Dell XPS 13 9350 fan noise even at light tasks

Hi,

got a Dell XPS 13 9350 (i7 iris 540 / QHD) and was pretty excited.

Installed all updates (driver/BIOS,....) and even did in right order for WD15 dock.

Only Chrome and Steam installed.

There still seems to be a weird fan control issue with this device:

- Fan stays quiet (off) when doing nothing or only browsing the web. (+/-52°C)

- Watching Youtube (even 720p only) and the fan kicks in after the device gets heats up. When unplugged the temps are about 70°C when the fan starts. Noise is very annoying even at lowest speed. I don't know why a high end device like this isn't capable of doing basic tasks cooled passively. Even a FireTV Stick , every phone or Raspberry Pi can do this. So very disappointed.

- When plugging Dell WD15 (USB-C) dock into the XPS 13 (external monitor, GBe, USB, Charging via USB-C) the temps raise from 50°C to 60°C immediately. Fan starts earlier at +/-60°C. Why?

The fan cools the device to 49°C and then stops for a while, starting again at 50 or 55°C. I can't see a pattern. When doing light tasks (Youtube 720p) the fans run constantly and may raise to >70°C.

XPS is in this case always loud and my main complaint. 

- When playing games with attached WD15 dock the fans are at full speed (very loud). This is expected, as the heat must go away somehow.

- Already tried many different energy settings (balanced/quiet/....), but the fan control stays always the same.

Read about a BIOS update 1.20 for Dell XPS 15 at "WD15 FAQs", where the fan control seems to be optimized with WD15 dock use. 

I'm hoping for a XPS 13 9350 BIOS fix to optimize fan control with WD15 dock and even fan hysteresis.

My suggestions:

- XPS 13 fan should start at a later temperature measurement, to be able to do light tasks without fan noise.

- XPS 13 fan should start at a later temperature measurement when connected to WD15 dock. Seems the fans start more often when the device is charged, so when using USB-C dock it's always the case and not user avoidable. Dell please disable this behaviour!

- XPS 13 fan should stop earlier again (eg. colling down to 60°C and not <50°C)

Dell Command Power Manager "Quiet" setting doesn't change fan control in comparison to "Optimized" setting. So why call it "Quiet"?

I really like my XPS 13, but the fan noise is making me angry after 2 weeks of use. It's not useable for continuous work.  :emotion-6:

Already reset BIOS to defauts, did a Windows 10 recovery and ran Dell diagnostics witout errors.

Don't know further helpful steps.

Please help.

Pappl