XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

16GB DIMMs don't exist yet, so there's no way to test 32GB in this system yet, and therefore no way to know whether it will work for certain. Intel says their CPU (which includes the memory controller) will support it, so I bet it will, but Dell says it only supports 16GB total. Sometimes there's a maximum amount of RAM per DIMM in addition to a max total RAM, but neither Intel nor Dell shows that spec. You'll simply have to wait until the right hardware exists before anyone can answer whether 32GB will work.

 

Ah, I understand now. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, because I was looking at the list of CPUs on Intel's site the other day and I saw that, but I guess we'll have to wait and see until that hardware is available. :/

 

I will be opening my xps to replace the SSD. I was thinking to also replace the thermal paste with a high performance/quality one. I assume that the replacement of the thermal paste voids the warranty. But I am wondering, how Dell can find out that I replaced it? Is there a sticker or something that is getting teared when removing the heatsinks?

 

there is no seal, and they will only void the warranty if you cause damage, they do not care if you swap the paste. did mine and all is well, its well stuck on though, be careful removing it.

 

What do you guys use to remove the default paste? Also, how much of a difference does it make in system temperatures?

 

I bought a refurbished XPS 15 (L521X) off ebay recently and had nothing but problems with it. Two on-site technicians visits and sent it off to the Dell center once. After that I asked them for a replacement unit. In the end they gave me the new Haswell 9530 as a replacement! I must say I couldn't be happier. It is so much better than the L521x. I've been considering replacing the 32GB mSATA with a 256 or 512GB SSD and install the OS onto it. Any thoughts on if it is worth it?

 

I found these cloths here

I think the 16-17.5in Wide cloths will work. I've measured them against the cheap paper cloth they put in the laptop for delivery (a friend of mine got his laptop already), and its almost the same lengths. Is anyone willing to try buying these to check if they will fit?

EDIT: I think it's a smidge too wide...The size underneath it is a lot less wide, but I think it might be OK. What do you XPS owners think? the bigger one or the smaller one?

 

Hopefully this week we will get some answers on the shipping date for those who ordered in February.

 

This came up a few pages ago either here or on the M3800 thread, and whoever did it mentioned it dropped his CPU and GPU temperatures by about 10 C, which is quite significant. And no, swapping the paste won't void your warranty directly, but yes if you experience a failure that could reasonably be caused by not putting the new paste on correctly, that technically wouldn't be covered. As to how or even whether Dell could prove that you changed the paste, I have no idea.

UPDATE: Found the post, quoted below:

 

king1153, if you are searching for a cloth, have a look at Crumpler's "The Slip 17 Widescreen for MacBook Pro":

https://www.crumpler.eu/index.cfm?seite=laptop-accessories&sprache=DE&productID=5976

They fit quite well. They were designed for the 17" MacBook Pro that isn't built anymore. Because of that the cloth is on sale for a special price (at least here in Germany).

 

I don't think that site ships to the US. I'm fine with paying more, but just to clarify, is 36,8 x 22,9 cm the correct measurements for the XPS 15? The website I posted can also do custom cloth sizes, but how does that size fit? Is it too wide?

 

Thank for your answers guys! I have two more issues with the laptop at the moment but I can not figure out if they are hardware or software related:
* When I use the edges of the touchpad the cursor speed is lower compared to the speed of the cursor when using the center of the touchpad.
* Sometimes the touch screen works and some times not (I do not even get the visual feedback)
Anyone experiencing the same issues?
Thank you.

 

I'm going to use this trusty paste:

Amazon.com: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 3.5 Grams: Computers & Accessories

If anyone has something better in-mind, please share!

 

king1153, I haven't measured the dimensions of the Crumpler 17W Slip, but it covers the black rubberized area of the XPS 15 nearly exactly. The approx. 2 cm wide strip at the hinge remains uncovered.

 

For those using this laptop the 3200x1800 screen res. means you have to set scaling to enjoy viewing the internet and mail. What res. and magnification do people use? I use 3200x1800 with 200% but the menu text is still tiny. Any other combinations that users find better?

Also I am just browsing the web and plugged into AC and the fans power up and down and whine..is this normal.. Is there a way to see what the temperature is of the CPU? As this runs hot even with little load from the looks of it. I am still in my 15 day trial period so deciding whether to keep it or fork out an extra $600 and get a 512GB / 16GB MacBook Pro equivalent...

 

isopropanol spray and camera lens wipes as they are lint free ( I had to use cotton buds to get it from between the surface mount parts)

it may be slightly conductive so I suggest the ceramique version or the arctic cooling mx paste you can get. I used AC MX2 as I had some.

 

I'm using 3200x1800 with 150% scaling. I like it small Sometimes I have a good laugh at microscopic small dialog windows from legacy applications, that don't scale at all.

 

Ah, cool. Thanks for that! Yeah, I saw the Ceramique version on Amazon, but wasn't sure as it lacked a star (in reviews) in comparison to the one I linked in this thread. Also, do you need to entirely remove the board from the system? Or is it something you can do while it's still in the chassis?

Does anyone know if running the notebook at 3200x1800 would affect battery life more than running it at perhaps 1920x1080? Even though 3200x1800 is pretty to look at, it's not much a difference for me, and if can save battery life, I'm all for it.

 

I have ordered in January and it is still in pre-production and the estimated date is 25/03...

 

Same here. I ordered 27.01.2014 and ETA is 25.03.2014. (Germany)

 

On my wife's XPS 15 we got bluescreens with the original 331.65 nVidia driver and as well with the new 334.89 driver. Disabling or enabling Intel Rapid Start didn't influence the behaviour. As a last try I made a fresh install of the original Dell provided 331.65 driver yesterday, but my wife got another bluescreen with it today. 5 Bluescreens in 4.5 days - time to ask for next business day onsite support. I will call them later when I'm back home. I hope I get through to one of the good employees in the tech support.

In contrast to my wife's XPS 15, my XPS 15 works flawlessly.

 

Regarding touch screen randomly turning off - you need to enter Device Manager->Human Interfaces->USB Device-> Right click -> Properties and tick something like "Do not turn off after a while" in the Power tab (sorry, can't check the exact names right now)

Cheers

 

It's totally worth it. If you've never experienced a full SSD system, you'll never want to look back after you have. Trust me, yes it is that big a difference. I've used systems that are 4 years old that feel fast because they have an SSD, and brand new systems that don't have them feel much slower by comparison.

I use 3200x1800 at 150%, which makes for a slightly smaller UI than 1920x1080, but I have good vision. However, some apps simply don't support scaling of any kind, in which case they'll be small no matter what you do. Not sure about an app to check CPU temperature (I'm sure others will help here), but to figure out what's running maybe check Task Manager and sort by the CPU usage column?

Read the Owner's Manual at support.dell.com, which will show you how to remove the thermal assembly (and everything else).

Running at a lower resolution shouldn't affect battery life much if at all; you'd be better off turning the brightness down a notch or two. Why pay extra for the QHD+ panel only to run it at a regular resolution anyway?

The permanent fix for this is to install the touchscreen firmware update on support.dell.com. Note that three people have said that this update bricked their touchscreen entirely and required a replacement display from Dell to resolve, but others (myself included) ran it just fine. And apparently despite the name, the touchscreen update also makes the touchpad work better.

 

Just finished talking with Dell (Poland). Oddly enough, the guy seemed surprised to hear about the whining noise issue, saying it's very rare for something like that to occur. They are sending a new motherboard. I hope it solves the issue.

 

I found that just reinstalling the driver was problematic - took a few tries, but eventually found that windows was reinstalling the older driver every time I uninstalled the current one. I was able to verify this in device manager - after the reboot, the old device/driver would be listed. So I disabled automatic driver updating, uninstalled the newer version of ndvidia drivers (334), rebooted, uninstalled old nvidia drivers (331), rebooted, reinstalled 334, rebooted (with Rapid Start disabled in sw and in BIOS) - and have had a few successfule resume from hibernations...not counting it fixed, but behavior is certainly better than before...

 

HWMonitor will do. It's free and simple. HWiNFO64 reads more sensors though.

 

Thank you for your answers guys. I can confirm the following:
* Upgrading the screen firmware fixed the issue regarding the screen's touch capability randomly turning off.
* Upgrading the screen firmware improved the performance of the touchpad. (especially for the edges).
* Accidentally I downloaded and installed the firmware for the HD screen but it turns out the two firmwares are the same. I did a binary bit to bit check of the two executables and I found them identical.
Thank you!

 

Ok new issue - when power is plugged in, the fan seems to be going cuckoo when just browsing through Internet. It seems this began after installing latest Touchscreen drivers. What the hell?

 

Ok guys, kinda unrelated, but my order now says "In Production" and I ordered on Feb. 2nd.

Does anyone know how much time is left with order? It still says March 17th as the estimated ship date, but I have a feeling it'll be shorter now.

 

I suggest Core temp, you can choose to place CPU temp, CPU load and CPU clock on system tray and fortunately you can choose even font size

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/php/download.php?id=3

 

Yeah. Once it is in production, it should be no more than 2 weeks to deliver. Hopefully this means no more shortages and all are orders will change now.

 

Well first, there aren't touchscreen drivers other than the ones included with Windows. There are touchpad drivers, and there's a touchscreen firmware update. But either way, I highly doubt that either would be connected to the fans running under any conditions. The fact that it only happens when you plug into AC suggests that it might be something with your advanced power plan settings, but I wouldn't recommend backing them down while on AC anyway since you presumably want maximum performance in that situation -- and just because you've got things set up for max performance doesn't automatically cause everything to run at full blast when not needed anyway. Is Task Manager showing high CPU usage from a particular process?

 

I ordered on the 3rd and nothing yet, still pre-prod.

 

I ordered mine on 285h of january but it is still in pre-production. Although I ordered from UK and everyone fro EU appear to get the same ETA 25/03

 

I am not sure if it is different with the m3800, but I ordered Feb 11 and it was in pre-production for only a day then went to production with a ship date of March 27. I am in no rush, but thought it should be noted that I think these titles don't carry much weight.

 

prplhaz4, according to the memory dumps the XPS 15 crashed with different versions of the nvlddmkm.sys. I think that the drivers were installed correctly. Anyway, the first crash was just three hours after delivery with the original Dell setup.

I will try like you suggested and uninstall the nVidia driver completely before installing the new version.

I have called the tech support this afternoon. They are sending out a technician to replace the mainboard, probably tomorrow or on Wednesday.

 

I actually think installing and turning on English language in Windows might have caused this issue. Switching back to Polish seemed to turn the fan off. Switched to English - fan turned on. Bizarre. I now deleted the extra languages altogether and fan seems to be ok...

 

Ok, the fan is back on...CPU usage seems to go pretty high up during normal browsing. Like 30-40%.

 

You are asking a Polish computer to speak English, so of course it will use more CPU. It's its second language, so it needs to think more.

 

Go to the Processes tab and figure out which application(s) are consuming that CPU time. Just knowing the overall usage doesn't help identify the culprit.

 

I ordered on the 2nd as well. Changed to "In Production" today. Estimated date didn't change though. Still 3/17/14 with next day shipping.

 

Very often McAfee starts to scan and CPU temp rises up rapidly and so the fan starts to run.

 

is this app permanently enabled on the machine or will the licence eventually expire? Also does having this installed slow the machine down?

 

You have 1 year of license for free.
I can't answer to second part of your question, I haven't uninstalled it until now because I'm waiting for a replacement.

 

+1. I got rid of it because I hate McAfee. Back on Windows 7 I used Microsoft Security Essentials since it's completely free. It's far from the best protection anymore, but it uses very few resources, has a clean interface, and doesn't annoy you with popups all the time -- plus again, it's free. And I didn't care that it didn't offer absolutely 100% bulletproof protection because frankly, I'm pretty careful with what I do with my system. If I were setting a system up for grandma, I might opt for something a bit more robust even if it means additional resource consumption. But in any case, apparently Microsoft has announced that they won't keep supporting MSE beyond a certain date (can't remember when that is) and it's not available as a standalone package for Windows 8 because it's built into the OS (now included under the Windows Defender umbrella).

If you feel the need for third-party anti-virus, Symantec seems to be back on their game with Norton Anti-Virus. They had a low point in the mid-late 2000s where NAV was slow, bloated, and had a terrible interface, but apparently somewhere around 2009 they massively overhauled the app and they seem to have kept it lean and among the top in terms of malware detection. Kaspersky also seems popular. That said, I haven't personally used either one in the last several years, and neither of those are free.

 

mcafee is quite often a pain in the , so yeah I'd be willing to bet it's a bit of a resource hog.

I'd uninstall it and go for MSE.

 

Oh, okay. Thank you, again. And yeah, I honestly liked the QHD+ resolution better (aesthetically). Do you think that resolution could affect performance in anyway? When I'm gaming or something like that?

So, correct me if I'm wrong -- The bluescreens are still coming, right? Which means that the Nvidia drivers may not have anything to do with it?

 

Well yes, trying to run a game at native QHD+ resolution will absolutely affect performance. Your GPU can't render all those extra pixels in a game without a performance penalty. I doubt you'd be able to play any games at QHD+ resolution. Newer games will all be too complicated for the GPU to render at that resolution while delivering a reasonable frame rates (and some of them don't scale their UIs to handle QHD+ resolutions very well anyway), and older games might run at reasonable frame rates even at QHD+ resolution but they're even more likely to have odd UI and display issues than newer games since older games simply weren't designed to handle that kind of resolution because it didn't exist back then. Running games at 1600x900 seems to be the common practice at the moment since it's a good balance between image quality and frame rate based on the capabilities of the GPU, though of course that general recommendation may have to be adjusted depending on the specific game.

 

Hi!

First post here been reading for a couple weeks.

I ordered mine (XPS15 with the 500GB SSD) on 2/11 and it has an estimated delivery date of 3/26, seems like forever....sigh.

 

If you have a Microsoft store nearby you can walk out with a system. I was able to do that last week.