XPS 15 9560 owners thread.

My turn to start one. I am holding out for the fingerprint reader before I order one but I expect them to start showing up at peoples doors within the next few days.

Please post when you have one or if you have a confirmed order.

I will have an XPS 9550 to compare the XPS 9560 so I will see what parts can be swapped over and supply the usual pictures.
I hope they fixed the screen flicker issue in this one as no fix to date has fully worked on the 9550.

Handy links (will try to keep this up to date)

Drivers

How to enable speedshift by hacking the BIOS (edited for the 9650 with the correct variable)

Spoiler

More EFI hacks to enable options in intel XTU
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-15-9560-owners-thread.800611/page-273#post-10567936

How to add the options needed to the power options so you can adjust the settings.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-xps-15-9550-skylake-speed-shift.796891/#post-10361703

Internal pics and also nit picking to show how piss poor the QC STILL is
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xps-15-9560-internal-pictures.801280/

 

Expecting delivery of a 9560 with 4K display, 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD in the first week of February. Have been using an XPS 13 9343 for about two years now, and it has been flawless. I'll keep you guys posted.

 

I have ordered one of these.
Decided I need a 2nd more portable laptop.
I look forward to ripping this thing a part and applying magic pads and liquid magic.
Nice to be here.

 

Reserved for the future.

 

i5/4k/8GB(->2x8GB)/256GB(->500GB) on the way.

 

Nice, I have a 960evo 1tb sitting on my desk that I can't decide if I should keep or not..

 

I'll be here waiting for someone to get frustrated and sell theirs.

 

If the BIOS is related to the 9550 that 960 pro won't work

 

Its a 960 EVO, but what about it wont work?

 

People fitting the new Samsung pro drives to the 9550 with the latest BIOS cannot detect it in the BIOS, almost as though Dell are back to restricting drives that will work to the list they use again.

 

Ironic given your history with the XPS!

 

Custom - Did you try getting the 960 EVO to work?

 

No, I haven't opened the box, still pondering returning it (it was an impulse buy). I also got a good deal on a 7700k for my desktop so I'll probably keep that instead.

 

For people that get the 9560, can you do a battery test? I am interested in 1080p video playback on battery. My normal test has been to play a 1080p clip for an hour and check the percentage of battery usage .
I am really wondering what the combination of the larger battery and the Kabylake cpu updates and how they will impact battery life. The 9550 was pretty disappointing with only around 6 hours of 1080p battery playback.

 

For those wondering, my 8GB memory config shows on the itemized list as "1 370-ADGT 8GB DDR4 2400 (4GBx2) $0.00". Glad I bought the ram separate. Who uses 2x4GB these days? I didn't know anybody even produced 4GB DDR4 sticks.

 

Hey guys!

I'll be picking up an XPS 15 9560 in a month or two for my grad school pursuits and obvious fun. I'm planning on swapping out the HDD and mini SSD for my m.2 SanDisk X400 512GB SSD. I'll also repaste both the CPU and GPU right away for better performance. Depending on the thickness I may end up running thermal pads along the heatpipes to use the frame as an additional heatsink but we shall see on that. Will keep you guys in the loop when I order it. I'm going for the FHD i5 version as well.

 

There is a long 9550 thermal thread here that you should review as the 9660 chassis looks to be identical. But I have not seen the insides of the 9560 yet so who knows. Typical i5 stress test improvements noted in the 9550 thread were in the range of -15*C (-5*C for repaste/repad. -10* undervolting). Dell could improve the 9560's thermals via better engineering-production making said changes less effective but time will tell.

Several 9550 gamers tried the thermal pads between the heatpipes and case. I think all but one removed them as they made the keyboard very hot. As professional laptop engineer GoNz0 noted, heating the bottom case also superheats the fan intake air, killing the active cooling in a death spiral. See the thread.

Gamers still noted thermal issues with the VRM. Possible solutions were improved ventalation or heatsinking chokes-mosfets to case bottom. A few of us tried heatsinking the chokes to the case bottom but that got the case bottom and keyboard super hot. I think one guy kept the solution with low-quality thermal pads but see the thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...rature-observations-undervolt-repaste.785963/

You might also reinstall windows to dump all the junkware.

 

The internals are revealed in the XPS15 9560 service manual. The layout looks very similar to the 9550.

John

 

Hi,
sorry for the dumb question. Will the new XPS15 9560 support 64 Gb RAM?
Do you know whether a single 32Gb stick will be ever released?
Thanks

 

Only a couple of laptops support 64GB of ram today. Officially the 9550 was maxxed out at 32GB.

32GB sticks exist but are expensive.

 

If you had 32GB sticks it would *probably* work, but Dell hasn't validated that to officially support it.

 

Aida64 says 64gb is the max supported on the 9550 but that could be for 4 sticks so would not apply. Only way to find out is to try it I guess (not me)

 

My 9560 should arrive tomorrow, Wednesday the 25th. I ordered the 4k with 16GB of RAM, which I will upgrade. I plan on ordering the TB16 thunderbolt 3 dock with my Dell rewards points. Has anyone here tried the new dock since they released the new version after the recall of the TB15? There are a ton of new TB3 docks coming out in the next few weeks and I would be interested to hear what you guys think is the best option. My 2 complaints on the TB16 are the built in host cable and the lack of an SD card reader. Other than those 2 draw backs, it seams to have the bets port combination and power output, at least when paired with an XPS laptop.

 

Yes TB3 dock are starting to emerge, which probably means that the makers now hope they will actually work, unlike the TB15 ;( I'd hold off before seeing positive user reviews WITH THE 9560, and only from vendors stating compatibility and showing reasonable support agility. Mind these are not like the old docks that you'd connect and they'd just work, with TB3 you need a load of separate drivers...
I guess the short cable is a limitation of TB3, I believe it is replaceable. A SD card reader is available in the 9560. I'd miss a TB3 through port. Regarding 3rd parties, I'm not sure if they supply as much power (100W) to run the 9560 without a separate AC charger.

 

Just remember that the TB3 port on the 9560 runs at x2 instead of x4.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Dude! Thanks for the Info! Looks like 1mm and 1.5mm thick thermal pads will be the way to go for the Vram. I've also learned from my desktop days that thermal paste between the pads also helps increase efficiency slightly... I'm pretty excited about the ability to undervolt. It'll be interesting to see how low the voltages are on the Kaby Lake processors! Your heat soak idea makes sense...didn't think of that too much. I may avoid that method and just stick with cooling from the heatsink instead of trying to use the frame. Looks like Liquid metal TIM on the CPU won't be any problem at all, GPU may be a different story with the caps around it... I'll see what I get with normal paste and see if it'll be worth it... I'm super interested to see how well the GTX1050 will overclock too! Hopefully we can get some massive performance increases from it!

 

Replacing the pads is asking for trouble, at most check if it still has the single dodgy fit and put a very soft thicker pad in, it is so easy to buy high thermal transfer pads but the trade off is they are hard and I ended up fitting 1mm pads and it no longer contacted the GPU.
Anyway, take the time to read all the 9550 threads, you will be up to speed in a couple of days.

 

One of the members here (custom90GT I think) opened ~10 9550 units and said the heatsink was not hitting all the VRAM chips in every case (usually 1 or 2 of the 4 VRAM chips were problems). So that was a rather "consistent" heatsink defect. See the thread.

But to GoNz0's point, inspect your laptop carefully visually. If there is an issue, lower rated fluffly pads are easy to install correctly, provide plenty of thermal transfer, and have more tolerance to thickness variance when compared to the high performance dense pads.

 

Yeah I do not understand why people feel the need to cool the crap out of the ram chips, they run cool anyway and probably get hotter with better pads as the CPU heat will head that way as it passes over. This ain't no overclocked water cooled card after all.

 

Could you provide a link to a 64 Gb kit (2x32)?
I cannot find anyone...
Thanks

 

OK so I've got a list of to-do's already before I even order my 9560...

1. Install my 512GB SanDisk X400 m.2 SATAIII SSD
2. Repaste the CPU and GPU
3. Check contact of Vram thermal pads. I have some cheap extras right now in my possession but higher quality extras may be needed...
4. XTU Undervolt that CPU!!!!
5. Find max overclock on the GPU!

Thing should be rockin! Excited to hear some initial impressions

 

Scrap 5, this is an ultrabook. It will throttle undervolted at stock.

 

Sorry kirth - I could have sworn I saw 2x32GB late last year but there is nothing. Probably a mistake on my part and the huge laptops with 64GB are running 4x16GB kits...

 

I'll be monitoring this thread closely. My needs are light, long battery life, video editing (amateur level - Cyberlink PowerDirector and/or Adobe Premiere Elements.) For the Skylake systems, I'd been leaning to the Precision 5510 rather than the XPS 15 just because it seemed like the QC was a lot better for those and frankly the problems thread here had me worried I'd be exchanging and having to "fix" the XPS 15 more than I wanted to. I've been using PCs since my Apple ][ in 1980 so I'm no novice, and I've had Dell laptops (typically about 3 at any time between me, my wife, and a kid) for many years. I was also a writer in the computer magazine world (back when there were magazines!) and that included articles on building a computer from scratch, so not afraid to open a machine up. My current laptop is a massive Alienware M17x that's several years old - lots of power but weighs about 150 pounds (slight exaggeration) and only has about 1 hour battery life at this point, even with a new battery (no exaggeration) and is too hot to hold on my lap within minutes of starting up. I travel a lot so I need something light, as much battery life as possible, with a quad core CPU, and the quad core CPU+light+long battery life surprisingly narrows it down to the Dells.

But at this point in my life I don't want to be constantly farting around trying to make the notebook work right. From what I've read on these forums, the Precision 5510 was more reliable and QC was better than the XPS 15, with the only real downside being the GPU being less powerful. If both machines were the same reliability I'd buy the XPS. So - I'll be watching here closely to see if the new Kaby Lake XPS 15 has all the bugs and warts worked out and lessons learned from the Skylake one.

 

So, from what I have read with the SL models... throttling is happening more on the VRM side of things rather than actual core temperatures? I've been reading up on the undervolting and repasting...seeing temps in the 50's under load for most...I'd think the laptop can maintain a constant max clock if the core is in the 50's...is that not the case?

 

Yes, the high temperature of the voltage regulator module (VRM) lets the CPU throttle. This was the case for my 9550, where the CPU went down to 800 MHz. First a Dell technician replaced the board an cooling unit, which did not really help (CPU at 1100 MHz). Then I did a repaste and undervolted the CPU, which solved the problem for me. Please have a look at my post, you see that undervolting improved temps more than repasting. I did not use liquid metal (LM) http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ndervolt-repaste.785963/page-52#post-10342760
Regarding the max clock: if only the CPU is under load, my 9550 with i7 6700HQ can hold the turbo at 3100 MHz. If the CPU and GPU is used, the CPU will go down to ~2500 MHz, check again the link from this post. It shows my 9550 under CPU and GPU load.

 

Please check if the 7th intel Core-i CPU generation is fully compatible with XTU. I had problems undervolting my 6700HQ with XTU and ended up using ThrottleStop, which worked much better. However, every new CPU gen can require special setting in ThrottleStop. For Skylake the CPU core and CPU cach offset had to be the same, otherwise the undevolt was not working.

 

Gotchya... Yea. Looks like you also still had some major heat issues on the core temps... Kaby is supposed to be a much more refined version of SkyLake so I'm hoping the leakage and temperatures are a heck of alot better. Watching people overclocking and their temps over on OCN thread for the 7700k seems like thermals are much better and voltages are extremely low compared to SL...

 

Well, considering the temperatures other people reported from their 9550 with 6700HQ, I can not complain ^^. But in general you are right, the temps are not ideal. I also had an Alienware 15 R2 with 6700HQ CPU and the temps were much better, which was due to the better colling system. In my experience, the smaller a computing device, the higher the temperatures of similar CPUs. But lets see what Kabylake can offer in the thermals department

 

I'm probably a month away from ordering my 9560. I've got a bunch of desktop parts I'm selling so I'm hoping I can get at least 80-90% of my XPS 15 paid for before I order it... I'll be getting the i5 version so that alone will help with temps. I'm more concerned with battery life and keeping the noise down... new paste and undervolt should do wonders.

 

Can we stick to the topic, we are way off the mark at the moment.

 

This post needs some love. Would be interested to hear others breakdown the decision between the XPS 15 and the Precision.

 

Several hundred pounds when I started speccing one!

 

9560 just arrived from Fedex.

i7 4K 512GB 1050 model with a TB16.

No time to open until tomorrow to play with, but maybe someone else can test the cooling on theirs since they are obviously arriving now.

 

Any chance you could do some heavy benchmarks to check temperatures/throttling/fan noise? I'm curious if Dell's changed their thermal formula at all. (Praying).

 

Some haphazard benchmarking at Reddit but it is tough to follow unfortunately...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comme...om_games_in_xps_9560/?st=iydyxgbw&sh=f3aff42b

 

Looking forward to your first impressions!!

 

The last thing I would advise anyone to do is thrash the hell out of a new Dell laptop without taking it apart and checking heatsink placement then replacing the thermal paste (at least twice with a test fit for paste spread)

 

Can we take a step back. Why should anyone take a brand new laptop apart, made by a (supposed) specialist, then modify it physically?! How bad are laptops from Dell that this would even be considered normal practice.

 

I guess by your 12 posts that you may not have read the XPs9550 threads, I suggest you get up to speed on that laptop and you will see why it is a bad idea pushing a brand new Dell XPS laptop to it's limit to appease a strangers questions

FYI you kind of answered your own question by placing the word "specialist" in brackets.

Replace "specialist" with (couldn't arrange a piss up in a brewery) and you would be getting warmer