XPS 15 (L521X) Owner's Lounge

Alright, so im quite bummed by my laptop's performance lately. when gaming, it reaches temperature of around 80 degress celcius. when not, it stays at around 55. it makes my fps crazy low. sometimes, i only get a little more than 10 seconds. i've tried everything. elevating it, directing my fan onto it on highest speed. nothing works. what i wanted to know is whether the temperature is normal for L521X. Also, it only happens recently. The game (tf2) used to run smoothly. now it gets laggy. Thanks in advance.

 

It's normal and at 80C the computer will throttle itself until it gets under that.

You can go back and see what people have done to 'fix' the overheating issues including putting new thermal paste on the CPU and GPU.

 

Thanks man. If only I knew it is this ty. I wouldnt have gotten it. Even now, it is running at around 60degrees celcius. felt terribly hot at left side of laptop. geez. i guess my best bet will be to get cooling pad or something. thanks again.

 

frosty, question that comes to my mind is what changed? You stated it was working fine and then it started having heat problems - what changed? Software/driver changes? Some system settings change? Keeping your house warmer? It's a bummer but for sure the machine is "thermally challenged" and it's just a factor to deal with, sad to say.

 

I'm just curious, is there *anyone* in this thread that is entirely happy with their L521X?

Forums are to discuss problems for sure... it just doesn't seem like anyone has NOT complained about wifi or heat throttling, and said 'hey this thing rocks'

 

I said it....I couldn't be more happy with mine

 

I do for sure. I love this laptop. My wife originally got me a mid-range Dell XPS 15z at the beginning of 2012 and because of an issue with headphone plug and Dell couldn't get the part. After two months I've received the offer of exchanging my 15z with an XPS 15 L521X with a quadcore, 8GB, 750GB, 640M 2GB Vram.. Of course I gladly accepted that offer and it's much more faster and more beautiful laptop than the 15z. I also had no Wifi issues and throttling occurred in only a couple games which was basically fixed by using AS5 thermal paste and getting a Thermaltake laptop cooling pad. I do plan to get a replacement Adda system fan but so far I've had no luck with Dell shipping it to me because it's still on back-order after almost two months. I'm thinking about upgrading it with a SSD and 16GB later this year too.

Again I love this laptop and I think it's amazing.

 

I'm entirely happy with the present state of my L521x and the big reason for that is easy fixes and the cheap price.

See my original thoughts:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=9211732#post9211732

 

I love it mine its great!!! also remember most the people that come to this forum are the ones having issues or worried about something.. anyone with no issues you will likely not see them on here!

But my XPS 15 is great!!

 

Yes, I like it too, if I could get a good one. I mean without LCD "pooling effect issue", or touchpad issues....
I do not mind wireless problems or throttling......for what I do is OK.
I had so far, I think five XPS 15 L521x and none of them were as it should be, without the mentioned issues.
I still have two of L521x, one week old, that supposed to replace other one I got in March, (it was replacement too). I have to send it back, (maybe both of them).

Pooling effect issue:
LCD pooling effect - YouTube

Touchpad issues:
XPS 15 L521x touchpad clicking noise - YouTube

I had around eight L521x LCDs, and ALL of them suffered from visible "pooling effect", and only one had a few dead pixels.
It seems that Dell failed to make a good machine to build up the LCDs. It could be borrowed from Apple for a while.
None of the Mac Pro suffers from "poling affect", as far as I know.
If is not in the middle of the screen, is on the left and right edges of it. Could be noticed while closing/opening the lid, or with it opened, slightly tapping behind the LCD and you will see the liquid shaking. If does not do this, than you are a lucky one that got a good one.

 

What drivers are you guys using for the Killer N 1202? I've tried a ton of them and it seems like windows update or something corrupts the driver every once in awhile. I just keep my computer on sleep mode now because whenever I do a real reboot the wifi just stops working and says the driver malfunction?

 

I've only used the Windows Hibernate with my system regularly, but never had a driver problem after reboot.

I think my latest used driver was the one provided by Dell.

I *do* go in and delete the startup item that runs the Killer app ... you don't need that to run all the time, only once for setup/tuning.

 

Finally made the shift from HDD to SSD as my main OS drive.

I used a 256GB Sandisk Ultra Plus, and I am really happy with it. Internal speeds are like super fast If you want speed out of your OS and applications, go SSD.

The whole process is relatively easy, just trim the original drive down to a size smaller than the new SSD, use a cloning software like Casper Copy (I found it straight forward enough for me, but there are other options like EaseUS).

Cloning takes about 2 hours for 151GB worth of programs, OS and supporting files for program libraries (iTunes, some Lightroom etc).

Then, I unmounted the 32GB Samsung MSATA from RAID, which was acting as a cache for the old HDD, and now used as extra space


The only issue I'm having is Intel Rapid Start... again. When I first bought the XPS, I found after about 2 hours of sleep, it would transfer to a lower power state (Hibernation), without me having set it to via the standard OS sleep and battery settings.

Ages of fiddling later found that Intel Rapid Start Tech was the culprit, having some timer to wake the XPS up after 2 hours uninterrupted sleep, and then put it into hibernation, which means a longer wake up time in the morning, and messes with my overnight work schedule (Set programs to scan, update and so on at 3.30am), only they wouldnt run because the XPS is now in Hibernation, not sleep.

Anyway, I uninstalled rapid start, because with the advent of the SSD, it was no longer needed. But now the wake timer to hibernation thing is happening again, and the software isnt even loaded anymore!

Anyone with ideas on how to fix this?

Cheers

 

I think you should check your control panel, power options and find in details the hibernation settings.

 

Like I said, this is not occurring via the standard OS power/ sleep settings.


I've been through all the advanced settings, hybrid sleep, media settings, sleep timers the lot.



Any other ideas?

 

? Any of the 'convenience' Intel stuff (smart connect, etc.) that does things while the machine is "asleep"

? scheduled tasks

I'd personally uninstall pretty much all Intel stuff - you know, clean house - and then only install what you know you need. There's a mess of stuff put on the machines to optimize it for HD based OS/apps with SSD based caching, and you need none of it.

 

Just wanted to post a quick follow up... I received and returned my XPS 15. Overall I thought the design was quite awesome, and for what I paid in the outlet it was huge bang for my buck.

However...I gave the grid issue a chance, but could not get over it. On top of that, I had at least 15 dead pixels. I dont know if Dell would have replaced the screen or not (outlet?) but given that the grid bothers my eyes I didnt see getting a replacement that wouldnt bother me. One other minor issue....my laptop keyboard area always looked like I was eating smashburger olive oil garlic fries. I really liked the feel of that surface but man it was a fingerprint magnet.

Dell offered me $100 credit to not return it...which I didnt even consider due to the screen

Thanks all for your info and feedback in this thread.

Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk 4

 

I used the driver from the Dell web site as the 1202 is "officially" supported on this machine.

 

What OS are you running? I had a similar problem with the 1202 in another Dell system. After trying every 1202 driver I could get my hands on (from Dell and from Killergaming.com) I couldn't keep the 1202 working after a reboot.
WHen I load the driver, it works fine. I can connect to my wifi, etc. But, as soon as I reboot, device manager would show the WIFI not working. Oddly, even when it was working, if I went into Network Adapters, it would show the 1202 as DISABLED (even though it was working).

Ultimately, it was my VPN software (which is WIndows 8 compatible and works with other wifi adapters).

Any chance you're running Windows 8 with VPN software?

 

so today dell replaced me 15z with a regular 15. I've been noticing the wifi issue. Mine came with the killer card. at my apartment my 15z pulls ~35Mbs, the 15 got about ~23mbs. With periodic drops to around 5... but I updated the killer driver and now its returned 3 stable results at 35mbs + has anybody else had experience with the latest driver? is this a trick?

edit: nvm, its back down to low 20s. Think I can get dell to take it back and give me an alienware or something? I don't wanna get stuck with a bad system. They keyboard/palmrest on this is really nice though. super comfy.

 

Yeah I'm thinking I might do a complete rebuild in our mid-semester break... Just to save hassles. The SSD is running fine atm, and I've cleared most of the intel/ dell bloatware off (surprise surprise, goes a bit faster now XD), and done a bit of optimising through the OS, ensuring TRIM is on, etc.


My battery issue wasn't related to the bloatware or even the OS task scheduler.


Went to the Microsoft forums, and lo and behold, someone else with an XPS 13 from the same year had the same issue as me. Did the usual check in the BIOS under f2 for the adapter (yes, it was at 90w).

Turns out, Dells smart battery software messes with the standard charge/ discharge cycle/ system. I put the XPS onto a 5 day 'desktop mode', to work the battery a bit, after all, the XPS sits on my desk plugged in 24/7 so the battery is in danger of getting charge memory and whatnot.

So I ran the Dell configured battery enhancer thing. When it completed, the adapter, under no settings found anywhere on the OS, could be told to charge the battery, or the battery to accept a charge. The only way around this no-charge dilemma was to discharge the battery entirely, do the press-and-hold the power button for 10secs to discharge the components, and then start it back up, charger plugged in.

Finally, we have the orange pulsing light of happiness.


Its not an uncommon fault it seems, something related between Dell's smarty pants battery enhancer and the OS settings. Either way, if anyone comes across it, before you do what the Dell forums said (go screaming to them for a new battery, power adapter and motherboard), try the discharge cycle.

 

Hi all,

Last week I received my XPS 15 L521X new from eBay with Intel Core i5 3230M (4000 graphics), Nvidia GeForce 630M, 32 GB Samsung SSD, 750 GB 7200 RPM HD, 8 GB RAM, Killer 1202 WiFi and 1920x1080 display.

I thought that was quite a lineup for gaming.

But I too observed what appear to be CPU/GPU throttling issues, even after freshly installing Win 7 Pro x64 over Win 8 Basic and upgrading to A13 BIOS.

And I still need to acquire a W7 product key since M$ charges $$ to “downgrade” from W8 Basic --- as well as to upgrade to 8.1.

Anyway, my 3DMark11 1280 x 720 score is consistently less than 1400+ with frame rates no better than 3 to 6 fps. Afterward I reduced CPU Max in Power Settings to 95% (to prevent throttling) and my 3Dmark11 score dropped to 1250 --- in contrast to an average score of 4600+ for gaming laptops, and not much better than an office PC.

My CPU temps at idle range from 47 to 60 deg C under ambient temps of 20 to 30 deg C. Though some have recommended 200 hours of up time for burn-in of thermal compound, I still plan to remove any excess amounts of compound on CPU, GPU and heatsink for more efficient heat transfer, remove dust and perhaps remove DVD drive for better airflow.

I have heard some good things about the A04 BIOS. Has anyone successfully downgraded from A13 to A04? I thought since I disabled Secure Boot to install Win 7, there may be an easier and safer method than the “hidden” method posted by janox1x2x3: http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/673630-xps-15-l521x-owners-lounge-503.html

BTW I found what appears to be a full archive of BIOS and driver files here: Drivers for XPS 15 (L521x) and through it I was finally able to make all the exclamation points in Device Manager vanish.

Blessings.

 

I'm on the latest BIOS with fresh thermal paste (Notcua NT-H1) and the DVD/Bluray drive removed and do not have any throttling issues whatsoever, even with the CPU Max set to 100%. The only way I can get it to throttle is running a GPU burn-in test with max stress settings, however it doesn't occur during normal gaming.

 

Yes i'm the same way.. I do have my cd drive in.. but like you I did replaced the Thermal Paste and I can only get it throttling with the GPU and CPU maxed at 100% and that will never happen in a game. So when i'm gaming no Throttling issues.

Most of the issue is the Thermal Paste job they did at the factory.. replace it with some good pace and your going to resolve almost all the throttling issues..

 

I didn't remove the cd drive initially but with 1+ hour long heavy gaming I can get pretty close to 77 or 78C which isn't too far off from the 80C throttling point. Granted it never reached 80C and thus never throttled.

The removal of the cd drive gave it more thermal headroom which for me is a worthwhile tradeoff. Running cooler is better long term for the hardware as well.

 

Thanks for the helpful data. I will probably look under the hood tomorrow

 

Also, if you removed the DVD drive, bought one of these

Amazon.com: StarTech.com Micro SATA to SATA with SATA Power Adapter Cable - 12 Inch (MCSATAF12S): Computers & Accessories

You can convert the MSATA port to a full size SATA, and rock another internal, Harddrive/ SSD, all at 3-6 Gbps speeds.



More airflow, more space = winning

 

Nice! Good find

 

-doubleup deleted-

 

Hi Guy's, I am thinking of ordering one of these today for my wife. Can anyone explain to me if the wifi issues have been fixed and or is it worth getting a different model? My budget is £1100.00
Many thanks

 

So i bought this laptop with i7 3632QM and nVidia 640M configuration. In power management in maximum power state i lowered it to 80% and still got a high temperature. In battlefield 3 still has some moments in which the fps drops pretty low.
It will take ages to read all 500+ pages, so can you please tell me what have you done to lower the temperature so that games cand be played decently? Changing the thermal compound will be enough?
Thanks!

 

There have been no fixes to the wifi. If wifi performance is important, shop a different model to keep your sanity.

 

I've had some heating issues like you, but I always keep the settings maxed up. If the XPS couldn't deliver the power it advertised without melting, I'd be sending it back asap.

Having said this, I've persevered in the first instance with a few mod that have had some success:


Upgrade/ reapply the thermal compound

Personally, I think this should be a #1 for anyone buying any laptop, especially dell. The thermal compound that gets applied at the factory is rubbish quality, and is overapplied by a factor of 10. When I first opened the heatsink up, the mess was unbelievable for a $2400NZD laptop. Chunks of compound everywhere, massive air pockets, it was horrible.

I redid mine with Arctic Silver 5, there are many other good products out there, but there are all only as good as the application. Some say smear, some say dont when applying... I personally applied a line line the length of the CPU, and a good sized dot 1-2mm high on the GPU. No worries.

Remove the DVD-RW Drive

This obviously isn't an option for all, but I work cloud based and off local/ networked drives, and make bootable USBs, so I haven't touched a CD in over a year. There's one mounting screw to remove, the plastic tape to make it look pretty, and the loom. Unplug/ unscrew and store somewhere. The extra space allows for more air to be drawn in by the fan, instead of the circuit-board-blocked air intake on the opposite.


Remove the plastic covers inside the back case panel

I did this because it irked me that Dell would design a pretty shoddy hinge shape that covers most of the exhaust port for the fan. Then Dell decides to cut a nice grill into the back and front edges of the case, which you'd think would help with air flow (the back grill). But no, Dell the covers those grills up with bits of plastic! If you look at the underside of a stock XPS, you'll see the area behind the grill is nice and black. Nice for looks, but it cuts the airflow right down, especially over the exhaust.

It gets better too. Inside, Dell has put more black plastic strips over the top of the circuit board, sealing it against the edge of the case. Thats nice and all, but for the side that generates the most heat (CPU/GPU side on the left), it renders any chance of airflow useless. The fan has to try get its air from the right hand side, and thats blocked with the DVD! (Which is good to get rid of, remember? XD).

I guess there needs to be style points for all this because it does look tidy. However, I'd then take those style points away minus 1000, and beat the heat dispersal engineer with his keyboard, because in cooling, form should ALWAYS follow function.


Get a laptop cooling pad

This is arguably the best thing to do if you don't want to modify your $2400 XPS internally. I've bought a CoolerMaster U3, which comes with a metal frame, speed controller, and 3 1800RPM fans that run pretty quiet. Can be bought off eBay easily enough like so:

Cooler Master NotePal U3 Notebook Cooling Stand for 15" 19" Notebook | eBay

There is actually 3 different sizes, so if you have a smaller laptop, get a smaller pad to save space.


Modify said laptop cooling pad

If its still not enough, then there's nothing else for it. Either not play the game causing so much heat, or get more cool air into the laptop. (I'm a car guy, and this principle is the same as intercoolers, kinda). At the end of the day, if you want to cool stuff, you need hot air going out fast, and nice cool air coming in fast. Dell's stock system is "Blow hot air at a moderate rate out, and slowly draw temperate air in, let it heat up over the components, and then try use hot air to chill the heat sink. Act surprised when this doesn't work."

I went out and bought a 12V variable supply at 1.5amps, 2 CoolerMaster SickleFlo case fans, and some wires.

The end result is 2 paralleled 2500RPM, 85CFM case fans pounding cold air into the XPS intakes (bear in mind I've made all the above mods at this point). I used some rubber to isolate the exhaust airflow so the fans aren't trying to blow the exhaust back into itself, and I'm hunting down a micro-particle filter to put over the fan intake to moderate dust (although there's been no dust forced inside so far)

P.S I've taken my rubber airflow separators out for this pic.




All this meant that playing Halo CE for 3 hours (usually at 95C, went down to 73C)

And I fired it all up while just working, browsing etc, internal temps get down to about 42-45C.


All this is dependent on how far you want to go, but if I had to recommend minor stuff, get rid of the silly plastic inside the case, you wont miss it, and get some new Thermal Paste in there.

Best of luck sir!

 

Thanks a lot mate!
Changed the thermal compound, removed the plastic strips from the back panel and disabled SpeedStep in BIOS and things are starting to move properly!
Athough i did all this, browsing on chrome still puts out an average of 60-64 degrees.

 

Thats higher than mine just from browsing. Do you have your Power Options/Profile Cooling Policy set to Active?

 

Best use practice would be to ensure it sits on a hard flat surface, and that the intakes, exhaust are kept clear.

And if you are relying on the fan to do the cooling, its going to be hampered by a higher ambient air temp too, if you work in a hot environment.

 

Better to use a stand that elevates the intake and exhaust vents/fans.
I personally use one of these:
Amazon.com: Griffin Technology GC16034 Elevator Laptop Stand: Computers & Accessories

 

Go back one page, you'll see my thoughts on that XD


However, a stand is not exactly mobile and too bulky to be pulling around for most people (Uni students who change desk 5-10 times a day)

 

There is a very compact one if you need mobility:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0053FE422/
(There's plenty of others like it, that's just an example)

It folds up to be a lot smaller than a laptop cooling pad and lighter too.

I just read your thoughts and you can control the fans in software using SpeedFan or similar.
However I don't have any problems heavy gaming without any fan control (software) and with just the stand. I actually only have fan control software running in Ubuntu and not Wondows (for gaming only)

 

It was set on passive. :/


About cooling pads, i'm using this one: http://http://www.ebay.com/itm/Logisys-Deepcool-NP2000TRI-Notebook-Laptop-Cooler-Pad-with-3-Fans-up-to-15-4-/130809903928 but isn't too efficient. The air is blown into the middle of the back panel, actually cooling nothing. I'm just using it as a simple stand, just to not block the intake/exhauts.

 

I did a write up on SpeedFan a while back regarding using it for documenting the temp changes after the mods.

I run it 24/7 now, as SpeedFan can work with the Dell BIOS, and you can alter fan RPM, and monitor temp stats on all the vital components



Little mobile notebook pads are good, but at the end of the day, you need to be keeping those intakes and exhaust clear of fabric and and the like.

 

Do you play video games with your laptop on your lap?

I'm definitely not advocating notebook pads, I think they are more detrimental than helpful. The reason to elevate the laptop (with a stand) higher up is to keep it clear of any dust that's on your table and allow the internal fans an easier time to intake and exhaust cool and hot air, respectively. It's definitely high enough that the exhaust is kept clear and open. Elevating it also allows for cooling of the bottom of the laptop. Sure you can use a laptop cooling pad to blow air at it but your also picking up more dust in the process and sending it towards the laptop intake vents. Simply put sending more air at it will cause a build up of dust faster. Also by blasting the laptop with cold air, it might actually make the laptop think it's relatively cooler than it actually is and it won't spin up its fans as much but in fact heat continues to build up inside and is spreading to other internal components.

 

Well, as has been previously said, the cool air blowing into the laptop reduces the temperature considerably in conjunction with the onboard fan.

The case feels cooler, and I use SpeedFan to manually control the fans RPM, also, as has been said.


The remark about keeping it on a level surface is to keep the intakes and exhausts clear, as you yourself have said. I obviously dont play with my laptop in my lap, as evidenced by the last page. My XPS is more a desktop replacement than anything, hence my work on the laptop stand.

Plenty of people I know do play with their laptops in bed, or sitting on a bean bag with a blanket on and the laptop on top of that, hence the remark about fabric.


If you spin back a page and update yourself, you'll see much of what you wrote has already been covered in detail XD

 

I've seen your posts and some of it doesn't make sense to me and thats why I'm pointing it out. You tend to say some contradictory things.

And I'm saying that sure the case feels cooler but that doesn't actually mean the internal components are getting cooled more than if you don't have a cooling pad blowing high speed air at it.

 

Well my XPS 15 decided to kick the bucket today, only 4 months old I had trouble with the AC adapter not working when the battery level was very low (less than 5%), and today had the same issue, but when I finally managed to get it to start charging, the laptop worked for about 5 minutes, then completely died. It now won't turn on or charge.

Engineer is coming on Wednesday to replace the motherboard. Hopefully that will fix it.

 

Not quite sure I'm contradictory... you are reading my posts, correct?


Ill reiterate for you. The system from stock has the intakes mostly covered by plastic and circuitry on one side, the DVD drive on the other. It is hard for the air to be drawn over the electronics by the onboard fan due to this restriction.

I removed the DVD Drive and the plastic. There's now a bit more space for air to be drawn over the circuitry, but not really that much more.

The way an onboard laptop cooling system works, is via the the air cooling the electronics slightly on the way in, and cooling the metal radiator connected to the heatsink on the the way out (Where most of the cooling is done for the circuitry).

Heat is most usually generated at the battery when its used, and at the CPU/ GPU. I run with the AC plugged in a lot of the time, and the CPU and GPU cranked right up.


So, how to get more, cooler air into the casing so the fan can do its bit with the radiator? Well, and it does seem a little repetitive, use a notebook cooler stand with the fans blowing air into the intakes.

The on board fan can and regularly does spin at about 3400RPM when the CPU and GPU are under load, although I manually spin this up via SpeedFan. The fan can do something like 17CFM, which is definitely not the amount of air coming in.

Hence, by pushing air into the casing, you allow the onboard fan access to more, cooler air (cooler by virtue of being blown from ambient temps) for it to blow over the heatsink radiator. (Added advantage of cooling at circuitry blocking the air intake i mentioned earlier too).

The case feels cooler because, crazy to think, there is good air flow inside the case, thanks to the external fans blowing it in. I know not of any physics in which more cool airflow creates a higher temperature.


Oddly enough, when the case gets hotter, the component monitored temps increase. And when the case temp goes down, the component temps go down too.

This is commonly attributed to the fact that the heat source in a laptop is the component, and not the case itself. Logic then will assure us that if the item being heated (the case) is cooling, we can assume that the source of the heat (the components) are cooling also.


Hopefully this was in depth enough? And please enlighten me where I contradict myself.


At the end of the day, its my laptop. The system I've worked out produces measurable, worthwhile results. I'm not forcing you to implement this yourself, merely advocating the idea.

 

Hello everyone,

I am planning buying XPS 15 L521x notebook in UK (version without msata but with SATA 512 SSD). I tried technical chat, but they don't know what am I talking about, so i decided to ask here for my answers:

1) Does xps 15 L521x ships now with new 6300 intel wifi card which apparently works better than 6250 ?
2) Does xps 15 L521x has WWAN card, if so, where is the SIM slot ? (I am confused because tech specs doesn't mention wwan card, but youtube dell tech support/repair channel shows presence of the card).

It's really frustrating that tech support can't answer these questions... anyone can help here ?

Thanks

PS: Video shows wwan card, but not tech-specs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkFin4lydEc&list=SPaMGK8uBGSYtfowAcFaGFbgFUcApVRpax

 

No wwan slot, its an msata slot so no possibility for gps or etc. The 6300 does not have bluetooth . Its the killer n 1202. Do not buy this laptop. You will regret it.and your odds of getting a perfect model is about 1/245

 

As I see on video, notebook should have 2 mini PCIe slots, does it not ?

I don't mind if I have to open chassis and replace wifi card, or put wwan card, but I expect cabling to be there so that I can plug-in mini cards if the ones that are in there not good. I can't believe there is no exact tech-spec on this notebook

What's wrong with the notebook ?? Is cooling ok, it's 35W cpu, so it's not impossible to cool it? Is the screen sharp and good? There is an ASUS as alternative which has similar specs as dell and is cheaper.

I have XPS 16, model 1645, I haven't regret anything, it's bit too heavy, but regarding the age, it's good notebook. I hope that new model isn't worse than old one...?

 

Peters, read back this tread for ten or twenty pages. Short version is

- horrid WiFi performance for many if not most/all users. If you need reliable WiFi in various places you should have a USB dongle for when the internal does not work.

- bad thermal management design, impacts both i7 and i5 models. Some owners have gone to extreme lengths to mitigate but if you need to use the GPU seriously do not buy the machine.

There IS NO WWAN support. Period.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4