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

I had no problem with your answer - it just that it didn’t confirm anything. I don’t take issue with if Apple throttles them or not (as you can argue their are pros and cons), just if someone could definitively confirm it - and your answer didn’t due to it showing no evidence, similar to the YouTube video.

Also, who said I don’t like Apple? I said I am a critic of them when they do things wrong (something a fanboy wouldn’t do), doesn’t mean I don’t praise them when they do things right. I own a lot of Apple and non-Apple products and likely will be purchasing their upcoming ARM machines.

 

Ok, well yes. I KNOW they do slow their machines down on battery power, as my son owns a macbook. I probably should have stated that. But I thought it was common knowledge for the regulars around here. Secondly, I own many apple and non apple products too. and, like you, I will be buying an ARM based macbook as soon as they release their touch versions.....YES, they are coming.

 

A touchscreen MacBook with FaceID would be amazing.

 

2 in 1 Macbook pro with pencil support and still have touch bar. I'm in completely then.

 

Thank you.
Why is there no choice for a second hard drive on the DELL website? I only have the option to add a second hard drive with the Precision 5750, so I thought the XPS might only have one M.2 PCIE slot.

 

Why not buy an ssd yourself and put it in? It’s very easy and normally cheaper.

 

I think his point was that the lack of this option led him to believe there was only one slot... I had the opposite confusion when I assumed that the 2TB option would fill both slots with 1TB SSDs. It is odd that Dell's configuration options all leave the second slot open...

 

Ah. Well maybe dell is turning. New leaf and trying to play nice for once?

 

However, i doubt that those touch screen ARM Appley notebooks will come with big screen like XPS17...
Most likely, the first wave will be their "matured" 12.9inch to 14inch. Then 15, 16 in 2nd or 3rd wave when they manage to skillfully tackle on touch screen power management?

 

I don't want a big screen, I want a 13 inch. I want portable like my current dell 2 in 1. You have no worries about screen power management considering the iPad goes hours and hours without recharging. You seem to forget apples arm chips are extremely efficents

 

By the way I found another reviewer who noticed the performance is not dropping on battery - this time with actual data. Looks like Apple have changed things since the one you purchased for your son.

Thought you might find this interesting.

(Notebookreview doesn’t let me link to specific time - if you forward to 3:45 for the geek bench 5 benchmark).



For most maybe this doesn’t matter and people might even prefer more battery life
to performance - but it is interesting to note that if you want full power while on battery, might only be possible on a Mac.

 

Yes, I am just wondering if this would break the warranty.

 

No it won’t.

 

On-battery performance was funny with the 9550 already. It would be notably throttled initially, but after some time of a continuous workload the CPU would gradually ramp up to the max clock. Mind hi-current drain may not be long-term healthy for the battery, these are prone to swelling if mistreated.

Also the CPU throttling on battery is adjustable in the advanced power profile settings (on-battery values). These also affect the throttling with a low-power charger.
The GPU throttling on battery is adjustable in GeForce Experience / Battery Boost. Not for low-power chargers afaik.

 

Saw this on Reddit (by ugly cowboy) regarding the XPS 17 battery drain:

So despite Dell saying it is normal, maybe a fix is on the horizon eventually.

 

Only if you break it. But it’s very straight forward. And as a laptop owner you should learn how to do it if you plan on keeping the laptop for a long time. It’s like changing the oil in your car.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/hnp7wf/xps_17_battery_drain/

Just too funny. Dell always runs home.

Dell might call it a fix, others might call it a (mostly huge) throttle

@Papusan

 

They must have. That's interesting. I wonder how bad the battery life suffers because of it. Also, as soon as they release a 2 in 1 macbook, I am gone to the darkside! Darth Cook is brewing something good up with these ARM Macs.

 

Dell told notebookcheck it's expected behavior:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/2020-...ercent-battery-while-recharging.480923.0.html

 

Dell misunderstood initially. They expect some small battery discharge at full power, but the 130w adapter should be proving 130w of power instead of 100w. Notebookcheck updated their article to reflect Dell saying they are investigating the charger problem.

 

Other Dellbooks uses the same 130 W AC adapter as the XPS 17 9700 (some with same problems while other don't). What will the investigating of the charger fix?

 

I should be more clear. There is likely not a problem with the charger specifically but with the way the XPS 17 requests power from the charger. The 9500 and 1650ti versions of the 9700 can use that charger to pull ~135w from the wall when under full load. The 2060max-q variant of the 9700 is limited to ~105w for some reason instead. Dell is investigating why this is the case.

For what its worth, this isn't the first time Dell has has a problem with notebooks not properly requesting power from their proprietary 130w charger. The 9550, 9560 and the 9575 all received EC firmware updates early in their lives to correct a problem where they would only identify the 130w USB-C charger as a 95w version instead. Hopefully something similar is happening here and Dell will be able to fix it with an updated EC.

 

Similar case. Area-51m was never fixed. You can utilize 240-250W from the single 330w brick. Dell promised a better power handling for single psu but nothing has changed since the release early last year. Maybe they will fix it for the XPS. We will see. But how Dell’s engineers have handled it so far isn’t trustworthy.

And it would be nice if they tested their products properly before it being thrown out in the market. They had more than enough time for that.

 

I also said in my post Dell said it is normal - doesn’t change the fact they are wrong and have been wrong before and many u-turns have come from them in the past.

 

I never stated an opinion... Just a fact and a link. I don't care about the battery drain thing that will never affect me, but I am certainly disappointed in Dell's lack of QC.

 

Fair enough. It appears they have already updated article you linked to say they have u-turned already and are now investigating the issue of not pulling more than 100W, something the XPS 15 can do.

 

Would be kinda funny, if all XPS have the same bug, maybe since some of the last power delivery fw updates which happened in the past months several times in bios updates. But it never was noticed so far because of the 15" XPS usually dont drain more than 100W. Dell is a disgrace if it comes to their bios. They need to throw the bios away and start from the ground again and hire some other company, doing it.

 

The notebookcheck review is out:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-...ew-Pretty-Much-A-MacBook-Pro-17.480975.0.html

 

Ok. What PCIE would you advise for the the second hard drive? I would choose a 2 TB if possible.

Also Dell France limits the RAM to 16Gb for the highest spec.. this is ridiculously low, so I would like to change this as well. I read the following specs for the RAM: SO-DIMM, DDR4 dual channel, 2933MHz. Should it be the same speed exactly? Not sure what to choose here as well.. Dell is not even offering that kind of RAM on their website.

 

notebookcheck had this to say about the SSDs that Dell uses:
"The two internal M.2 2280 storage slots support PCIe SSDs with one supporting SATA as well. Dell sources SSDs from a handful of OEMs so it's a gamble between Micron, SK Hynix, Toshiba, and Intel based on our experience with previous XPS systems. The 1 TB Micron 2200S in our unit is still fast even if it doesn't quite seem to reach the speeds of a 1 TB Samsung PM981."

Any M.2 2280 PCIe should work, but you should shop around for price, performance & reliability...

Someone else posted this recommendation here earlier for RAM, so I went with just 8GB from Dell and replaced them with these:
https://www.newegg.com/crucial-64gb-260-pin-ddr4-so-dimm/p/N82E16820156242

 

Dell's favorite reviewer editors view on the topic.

The Dell XPS 17 9700 has a charging problem Pcworld.com | Yesterday
Dell's choice of a smaller, lighter 130-watt brick could be backfiring.

How serious is it? We’ll just say that based on our review unit, it’s enough to recommend that you put a pause on a potential purchase until the problem is addressed by Dell.

This probably isn’t a surprise to anyone who pays attention to the unsung hero of laptops: the power brick. When we saw that Dell had chosen a 130-watt USB-C charger for the XPS 17, we even expressed our concern in a video posted on YouTube in May.

​

 

I came here hopeful to see an overwhelming amount of praise for the XPS 17. MC has these for $2499 and I thought about reviewing one then sell it. Now i'm not sure this is worth my time. When it's my money on the line I prefer to review products I'm genuinely excited about.

 

All the hate I've seen here came from people who don't even plan to buy one... My first one had a bad USB port, but they replaced it with one that seems perfect. Best laptop I've ever seen.

 

Erm... this is a Dell XPS. You won't find positive reviews of them if you ask the right people, except if you look on youtube then youll find 99% positive """reviews""" of those "content creators", which prise the XPS every year as the """best premium laptop""".

 

I'm not a content creator, gamer, or reviewer... Why am I supposed to hate this laptop?

 

XPS history...

Opinion: What on earth is going on with Dell's XPS lineup...

See also posts about all flaws in this thread
XPS 15 9570 Owners Thread

 

I see nothing relevant to the XPS 17 9700 at either of those linked sources.

 

I have this laptop, it’s just fantastic tbh


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Like @Papusan said, the XPS line has for years a bad history. Every year it is the same. Just fail after fail after fail after fail. Then during its live cycle, fail after fail after fail after fail continues with bios updates. The chance for new fails is just too high with new XPS. History will repeat itself.

 

That's funny because people who actually own them love them. The only people who think they fail are gamers and benchmarkers. Wrong system for the job.

 

As I read through that old notebookcheck article that he linked about a different computer, I noticed that every complaint the author listed has been fixed/reversed in this one... What specifically is your issue?

 

Sadly this owners lounge will probably only ever have the experience of a handful of owners complements of Dell's pricing. If you're a power user than you probably won't be happy with this laptop complements of the thermals and lack of undervolting. Dell is also limiting 3rd party USB-C chargers to 60w and disabling others from working, I'll pass on that.

It's a great package size with theoretical great performance that just doesn't happen. It's great for someone who doesn't need high level performance but wants a good all around product with a great screen IMHO. We will see when refurbs start coming out if prices are reasonable, maybe I'll pick one up to bench then.

 

My first XPS 15 definitely failed. I am neither a gamer nor a benchmarker. That said, my current XPS 15 has been a pleasure, though it's already been sold as I await is replacement, which surprisingly doesn't have its own thread here yet.

 

Says who? I have a 60W charger that generates constant complaints and (now disabled) warnings that I've plugged in a low-powered charger. I also have a 100W charger that is accepted without any such complaints/warnings when I plug it in... A quick search for how to view the actual power delivered (without external hardware) didn't turn up anything useful... Got a suggestion for how I can confirm this difference?

EDIT: Both chargers work. The 60W one will stop charging if I'm doing something that draws too much power, but then will resume charging when I go back to web surfing or whatever. The 100W charger never stops charging, but again, I am not a gamer, content creator, or benchmarker... Just an engineer doing normal nerdy stuff.

 

There are numerous threads on the dell forums/reddit about it on previous XPS laptops, I also verified it on my XPS 9570, XPS 7390 1-in-1, and Vostro 7590. These were verified using 3 different USB-C chargers ranging from 65 to 100w with multiple different cables, using a USB-C inline multimeter. The 65W Google Chrome adapter no longer works at all on these Dell laptops, and the other two are power limited to 60W. Perhaps they did not do this on the 9700, but that's unlikely in my opinion.

On a side note, the 9570 worked with these adapters prior to some Dell update, but the other two newer laptops have never functioned with them. They also work fine and dandy on my G14... Also just a ME, not a EE...

 

Some 2020 Dell XPS 17 9700 machines appear to be unaffected by charger issue notebookcheck.net

It turns out that Dell XPS 17 9700 machines can draw up to 130 W from the wall, after all. Not all units can do so as our tests have confirmed, but these unaffected units apparently cannot always charge at their full capacity.

As we have covered previously, "the route of the problem appears to lie with Dell's implementation of 130 W charging over USB Type-C". For reference, Thunderbolt 3 can deliver up to 100 W, but Dell found a way around this. However, many units can only draw a maximum of 105 W from the wall, 30 W short of their peak power consumption.

Interestingly, some people have reported that their units do not always pull 130 W, with one unit warning that it had been attached to a 90 W power supply even though it was using its standard 130 W adapter. A reboot apparently remedies this, though.

Power adapters and max utilization from Dell seems to be a problem. Proprietary solutions will often go wreck. And a ongoing firmware update to try fix it ain't nice. At least not if not all will be fixed.

 

What does any of that have to do with the 9700? How did you check these chargers on your other laptops? I would like to duplicate your tests with mine and report back... I have strong enough evidence to refute your claims in this instance, but I would like to be more definitive.

Oops. Just noticed you mentioned a USB-C inline multimeter... My wife's macbook shows the power supplied by USB-C chargers in the OS info, but I guess Windows doesn't support that. I will look into getting a meter, but I already know for a fact that my 100W charger works much better than the 60W. It isn't possible that my 9700 isn't recognizing the higher PD levels...

 

It has to do with the fact that Dell likes to implement stupid changes across all of their products. I checked these charges on my other laptops using the exact same methods. They also work on my wife's old Inspiron 7377 as I refuse to update the firmware on it. I'd love to see you create a 90w load for >20 minutes and see if you actually have discharging issues. What brand of 100w USB-C charger do you have anyway? My 100W is a Hyperjuice GaN that doesn't have any issues supplying 100w to everything except my Dell laptops (well 3 of the 4)...

*on edit*
Sorry I did miss where you were asking how I tested them. I used Prime95 and Heaven Benchmark to load up the CPU/GPU respectively and looked at the reading on my USB-C multimeter to get my supplied power. You could open those up and use hwinfo to monitor the system load and if it has discharge. It's not a real accurate way of measuring it, but it may point you in the right direction.

*double edit*
Looks like Dell may have finally increased the 3rd party charging limit to 90w on only the 9500 and 9700 (although they seem to still be blocking some adapters). Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised if one day that changes and they go back to 60W without telling anyone (just like when they lowered the GPU throttle setpoint on the 5970). I'm glad they allowed a higher limit as 60w is totally ridiculous. Now if they can fix the 100w limit on the 2060 model it would be great.

 

Mine is this 100W PD 3.0 GaN by Choetech.

I have a Fluke 189, but I'm guessing the USB-C multimeter you use is something more like this...? Using the Fluke would be much more of a project.

I was already certain that my 100W was performing up to spec, but it's nice to see others confirm. I'll get that USB-C meter anyway just because I like such toys... I hope you're wrong about future firmware.