I've had a 9560 and currently have a 9570. Both have cooling issues. Undervolting helps, repasting helps, but VRMS become an issue. A guy named iUnlock did a pretty crazy mod where he diverts part of the fan airflow to cool VRMS, which is indeed very helpful, but is way too much for almost every one. I'm glad to see dell added new chips, but unless they greatly improved the cooling, it will be for naught.
Of course, the OLED is pretty great. I hope more laptops use it soon. Sad I'll end up waiting about six years before replacing, if I can get away with it.
Also, Dell had better fix their bios bugs. The bios has issues, they reduced the tjmax for the nvidia gpu a few updates back, there are sleep bugs, processor state bugs, audio bugs, and many others. If Dell wants to pitch a premium machine, they'd better ship a premium firmware with it.
It's such a fraud that so many laptops are designed for burst but not sustained performance. Nothing's more awful than your video game completely crusting out 10 mins in and never recovering.
I had a lot of luck adding thermal pads on a bunch of components on my xps-15. But the fact that I can alleviate the issues makes me wonder why they're not doing that at the factory.
That't pretty much my thinking as well. If paste and pads do so much, and if diverting a little bit of fan flow helps as well, why does Dell not do so? The XPS division is run by the same guy who runs Alienware; why can they not get this right?
> I've had a 9560 and currently have a 9570. Both have cooling issues. Undervolting helps, repasting helps, but VRMS become an issue.
I have a 9560, and would not have bought it if I was aware of the thermal issues. I'm very angry that this is even legal - Dell (and the other OEMs, including Apple) should be required to put big red signs everywhere if their customers cannot fully use the computer without buying it.
By default, just stressing the CPU makes it downclock to the minimum of 800 MHz and the computer becomes unusable. Undervolting the CPU in Linux took an hour, now I can run it at max and the temp goes to 70/75 degrees with no performance issues. But using both the CPU and Nvidia GPU kills everything, since the GPU heat also spreads to the CPU. On Windows you can underclock the GPU but it doesn't make a big difference. Playing Overwatch at minimum settings and 1080p should work well on the GTX 1050, but I have to resort to hacks like limiting the CPU to 70% speed and putting a 70 FPS limit in Overwatch to keep the GPU from burning itself. And even then it stays at 90-95 degrees and sometimes crashes. Training neural networks was a bit more doable but still not fun.
I have no idea how they put a 6-core i7 in the 9570 without it melting down. And this new 5GHz one seems similarly ridiculous.
TL;DR just buy a gaming laptop - they're cheaper for the same specs and generally have a sturdy build. You might not get 10-12 hours battery and will need to carry around a charger, but the thermal issues are not worth it. Plus you get an Ethernet port included usually, and more USB ports.
I have a 9570 with the 6-core CPU does stay over 3GHz under load and gets quite warm, but I think it's largely a function of them increasing the tolerances. I've rarely seen it dip down to the "base" clock speed of 2.2GHz.
I've got the 9550 and run Ubuntu on it. No issues whatsoever and I do very compute-intensive work on it.
One thing that I've found is very important is to clean out the fans often, otherwise dust builds up and prevents cooling. Just unscrew the plate on the underside of the laptop and blow / brush / pick out the dust that's built up (both the fan intake and the fan outlet). Doing this every few months has been a game changer for my 9550.
I have a 9575 and a 9570, and cooling is the biggest issue I have. They both run extremely hot, and charging the 9570 through the former's 130W USB-C charger causes it to reach temperatures I can only describe as "unsafe".
It doesn't help battery life that some applications I run like Docker for Windows like to enter a permanent CPU usage state that prevents the system from idling and reducing power usage below that high water mark. But since I run a lot of VMs and containers, I don't expect a lot of battery life on either.
The fixed camera placement is probably the biggest feature for me. Oh, and up to 64GB of RAM.
The bloatware is universal across all non-Apple computers. You can download a Windows 10 ISO for free from Microsoft's website (apparently they've started blocking it if your User Agent indicates that you're already on Windows, but that's trivial to bypass). Download ISO, burn to USB, reinstall Windows and you get rid of all the bloat. The license key is embedded in the hardware these days.
That said, MS gives ridiculous freedom to drivers. It auto-installs drivers for my 9560's audio and Thunderbolt controllers. The audio drivers include a 'Waves MaxxAudio Pro' application that stays in the system tray; stopping it makes the audio stop working. The Intel TB drivers also have a permanent unremovable notification in the system tray.
What's worse is that when you plug in a Logitech Webcam, Windows automatically downloads drivers (which are not necessary if you're on Linux since webcams use the same standard protocol), and then the Logitech drivers pop up a giant popup window asking to install their bloatware application (which is not required for the camera to work). What else does Windows let hardware manufacturers autoinstall onto your computer? Keyloggers? Rootkits?
Why would they block you from downloading windows if you're already on windows?
For what it's worth, I successfully downloaded that windows iso from microsoft less than a week ago from a windows machine, and used it to reformat that same machine without any issues or workarounds.
They offer to download Media Creation Tool, which itself either downloads the ISO, burns DVD or makes an USB with installer for you.
There is one subtle difference between the ISO you can download and what the tool downloads: the ISO contains install.wim file, which is larger than 4 GB (i.e. it won't fit on FAT32 usb, if you are going to make it yourself; it is fine with UDF, when burning), while the MCT image contains install.esd, which uses different compression and fits into FAT32.
TLDR: if you want USB stick with installer, use the Media Creation Tool. You won't be able to make it easily from the ISO (aside from wim-splitting, esd-recompressing, or using NTFS if your UEFI supports it).
Oh, that's cool! Seems like it's not malicious then (though it may be the case that the media creation tool doesn't allow you to download a higher level of Win10 - the normal ISO download allows you to install Win10 Home OR Pro during setup, unless your computer has an embedded license key in which case it automatically installs that version).
That also explains why I always had to flash the ISO to a USB stick with Rufus (inside VirtualBox) - just `dd` or `cat`ing it onto /dev/sdX never worked.
If your target is UEFI boot only, you don't need any special tool to make the install media. Just copy all the files to a filesystem supported by UEFI and you are good to go. The FAT32 support is mandatory, and the UEFI bootloader looks into the efi directory in the root to find the boot files. Some UEFI implementations also support NTFS, but that's optional, so it cannot be used on universally usable boot medium.
The magic boot sector that all those tools like Rufus create, is needed only for legacy boot.
The Windows 10 ISO from the download is using UDF filesystem and is intended for burning. If you dd it to a block device, very few firmwares support that from non-optical drive. Prior to 1809 release, it's install.wim was smaller than 4G, so you could make UEFI installer by just copying all the files to USB drive, but since 1809, the easier way is just to use the Media Creation Tool. The harder way is to recompress install.wim into install.esd, or just use NTFS if your firmware has the support (e.g. Intel NUCs do).
For me XPS is an unstable machine: bad firmware, bad wifi chip, bad tb dock, kernel modules crash continuously. Next time i'll buy something else (and cheaper).
Anyone else feel like commenting on build quality and reliability of xps machines. I bought an xps 13 for my mother-in-law with the hope of minimising support calls. The motherboard failed within the first year and it took more than three onsite support visits to sort it out with Dell who eventually replaced it under warranty. We have Dell Inspiron laptops at work and they are bearly useable heaps of junk. Hoped the xps range was better but based on my sample of one,it doesn't look like it.
I got two, now older generations and had problems:
- display dims when using dark themes. Had to use a sketchy unofficial leaked firmware patch to fix it.
- bluetooth + wifi not working
- changed chipset, now bluetooth only working when I activate/deactivate it once after startup
- after 2.5 years or so the battery of one bloated (got free replacement, quite nice to have the battery refreshed actually)
- bluescreens
- the dock... I had my display not turning back on when disconnecting, USB stopping to work after disconnecting, slight electric shocks from one even. Oh and the USB-c dock blocks your only usb-c slot and does not have any usb-c hub.
- I blew a speaker in week 2 (don't EQ it, neither yourself, nor with the dell eq stuff)
- the case screws are tiny. I was afraid I put one in at an angle, another one got lost because I didn't have any locktight.
Other than that very nice machines... I also now people without any of these problems.
> Anyone else feel like commenting on build quality and reliability of xps machines.
I have an XPS 9550. The issues I have with it are:
- The speakers have self destructed 3 times now. Just prior to self destructing they were wonderfully loud (which I at first thought was feature). By the 3rd time I was aware of the flaw is when some app decided I really needed to hear the notification I turned it done so it was only a few seconds - but it was enough.
- The Bluetooth has never worked. It took me a while to notice as I don't use it a lot, and I run Linux so I put it down to a software issue. But then I found if I was real persistent I could get it to pair, but then it sounded like the 2.4GHz signal was woefully weak. I asked Dell to fix it on one of their warranty visits and they replaced the module - but no difference. I now suspect it's an antenna problem.
- As others have said it regularly overheats. On a hot day it will spontaneously reset.
- There is some issue with the connectors on the mother board. In my case it manifests itself by it occasionally rebooting when I pick it up by a corner (thus putting a bit of torque on it). Once I realised what was happening I found I could 100% reliability get it to reboot by tapping it at the right point on under the base. I thought it was just my machine but then my brothers Precision laptop (same case) exhibited the same problem.
- Over time I've come to truly loath the layout of the keyboard with it's dedicated PgUp, PgDn and so on keys. I also disliked the feel with a passion - the cheaper Inspiron's have much nicer feeling keyboards. Of course the 9550 design when for slimness over function, and maybe others have a different opinion. Unfortunately it became less and less reliable over time. Turned out when the Dell man disassembled the thing this spill resistant keyboard was trapping huge amounts of hair. I've never seen a keyboard held in by so many screws - there must be at least 20 of them. And the Dell man asked me to get rid of the hair - it must taken me 1/2 an hour with a vacuum cleaner, and even then I didn't restore it to it's original reliability.
- There is the nostril cam issue. I don't hold that against Dell. I knew about it when I bought it, but that screen was oh so gorgeous. But I wouldn't make the same buying decision again.
- The power cord socket broke. This mostly isn't Dell's fault - the exuberant dog got itself tangled in the power cord. Still Dell design the connector, and they could have designed one that disconnected when it got a sharp yank rather than breaking.
- The rear hinge support (an intricately shaped bit of metal inside the machine) snapped. I don't know why - no event stands out in my mind. It became evident when the screws started popping out of the base, and I saw what the problem was when the Dell man fixed it. Sadly after the Dell man left I noticed the same screws were still proud of the case, and remain that way to this day.
- Early on the screen barely worked. The root cause wasn't Dell's, of course - it was Intel bloody horrible GPU drivers. It took Intel 12 months to get them close to reliable: in the end they had to appoint a new team leader who, according to an interview on LWN, just implemented some basic software engineering practices (like CI). From the outside the effect of doing that was pretty dramatic: it went from dogs breakfast to reasonably solid in a remarkably short time - it should be a case study on the effect of good software engineering practices. In the mean time if you scanned the net for reasons on why your shinny new Linux laptop screen kept hanging, what you found was hundreds of Windows users saying they were taking their new XPS's back because Windows didn't work. Turned out Intel was doing their development on Linux and was releasing their Linux drivers before Windows, so the Window users were in a worse position than I was. Dell was _very_ proactive about rel...
I've heard about lots of people having issues with the new Killer WiFi chipsets (on both Windows and Linux). I have a Dell XPS 13 (9350) which had the Broadcom chipset in it. Eventually, I also started having issues with it under Linux (see: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201853).
It wasn't until I bought an Intel AC 8265 on ebay and replaced it myself that the WiFI actually started working perfectly.
I can't understand why they don't just ship it with Intel WiFi chips instead of these flaky Broadcom and Killer ones. Is it because they have some sort of OEM agreement with Broadcom or Killer? I don't get it. It's a fantastic machine in every other way, but if the wireless is flaky then it's a showstopper.
Also with regard to this new machine, I would rather have good battery life and decent performance than a really fast CPU that drains my battery quickly and heats up my machine.
I've got a bunch of fanless mini-pc's (fit-pc4's). They come with Intel WiFi modules. I intended to turn them info WiFi hot spots, so I tested them out at a company conference. It was a mess - PC's kept dropping off the WiFi network left right and centre. In the end I tracked it down to the Intel modules not supporting more than 13 clients. And they had a bunch of other limitations as well, all of which like the 13 clients weren't documented.
In the end I ordered a bunch (10 or so) different WiFi AC modules off EBay (including newer Intel modules), PXE booted 100 laptops with an image that created a suitable amount of traffic, and powered them on one by one until something failed.
The Intel modules were both the worst and most expensive. They best by far were the atheros wifi modules - and they were also the cheapest.
Now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing an Intel WiFi module in a router, so that outcome was not as surprising now as it was then. And of course now I've seen Intel fail to deliver the 5G modems Apple was waiting on.
The reason you don't see Intel chipsets in routers is because they don't have as cheap and plentiful integrated offerings like Broadcom and Atheros (ARM based SoCs).
I am not keen on oled screens for laptops. Screen burn in would be a massive annoyance. I suspect manufacturers will push in this direction though to give people yet another reason to have to throw away a device and upgrade...
For articles and reviews like this, is it responsible journalism to not link and therefore promote the product? I’m genuinely curious if this is an oversight or something else; I see this a lot. It’s not hard to cut n paste the model number and on Dell’s site; but linking to the thing you’re reviewing is convenient; on the flip side Amazon embeds wirecutter reviews and wirecutter almost exclusively reviews products but links to Amazon instead of a manufacturer.
29 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 37.0 ms ] threadOf course, the OLED is pretty great. I hope more laptops use it soon. Sad I'll end up waiting about six years before replacing, if I can get away with it.
Also, Dell had better fix their bios bugs. The bios has issues, they reduced the tjmax for the nvidia gpu a few updates back, there are sleep bugs, processor state bugs, audio bugs, and many others. If Dell wants to pitch a premium machine, they'd better ship a premium firmware with it.
I had a lot of luck adding thermal pads on a bunch of components on my xps-15. But the fact that I can alleviate the issues makes me wonder why they're not doing that at the factory.
I have a 9560, and would not have bought it if I was aware of the thermal issues. I'm very angry that this is even legal - Dell (and the other OEMs, including Apple) should be required to put big red signs everywhere if their customers cannot fully use the computer without buying it.
By default, just stressing the CPU makes it downclock to the minimum of 800 MHz and the computer becomes unusable. Undervolting the CPU in Linux took an hour, now I can run it at max and the temp goes to 70/75 degrees with no performance issues. But using both the CPU and Nvidia GPU kills everything, since the GPU heat also spreads to the CPU. On Windows you can underclock the GPU but it doesn't make a big difference. Playing Overwatch at minimum settings and 1080p should work well on the GTX 1050, but I have to resort to hacks like limiting the CPU to 70% speed and putting a 70 FPS limit in Overwatch to keep the GPU from burning itself. And even then it stays at 90-95 degrees and sometimes crashes. Training neural networks was a bit more doable but still not fun.
I have no idea how they put a 6-core i7 in the 9570 without it melting down. And this new 5GHz one seems similarly ridiculous.
TL;DR just buy a gaming laptop - they're cheaper for the same specs and generally have a sturdy build. You might not get 10-12 hours battery and will need to carry around a charger, but the thermal issues are not worth it. Plus you get an Ethernet port included usually, and more USB ports.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p/Thi...
One thing that I've found is very important is to clean out the fans often, otherwise dust builds up and prevents cooling. Just unscrew the plate on the underside of the laptop and blow / brush / pick out the dust that's built up (both the fan intake and the fan outlet). Doing this every few months has been a game changer for my 9550.
It doesn't help battery life that some applications I run like Docker for Windows like to enter a permanent CPU usage state that prevents the system from idling and reducing power usage below that high water mark. But since I run a lot of VMs and containers, I don't expect a lot of battery life on either.
The fixed camera placement is probably the biggest feature for me. Oh, and up to 64GB of RAM.
That said, MS gives ridiculous freedom to drivers. It auto-installs drivers for my 9560's audio and Thunderbolt controllers. The audio drivers include a 'Waves MaxxAudio Pro' application that stays in the system tray; stopping it makes the audio stop working. The Intel TB drivers also have a permanent unremovable notification in the system tray.
What's worse is that when you plug in a Logitech Webcam, Windows automatically downloads drivers (which are not necessary if you're on Linux since webcams use the same standard protocol), and then the Logitech drivers pop up a giant popup window asking to install their bloatware application (which is not required for the camera to work). What else does Windows let hardware manufacturers autoinstall onto your computer? Keyloggers? Rootkits?
For what it's worth, I successfully downloaded that windows iso from microsoft less than a week ago from a windows machine, and used it to reformat that same machine without any issues or workarounds.
They offer to download Media Creation Tool, which itself either downloads the ISO, burns DVD or makes an USB with installer for you.
There is one subtle difference between the ISO you can download and what the tool downloads: the ISO contains install.wim file, which is larger than 4 GB (i.e. it won't fit on FAT32 usb, if you are going to make it yourself; it is fine with UDF, when burning), while the MCT image contains install.esd, which uses different compression and fits into FAT32.
TLDR: if you want USB stick with installer, use the Media Creation Tool. You won't be able to make it easily from the ISO (aside from wim-splitting, esd-recompressing, or using NTFS if your UEFI supports it).
That also explains why I always had to flash the ISO to a USB stick with Rufus (inside VirtualBox) - just `dd` or `cat`ing it onto /dev/sdX never worked.
The magic boot sector that all those tools like Rufus create, is needed only for legacy boot.
The Windows 10 ISO from the download is using UDF filesystem and is intended for burning. If you dd it to a block device, very few firmwares support that from non-optical drive. Prior to 1809 release, it's install.wim was smaller than 4G, so you could make UEFI installer by just copying all the files to USB drive, but since 1809, the easier way is just to use the Media Creation Tool. The harder way is to recompress install.wim into install.esd, or just use NTFS if your firmware has the support (e.g. Intel NUCs do).
- display dims when using dark themes. Had to use a sketchy unofficial leaked firmware patch to fix it.
- bluetooth + wifi not working
- changed chipset, now bluetooth only working when I activate/deactivate it once after startup
- after 2.5 years or so the battery of one bloated (got free replacement, quite nice to have the battery refreshed actually)
- bluescreens
- the dock... I had my display not turning back on when disconnecting, USB stopping to work after disconnecting, slight electric shocks from one even. Oh and the USB-c dock blocks your only usb-c slot and does not have any usb-c hub.
- I blew a speaker in week 2 (don't EQ it, neither yourself, nor with the dell eq stuff)
- the case screws are tiny. I was afraid I put one in at an angle, another one got lost because I didn't have any locktight.
Other than that very nice machines... I also now people without any of these problems.
I have an XPS 9550. The issues I have with it are:
- The speakers have self destructed 3 times now. Just prior to self destructing they were wonderfully loud (which I at first thought was feature). By the 3rd time I was aware of the flaw is when some app decided I really needed to hear the notification I turned it done so it was only a few seconds - but it was enough.
- The Bluetooth has never worked. It took me a while to notice as I don't use it a lot, and I run Linux so I put it down to a software issue. But then I found if I was real persistent I could get it to pair, but then it sounded like the 2.4GHz signal was woefully weak. I asked Dell to fix it on one of their warranty visits and they replaced the module - but no difference. I now suspect it's an antenna problem.
- As others have said it regularly overheats. On a hot day it will spontaneously reset.
- There is some issue with the connectors on the mother board. In my case it manifests itself by it occasionally rebooting when I pick it up by a corner (thus putting a bit of torque on it). Once I realised what was happening I found I could 100% reliability get it to reboot by tapping it at the right point on under the base. I thought it was just my machine but then my brothers Precision laptop (same case) exhibited the same problem.
- Over time I've come to truly loath the layout of the keyboard with it's dedicated PgUp, PgDn and so on keys. I also disliked the feel with a passion - the cheaper Inspiron's have much nicer feeling keyboards. Of course the 9550 design when for slimness over function, and maybe others have a different opinion. Unfortunately it became less and less reliable over time. Turned out when the Dell man disassembled the thing this spill resistant keyboard was trapping huge amounts of hair. I've never seen a keyboard held in by so many screws - there must be at least 20 of them. And the Dell man asked me to get rid of the hair - it must taken me 1/2 an hour with a vacuum cleaner, and even then I didn't restore it to it's original reliability.
- There is the nostril cam issue. I don't hold that against Dell. I knew about it when I bought it, but that screen was oh so gorgeous. But I wouldn't make the same buying decision again.
- The power cord socket broke. This mostly isn't Dell's fault - the exuberant dog got itself tangled in the power cord. Still Dell design the connector, and they could have designed one that disconnected when it got a sharp yank rather than breaking.
- The rear hinge support (an intricately shaped bit of metal inside the machine) snapped. I don't know why - no event stands out in my mind. It became evident when the screws started popping out of the base, and I saw what the problem was when the Dell man fixed it. Sadly after the Dell man left I noticed the same screws were still proud of the case, and remain that way to this day.
- Early on the screen barely worked. The root cause wasn't Dell's, of course - it was Intel bloody horrible GPU drivers. It took Intel 12 months to get them close to reliable: in the end they had to appoint a new team leader who, according to an interview on LWN, just implemented some basic software engineering practices (like CI). From the outside the effect of doing that was pretty dramatic: it went from dogs breakfast to reasonably solid in a remarkably short time - it should be a case study on the effect of good software engineering practices. In the mean time if you scanned the net for reasons on why your shinny new Linux laptop screen kept hanging, what you found was hundreds of Windows users saying they were taking their new XPS's back because Windows didn't work. Turned out Intel was doing their development on Linux and was releasing their Linux drivers before Windows, so the Window users were in a worse position than I was. Dell was _very_ proactive about rel...
It wasn't until I bought an Intel AC 8265 on ebay and replaced it myself that the WiFI actually started working perfectly.
I can't understand why they don't just ship it with Intel WiFi chips instead of these flaky Broadcom and Killer ones. Is it because they have some sort of OEM agreement with Broadcom or Killer? I don't get it. It's a fantastic machine in every other way, but if the wireless is flaky then it's a showstopper.
Also with regard to this new machine, I would rather have good battery life and decent performance than a really fast CPU that drains my battery quickly and heats up my machine.
I wish they went with Intel chips too :(
In the end I ordered a bunch (10 or so) different WiFi AC modules off EBay (including newer Intel modules), PXE booted 100 laptops with an image that created a suitable amount of traffic, and powered them on one by one until something failed.
The Intel modules were both the worst and most expensive. They best by far were the atheros wifi modules - and they were also the cheapest.
Now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing an Intel WiFi module in a router, so that outcome was not as surprising now as it was then. And of course now I've seen Intel fail to deliver the 5G modems Apple was waiting on.