not an expert but after a glance I did not find anything could be trivially changed to alter the FSB or something like that (there are some interesting bits about the throttling and ambient light sensor though). And for me it still defeat the purpose as it does not properly fix the problem, just hides it.

 

Thank you for your experience. Turbo boost seems to influence the noise. Some people suggest it could be cause by C-states switching of the last 2 i7 generations. Therefore I also tried some other tools and investigated so many combinations of different settings with two very powerful tools: "i7turbo,exe" and "throttlestop". Both can be found in some OC forums. But none of the c3 states, turbo boost disabling or changing the multiplier really helped. Be warned: these tools are nothing to play around with, you can easily brick your machine.

Bu interestingly with c-states adjustment altered frequencies and the tool i"disable_cpu_parking" can partly change or reduce the coil whining sound. So in general as stated before it is an sound comming from the rapid frequency or powerstate adjustments inside the cpu. - but that's nothing new.

@Dell: We need options in the bios to disable the different c-states as also desktop MBs have! I think, just an bios update with changed polling rate of frequencies of intel speedstep may finally solve our problems or at least enable people who are affected to limit their pain. Dell should be aware that also all their other models are affected the xps 12 and xps 14 for example.

But one think which is still wondering: Why to hell is the coil whining just present on AC use with full battery? Properly the battery filters something out if the laptop gets power from that (I suggest that even in loading, the battery is physically connected to the power supply of the whole motherboard. Therefore I'm very interested what would happen if one changes the dell power adapter to some other model.

Please Dell, fix your premium laptops! There hopefully there will be some solution via bios update. Maybe also some changes in the reference clock of 99.8 MHz could help to tune!?!

 

You are right! Such an expensive machine needs better support and the noise is not acceptable. My old xps Studio does a better job

 

Maybe we need someone to unlock the bios. There are some guys at bios-mods.com that may be able to help us.

 

You should start a new thread. I'll contribute to it and tell you what I've read so far.

 

I recommend this one. Amazon.com: Plugable UD-3000 USB 3.0 Universal Docking Station for Windows 8.1, 8, 7, XP (DVI, VGA, or HDMI to 2048x1152, Gigabit Ethernet, Audio, 2 USB 3.0 Ports, 4 USB 2.0 Ports, 4A AC Power Adapter): Computers & Accessories

 

I can further confirm this theory. My XPS 15 has been running fine for about a month, and I've used the Nvidia GPU some in Adobe apps, but never really stressed it. Not a gamer, but just to see what it could do I installed Serious Sam BFE and set everything on ultra (an old game, I figured this might work) Game ran pretty smooth and it looked great. But after 5-10 minutes the frame rate dropped to almost nothing. Reading along here, I deduced that the GPU was throttling... just like others, the GPU clock was dropping down to 135. Some here mentioned solving throttling problems by improving ventilation. I'd been running the game while lounging around, but I was careful to keep the bottom of the laptop bottom clear with plenty of air circulation, so I figured that couldn't be it. But I tried the game holding the laptop up in the air, and sure enough, no throttle. I maxed out everything, and the gpu stayed under 70C, game ran for over an hour. Before, I had the back of the machine resting against my leg and apparently that was enough to impede ventilation and throttle the GPU. I think this machine is ventilation-sensitive when running hard, especially in back, near the bottom of the screen. Is there anyone who still has throttling problems when the laptop is sitting normally on a hard surface?

My only problem now is that I've been sucked back into the world of monsters and rocket launchers. And damn those exploding monsters look good. I think there was a reason why I quit installing games on my work machine.

 

That's very disturbing. I haven't stressed my gpu yet. Anyway, how is your xps with the new mSATA? I remember you saying that you swapped the 32gb with a 256gb. My mSATA is in the mail. Any words of wisdom when I swap mine out?


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This is what crossed my mind a few pages back...

Sounds odd, but imagine a vacuum cleaner, ever noticed that it sucks harder when you put a smaller/thinner attachment on it? I think the fans accelerate the air through the machine better when it's just on its own feet as you effectively have a narrower 'opening' so more of a mini vacuum is created. When it's flat I can feel a stronger cool current from the sides and the air coming out of the back is hotter than when the back is raised. When I used the magazine I placed it very carefully so that it didn't cover the grill underneath and the foot bar was still separating the exhaust. My experience tells me though that with it flat the current through the machine is stronger and more heat is being drawn out.

jphughan, some of the throttling others have reported may be due to similar issues but it's also a fine line balancing the settings as the 750M can only do so much. Games run at 3200x1800 when you first play them so require configuration to avoid throttling. For a few minutes it did render max resolution on NFS Most Wanted and it looked ace, although the frame rate was a bit laggy.

I have since done some more gaming on NFSMW & Dead Space 3. DS3 can run at FHD & high settings with no throttling and less fan for hours no problem. NFSMW is always maxing out the fans and you have to tone down the graphics or you get throttling every few minutes. This says to me that the machine works fine up to its abilities but you need to get the settings right as if you overcook it then it throttles very easily despite being on a hard surface.

 

--> See my post before: Dangerous tools but which can be used to do some investigations about the coil whining sound problems

For all who want to investigate if they can get any curing for the coil whine problem some tools:
- Tool for disabling some C-states: (easy and safe, no much increase in power consumption)
Park Control: ParkControl is FREEWARE to tweak and disable Windows CPU core parking!

- Mighty tool with so many options to alter cpu (therefore dangerous! even multiplicators can be altered)
Throttle stop: many Options!: ThrottleStop 6.00 Now Available For Download - The Digital HQ

- another tool which allows some change of a c-state and intel EIST (the 2 tools before are the best)
i7 turbo: i7 Turbo Free Download

 

XPS 15 with OS on SSD is the only way to go. It flies. No excuse for running a system off HDD these days, and positively criminal on a machine as nice as this. The swap is painless when you know what your doing. It's been covered already. One thing that tripped me up was leaving the HDD with the original W8.1 system plugged in while I installed it fresh on the new SSD. Windows installer found the system partitions on the HDD and used them instead of creating new ones on the MSATA, so the system became unbootable when I wiped the HDD. Remove the HDD before installing Windows on the msata. And use care with the T5 screws, they strip easily. Don't over tighten. I stripped one about the 3rd time I opened the case and it was a real b.tch to get out.

Overall, the XPS 15 rocks. No problems to report, here. This system is a beast - fast, sleek and sexy. QHD+ IGZO display panel is to die for.

 

Just saw this post on the Dell forums: xps 13 - electrical noise - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community
Guy on the bottom says that it fixed the coil whine on his xps 15. Maybe you have already tried something similar, though?

 

Every week or so somebody comes on this thread and comments how 200+ posts is just too much to read all the way through. I'm inclined to agree, though I *have* read through them all. In response to this repeated request, I'm at the early stages of creating a wiki for the 9530. I'm no expert, though, and haven't even received shipment of the XPS 15 I ordered nearly a month ago, so I'm mostly just combing through this thread and duplicating the information in a cross-hyperlinked network of wiki pages over on Wikia.com.

With few exceptions, I am stealing other people's contributions and posting that content without attribution. For this, I apologize. I encourage each of you, time permitting, to take a look at the wiki ( XPS 15 Wiki) and correct my oversights, take credit for your work (or remove it, if you want to restrict it to this thread), or contribute fresh content. I am only through the first 500 posts or so, meaning I have more than 2,000 additional posts to incorporate before I catch up. Please be patient. I've never created a wiki before and don't know what I'm doing. If I need to change some setting so that guests can freely edit the wiki, somebody please let me know. I don't intend to micromanage this thing. I'm just trying to get it going as a public resource. *I* want to have something like this to use once my machine arrives, and on the Internet the easiest way to make something happen is to donate a little time and effort in that direction and see who else is interested in jumping on board.

For those that have contributed the bulk of the information I'm using here, you have my heartfelt thanks and my hope that you won't mind having your work plagiarized in this fashion.

 

Does not work on my machine :-(

 

I like the idea of a wiki but keep in mind that there are many versions of the XPS 15. When you go to the wiki, it seems like it's a wiki page for all XPS 15s (based on the URL of the page). If that's the case, you should make a subsection for XPS 15 9530. As you can see in this forum, the XPS 15 L521X is still just as active as this forum.

 

An excellent point. The wiki currently has the structure it has because I was creating it to satisfy my needs. Given that it currently has no content related to previous generations of XPS 15, I'm not sure it makes sense to have the home page simply be a branch page. Surely if we get that other content we can restructure the home page, and I have no objection if owners of previous generations of XPS 15 wish to reorganize the start page or make other changes to the way the wiki is structured. In general, I want to have as little control over this wiki as necessary. I really wish someone else had created it and I could just contribute content, but I was unable to find anything else that resembled it.

Thanks for adding the section on the BIOS, by the way!

 

I got the SSD version and I am very happy with it. As soon as I got the laptop, I resized the partition and created a new drive. Later, I remembered about creating a recovery disc. When I launched Dell Backup and Recovery utility, it said it cannot find the recovery partition or that it may have been corrupted. I can see through disc manager that the partition still exists. Is there anything I can do to get the recovery partition back?

 

Maybe try deleting the new partition you created? Sometimes those utilities have funny ways of identifying the target partition, so the presence of an extra one might throw it off. If that doesn't solve it, you might be SOL, but honestly a clean build isn't the worst thing. Or you could just get it configured the way you like with all the extra apps you want (but without your actual data) and take a system image that will become your own personal recovery partition, though if you use the built-in Windows tool for this purpose, it won't be able to live on the same disk as the one from which you're creating an image.

 

Had anybody ordered on or around December 6th have any tracking/status updates from Dell?

I saw a couple posts from orders on Dec 1 that people have received this/last week, but I think right in those couple of days is where Dell actually ran out of displays.

I ordered from Costco Canada on Dec 6 and their agents are unable to pull the status/tracking information. (I've called a couple of times, they know how to do it for the US orders, but they can't get the Dell website to cooperate with Canadian purchase order numbers.)

Just trying to figure out approximately when I might get it. It looks like new orders ship on around January 20th.

 

I Ordered on the 8th from Costco Canada.
I got the Dell PO and Order number by e-mail (on the phone they told me nothing could be done...)
In order to check it, I have to go to the dell site and put in the order number, and then "costco" as the client name.
I noticed that they ordered it on Friday the 13th. Maybe yours came in under the wire for the Friday te 6th, or not.
Anyway, for my order ,the dell status has been "In production" since almost the begining, with no change... (Of course I look at it several times a day
conclusion: just bug Costco.ca by e-mail.

 

I already tried deleting the partition. It didn't help. I also tried the steps mentioned here. That didn't work either.

Can you please post the contents of C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml? Also, please post the output of "detail partition" as mentioned in the above link so that I can compare what went wrong, assuming this file is the culprit.

 

I forgot to answer the main questions...
I have had an estimated delivery date of 27/01/2014 since the begining... so obviously affected by the shortage... Hope it changes when they get the displays in.
Hopefully you have better luck...

 

Great job with the wiki so far. I'm trying to find stuff to add but you seem to be on top of it!

 

New firmware update for the touchscreen is out. For both the FHD and QHD versions. I put the download link in the wiki. Documentation for the update is on that page also.

Latest Drivers - XPS 15 Wiki

Feel free to contribute to the wiki.

 

im selling mine, i cant return since past the period. has anyone experienced problems with the audio jack? with any of my headphones i hear in my headhones, but the built in mic in the headphones does not work.

 

If your audio jack doesn't work you can get it fixed for free. Why are you returning your laptop?

 

I just installed the new QHD+ firmware. It gave me a compatibility warning but I ran it anyway. Installation went smoothly and I just rebooted my laptop.

 

Thanks, I already had the PO # from one of my calls with them, but didn't know what to use as the company name. 'costco' worked.

Looks like mine went in on the 13th as well, with the same delivery date of Jan 27.

That's pretty terrible, considering ordering direct from Dell today would come quicker. But oh well.

 

Thank you. I had to uninstall the existing Intel 15.x driver before installing the 16.x version. Otherwise, installation was failing.

 

Just did the firmware update for the trackpad and touch screen.
The trackpad seems to be massively improved in both multi-finger gestures and click motion filtering (the cursor doesn't jerk around anymore when clicking). Two and three finger gestures both seem to work better. 4 finger still works about the same with 4 finger swipe up just not quite working well enough to be useful.

I did notice that the touch screen disabling was linked to the setting in the touchpad config that disables the touchpad when a mouse is connected (at least for me that was the only time it happened). I think that one might be entirely software related and probably not addressed by this firmware, but I haven't tried it so I may be wrong.

 

Where did you find the trackpad firmware? I want to put it on the wiki page.

 

I should've said touch panel. That software may or may not be related to the track pad, but there's definitely a difference. I don't know if they run the same controller or not, but like I said, and I've been messing with this for at least the last 20 minutes, I'm no longer experiencing the issue where when you click the trackpad, the cursor just moves. It's also not missing 2 finger clicks at all or 2 finger scrolling. I use 3 finger up and down for search/settings and those used to miss all the time as well and now work perfectly.

Maybe I'm just crazy...

Either way, you're correct. I should've stated touch panel.

 

ordered on nov 30th and have not received any shipping notice. still shows on "in production" this was ordered directly from dell.

 

How did you find this firmware update? I can see that the wiki link takes you to a Dell site, but I see no mention of this update in the Drivers page on support.dell.com for this.

 

I wiped my entire disk immediately after getting it, so my results wouldn't be helpful to you. Maybe another owner can help out here?

 

I found the firmware update on Dell's FTP site. It's listed there but it's not listed on support.dell.com. ftp://ftp.dell.com/published/Pages/xps-15-9530.html

 

That can happen because the ground pin and mic pin are sometimes switched on the male connector poles. Apple famously reversed the convention when they released the iPhone, and since then more and more headsets have adopted the "backwards" version to have iPhone compatibility, so if you have a headset that's the "right" way around, that could explain it. If you can get one, try an Apple headset to confirm.

 

Hmm, the update is clearly intended to pertain to the touch panel, hopefully to fix the issue of it becoming spontaneously non-responsive on occasion unless you either disable device sleep for it in Device Manager, otherwise when it stops responding you have to do something like reboot or disable and re-enable the device in Device Manager. I'd be surprised if this update is intended to do anything with the touchPAD since I would assume they use separate controllers, but I'd definitely be interested to hear whether others notice a difference there after applying this update. I don't use my touchpad often enough to be a reliable source of feedback.

Nice find, thanks! Didn't know about that page.

 

The battery life discussion seems to have disappeared recently. I've asked before without any answer, so I'll try it again. Has anybody tried to deactivate the touchscreen (not the display, of course) as described here ? Does it improve the battery life by disabling the hardware or is it a mere deactivation of drivers?

 

Its now listed in the support page as well.

 

I don't think that ordering from dell would have been any faster (except maybe the delay that Costco took to order on the 13th, because since I first checked, the date seemed o coincide with the estimated shipping date on the US dell site, plus a week for shipping (27/01/2014 is the estimated DELIVERY date). Of course the canadian dell site was and still is indicating a week earlier shipping date for some reason... Who understands.

 

I've just done the QHD+ Firmware update and it's a Synaptics thing. I can concur that two finger scrolling on the touch pad is massively improved. Before it would inconsistently jump the pointer around and all sorts as it struggled to recognise the gesture. Now it feels like a Mac...but better because it's not one. :thumbsup:

In terms of order statuses my replacement was put through on 4th Dec and was due before xmas, then it was delayed until 26th Jan. Now I'm back on the net after xmas I've discovered it was shipped on Boxing Day (26th Dec) so progress is clearly being made with at least some orders.

Happy days.

 

Oh yeah, I guess they show you the ship date in the shopping cart and the delivery date on the order tracking page. I just tried tossing it into the cart on the Canadian site and the estimated ship is January 25, so I really don't know why the costco orders are further back. (Since both of ours went in on the 13th, I feel like Costco batches orders together and gets a pallet at a time or something, so everyone that ordered in the same batch will get theirs at the same time)

 

I can also confirm that the two finger scrolling on the TOUCHPAD improved significantly after updating the firmware on the TOUCHSCREEN.

 

I know this reply to my comment is old, but I just found it while searching the thread for touchpad info.

Anyway, this is wrong. The coating on the area around the keyboard is NOT rubber, it is silicone, and isopropyl alcohol WILL NOT damage it. Moreover, isopropyl alcohol will not damage synthetic rubber. At my job, we use isopropyl alcohol to clean buna o-rings in critical high-vacuum applications where the slightest degradation of the o-ring can compromise the vacuum. Also, in the relatively exceptionally short contact durations involved in simple cleaning, alcohol will not damage plastic.

I'll repeat: the trackpad is glass, with no coating on it. If you're getting discoloration, use isopropyl alcohol to clean it; it's better than any other option.

 

That's great information. Thanks!

 

Hi everybody,

has anybody ordered the XPS 15 9530 top model in the last days? I have ordered two on Dec 27th, but both were cancelled today due to lack of parts. I guess it's the display. What I don't understand is that the model can still be ordered on the german Dell website.

Anybody with more luck?

 

I am wondering how to best back-up the recovery partition. Would backing up the partition with Clonezilla and then saving it into a USB pendrive result in a bootable USB pendrive? Or would it be better to use the Windows tool on the actual active partition? (even though that stores the current state including the created user, not the original state as found in the recovery partition). I am ordering two PCs, so I would prefer the recovery media not to contain users information.

 

I just ordered mine (mid tier).

I'm planning to change the 32GB mSata with a 480GB one the day I get my laptop.
Appearently this voids the warranty (void as soon as you open the laptop yourself, confirmed by Dell customer service)

But what if I've got a serious coil whine problem or something else... will I still be able to get parts replaced?

 

My top tier XPS 15 just arrived. Pictures and review comming soon

@edit: with coil whine which is very annoying... sounds like a HDD which is writing.. but I have a 512GB SSD :/