XPS 15 9560 owners thread.

LOL - I am VERY put off by Dell FYI!

I have read a LOT about the 9550. However the notion that a laptop should be tinkered with at an expert level before using it seems at odds with what i would expect!
Agree on stress testing a brand new laptop - but they shouldnt need warm ups or actual physical intervention. Are HP/ Lenovo etc as bad?!

 

No they shouldn't but I also disagree with people being asked to thrash the tits off a brand new laptop as these sort of tests push it beyond and reasonable usage scenario and may blow it up, it needs better thermal paste to cope with the stresses.

 

You, sir, are a lyricist..."thrash the tits off...". Made me laugh.

 

In Dell's defense, the 9560's launch problems seem to be quite limited (based on posts here), particularly when compared to the disastarous 9550's launch problems. Of course, Dell had c18 months of rigorous and broad market testing to work out the bugs of the nearly identical 9550. And Dell was content to pass on a significant number of bugs to from the 9550 the 9560.

I haven't seen anyone inspect the 9560's heatsink / thermal paste-pads but would not bet that they have been improved from the 9550s. Dell should have had this stuff optimized out of its factories in 2015.

The way I saw this is Dell sells a moderately performing 9550. A big jump in performance can be unlocked for those willing to spend a bit of time and (very little) money optimizing thermals.

Finally, GoNz0 noted that FurMark is a good benchmark for anyone trying to permanantly damage a laptop. Too much heat

 

Again. A danger of straying off topic but still on it. Why is the 9560 moderately performing? To what? Another laptop in similar bracket? Relative to its potential?
And what (ballpark) % benefits does tinkering yield? 5? 10?
Thanks

 

Any reviews of the 9560 yet? Is it worth the upgrade from 9550?

I want a 9560... to thrash the tits off it of course haha


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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

Typical 9550 users reported improved thermals by 15*C and more under "intense use" scenarios. Undervolting (~10*C), new thermal paste/pads (~5*C). Furthermore, at least one guy claimed he successfully cooled the voltage regulators (VRM) for even better thermals (although that is tougher to execute).

These tweaks could reduce power consumption and improve performance during "intense use" such as gaming. Part of the trick is keeping thermals low so the computer does not throttle down speeds, making the computer slow to a crawl. They also give you thermal headroom to boost GPU performance.

But there is potentially more upside than just dropping temps ~15*C. Two of my VRAM chips were not contacting the heatsink properly as Dell did not properly engineer-produce-install the heatsink. So during gaming, the VRAM chips got very hot very fast. They weren't being cooled. The system 9550 saw that heat and throttled very quickly as a result. For this purpose, we can consider this behaviour was largely independent of current CPU-GPU temps. That throttling does not happen with "upgraded" thermal pads.

NBR user EASON published an introductory article on how to lower thermals and improve graphics performance with the 9550 (see link in his signature of any post).

 

Anyone have luck ordering the 97Whr battery separately?

 

Wonder if the 84Wh 9550 battery will be backwards compatible to the 9560.... Might save a few $$$ with a slightly lower capacity battery...

 

I would say you are both right. You shouldn't have to do this on a brand new laptop in this price range, but based on experience, Dells QC is horrible and many of the laptops delivered by Dell never reach their full potential because of this.

 

Based on what? I have yet to see anyone posting real life experience with the 9560 and have not seen any reviews of it. Only the facts that the promised finger print reader has gone AWOL and so have 2 lanes of the Thunderbolt 3

 

I have had similar issues with most laptops I have owned (Apple, Toshiba, Sony, HP...) so not just a Dell problem. It is difficult ot figure out who makes the "highest quality" laptops at a given time. And every laptop I see seems to have comprimises and issues.

 

Not really

http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptop-brand-ratings

That said, general discussions about other brands are probably better left for other threads.

 

To your point, plenty of 9560 bugs could emerge in the coming weeks. On the other hand, the 9550 and 9560 seem to share a lot of the parts "bin".

I own a 9550 and have a reasonable grasp of the major issues.

Now there are plenty of early 9560 owner posts littered around the internet (e.g. Reddit, Dell.com etc.). The 9560 complaints seem to correlate with the remaining 9550 complaints. Not to trivialize those existing bugs (thermals, tricky TB3 port, screen complaints, nvme challenges...)

But look at the early problem threads here for the 9550 particularly 2015-early 2016). That was an absolute disaster. You will see that most of the early bugs were resolved in the 9550 via BIOS and driver updates but that took a long time. Those 9550 launch bugs don't seem to have been carried over to the 9560; I think Dell just carried over the remaining 9550 bugs...

 

Well, based on my experience with Dell the last couple of years, I assume that there will be problems due to lack of QC and Dell will have to prove me wrong. Have had 2 of the latest Alienware laptops returns already due to horrible quality problems and the XSP13 I bought 2 years ago required 3 services before it could be used. And based on the horror stories I've read about the 9550 nothing seem to have changed there.

 

Agreed!

 

Thing runs without issue. Silent until benchmarking, at that point the fans are just moderate.

Firestike score of 5600 out of the box.

VERY snappy.

Using TB16 dock without issue. Dual 1080p monitors, lan, speakers, and powering the 9560 thorugh single cable while benchmarking was no prob.

4K screen is AMAZING!

No issues to report atm.

 

Great to hear.

Any perceived differences to the 9550 in terms of keyboard, touchpad, display etc?

If you have the time, please do some benchmarks of the SSD as well using CrystalDiscMac or simliar. And please let us know what SSD you (make and model also if possible).

 

5600 points for what? Normal, Extreme, Ultra? Pure graphics score or combined?

 

Has anyone looked at the 1050 GPU in this machine with GPU-Z? We're having a discussion about the 1050's number of ROPs elsewhere in the forum and it would be really helpful if somebody either posted a GPU-Z screenshot or simply wrote down the numbers from the ROPs/TMUs box.

 

Normal, combined I'd guess.

 

Pics at reddit show that the heatsink and the mb VRM are have been modified.

 

link me m8

 

http://imgur.com/a/5774g

There's also a new place for a connector next to the (unused) HDD connector.
The fingerprint sensor connector is also there. Nice to see it's populated.

 

Meh, heatpipes are the same bar the contact plates so no extra heat dissipation

It will be interesting to see if the wifi antenna can be swapped with the 9550's to give 3x3 when intel release the updated card, or even shove the broadcom one in from the 9550

anyone wanting a side by side can use my images of the 9550
http://i.imgur.com/Hqy8osQ.jpg
http://imgur.com/ZVHbXeo.jpg

Battery would seem to be a direct swap.

Screen layout the same mounting wise as expected, I see that is a FHD without touch as it is missing the connector.

Impressive SSD Read 3000MB/s, Write 1150MB/s !!!!

 

Well, the substantially improved thermals shown by you & co have been demonstrated even using the old contact plates, just by replacing the paste and pads. I think changed contact plates might mean that someone was at least concerned. The VRM area isn't the same either.

I'm not sure Intel is into 3x3, I guess they would've released it by now. They do have a much faster WiGig option for short-range wireless docking though, I believe avalilable on one Latitude.

 

I think the changed contact plates are just to accommodate the changed CPU/GPU

 

How do you know those are the ready /write speeds? They look insane!

 

What numbers are you referring to?

 

Simple really. I looked up the model number of the ssd.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

Those are insane speeds. Double the 9550?!

 

Depends on the SSD you have, my 9550 had a Toshiba 1tb 2400/1500 so that isn't to be sniffed at.

 

That board looks familar - thanks for the link dproldan.

The VRM arragement was significantly shuffled around in the 9560 but not does not look so different fundamentally from the 9550's. Some different parts but is still 3 + 3 chokes for the CPU and GPU which is probably the minimum Dell could get away with. Also seeing the same insulation strip above the VRM (with the same awkward round pinched part at the middle).

I don't see why 9560 VRM would not suffer same themal throttling issues the 9550 VRM does. But but time will tell...

 

With a bit of luck I'll get mine today and I'll post benchmarks.
Delivery truck has it but I may miss it if I'm stuck at work.

 

I was hoping to get mine today since it left LA yesterday afternoon and I'm only in Sacramento, but tracking hasn't shown it arriving up here yet.

Post all the info you can.

 

Great... I was hoping to get a decent deal but my Grad school discount and corporate discount will basically cut out the sales tax...great!

 

If anyone was wondering... The photos aren't mine but I was able to do a quick comparison shot...

 

I can see the lack of a 6th screw causing issues on the ram chips, it really looks like they removed the screw to make room for the 4gb of ram. ****wits

 

Don't worry, I'm sure that it's perfectly flat and will not pose any problems...

 

If that missing screw causes contact problems between the VRAMs and heatsink, how would you address it?

a- Replace the VRAM thermal pads with thick fluffy low density (low performance) pads?

b- Put thermal pads between the bottom case and top of the heatsink to force the heatsink down towards the VRAM?

c- Return to Dell?

d- Toss out the window?

 

A.

But I will say again the chips do not get hot enough to really worry about, everything else will overheat 1st

 

Now they are arriving can I ask ask what video drivers come pre installed and has anyone noticed flicker at lower brightness levels?

 

Since there has been discussions about the performance of the SSDs in the 9560, perhaps someone can now answer WHICH SSDs are infact in the machines?

 

Sammy PM961 from the picture I saw 3gb/s read 1.1 write

 

you realize this doesn't mean anything. SSD prices are going to go up even more, and Dell uses whatever they can get their hands on. It may be pretty reliable at first to get a PM961 at first, but you never know. My wife's 9350 came with a hynix SSD. In the 15 or so 9550s I've ordered I've received: toshiba drives, pm951s, and a couple hynix drives.

 

Got a 9560 yesterday, with a 4K display.

It's great, apart from severe ghosting. The response time seem to be at least 50ms, possibly at high as 80ms. It's a Sharp LQ156D1.

I'm testing using http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/testsoftware/ghosting-test.html

Does anyone else with the 4K screen have similar issues? What screen does your 4K version have? You can use HWiNFO to check the exact model.

 

I think it's known to have ghosting. See the screen shot from the review on this site for the 9550

 

Bollocks, it is the same panel as the 9550, out the window with my hopes of them ditching PWM to control the lower brightness. I wonder why they are selling this with 350 nits instead of 400?

 

Just curious here...the 4k screen of the 9560 got pretty amazing reviews (when people didn't have replacement issues). Can you elaborate at all about your concerns for less tech savvy users? How is the display for someone that isn't a heavy games? Is it dim? Any other big issues you expect on a fully functioning new computer?

 

Have a look at the flicker thread