Inspiron

[fullyard]

Dear Community,

I need further assistance and maybe other users with similar issues and problems giving me some advice and maybe tweakability options (which are almost below zero in terms of the undervoltage locked 12700H) or a solution.

First at all I'd love to know what the EXACT (@Dell) Specs are for this specific Model. What are Dells designed set TDP for the CPU (Intel I7-12700H) and TGP for the GPU (RTX 3050 4GB).

There is a bandwith from the manufactures which are limited in the worst case by the final manufacturer/assembler/nd designer of a given Model, which would be you (@DELL). The final actual permanent achievable performance of a device stands and falls with its thermal design. I am not asking for a friend btw.

I got my 14 Plus about 2 months ago and did use it not that much and not intense- until this weekend where i was able to stress-test it and see what someone can squeeze out of it. There is a really nice review out there ->

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https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Inspiron-14-Plus-7420-laptop-review-For-power-users-on-a-budget.6...

CPU Clock (GHz)	GPU Clock (MHz)	Average CPU Temperature (°C)	Average GPU Temperature (°C)
System Idle	--	--	59	47
Prime95 Stress	1.9	--	80	63
Prime95 + FurMark Stress	0.9	~1485	69	67
Witcher 3 Stress	~1.1	1590	80	74

Stress Test

Running Prime95 to stress the CPU would cause clock rates, temperature, and board power draw to spike to 3.5 GHz, 100 C, and 80 W, respectively, for about 10 seconds or so. Thereafter, clock rates, temperature, and board power draw would steadily decline before stabilizing at 1.9 GHz, 80 C, and 38 W, respectively, in order to keep temperatures in check. The performance drop is relatively steep as the HP Pavilion Plus 14 with the same CPU is able to maintain a faster 2.2 to 2.9 GHz range when subjected to the same test.

Running Witcher 3 shows the GeForce GPU stabilizing at 1590 MHz, 74 C, and 50 W. In comparison, the RTX 3050 Ti in the larger Inspiron 16 Plus would stabilize at 1627 MHz, 84 C, and 63 W. Core temperatures are unsurprisingly high since this is one of the few 14-inch laptops to come with both a Core H-series CPU and a GeForce RTX GPU. Changing the power profile from Ultra Performance to Optimized will drop the GPU power draw to around 45 W or less.

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showing some similar results, but i really want to know how much maximum power i can get out of the CPU + GPU going mad and the overall Package Power. The power adapter is theoretically set up for 130 W, but this is nothing i could reach. 

The whole limited given settings with most of the Dell Notebooks is not so nice - something i didnt really dive too much into - until now. You cannot do much with this specific Model here, because the 12700H is locked and not able to be undervolted - undervolt? Why would you want this? Because it gets VERY HOT. Because it simply doesnt make sense to design a powerhorse which isnt able to run the extra mile that you would've expected. 

I did learn ALOT about thermal and power throttling the last 48 hours and i still dont know how i can optimize it to stop it from doing so. Especially with PL1 and PL2. In reality i dont need the P Cores running with 4,7GHz, not a single second, and the E Cores with 3,5 GHZ. You cant set a max threshold for these , nowhere. I got that. 

The only thing i could do is get XTU or Throttlestop running with my personal given PL1 and PL2, but what to choose best? I was on vacation a few days and wanted to play some 3D games - tried various settings from ultra down to mid - but i just cant get behind what this notebook is doing.

In Throttlestop i got weird values and permanent alternating warnings about power and temperature throttling notifications. What would be good values for PL1 and PL2 to get a great overall performance without constantly reaching temps over 90 up to 97 degrees which causes the whole thing to instant throttle down.  I was not able to get more than 35 W out of the 3050. The CPU, if you take the minimum guarantueed TDP of 35 stabilizes around 75 to 80 degrees with 20-25 W - thats around 1,8 to 1,9 GHZ - very disappointing. ( Need to make more tests i fear). 

In theory the 3050 can go up to 80W, the 12700H can go up to 110W which makes 190W - the delivered power supply would be way too less for that, so i get to the point where i understand that the maximum can only be 135 W - which is a design decision mabe by someone hopefully with an idea what to do with this Inspiron 14 Plus and in what intensity. The fans go super turbine mode loud, and while the gpu reaches 100% occupation, the cpu , depening on the game - shows around 15 to 30% occupation - max. - giving an average of 20-25 W.

It would help to know if someone has similar experiences and maybe some "master" settings to get more out of it. I really dont see the advantage of something being capable of ALOT, but running overall below the standard clocks during a normal to high workload put on.

I really feel like i got something worth 800 bucks , but did pay 1450 for it. That is not ok.

My aim would be to get a decent short boost PL2 performance without going beyond 90 degrees, and a good PL1 performance stabilizing around  60-70 degrees. This would be easily achieved with undervolting -which you cannot do - so i can only jiggle with PL1 , PL2 . Obi-Wan Kenobi - please help! 

[fullyard]

Hi there, my overheating issues, friend!

Thanks for sharing your video. I did listen to it on my headphones and it is definitely a complete different thing. My problem encountered after i did replace the "new" heat-sink which i had to bend to have it doing the cooling as designed....  and developed only after 2 weeks .

I did use the possibility and did replace also the the original cooling pads with way better ones to have all parts being able to dissolve their heat onto the hole heatspreader-unit .

It resulted in a overall way better performance (as mentioned above in my original posts) , thus the unit running on longer periods of time with way more clock speeds. Still i did tame it and i am not having it to go above a boost mhz of 4200 - because it will produce way too much overall heat which is really not something youre aiming for (well u know lol).  I voluntarily sacrifice 500 mhz maximum performance to save a few degrees - thats absolutely ok for me - we know by now, that there is a design and technical flaw putting a 12700h into a 14 inch "light" notebook.

Once i stop using the turboboost (which is a bummer anyways) - the scratching and various pitched noisy stuff instant stops - the second i put the turbo on again its audible and very annoying (again).

Tomorrow ill have a good dell technician over my place and he will replace the motherboard. I asked Dell about the idea of also replacing the heatsink i had to bend to get it working the way it should, but for now the motherboard it will be- after that i will report back to you and will give you after a few benchmarks my final conclusion about the unit and how it performs under various situations.

Cheers,

Fullyard

[Martin Toth]

Hello Fullyard,

Let me start by telling You, that I do not want to hijack your thread, so if You think my issue is unrelated to yours, I will just stop posting right away, please let me know. Also, let me thank You for sharing and detaily explaining your experience with this laptop. It helps us fresh owners to better understand what is going on with our unit.

Long story short - I have purchased a 12700H + RTX3060 Inspiron 16 Plus 7620 just two weeks ago and I was having performance issues due to thermal and power throttling from day one. After discovering this thread I have decided to give it a go with repasting and see from there if it will be needing more tweaking in Throttlestop.

Since SYY is not readily available in my country I went with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. After a few warmup and cool down cycles during a day I decided to do a benchmark in the evening (I did a reference benchmark before the re-paste job) and it turned out incredible - a 7 to 9 degrees Celsius decrease on average while maintaining longer PL2 and pretty much the same PL1.

1-2 days after the repasting I started to notice rising average temps during load nad after a couple of days I am pretty much back at where I have started. I think Kryonaut is maybe the wrong choice for a laptop with high temps during mid to heavy load (I do casual gaming on the laptop after work) and without and IHS on the chips. I ordered some SYY 157 from Germany, this paste should be much ticker than Kryonaut and might hold in place better even at higher temps during my gaming sessions.

Anyways, to get to my point - just after 10 days of using I have started to notice a weird electric buzzing/static noise/scratching... I would say it is like a mix between a noise an HDD reading head accessing data and a high voltage electric buzzing. I am attaching a Google Drive link with a terrible quality smartphone recording, but the noise is noticeable since the fans were not spinning at the time (I have checked and both fans were at 0RPM, so the noise is not coming from the fans, nor the speakers, it is most definitely coming from under the keyboard i.e. the motherboard).

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Qfhjbz3QfNfULMXt7

I have never experienced coil whine from a PC nor laptop in my life, so I am not sure if it is coil whine. It is not a very high-pitched sound, more like an electric kind of buzzing as I have said. I have tried turning TURBO off, but I haven't noticed a major difference in intensity.

Is it similar to your problem or is this totally unrelated?

Thanks for reacting.

Regards,
Martin

[jpsulisz]

FWIW, I used to own a ThinkPad Yoga 14 20FY with the 940m and had a very similar sound - turned out to be a whine from the 940m. I would usually hear it quite a bit louder on a gpu load; try loading Furmark and see if the whine intensifies.

In regards to @fullyard  performance, I found that on the iGPU model - turning off turbo boost helps temperatures immensely but keeping it on w/ PL1 (45) and PL2 (62) allows the computer to stress test @ 90C without throttling passed PL1. 

I do wonder if it's possible to have the dGPU heatsink fit in the iGPU model like some of the older ThinkPad T-series allowed. The additional heat pipes may help out.

How's the battery life for you all? With all the eco stuff I can find enabled, I can only get a low idle of around 9W

[fullyard]

Hi Martin,

Hi Martin,

no problem at all. I am really happy, that i am helping in some ways other users with the same or similar issues regarding this matter. Replying and adding your two cents to such a thing is important in my opinion. It shows that there are some technical flaws in the Inspiron 14 and 16 Plus series and it almost takes away some of the "burden" i experience these days knowing, that my unit here is not the exception.

First i want to mention, that i did search the net ALOT and i found out, that most users do NOT recommend using Kryonaut for the latest 12th gen Notebooks. Those generate insane heat which will result in whether a "suckout" "dryout" or both of the paste within a very short time - making things worse than before. I dont know what you experienced, but the original paste they added in the factory was spilled allover the parts in a very "generous" way - like they wanted to drown the whole gpu and cpu/cpu-gpu die with it.

After doing quite some research there were two or three thermal-pastes which I was able to include in the applicable list of candidates - the overall winner was definitely SYY157.Did you already get yours and do you have any comparison?

In regards to you other problem, which is far worse - i did listen to your recording and it is pretty much the same thing. Not 100% - but it is COIL WHINE for sure. Same here - in 25+ years this unit here is the first time where i really hear some audible coil whine which is pretty much annoying.

Please keep me and the community updated.

I hope you will find a solution. Currently i am very disappointed with DELL.

[fullyard]

Hey!

Thanks for the heads up!

Turning off the turbo always helps - but is no solution. You take away the units designed performance to prevent it from overheating and cut it down to 60% of the performance intended by the manufacturer.

Good to hear about your PL1 and PL2 settings. I cannot give you a final summary YET, because after the technician was over my place and replaced the motherboard - i was experiencing the SAME COIL WHINE, but this time its around 20-30% more audible. Guess what - the replacement motherboard was not new - it was a used unit from another returned unit or so - thats a BUMMER and i am pretty disappointed with DELL at the moment.

I also experience with this "new" motherboard in my notebook - that the fans are running way more often - temperatures are pretty much the same and smilar - no big tests here , as i did open ANOTHER ticket and seeing all the Black Friday Notebook deals from other brands makes me pretty furious.

I rarely used the Inspiron 14 Plus without the power supply so far - but i can tell you, that i did three times, and it didnt last longer than 2 !!! hours. Thats another real turn off. I think you would need to completely design a different power plan setting and also strip down the unit with throttlestop once you use it on battery - maybe you can squeeze out 4-5 hours. But nothing i am going to try for now.

I WANT A UNIT WHICH IS WORKING THE WAY ITS DESIGNED RIGHT FROM THE START - sorry for caps! I am really not interested in ending up having a spare parts notebook - this aint no fun at all. Its not like i am interested in spending that much hours of my spare time to deal with such a thing endlessly.

I attached the actual noise this unit makes coil whine part 2  - i stop the turbo two times - to make the huge difference audible.

"Cheers",

Steve

[Martin Toth]

Hi Steve,

thanks for the info regarding Kryonaut - you basically confirmed what I was afraid of (and unfortunately have found out only after I had applied Kryonaut). Anyways, the SYY is still in transit and should be arriving by the end of this week. I will post an update when I finish with the repasting.

I like your choice of the word "generous" when talking about the way the original paste was applied on. I will just add two words - SAME HERE. The CPU was pretty easy to clean off, but the NVIDIA chip was a total mess.

Regarding the COIL WHINE - thanks for confirming. I have never experienced it, "good" to know that I am not the only one with a "faulty" unit.

I made the brand switch from HP (after switching to HP from Lenovo years ago because I wasn't happy with the current Thinkpads as an original IBM Thinkpad owner) and I must say, that this is by far the worst experience with a laptop among the "big three" brands for the past 20 years. Thermals and power management is completely nuts on this model. I am not happy with my purchase at all and I do have the same bad feelings when seeing all these black friday sale ads.

P.S.: I have a new problem with the laptop for which I haven't had the time to research for a solution yet. Coming from a W10 machine without Modern Standby I was shocked when I first pulled out a super hot laptop from my bag after my daily commute. I was used to S3 sleep mode. Due to this "problem" I switched to Hibernate mode when traveling, but sometimes my fans won't turn off after entering Hibernation and keep running forever even though the laptop has already saved all work and entered hibernation. I will be troubleshooting these issues after I finish with the SYY repasting and compare the power/thermal graphs from the benchmarks.

Regards,
Martin

[Martin Toth]

Hi jpsulisz,

regarding your question on power at idle CPU - I have measured an idling cpu package power of 6-7W with an idle temperature of 41°C (hottest core).

To add some context: this is with an ambient temperature of 23°C in my room. The laptop is placed on laptop stand (no external fans activated) on a slight incline of about 8 to 10 degrees.

EDIT: let's not forget, that I have the bigger 16" version so it's not a 100% accurate comparison.

Regards,
Martin

[fullyard]

@Martin Toth 

@jpsulisz 

Guys - you wouldnt believe whats happening right now. I am being offered a replacement - but they tell me that there are no more Inspiron 14 Plus available. So i got a Inspiron 15 - 3520 replacement offer which literally makes me speechless. They want me to downgrade to a unit which is worth like 500 bucks less, is bigger and has not even a dedicated gpu and all. Dont know what to say right now.

Keep y'all updated...

[fullyard]

Well - final  and last update from my side (Alot to read)

@Martin Toth 

@jpsulisz 

Dell is not able to replace me the same model and configuration. I come to the conclusion, that they whether discontinue it, or simply have too much problems in terms of returns warranty/service issues.

-questionable TDP and thermal design, stripping down the CPU down to 50% of its performance during high to intense loads with its original weak thermal paste
-too thin brushed aluminum which is prone to scratches and dents and fragile
-Coil Whine?!?!

I am allowed to return the unit and will get my money back. Unfortunately there are (especially here in the Austria store) only 2 models which would be ok, but i cant afford a 2700 bucks XPS 15, which would be the only REAL choice - and dont want to get a Alienware x14 with soldered RAM (the 32 gb configuration is insanely expensive).

I currently lost somewhat my confidence in DELL picking a unit for my private/semi-work/music production/casual gaming needs- not sure what to think in this actual state of mind.

Spent the whole night reverse-engineering my unit back to its original state (did replace the better cooling pads with the grey ones it came with, a good "DELL" factory repaste with WAY TOO much paste on the GPU and CPU and IGPU, as well as putting back the original NVME SSD And DDR 8GB Ram -stick. I also reinstalled the original heat-sink it came with- works fine with it with a thick layer of paste. lol).

Before i changed the Hard-Drive though, i made a final 30-45 Minutes benchmark and completely RESET Throttlestop to its core-settings (just delete the config file, might come in handy to know). So no prochot offset reduction, no PL1 and PL2 manipulations and not tweaking speedshift to tame the max turbo down to 4,2 GHZ.

I can once again absolutely RECOMMEND SYY157 for everyone who has overheating issues with a Dell unit. It runs smoothly with max temps of 97 degrees, barely audible fans during browsing and normal duties - and 48 dB in optimized mode during gaming and 52-53 dB in Ultra Performance mode.

Optimized:

During very demanding gaming the unit is able to a maximum of average 35 W TDP for the RTX 3050 mobile while the CPU clocks stabilize around 2,2-2,3 GHZ (which is very acceptable for this thing here).

Ultra Performance:

During very demanding gaming the unit is able to a maximum of average 45-50 W TDP for the RTX 3050 mobile with the same CPU clock - but 52-53 dB is way more audible which is OK when you demand that much.

I also observed, that the 32 GB Crucial DDR5 4800 stick produces WAY more heat (yeah i guess that's "ok") and even with a decent small copper/graphite nvme heatsink on it it will result in transferring heat onto the NVME SSD which is pretty much next to it, causing the drive to get up to +7-10 degrees, at least that's what i observed in my unit. (temperatures on the drive were 63 max with the crucial installed, and went not up beyond 55 with the original 8 gb without a heatsink on it)

The original 8 GB ram will heat up, nonetheless, to a maximum of 62-63 degrees without any heatsink on it (in its original state). I couldn't check the original harddrive temps, as this was the last step and stopped after reinstall Win11.

TLDNR  / FINAL CONCLUSION

If it was not for the COIL WHINE (which was still there with the other heatsink - so thats 100% not causing it -> "we" knew that anyway), this notebook would be a absolute top notch unit in a price tag around 1300-1500 bucks. The fact that Dell provides a Copper-Heatsink for the NVME harddrive is also a nice extra.

Once you re-paste it with SYY157 this 14 inch notebook is a very versatile power horse which can do pretty much anything. You can tweak the overall maximum temps with reducing the turbo in Throttlestop to a acceptable value still getting ALOT of its max performance with less audible fans and noise.

I can recommend to everyone experiencing a Coil Whine with Dell notebooks to use Dells Service and ask for a replacement. They need to learn to provide their Customers with better designed parts.

All the best to you.

Cheers,

Fullyard

[fullyard]

Hi!

@Martin Toth 

@jpsulisz 

I just wanted to give you and the community in general an update. After a few months i saw the Inspiron 14 Plus available again in the DELL store as well as the Amazon store. 

As it was 10% off i pulled the trigger and hoped for the best. I should have known!!!

The fresh unit i got was manufactured 24/12/2022 and after finishing the Win11 install i started to test and benchmark the unit - but had to abort the operation. COIL WHINE. Asked Amazon for a replacement, got it today, sending it back after 15 minutes usage. COIL WINE AS WELL.

DELL. You have some serious quality problems and i can HIGHLY recommend to anyone experiencing coil whine to unleash the hellfire on them and return every unit until they manage to get rid of it. I' dug in the web and it seems that XPS 15 as well as even their precision premium line is affected by this. This is UNACCEPTABLE. I am done with this brand.

So bear in mind, that COIL WHINE is a given manufactured standard for these products.

Cheers,

Fullyard