*** XPS 17 Owner's Lounge ***

Yes, it's listed as compatible with the 9500 so it should work with the 9700. I don't know if it will run at 2933mhz or 2666mhz though. I know Dell supports up to 2933mhz however it may not have a JDEC profile for it (sadly crucial's website won't pull up that model right now). Also, this is a single stick of 32GB, were you planning on adding a second? You can run one of the 8gb stock sticks with it and it will give you dual channel on the first 16gb but it will be slower single channel on the rest of the memory.

 

I plan to buy 2 X 32gb making it 64gb RAM in total. I wasn't planning to upgrade to 64gb if Dell UK was offering 32gb RAM on the 8 core CPU 10875h which can't be customise on their site. I can't seem to find any 2933mhz DDR4 RAM in the UK

 

You'll be fine either way. The difference between 2666 and 2933mhz ram won't be a tremendous blow. Also Amazon has good return policies (at least here in the US) so if it doesn't work, you can return it.

 

Congrats, You will LOVE the 17. I am placing my order for one soon as well. I will be upgrading myself now that I know for sure it's user upgradeable. It's still going to cost me a bit of money, but I will have a 4tb samsung 970 drive, and 64gb of good quality ram. Add in the 4k touch screen I will be happy.

 

The 4K touch screen I had on my previous XPS 17 9570 was one of the best screens I've ever looked at. Super vibrant colors, very sharp, and very very bright. You will love it.

 

The main reason I am buying it. I am doing alot more create work now and want the best screen available.

 

Ugh. I saw "Thursday" in the estimate for delivery and, without bothering to fully read the expected delivery date of 9 July, assumed it was coming this week... Anybody got an earlier expected delivery date?

 

Sadly one of the worst screens Ive ever seen if the pictures moves (even slowly), it looks good when nothing moves, that's it. The ghosting is huge.

 

I have used many xps notebooks recently and never experienced anything like that. You must have had a bad panel.

 

Sure buddy, sure.

 

Please explain? Bad panels happen, I have looked at probably a half dozen xps devices in the past few months and none had these issues. People.

 

"Buddy" is a pretty hostile way to address someone... I'm baffled by all the anger in here.

 

Good news, the first wave of xps 17 is shipped already, some will receive it this week. I hope I will receive mine this week.
Someone on reddit received xps 17 today and he said the trackpad doesnt have any problems.
I plan to buy 2 x 32gb with cas 16-19 toobut they are out of stock now, the crucial ballistix. In addition, I plan to buy the 2tb Adata sx8200 pro (this one is power effeciency M.2 drive, fast, reliable, hot as hot as sn750 and the cheapest).
Accessories, I plan to buy a usb 3 hub with ethernet adapter which doesnt have any issues with mouse dongle and multi plugged devices. The last one I am going to buy is usb A to usb c with the size that can plug 2 of them side by side. Also grizzly thermal conductonaut.
I still consider whether I should buy dbrand skin or not since it doesnt increase the heat but give very nice looking.

 

I am running ballistix ram now and it works great. Good choice. Dbrand make awesome skins. Can't go wrong there.

 

Can’t believe they haven’t added an RTX 2060/32GB RAM version to UK yet...

 

Can I have the link to the RAM you want to buy?

 

Dave2D Review:

 

In UK, only two low spec versions of the XPS 15 is strangely only available / wonder why? Are they stopping to fix the trackpad issue?

 

Crucial Ballistix 64GB (2 x 32GB) 260-Pin DDR4 SO-DIMM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Laptop Memory Model BL2K32G32C16S4B https://www.newegg.com/product/N82E16820164170

Good price for 3200mhz , cas 16, but it is out of stock. I dont know when it is in stock to purchase

Seems like Dave gave more negative feedbacks on this product then possitive ones. However, I don't care, just aware of hardware fault, like trackpad, etc. I hope Dell doesnt limit power output of cpu. 5.53lbs is heavy as my old Dell inspiron 15 3521 but smaller form factor is better for grabbing and holding

 

Don't expect the XPS 17 to support XMP. I think the highest JEDEC profile on that ram is something like 2666 CL20.

 

LOL, unlike Abandonware (*) m17 R3, this still has RAM slots:

https://www.dell.com/support/manual...6dae1b-1fbe-40f9-8d46-40e8c3fbd267&lang=en-us

(*) Formerly known as Alienware.

 

I could count on one hand the amount of people who I know had to replace RAM. But I wouldn’t even need a hand (0) to do it.

 

Thank you for this insignificant anecdote. What about being able to upgrade or replace faulty RAM? Rhetorical question, the answer obviously is: any user would benefit from one or both of these capabilities.

 

Again, how many people suffered faulty laptop RAM - compared to the fact that having non replaceable parts means for less chance of failure in the first place as well as lower cost to consumers?

Should they make decisions based on the 0.01%? Seems silly to criticise for that.

 

Are you some sort of paid for Dell shill?
There is no benefit of soldered RAM to the consumers whatsoever. One could argue height, but even in this XPS 17 they found space for the modules, and anyone who has looked inside thin AW models can verify there is plenty of space.

Lower chance of failure? What's the rationale/evidence? Lower cost to consumers? Dell RAM is ridiculously overpriced and of subpar quality, and this ripoff is baked into the price of models with soldered RAM. Or perhaps this is about the cost of RAM repair? Oh wait, no - the whole motherboard would need to be replaced at a substantial cost and effort. Which hole did you pull that 0.01% from?

Unbelievable.

@Papusan

 

Fyi, 64 gb ram (32gb x2) crucial 3200mhz is on sale on newegg. Only $309 (from $330).
Crucial 64GB Kit (32GBx2) DDR4 3200 MT/s CL22 SODIMM 260-Pin Memory - CT2K32G4SFD832A https://www.newegg.com/product/N82E16820156242?ignorebbr=1

 

It’s called science. Good quality soldered joints virtually never fail, while sockets are far less reliable, particularly in moving products such as laptops. It adds a whole process to go wrong during manufacturing as well, resulting in extra costs and QC issue.

The cost reduction and weight/size improvements are a bonus in addition to reliability. The downside is you lose the option for user replaceable parts but again, nobody really does that. We might as well complain that the CPU and GPU should be user replaceable.

 

LOL. Science, huh? Any references to back this "science" up?

 

I'll disagree with the bonus in reliability and cost reduction argument. RAM does go bad, I worked as a tech for 5 years while getting my undergrad and I saw it all the time. It doesn't have anything to do with the contacts, but the ICUs themselves. Cost reduction is also really not a thing with it. You can "upgrade" the amount of ram on Dell's website from 16GB to 64GB for $441 but you can do it yourself easily for $250.

You may not know people who work on their laptops, but that's your circle of friends/contacts. The people that I hang out with most assuredly upgrade their laptops/desktops. These are the same people that buy their grandma a laptop and set it up for her, so they aren't just buying their own laptops.

 

One of many. And many don’t even know what they bought.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/bga-venting-thread.798775/page-258#post-11021946

 

You can disagree all you like - but if you can find a free PDF of this https://www.amazon.com/IC-Component-Sockets-Weifeng-Liu/dp/0471460508 it goes into good detail into the pros and cons of BGA vs Socket design.

Also stating RAM can go bad is kind of not relevant, as no one is stating it can’t.

Also my circle includes people who work in computer repair shops, but again seems pretty irrelevant to mention it.

My suggestion is that the solution for someone buying a laptop which does not meet their needs need should NOT be to make it upgradable. And if they don’t know what they bought, maybe a way to educate consumers or make it simpler to buy things. That seems better than letting users bu

What if the user got one without a GPU and now realised they need one, would you also now request all laptops have the ability to install or upgrade GPU’s? What if they got a 4 core but now need an 8 core CPU?

People just don’t like change, I remember in this forum we had anti BGA clan almost when laptops began to have soldered components at all many years ago.

 

Since the discussion is purely anecdotal, has anyone ever heard of a socket connection related RAM failure? It doesn't seem to be a particularly prevalent issue.

I find the implied suggestion that people here don't like change a bit ridiculous. Probably more than a half of posts in this forum pertains to anticipated/upcoming changes to laptops and related products. On the other hand, it's the first time I've seen anyone support soldered RAM. Statistically speaking, it was bound to happen one day I guess

 

You mean all know exactly what they need within the estimated 3 years lifespan for notebooks?

The review sites also don’t like the change. Read reviews of notebooks with the new soldered on trend.

Maybe soldered storage is ok as well? What next? Glue the heatsink on the chips?


http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...eaving-alienware.829424/page-11#post-10980364

 

Some people are OK with this. Some people just don't care.
The problem is that it eventually affects those that do care.
We get to live with whatever they are content to put up with.

 

You're right, I can disagree with it as I like since we have different opinions. You try to find a link to a document which supports the adaptation of BGA vs Socket, but that doesn't mean anything as well. Sure ram can become slightly dislodged and you need to reseat it, but that's a 10 minute thing and rarely happens. When was the last time you had to reseat your ram? I've had probably a hundred laptops over the past 10 years and I haven't had to do it once, but I have had bad RAM in two of them... The connector isn't the problem, it's the fact that components can and do go bad.

If you have socketed components you can swap them and not have to replace the motherboard. When you're 5 days out of warranty and your RAM dies, would you rather spend $80 or $800? That's where stating RAM going bad is totally relevant. I would venture to say if your friends really worked in PC repair shops, they would have seen bad ram by now...

There really isn't an advantage to soldered ram IMHO. Sure you may be able to free up 3mm of space at the cost of future usability/serviceability/upgradability but that's not worth it IMHO. You can save lots of money by upgrading the ram yourself, that's smart IMHO.

 

I didn’t find a link to support BGA, it’s an academic text used in university courses, nothing to do with business decisions of whether people should solder things or not. It’s an objective text about pros and cons of all methods. I posted it as some refuted the fact it has some reliability and cost advantages. It’s not to say soldering is a perfect solution which doesn’t have some of its own risks. I think socketed design is very reliable on desktops which aren’t prone to being moved

 

With regards to fixing a "SODIMM reliability issue", the well known engineering tenet "don't fix it if ain't broken" very much applies. It's quite clear the decision to solder RAM is driven primarily by cost and profit, at the expense of the consumer not just in terms of the initial outlay, but also the lack of choice, the non-upgradeability (need to buy another device if amount of RAM is insufficient) and the out-of-warranty servicing premium

Moreover, soldered RAM goes against the core principle of PC computing which made it so popular: standardised modularity. BTW It's now clear Intel shot itself in the foot by following Apple's thin and light mantra, and dropping support for socketed mobile CPUs. They are now getting dumped by Apple in favour of another proprietary solution

 

We do have soldered storage on many premium laptops already and have for years.

What I will say is in my view, due to the extreme high failure rate compared to everything else, dGPU’s should probably be replaceable.

 

Those cost advantages only go to the company producing the laptop, not the consumer. If anything the consumer pays more as they can't buy something they can afford now and upgrade later.

Again though, when is the last time you had to reseat ram even in a laptop that is moved often? I travel with my laptops. They go daily with me to the hospital and make rounds around the ICU and then to clinic where I take them into patient rooms. That's a lot of movement daily and having socketed ram isn't even on my list of concerns.

 

If one company decides to pocket the cost saving, another may decide to pass it onto consumers and gain market share - and this is just how competition works right.

Recently, Apple doubled the base storage of their Mac lineup with the prices unchanged. They didn’t do it out of their kindness of their hearts, they did it to keep up with competition.

 

Yes to keep up with competition is the only reason. They didn't pass on the savings for the joy of it. Soldered RAM effectively doubles the cost of memory upgrades looking at Dell's product lineup. I'm glad Dell didn't solder on the memory for the XPS 15/17, but they've been doing it on the 13 so it may only be a matter of time.

 

It comes to a supply/demand game I guess. There is far more people needing higher RAM on say XPS 15/17 so relatively it becomes more cost prohibitive for them to supply say a 32GB option on the XPS 13. I don’t believe it would have been cheaper if it was socketed. Many socketed laptops like Gigabyte etc have super high RAM upgrades prices to the point reviewers say you should just buy your own.

 

Exactly, you can buy your own with socketed components and save yourself a bundle of money. That's my suggestion to people who are purchasing the XPS 17, why throw hundreds of dollars away?

 

At a risk of exerting slight pressure against the forum guidelines, purchasing Apple products is like voting for a totalitarian-leaning regime promising unicorns and sunlit uplands. Imagine a notebook market dominated by Apple: no consumer choice, just the same thin and light non-servicable locked down throttlebooks at extortionate prices. With the competition eliminated, the ripoff would go from terrible to abysmal.

On the other hand, Windows dominance aside, the PC platform promotes competition and virtually prevents monopoly formation. Dell/Alienware's ever increasing efforts to lock down their products with progressively aggressive soldering strategy and creeping use of proprietary technologies is an unwelcome trend that needs to be pushed back against by the consumers as much as possible, while there is still choice.

 

People vote with their wallets and so far people seem to enjoy Apple products - so we can’t be surprised if other companies follow suit right?

The enthusiast segment is even smaller than we probably imagine.

If in the future, the general population made a huge fuss about upgradability on laptops - you can be sure Apple would go down that route. To date, they are keeping some products serviceable/upgradable based on what they perceive as what most people want for said product. They could have made the new Mac Pro all soldered but they knew it would affect their sales, so they didn’t, even if they wanted to.

 

Apple have always been the masters of marketing. I mean who else goes as far as arranging fake queues in front of their stores? Consequently, their visibility in the market is out of proportion.

Would be good to know their laptop market share in terms of units and revenue. One number that popped up yesterday is that Apple business represents just 4.5% of Intel's revenue. That's almost peanuts.. This ARM thing seems like they are pulling out of pro laptop market. Best thing to do would be to just ignore their antics from now on.

As far as claims regarding enthusiast laptop market facts and predictions are concerned, I would need to ask for references more concrete and accessible than an obscure $120 textbook on Amazon.

 

The textbook could have been $10,000 and written by God, nothing will change your bias towards Apple. Instead of me posting references, how about you do that to back your statements up?

 

The textbook being $10000 wouldn't make it easier for us to obtain a copy in order to verify your statements.

Which of my fairly obvious statements would you require further clarifaction on?

 

Sounds awfully similar to the response I got from a guy for not accepting 5G causes coronavirus.

 

Seems like you've decided to deflect and troll rather than discuss. Welcome to my ignore list, sir.