XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

My L521X is among the first batch but I can do this (keeping one finger on one virtual button while moving the cursor with another finger).

 

In my case, evident in just a few minutes. Running Prime95 and with Furmark on a 1920x1080 burn-in, I got sub-200MHz clocks. Stop Prime95, and within ten seconds you're back up at 645MHz (then higher).

 

Still no dropped connections and still good interaction with BT, but performance isn't perfect in all locations. I have found one location where performance is only slightly better than before. I will repeat tests from earlier to find out if something has changed.

 

Hey guys, I would like some opinions about Factory Refurbished units of the XPS15 L521X.

I'm about to purchase one, and I found very attractive prices (like U$ 1300) for a top config.

Are they reliable ? I mean, I always heard that HP refurbished are junk, but Dells are always good and get no problems at all.

Thank you very much !

 

If you game or want decent wifi no.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

It appears I've spoken too soon. WiFi on my new XPS 15 is turning out to be pretty flaky.

For the first day or so, performance was very good. Higher link speeds, higher signal quality, and higher actual transfer rates than I'd had before. Plus, the network connection wouldn't drop by itself, and hooking up a BT mouse wouldn't cause it to drop, either.

While the connection stays up, signal quality and throughput have started to vary wildly. Get close to the AP, and performance is great. Further away, in my "normal" locations, I sometimes get great signal level (75% plus) and good performance (65%+ of near-to-the-AP speeds), but other times it drops through the floor -- especially throughput. I've seen it drop by a factor of 50 or more.

I'm going to fiddle with my AP and interference sources to see if I can find a cause for the sudden change in performance.

 

Well my replacement finally arrived, it came with the Killer N 1202 card installed.
There is somewhat of an improvement in download/ upload speed. Download and upload have increased by a good 20 Mb. however the range is still terrible which is the main thing to me as most of the time i take my laptop with me I am nowhere near the router. Even just down the stairs it struggles to even see the router. I have no interest in calling up tell tech support ever again so I think i'll be buying a wireless adapter.

Besides this it's all working fine. I don't know weather I am just lucky with this or not but just like my old laptop this one does not throttle at all and plays games great.
I've played games life Battlefield 3, Far Cry 3, Crisis 3 all on decently high settings, it never drops below 40 fps and I've played for long periods of time without any hinder whatsoever. Guess i'm just lucky .

I do notice some of the differences that were mentioned a couple of pages ago between this an last years model

 

Just as an update, failed speakers and failing hard drive both been replaced by dell. The tech hasnt really done a good job with the internals, one of the screw holes on the battery plastic had been split open, and underneath the battery attaching the touchpad to the computer, one of the main screws has been completely rounded off.

In other news, anybody having any trouble with intel's new display drivers?

 

Mine was a refurb, wifi connector was physically broken, speakers and hard drive were failing within the first six months, and still has the throttling issues. Honestly, I can't say this is what all refurbs are like, but at the very least if your in the UK you'll get some decent warranty support if anything does go wrong. Just my two cents.

 

Installed on release day, but it didn't play nicely with IE, so I rolled back.

Will wait for an update.

 

Had problems with it. Desktop windows manager kept crashing/disabled on startup. Rolled back as well.

 

Just got my xps 15 this morning, so thought I would reply to this. Been testing the WiFi, and it has excellent range, full signal everywhere in my house. No pixel grid either which some people are seeing. So far really pleased with the laptop.

 

Been on many lengthy calls to Dell this morning after being on my third fan & second motherboard.

Dell verbally agreed that it is a systemic problem with the machine and would not be fixed by any amount of motherboard / fan swaps. They would not put this in writing (obviously).

Dell have agreed to do a full refund (via the reseller) which I'll hopefully receive at some point.

 

can you post maybe a picture of your screen...i wonder how a screen without the pixel grid would look like on the xps!

your post is making me to consider asking for a replacement, though my current one, besides the grid issues, have little wifi or throttling problems at the moment...hate to receive a replacement with every issues compounded...

 

Ok, one slight issue I found with it. The dell synaptics driver is beyond crap. Two finger scrolling is literally unusable with it, as it keeps jumping to the bottom of the page, and is overall twitchy. I fiddled around with the settings for ages, but still couldn't get it to work. I instead decided to install the stock driver from Synaptics, and this fixed the issue. The scrolling is a joy to use now.

The only downside is for some reason the trackpad doesn't recognise 4-finger gestures using the stock driver. That is only a small downside though, but it would be nice if I could reconfigure the three finger ones to allow me to clear everything to reach the desktop, like the four-finger dell one did.

Has anyone else had this issue?

 

Update:
I had the Heatsink and Fan replaced today by Dell and temperatures are definitely better. I can get it to throttle if I run a synthetic burn in GPU test but all the games I play no longer trigger throttling. So that's good enough for me.

The replacement heatsink and fan was the same model as before, just that the tech cleaned off the old way over applied thermal compound and that seems to have done the trick.

 

I had the same two finger > jump to screen bottom problem. Rolled back to an old version, but may try the Synaptics driver. Can you point me to the one you used please?

Quite how this driver cr4p gets out of Dell QA is another question of course

 

For me this one, (synaptics 16.2.12.17, A01) is working fine:
Driver Details | Dell US

 

Drivers | Synaptics

This is the one I used. Dell really need to sort this out, since the trackpad is the best I have ever had, but their crappy driver ruined it. They should stop messing with the scrolling and just keep it as Synaptics intended.

If anyone can figure out how to get the four-finger gestures working with the stock driver, it would be appreciated.

 

Yeah its really funny because I thought the touchpad wasn't all that great but when I dual booted Ubuntu 13.04 (beta which has Dell's Sputnik project built in), it was perfect and just as good as my MBP for two scrolling.

 

Does the driver help with cursor movement when you "click"



Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

Sorry not to update sooner. I had the Dell tech out last week to apply the "hinge wifi fix" and I can reveal that unfortunately it hasn't fixed the problem.

I was expecting the fix to do something with the antennas, possibly have them routed within the hinge itself but it turns out the new service pack involves placing a number of mylar stickers within the hinge in order to shield out interference. They did say it would probably only be effective if you already had the screen/antenna update, and tbh even though I was supposed to have this done on the previous visit when they replaced the wireless card I'm not entirely convinced the tech actually did this, he was a bit reluctant to spend too much time on the service call.

Anyway, I've wasted too much time on this so reluctantly the laptop is going back for a full refund.

 

I guess I've been lucky. Wifi is not as strong as my other laptops but works fine (1 bar less). It no longer overheats while gaming either after Dell tech came out and replaced the heatsink+fan and thoroughly cleaned up the old thermal compound. No dead pixels and no noticeable uneven backlight spots on the LCD either. Trackpad works just fine in Ubuntu 13.04 beta as well although I couldn't totally fix the cursor jump on click issue but there was a synaptics driver tweak that helped a lot (80% better). The issue should be 100% fixable in software though.

I only use Windows for gaming and have a monitor, mouse, and keyboard for that so I can't really speak to touchpad in Windows. I can actually get 5+ hours of battery life in Ubuntu 13.04 with wifi on and about 50% brightness; more is possible with some tweaking.

 

Oh great, another Linux user. I'm not alone !

silentjudge, I've got a pretty decent behaviour of the touchpad by tweaking the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf file. I added to the synaptics section the following parameters:

Option "VertHysteresis" "66"
Option "HorizHysteresis" "66"
Option "FingerLow" "20"
Option "FingerHigh" "35"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "110"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "110"

And my cursor doesn't jump anymore.

 

duplicated.

 

I have pretty similar to that.

Option "VertScrollDelta" "60"
Option "AreaBottomEdge" "4100"
Option "CoastingSpeed" "40"
Option "FingerLow" "30"
Option "FingerHigh" "50"
Option "VertHysteresis" "66"
Option "HorizHysteresis" "66"

EDIT:
I changed FingerLow to 25, seems to have helped.

 

I'm having a similar experience (on a new machine), which is good. I can get GPU throttling to happen quite quickly with Prime95 running alongside Furmark, but I can't seem to convince the system to do it while in-game. During many games (e.g. Crysis), GPU temp never gets above 70 degrees C. Very happy with the graphics performance.

 

Update on Wifi.

Looks like even in my new machine, Wifi is not "fixed". My first several hours with the machine were not indicative of regular performance -- I had hit a "perfect storm" of ideal conditions: 1) Room where Wifi access point had its door open; 2) no other systems in the house in use; 3) suspect other 2.4GHz networks nearby weren't very active (late at night); and 4) wasn't using my Bluetooth mouse.

So, after lots of evaluation, I can say that the 2.4GHz Wifi in the XPS 15 remains not great. If it had been better, it would have been an indication of an actual "fix" in production from Dell (machine built end of March), but no such luck. What I've found:

- Fairly sensitive to BT interference, but then again all 2.4GHz systems are, and I have no way to truly measure the impact
- About 75% of the 2.4 Ghz Wifi reception of other laptops I have when in the same location, if the AP is on the same side as the front of the screen
- Serious signal loss when the back of the screen is directly facing the AP (in troublesome areas, throughput goes down to nearly zero)
- BT mouse occasionally jumpy
- Intermittently, I get okay performance
- Despite the above, a very "stable" connection (no dropouts, even when adding a BT device)

In other words, go somewhere where reception is a bit low anyway, and sit in a corner with the back of the screen facing your Wifi AP, and things get very, very slow. Why/how the connection stays up in this situation I don't understand. (With my old XPS 15, built Sep/Oct 2012, I got weak performance, and dropouts every 10 minutes or so in the same location.)

But: The card comes to the rescue. In situations where 2.4Ghz is basically giving me no ability to communicate, 5GHz delivers about what I get from my ISP (15Mbps down), even through a wall. InSSIDer tells me I'm an idiot because my link score can be 40 (or lower), but it beats the 2.4 band for sure (link score of 100 there, BTW -- wacky). Overall, it works for me, and all it took was putting the router on a slightly higher shelf.

For those not familiar with SmallNetBuilder and wondering about their Wifi, here's a couple of good articles:

- 5 Ways To Fix Slow 802.11n Speed - SmallNetBuilder
- The Best Way To Get Whole House Wireless Coverage - SmallNetBuilder

The second article doesn't tell you want you want to hear, but it's useful for those who actually want fast Wifi. Take a look at the rest of the site as well, especially if you're buying a new router or NAS -- these guys really know what they're doing.

 

I replaced the thermal compound on the heatsinks. Used Articlean to fully clean everything and then applied Noctua NT-H1 compound. Temps are lower at idle but while gaming, it makes almost no difference (I think 1C diff). I think at the end of the day, it just comes down to the maximum thermal dissipation of the HSF in the XPS 15 is not fully adequate.

 

Another XPS 15 story XD


I bought my XPS in the first quarter of this year. Everything looked good, Dell were even putting the newest variant of the processor (Ivy Bridge Q1/13).

Quick spec list: 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD w/ 32GB SSD, i5 Ivy Bridge, Nvidia GTM 640 w/ 2GB RAM, 7 Pro. So for a $2,200 NZD laptop, a very good deal and certainly much better spec'd than its MBP opposite. Big day arrived, and I got it out and running all the usual updates, got rid of some bloatware and loaded my stuff on. Burned the new processor smell out with 4 hours of Halo, nothing wrong. Smooth game play, WiFi connection v. good.
It lasted about a week like this until the problems began...

First off, the PowerShare USB just dropped. Boof. Gone, not even recognizing a device plugged in, let alone charging my phone at night. So on the line to Dell, and managed to resolve it after a BIOS update and 2 Intel USB driver updates. Works fine.

Next up, realized that the XPS wasn't staying in sleep mode. Sure, I could put it to sleep, and come back within an hour, instant resume. Come back in the morning after sleeping all night, and the process was similar to a reboot from hibernation. Not useful, and a pain in the . (Yes I did configure ALL the possible power options and combinations thereof not to do this, yes it was plugged in). Back to Dell support.

This was the interesting part. The Dell rep literally made sure that I had the power settings sorted, then sent a tech out to "replace parts". Just like that. No info on what parts where being replaced or anything. So the tech comes, does usual diagnostics, then pulls it apart. Swaps a brand new screen in (cover and all), brand new motherboard, audio chip and port chip. Puts it back together and signs off. Sure enough, problem not solved. Just yesterday, I discovered the handy dandy menu for the Intel Rapid Start software.

Yep, thats right. The Intel Rapid Start software had a 125min timer set to that after sleep mode was initated (power mode S3), Rapid Start would wake the laptop up, and move it to the so-called S4 state, or hibernation. Tested this with a 5 min timer, sure enough had the pulsing status light right up to the 5 mins, then it starts for about 30 sec, then shuts down, no lights or anything.

The point of that is, I'm amazed that Dell asked about the traditional power settings, but didn't even mention Intel Rapid Start, something I'd only read about in the specs on their site before purchase.

So now I'm having a look around the various Intel options paired (Rapid Storage) with the 32GB SSD. Turn the data traffic mode from enhanced to accelerated and... Heat. I have SpeedFan 4.49 installed, a really useful utility and the temp readings went through the roof.

Before, the CPU and cores were about 50-53C and the GPU at 45C. Suddenly, all temps were 60C on average, usually above. I tried to open up Halo or Minecraft with all the settings ramped up as I usually do, and the heat went nuclear. CPU was showing 95C at the lowest and the GPU was toasting 85-90C. The fan was maxed out at 3700RPM, and the heat just kept rising. I didn't get into throttling issues, as I was too worried about heat damage to continue.

Shut all programs down and ran a cooling cycle using SpeedFan, but even with the the Pwm1 at 100%, the fan roaring at 3700RPM, the temps bottomed out at about 65C across the board. After doing more research into the Intel Rapid Storage software, I discovered the accelerated mode puts a huge amount of traffic across the CPU, resulting in massive temp changes. No warnings for this ANYWHERE, so I quickly turned it back down to enhanced. Ran another cooling cycle and suddenly, the temps dropped to on average, about 55C for the CPU and anywhere from 20-45C for the GPU.


Haven't had any heat issues since, but I've had to keep SpeedFan running to monitor heat and to control the fan speeds. Under the normal Dell Active cooling policy, the fans will drop to about 1000RPM, or even off when the temps get to the 50s. Then itll warm up a bit, and the fan will ramp right up to 3700RPM. Very annoying and noisy. SpeedFan keeps the fan speed moderated at anywhere from 2200RPM to 3600RPM depending on the load. This results in a slightly louder operating level, but a cool and fast laptop. It'll probably mean the fan fails sooner than expected, but I'd rather a busted fan in a few years than heat damaged components in 3 months.

And aside from the noise of the air rushing through the too small exhaust port, there isnt any more sound than usual, so I guess, this is probably as good as I'm going to get.

Out of interest, I noticed when the tech pulled the laptop apart, that the fan had a very small effective blade area and the individual blades were tiny. Does anyone know if a Forcecon replacement such as this

Forcecon DFS601305FQ0T Cooling Fan DFS601305FQ0T,F98S, 4JGM6FAWI00, DP/N: W3M3P 0W3M

for a L502X would fit in the fan bay and plug into the board?

The blade design seems far superior, and looks like it would actually move some air over the heat pipe radiator at far less RPMs than 3600.... Thoughts?

Cheers, sorry for the long post!

 

I looked at the pictures I took when I removed the back cover and the fan we have is a FCN (Forcecon) DFS661605FQ0T FB8X. Judging by the screw placements, it probably won't fit. The fan you linked though says 10CFM and ours is only 7.4CFM. (CFM is measure of amount of air pushed, higher is more air, so higher CFM = more cooling in this case)

Another weird thing is when I google that DFS..., it turns up:
http://www.mrsparepartsonline.com/c...pu-cooling-fan-dfs661605fq0t-xkd45-cn-0xkd45/
But thats not the fan in our laptop.

This is the fan in the L521x:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Cooling-Fan-for-Dell-XPS-15-L521X-37XGD/731810599.html

It looks like the Dell Part Number for the fan is 37XGD, which is printed on the cooling fan.
http://www.waresphere.com/store/dell-xps15-l521x-cooling-fan-37xgd.html
That has the same mounting points as the FCN fan I have in my laptop. So it should fit. The difference is its made by Adda, which is a pretty common PC fan maker.

 

my battery's max charge is 95%... anyone else?

 

Im a little confused... isnt this link Cooling Fan for Dell XPS 15 L521X 37XGD-in Fans & Cooling from Computer & Networking on Aliexpress.com

and this link Cooling Fan of Dell XPS 15 L521X 37XGD

the same fan, from different sides? Also, that IS the fan thats currently in my laptop, with the useless blade design...

I wonder if any of the mounts for the forcecon fan i posted before would line up sufficiently to be able to replace it... ill have to take several photos when the tech comes. Dells sending another guys with still more parts (?) to attempt to fix the heating issue...

This will be interesting XD I was hoping to be able to fit a more powerful fan in that would achieve the same airflow as now, but at lower rpm, then have some extra to give when the loads come up.

Right now, CPU is at 54C and the GPU is at 50C, and the fan is maxed at 3600RPM to keep that stable. =/

 

Im a little confused... isnt this link Cooling Fan for Dell XPS 15 L521X 37XGD-in Fans & Cooling from Computer & Networking on Aliexpress.com

and this link Cooling Fan of Dell XPS 15 L521X 37XGD

the same fan, from different sides? Also, that IS the fan thats currently in my laptop, with the useless blade design...

I wonder if any of the mounts for the forcecon fan i posted before would line up sufficiently to be able to replace it... ill have to take several photos when the tech comes. Dells sending another guys with still more parts (?) to attempt to fix the heating issue...

This will be interesting XD I was hoping to be able to fit a more powerful fan in that would achieve the same airflow as now, but at lower rpm, then have some extra to give when the loads come up.

Right now, CPU is at 54C and the GPU is at 50C, and the fan is maxed at 3600RPM to keep that stable. =/

 

Those two fans look the same but the one in my Dell is a FCN (Forcecon) branded one whereas the second one is an Adda branded. That's what I was trying to point out, the brand/manufacturer difference.

Is this at idle or load? I usually see 45-50C idling with no fan speed control (low or no fan)

 

Anyone taken a look at the airflow on the machine?

Where does the fan get the air from?

Seems to my eye it's quite a mission for it to pull the air from the front.

 

What program are you guys using to measure idle temps?

 

HWMoniter, Speedfan, OpenHardwarrMoniter, etc all work fine.

 

It pulls air from the (screen) hinge area, specifically the two sides and then exhausts it out the middle of the hinge area. It's pretty much the same as a MacBook Pro 13". The MBP 15" smartly uses dual exhaust fans, something Dell sadly didn't copy but should have.

 

After ordering my XPS before stumbling across this forum, I was a bit concerned mine would exhibit wifi problems, but I've found it's the best performing laptop/tablet in the house. I've got 2 access points into my network, at diagonal corners of the house, normally when you're next to one I get max or one lower bars, but the other access point has 2. Trying the XPS, I get full bars on both networks, and can see 3 or 4 more of my neighbour networks. This is a well used wifi network too with plenty of devices all fighting for attention, when testing there were 3 laptops in total on the wifi network in the same room.

My XPS does come with the killer card and was a little longer coming from Dell Outlet than you would expect, I wonder if it got the fix at the factory before shipping.

I'm going to try the throttling tests later.

mike

 

I use speedfan as it can control the pmw for the fan to an extent. Having written the last comment, the situation has worsened.

Where the fan would max at 3700RPM to try and hold back gaming temps at 80C or there abouts, the fan now has to run 4400RPM. Laptop is elevated and everything.


The previous temp readings were at idle!

Sure the temps were normal, but the fan had to run at 3500RPM to maintain those. And when im gaming, the temps get to about 80C and slowly creep up over an hour or so after that.


Now, the fan is at 4400RPM to try keep up with that slow rise, and its losing out at the rate of 1 degree per 25 mins or so...

Dell tech is coming tomorrow, along with a CoolerMaster U3 pad. The XPS is great, and I love what it can do, just so powerful and fast. If it didnt heat up like it does, it'd be perfect

 

Are you happy with the U3 as a solution to your overheating problem?

After paying over £1k for a laptop i'd not be!

 

Is there a really good game, with free trial, to allow me to test the throttling, and what would you see?

I'm not into gaming, really more interested in a super fast development PC, with video encoding speed, but would like to know that I could game if I wanted, and more particularly I don't want to find I've got a dud, after I've gone past the point of returning it.

cheers

mike

 

Download a synthetic test like FurMark

 

I've run this one, but nore sure what I'd expect to see, I'm get 9-10 frames per sec at 1920x1080 and a GPU temperature of 68 degrees C, but there's no obvious change from the second it was started to 5 minutes in.

mike

 

Are you sure you are looking at the gpu(or the right gpu) temp?

You need gpuz for that. Select the nvidia core.

Run furmark at a lower res in window and watch gpuz

Mine hits 80 at the 20 min mark if i run prime95 sooner.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

Hey guys, ordered my L521X yesterday, I asked the seller if she could load Win 7 on for me and she says that this newer model might have complications with Windows 7 and will NOT be able to function properly on the Win 7 platform. This can't be true right? I checked the model number on dells website and sure enough there is 64bit drivers for Win 7. I haven't owned a laptop in quite a few years, (desktop gamer & oc'er) I heard good reviews for this and read a fair amount in this thread, but if you could give me any tips or tricks that could save me down the line it would be appreciated, most stable bios version etc.. I will post my specs if that helps at all,

i5 3210m
GT 630m 1gb
128gb m-sata, 500gb hdd
8gb 1600mhz

Thanks very much

 

It would be fine with Win 7 . You just need the Win7 drivers instead of the Win 8 .

 

Im running Win 7 Pro, don't like 8 XD

And yeah its great. The 'magic' of 8 is missed without a touch screen, or so I am told, but anyway...


UPDATE! the Dell tech came, didn't bother with a new motherboard, but did redo the thermal compound, the original looked a bit thin. Also, brand new fan, changed from a Forcecon one with tiny blades to an Adda one, which seemed to have larger blades (to my eye). Also, the U3 arrived, and together with a new fan, new compound and 3 1800RPM coolers chilling the intakes, the temps are good!

After winding the onboard fan back to just 1200RPM, and leaving the U3 fans idling at about 900RPM, and then loading it to the state I mentioned before (Skype, Chrome, iTunes, which was 62C at 3600RPM), SpeedFan is now reporting temps of 47 and 49C for the cores and 38C for the GPU!

Can say I'm happy with that. Im about to run a stress test, and we'll see what numbers we get. And aside from everything else, the U3 looks awesome too XD

 

I decided to go a little extreme and removed the Bluray drive altogether since I never use it. This helps with better/more air intake and its definitely lowered temperatures by at least 8-10C. This along with setting the Power profile in Windows to disable turbo boost (max 99% CPU freq), the temperatures are very acceptable. Running FurMark alone I'm seeing no more than 63C on the GPU and CPU. Running Prime95 alone, I'm seeing no more than 74C on the CPU. Running FurMark and Prime95 torture test together, CPU is around 83C and GPU is 74C. Not bad for fully pegged, which even most games won't do.