XPS 15 2-in-1 with 8th Gen Core G?

Problem is, they do not offer 16gb of ram and 2tb drive on the i5 model.

 

Right, they are learning well from apple, lol. You do know the SSD is replaceable right? You can buy your own SSD and save hundreds...

 

No, I did not know that the SSD is replaceable in the 2 in 1 model. hmmmmm interesting.

 

Yeah, so don't let waiting for the 2tb keep you from purchasing. I would get the cheapest model with the ram/screen you want and then purchase a 2tb drive yourself. My guess is you'll save a significant amount of money and time.

 

Well, it will still be an i7 since I wank 4k screen, and 16gb of ram, but I can ditch the 2tb and get one myself. Also, is the xps 13 2 in 1 the same thing?

 

I'm not sure what you're asking about the 13 2-in-1? If you mean is the drive replaceable, yes it is.

 

Dell just shipped my 9575, should be here Friday. I hope it comes early in the day otherwise I won't have time to play with it until the following weekend. Will do a fresh install right when I get it and then get temperatures measured. If I have time on Friday I'm hoping to check temps at stock, after undervolting, after repaste, and then repaste+undervolt like I did in my 9550 post. I'm still worried that 8gb won't be enough ram...

 

Yes, thats what I was asking. Thats a savings there then for sure! thanks. forget testing for temps etc. USE IT. If its fast who cares.

 

Lol, I actually want it to run as fast as it can, hopefully with only minimal throttling.

 

I gave up overclocking, monitoring temps etc and just use my ****ing computers now. Way liberating. instead of hyperfixating on silly nonsense.

 

Like having a computer that runs at it's rated speed? I rather enjoy tearing them apart and such. Since I don't have money to mod my truck I get my kicks this way.

 

All I read on here is throttle this, throttle that. meanwhile, in reality, the xps blows the doors off pretty well any of its competitiors...no it's not going to kill a gaming system, which is what most people in here compare it too. It's NOT. It goes head to head with the macbook pro and it blows that in the weeds in speed. I dont care if it throttles if it's fast....I don't see it happening, I don't feel it happening....only if you go looking for it on some monitor apps etc would you even know that it's doing anything. Keep that **** off your laptop and enjoy how fast these xps devices truly are.

 

But meanwhile your Mossfits are being baked at 90 C and PCH is cooking. The battery is being heated increasing risk of failure by expansion.

Your CPU and GPU can take high temps, and throttle a little when they get too high; but everything else is not rated to those temps. You need good heat management / efficiency to not only keep the CPU + GPU from throttling; you also want to keep surrounding components cool by making sure the heat is being dissipated efficiently. Otherwise you increase the risk of some sort of failure.

 

*on edit*
It's pointless to argue with this guy.

 

It's still faster than it's competiton...you are not grasping that....side by side, the supposedly molasses slow xps 15 destroyed the macbook pro doing a video conversion....So...who cares if it throttles it's still fast...and faster than it's competition.

 

ONCE AGAIN, I will leave this here...Ok, so both throttle....so both "slow" down. it still flat out smokes the macbook pro, which is the xps main competition.

 

Can you provide proof of those things happening regularly on xps devices? Like is there a major failure rate on xps devices?

 

*on edit*
It's pointless to argue with this guy.

 

The XPS 9550 & 9560 have some cooling challenges due to small footprint, some engineering shortfalls, and some production shortcuts. There are hundreds of pages here documenting these issues and a few good fixes that allow the CPU & GPU to perform cool and at 100% of spec during some rigourous usage.

Increased heat will exponentially reduce the lifespan of all electronic components. Some components are more robust than others. But in the end, you can't beat basic physics. . .

 

The early BIOS and drivers were terrible on the 9550, less terrible on the 9560; a large number of bugs were resolved (but Dell wasn't rushing these fixes). We saw a fair number of new computers returned to Dell shortly after purchase for refund due to: engineering, component, assembly, driver and/or throttling "issues".

Over the years, we see some people have replaced wonky motherboards or screens multiple times on warranty. But outside the big swelling battery "recall" and engineering shortcuts we have to live with, I don't see many posts indicating "major failure rate on xps devices".

My take: After a good repaste/repad, undervolt, and reinstalling Windoze/drivers, the XPS performs well, despite some bugs and quirks.

 

More like you can drive your car at 200mph, for 5 min then slow down to 150mph for the rest of the time...meanwhile, the rest of the cars can only go 60 mph all the time. There that's a more correct analogy if your using car speeds. Anyways...go buy something else, move on, and stop posting crap about these machines. peace.

 

Specs are as follows for the XPS and Macbook pro in the video.

XPS

• 7th Generation Intel Core i7-7700HQ Quad Core Processor (6M cache, up to 3.8 GHz)
• 16 GB DDR4-2400MHz up to 32GB (additional memory sold separately)
• 512GB PCIe Solid State Drive, No Optical Drive
• 15.6-inch 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) InfinityEdge touch display

Macbook Pro

• 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
• Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
• 16 gb DDR3 Ram
• 512 GB SSD storage
  
• Four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports
• Intel HD Graphics 530
• Mac OS Sierra

An apples to apples comparison...anything else you would like to know? what? did you think they were using the base macbook pro and top spec XPS 15?

Oh and 1300 replies in your XPS 15 throttling in which 1290 of those are Don Stelvio going all hater on anything dell. So I take THOSE specs (1300 replies) with a HUGE grain of salt too.

Most every other review I have read on the xps lineup is the same. FAST, AWESOME SCREEN, and AWESOME BUILD QUALITY!

 

I personally don't consider those videos from "Western Gents United" as real reviews, more like product displays. Over hyped and quite often partial. Come to think about it, they kind of reminds me of someone in here, with the exception that the Western Gents United guy atleast seems to have a XPS15

 

There are really two different types of temperature stress, cyclying and sustained heat.

Just about any part is susceptible to failure from large number of temperature cycles. The Greater the differential in temperature cycle; the greater the stress. Each different type of material in a part expands and contracts at different rates. Of course packages are designed to accommodate this, and materials are chosen or specifically created for common thermal expansion responses, but stresses occur nonetheless. Eventually those stresses being applied back and forth enough times will break something.

Sustained heat is different. Eventually something melts and the part is irreversibly damaged. This is much more uncommon, as modern computers are forced to shut down when high temperatures are reached. However, ribbon cables have been known to melt from time to time.

Electrolytic capacitors are different from most other electronic components in that they inherently go bad over time. Heat accelerates this. Running a electrolytic cap at 100°C, even without cycling, will degrade it much more rapidly than at 50°C.

To answer the specific question...
While Dell, HP, Lenovo, and the like do not specifically release their failure rates (especially by model), Consumer Reports and others release projections based on surveys and investigation on sales numbers. Without doing the research for you, the numbers if I recall, are like 18% from Dell Compared to like 25% from Razer. The entire industry ranges from 13 - 25% 1st year failures...

 

In addition from my other response above; you should remember that a certain level of performance is advertised/ promised from the listed/ advertised specs. Yes it still could be fast; but it is not as fast as they said it would be; which is a problem.

I Personally think the "who cares the corporation is lying" attitude very huge problem. Even for something as small as this, or as big as lying about the slave labor mining the minerals for this stuff.

 

*on edit*
It's pointless to argue with this guy.

Hope it comes in early tomorrow so I can get some number for those that care.

 

ha ha...cool story bro....

If your past dell bending you over...then leave, and stop buying their products and stop constantly *****ing about all the dell products you bought that were crap. Sounds like the problem is you. You SHOULD have bought the HP like you said you were going to. That would have been your best bet. instead you have this issue with buying dell devices then *****ing about everything about them. You have issues. NOT ME. They work great for me, even my old cheapy dell devices work fast, and smooth. Have great build quality for lower end stuff and decent screens. I am just waiting on ordering a new xps 15 2 in 1 for my business, and family trips. I have 2 or 3 months left on my payements for this device, then I am putting the xps 15 2 in 1 through my company and going to enjoy every EFFIN MINUTE of using it.

You should go find something you like and use that. I would NEVER buy an ASUS product. Everyone I owned was a peice of crap. You don't see me over there on the asus board constantly *****ing, or berating Asus users and products there do you? NOPE. Thats because I don't care about them, or their users. Unlike yourself, and a few more here who have major issues with people liking things other than what YOU like...so, please, again kindly buy somehting you like and leave your *****ing to somewhere else.

 

Well the 9575 just arrived and I'm reinstalling windows as we speak. The keyboard is surprisingly nice even with its limited travel. Hoping the bios update fixes these fans though, they are screaming just doing the windows install. Will post up some benchmarks/thermals later today.

 

what have your step been for the windows reinstall? any driver issues? i guess im hesitant to do it because of the intel/amd divers.
thanks

 

I reinstalled windows and used the dell drivers for everything except video. For the video drivers I used Intel's newest drivers for the NUC8i7HNK and then Intel's latest base video drivers. Seems to be running fine for me although I haven't tried more than a handful of games.

 

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/dell-xps-15-2-in-1

 

I disklike qualitative reviews...talks about screaming fans as one big drawback. Says this happens "when you plug it in"...wait what?? On the other side of the fence you have Notebookcheck saying it's 1/4 as loud as the outgoing 9560 (44 vs over 50db when gaming). SO what is the objective measurement of the fan noise on this thing?

I guess I'll be finding out when I get mine.

 

In all this arguing in this thread, I do see merit in both sides. On the one side, I've always loathed obsessing over CPU/GPU temps - I spent countless hours arguing in the Alienware 13 thread about this. Folks always assert they know about failure rates for "hot components" but yet there has never been concrete data presented about relationship between Tj-max and failure rate of components. Having worked Thermal subsystem design for satellite systems, I've always had to laugh at folks freaking out.

Now, on the flip side, caring about fan noise, and surface temps - is always great. A system that can get the work done (computations) and be cool and quiet is something to desire. But it's rarely truly about "safety" or "burning up" components.

I think we are reaching an age where the complexity between thermals, power delivery, power envelopes, distribution - means that simply using terms like "throttling" seem such a disservice to the engineering and coding that goes behind modern laptop systems. We rightly desire maximum computation power and a system that can deliver this should have the competitive advantage. However, I always get frustrated at armchair engineers who always know better and toss around terms like "lazy engineering" and the like.

When you compare a notebook you bought just 5 years ago, to what you can get today, it's astonishing - but I think to some degree we are reaching some sort of junction point between how cool and power efficient Intel's chips can get without being extremely clever in many other ways in terms of computer engineering, all the while trying to shave fractions of millimeters and ounces of weight. This collaboration on the 9575 with Intel and AMD is evidence of the cleverness at play to reduce thermal output and provide flexibility in the distribution of power. So when the CPU "throttles" to under 3ghz - while maintaining power and thermal headroom for the GPU is just clever engineering. The decisions being made by the firmware is awesome stuff.

I'm not trying to point out Dell as an angel or demon here - but they are one of the world's premier computer systems companies in the world, so I doubt they have lazy engineers. It's just that this stuff is complex as hell. I do think we should enjoy this type of innovation and also respect it for what it is, without yawning and simply saying "is that all you got". That doesn't mean this system is for you either.

Wow, that was longer than I expected...guess I was bored tonight.

 

I see your points here but during routine use, keeping laptops cool, keeping fans quiet, keeping CPUs running at spec clocks are not outrageous consumer demands.

 

How are people getting along with the keyboard?

 

Like Pressing, I see where you are coming from. It seems like such a simple thing like vent size may be the biggest downfall of the cooling system, I call that a big missed opportunity (from one engineer to another). It's also not cool that Dell doesn't tell you that they limit the power going to the cpu/gpu regardless of temperatures. I guess it would be stupid to admit that the i7 is going to power limit itself at the same spot as the i5, sales may decline (and I suspect they aren't great to begin with). And sadly mine throttles to 2.8ghz when the GPU is in use which is where I imagine the i7 will end up as well.

Dell is number three in terms of units shipped per year, right behind HP and then Lenovo as they have been for years. The thing is if problems with the XPS 9550 and 9560 can be fixed by end users (looking at iunlock specifically), but Dell can't figure it out/is not willing to do so, then I say shame on dell. It's already looking like their 9570 is going to follow right in their previous steps, aka lazy engineering.

I love the overall look and feel of this laptop, but I also would like to take advantage of the high end hardware instead of it being driver limited to low end hardware. I wouldn't hesitate to keep this laptop if it didn't struggle to breath. It also makes me laugh that the heatsink design is much better than the xps 9560 yet they are going to further power limit it. Those two issues may very well cause me to send it back.

I really like this keyboard. I was worried about the travel, but to me it has a nice solid feeling.

 

The reviews are a joke actually. If I bought because of reviews, I would never own my dell 2 in 1 I have now, I would have a crappy asus. Thank god I don't listen to so called "EXPERTS". They stated my model Dell inspiron 2 in 1 has a crappy screen, it's loud as ^&*(, and is slow as molasses. That is so off the mark it's laughable. just as this xps 15 is "SLOW". The video I posted is not some scientific experiment, rather, a video showing how much faster the xps 15 is at coding video, using the same software, as the macbook pro. Those two notebooks were spec'ed as closely to each other as possible, using the same software and video clip. I agree with you. There is WAY to much made of this whole heat and throttling thing. If you get caught up in that, besides burning your lap off, Keep it to yourself. Thats great advice!

 

It isn't clear yet regarding the 9575. But for the 9570, which is supposedly now getting the i9, we just found out that the same undersized cooling system as in the 9560 is used, as tweeted by Azor not designed to take simultaneous full load of the CPU and the GPU. I simply don't find it fair to stuff hot chips into a case with inadequate cooling without listing the available cooling capacity in the sales pages. Not to mention that the borderline thermal design is obviously very sensitive to the quality of thermal paste application, which obviously isn't as good in the Dell factory as when done manually with proper paste, and that this even isn't subject to QC before shipping!?!?!?

Even though iunlock, who isn't exactly the armchair type of an engineer, about a year ago demonstrated in a thread here that unthrottled performance is actually possible by modding (fan exhaust and heatsink for the VRMs), within the spare space of the same casing. I believe even better solutions are possible for Dell engineers because they aren't restricted by the current design.

I am more of the armchair type but also have some engineering background, so I know that even if throttling were inevitable it could have been implemented in a better way. So that the the thermal constraints would be reached smoothly, not via oscillations and limit cycles which we can observe.

I think that Dell does have good exterior designers Also I wouldn't claim the interior designers are lazy, maybe too busy with the new 2-in-1s (which might have been released earlier than they'd wish).

 

The XPS platform clearly was designed to cover the same CPU family (6th, 7th, 8th gen). Unfortunately, Dell missed the thermal and power limits with Skylake but are stuck with the same platform for the more aggressive CPUs and GPU in the 9560 & 9570.

The new i9 is a silly proposition if the i5 will outperform in your workflow. Unfortunately with the opaque marketing of laptop firms, consumers can't know if these laptops will perform even close to spec without trying. . .

I expected a new XPS platform with the next gen of Intel CPUs but Intel is having some challenges with the technology and AMD has shaken things up a bit.

I wouldn't say that either lol​

 

I think this is exactly what I said, other than "running at spec clocks" - does this mean you believe this system should be able to maintain turbo at all times? My point was demanding a cool and quiet notebook is perfectly acceptable. I'm saying that the race to make thin and light designs means that "running at spec clocks" is becoming increasingly unlikely as we demand thinner and thinner designs. If you want max performance, you have to look elsewhere (thicc notebooks or desktops).

What I do see from the evolution to the 9550 to the 9575 is indeed a system that has improved on it's predecessor in nearly every way. The 8705g is surprisingly good for a brand new architecture, seems to be smoother rollout than the 9550 was 2 years ago (how many months did I wait for drivers to fix issues?). It seems to offer on par or even better computational performance to the 7700HQ in the 9560. The screen is measurably better than the 9560's offerings, which were already excellent displays. The 9575 offers a more flexible form factor as well, all while (at least by NBC's review) doing this at 1/4 the fan noise output as the 9560.

 

I do hope that more manufacturers offer the i5 variants of these new intel chips with 16gb of ram, because that is more than sufficient for the majority of people, now with 4 cores and 8 threads. The upsell is frustrating - but every corp in existence does this crap and it works. I would have preferred the cheapest 9575 with 16gb of ram and the 128gb throwaway SSD that I would promptly replace with the 970 EVO.

I'm still struggling to understand the complaints with the 9575 cooling system - from what I'm hearing, it runs quieter than the 9560, matching it's performance in most cases (exceeding in GPU), and is indeed cooler overall component and surface temps. Is the 9575 throttling into the 3 digit clock speeds under load? Or is just that it isn't maintaining base clock at 3.1Ghz? I've seen that it seems to stick to 2.9Ghz under stress? How much of a difference in real-world performance is the 200Mhz difference to the tasks you care about?

 

It seems, for the most part, it is quieter in decibel levels. Unfortunately, from the reports so far, it seems it is the pitch that is irritating. Decibel levels isn't everything, and people often confuse pitch with noise level / decibels.. I suspect it depends on the user weather or not the pitch is grating on the ears.

 

Quote (I never got the option this time to quote the post for some reason.)

"I do hope that more manufacturers offer the i5 variants of these new intel chips with 16gb of ram, because that is more than sufficient for the majority of people, now with 4 cores and 8 threads. The upsell is frustrating - but every corp in existence does this crap and it works. I would have preferred the cheapest 9575 with 16gb of ram and the 128gb throwaway SSD that I would promptly replace with the 970 EVO.

I'm still struggling to understand the complaints with the 9575 cooling system - from what I'm hearing, it runs quieter than the 9560, matching it's performance in most cases (exceeding in GPU), and is indeed cooler overall component and surface temps. Is the 9575 throttling into the 3 digit clock speeds under load? Or is just that it isn't maintaining base clock at 3.1Ghz? I've seen that it seems to stick to 2.9Ghz under stress? How much of a difference in real-world performance is the 200Mhz difference to the tasks you care about? "

A lot of people are just throttle Jockeys, looking to "prove" things. In the real world, these things do not matter as much.

 

Some people might be but squeezing extra performance makes all the differerence for me.

My XPS runs very large virtual instruments in a live setting which require uber-low latency. I also run big statistical applications. Both are very CPU intensive.

Out of the box, the 9550 and 9560 performed poorly on these applications. That meant that the virtual instruments were not playable without unacceptable dropouts, clicks and pops It also meant that running some stats took hours longer than they should have.

Tweaking thermals and throttling schemes allows these programs to perform very well on the XPS. Fans are very quiet now. For my purposes, these are monster laptops with a few minor user mods. YMMV.

 

I welcome you to read the other thread I have going about the thermals. To my ear it does NOT run quieter than my 9560 at full fan speed. I can hear the fans in the next room over, and if you give it any airflow the pitch is so high it actually hurts my head. It does have cooler surface temperatures for sure, but given any real load it goes from 0 rpm to a max of 5400 rpm without really anything in between. My 9560 could game all day at ~3500-4500 RPM, whereas in about 45 seconds the fans stay at max on the 9575.

It doesn't maintain base clocks whereas the 9560 when modded could maintain its max clocks or near it when gaming. Having a clockspeed of 3.4ghz vs the 2.8ghz that it does in games could make a lot of difference depending on the title. Likewise performing FEA analysis at 3.4ghz or higher on an i7 would be better than the 2.8ghz that it will be power limited to would save time. Gigabyte and MSI are proof that you don't you don't need a 2" thick gaming laptop to have something that runs cool and performs as it should (Aero 15 and GS65).

Overall it's a really neat system, but Dell could have done a couple of things better. Thankfully many users won't notice a difference, but there are a few power users on this forum that surely will. Then there are those who just drink the kool-aid much like many of the Apple users out there.

 

ha ha.....for sure. SMDH.

 

@kojack So when is your 9575/9570 scheduled for delivery?

 

I know that many XPS buyers just want a laptop that looks nice and expensive and for some reason don't like Apple and never notice any throttling and hate anyone that speaks disrespectfully about it.

But there are also users that want to have a fast laptop for heavier processing and preferably one that looks nice and is relatively light. If they didn't need processing, they'd pick an even lighter ultrabook with an U series processor. Judging by the price tag they often think that they'd get the performance according to the CPU specs. Which doesn't seem to be the case if throttling kicks in often. For instance, it was rumoured some time ago that the SoC in the 9575 is nominally 65W TDP but capped at 45W by Dell and only thorough testing may show how much lower it goes under longer loads. Haven't seen it on Dell's specs page, have I missed it?

My XPS indeed idles most of the time word processing and browsing. But I also run computations that last minutes or hours where performance matters. And once in a while I do benchmarking of algorithms where throttling is major hassle, because it practically spoils the measurements. Of course it would be possible to do it on a desktop and I sometimes have to, but it is hassle.

I think you shouldn't generalize your opinions to the needs of the whole real world.

 

Again, You have purchased the wrong device, if you need to do super powerful computations. You need a desktop with super horsepower for that. For doing photos, graphics, design work, the XPS flies...you should not generalize your opinions on the whole real world either there!

 

Reminds me of when good ol' Frank Azor said that the XPS wasn't designed to be used by people who use the CPU and GPU at the same time...

What's really funny about this machine is I love the keyboard on it. That was a darn good idea Dell had. Things a total fingerprint magnet just like the other XPS laptops, but nothing a good cleaning doesn't take care of. Still sad it doesn't have at least one USB-A ports so I could use my logitech mouse without a stupid usb-c to a adapter, I have a new Logitech MX Master 2S that I should open up and use with BT but I hate giving up my trusty Performance MX.