Brand New 5511 - Loud Fan Noise, Tons of Heat, just sitting on BIOS screen doing nothing.

Because of heating and reliability problems building Yocto Linux under Ubuntu 20.04 (admittedly a torture test for a thin laptop) with Turbo Boost turned on, I returned my Dell Latitude 5511 and got a Dell Precision 5550 instead.

It is a beautiful machine - 12 hardware threads (hyper-cores), 1600x1200 graphics, carbon-fiber-looking case, light and thin, with better cooling than the 5511.

The 5550 can do a 4651 task Yocto Linux build in a VirtualBox Ubuntu 20.04 VM running on top of Windows 10 in 70 minutes. That's 20 percent FASTER than the NATIVE Ubuntu 20.04 did the same build on the overheating Latitude 5511. The key is the use a fully pre-allocated-space VDI (not VMDK) virtual disk in VirtualBox - and of course use an M.2 NVME SSD drive. At this point there is no reason to run native Linux on the Precision 5550 - apparently running Linux on a new laptop is a real crapshoot unless the exact model is officially supported by the hardware vendor.

Now, the 5550 doesn't exactly run cool when building Yocto Linux (an incredibly severe torture test) but - unlike the Latitude 5511 - I haven't had any reliability problems.

Bottom line: light, thin laptops have heating problems when doing extended torture tests, but if you don't want to turn off Turbo Boost, the Precision 5550 is a good choice. I can now have Linux and Windows 10 running essentially at full native speeds all the time.

P.S. I did have one unexpected lockup a few days ago (while the system had been idling in Windows only for days) and had to hold down the power button for about 10 seconds (not 5 seconds) to recover. So far the system looks okay, but I had never seen a system where you had to hold down the power button for more than 5 seconds before I started getting these Dell 55xx laptops. The service manual explains the different power button press and hold times, IIRC. So far I'm blaming this last glitch on Microsoft, but I don't know for sure - I wasn't running VirtualBox at the time.

JFYI I did "Dell Command Update" but unfortunately this didn't solve anything. The Computer Latitude 5411 is still overheating and loud fan noisy.

To prevent my hand of burning, my IT department supplied me with a docking station, a wireless keyboard & mouse and a stand. So no burned fingers anymore. As long as Covid-19 has me locked up at home I am ok. When I have to go to customers again (I am a consultant), I am ... again. Now only the terrible, continuous noise... I can’t wait how customers will react when I present them with a free Fan .

I hope Dell will think of some kind of fix for this.

I see you’re looking for technical assistance. If you require our help, you could initiate a private/direct message with us, and we’d be glad to assist you.

@JohanTV At this point I would contact Dell support (assuming your laptop is still under warranty) and have them send out a tech to replace whatever they need to inside the laptop.

Use a thermometer near the exhaust fans and record the temperature, and then use a Noise app on your phone to record the DB level of the fans. Because it's clearly a problem they have no inclining to fix from a hardware design level, I would feel free to exaggerate those numbers in order to get Dell to approve the support call.

It genuinely could be a bad thermal sensor or something similar, but seeing as you've done everything you can do at this point, it's a hardware problem that they need to come out and fix.

Hereby an update: DELL-Cares helped me out with private messages:

- Setup the driver for the Intel dynamic tuning (It its purpose is automated thermal control and fan regulation).
This probably is a general feature and will probably be beneficial. It did not fix the fan or heat.

- Disable Turbo Boost within BIOS. (Startup-F2-Settings-Performance- Intel Turboboost) After the turbo boost was disabled my Fan noise went to an acceptable level. The heating is probably also a bit less, but I think this is more a design issue. I would never have put the fan to the left side of the keyboard as it is close to my pink. So hope in future it will be at the back again. I asked DELL-Cares if heat could be diminished a little.

Anyway, no continuous fan noise since 2 hours (great!!!), so if heat can be a downsized a little I can finally enjoy my laptop.

Hi,

I have replied to you from a private message.

-Gautam.

I have same issue.  Had this brand and processor for 6 months.  Runs very hot.  Both times I called into tech support they ran a number of CPU and video stress tests and said everything was within spec and just said these high end processors will run hot.  But I still think there is some correlation between this heat and laptop seems to run slower than my 3 year old Latitude with lower generation i5.

We have purchased many of these laptops and they have this issue (after being re-imaged), the fan seems to be running at maximum all the time, they get incredibly hot to the touch on the left side of the laptop. I have solved this on the laptops by doing the following things:

-Get Intel Support Assistant and install all the driver updates it recommends

-Get Dell Command Update and install all the driver updates it recommends

-Make sure the Intel Management Technology is up to date

-Get all the Windows Updates, include optional driver updates

-Install the newest Thunderbolt driver (some of these things don't get resolved by the Intel Support Assistant or      Dell Command Update so you just have to force them by getting the drivers from Dell.)

-Install the Thunderbolt Firmware Update

-Turn off the TurboBoost in the BIOS

-Install Intel Dynamic Tuning (This is never automatically installed by anything you have to get it.)

-Install the latest BIOS update

** I did all of these operations on two different Dell Latitude 5511s that were having this high heat/max fan problem today, and they now both run Windows with no fan noise, and the left side of the laptop near the fan is basically room temperature when the laptop is idle. It makes a world of difference and I am posting this so that it is clear that a constantly running fan and large amount of heat is NOT a normal operating mode for this laptop. It can be fixed, I am not sure which thing in all of this is the magic bullet but it does fix the problem.

Thank you @RKSR9997 for your solution.  I did the following based on your solution and so far it has made a major difference in the amount of heat my Latitude 5511 is generating.

1. Run the Dell updater via the support web site.  My laptop was way out-of-date as there were 16 updates which took considerable time to download and install (over an hour), so be aware of that before starting.  One of the updates triggered a restart and BIOS update.  Most of the applications mentioned in  @RKSR9997 's list installed as part of the update.
2. Disable TurboBoost in the BIOS.  I may turn this back "on" to see if it matters, but as part of the fix I turned it "off".
3. Run the Intel Driver & Support Assistant.  This tool was installed as one of updates in Step 1, I didn't need to install it separately.  I did, however, have to click the icon in the Windows 10 icon menu (lower right corner) to open the updater and it installed 3 updates (of which 2 of them were not related to this fix.)
4. Restart.  As a true test, turn off the laptop and let it cool down for an hour.  Then turn it on again and see if anything changed.  

Upon turning my laptop on this morning, it was about an hour before the fan turned on to a noticeable level.  (Up until now, the fan would go on full-blast within minutes of turning on the laptop and got very hot almost instantly.)  Once the fan eventually did turn on, the air coming out is only warm, not blazing-hot like it's been since I got the laptop.

Awesome, this solved my issue for the most part but now that I'm hooked up to my dell dock + external monitor fans are still blazing. I haven't turned off TurboBoost yet because I am afraid that would make the computer too slow. 

We have the same issue.

We first noticed it when the screen melted and cracked, and some of the plastics melted.

Dell came out, changed the plastics, screen, motherboard, fan and heat sink. Bascically a new laptop.

Some time after, im sure some one came out and replaced the fan, heat sink and motherboard again.

Months later, co worker complained he was still getting temps where he cant type on the keyboard for anymore then 3min due to high levels of heat. Looked and sure enough, 90'c+

Sent off to dell for a heat sink, came back and same issue still....

Sending back off for another motherboard and heat sink and Fan AGAIN!! >.< 

There is defenetly a hardware design fault here and not a OS software issue.

The solution for me was to swtich off touchscreen of the laptop in BIOS. Since a week, the frequent noise and heat periods went away. Before that I already switched off Turbo boost and set thermal setting to quiet. This latter helped a lot, but not enough. Touchscreen off in BIOS solved it.

You can Download SupportAssist app from dell as I also had the same problem in latitude series but now it is 60% resolved after this app.

Link to support assist :-

https://www.dell.com/support/contents/en-in/article/product-support/self-support-knowledgebase/software-and-downloads/supportassist