Latitude 5591 with TB16 Dual Monitor Temperature Throttling

The new BIOS Beta 2.0 was sent to me Friday night.  I loaded up and am testing it now.  So far, all looks good.  I can now run Ultra Performance with the egpu without crash throttling.  It drops to 3.8-3.7 and fluctuated, but never crashes.  I still need to test it with the other settings and with the TB16.

Unfortunately, BIOS beta 2 is also a failure. Still crash throttling on TB16 occasionally on eGPU. I noticed it when doing a video encoding today. Sent off logs to the engineers. We will see...

On on a side note, gaming on 4K with the TB16 is total **bleep**. Frame rates are sub 15. I would never call the Latitude 5591 and TB16 a 4K system. The Mx130 is just not up for the 4K task. 1080p it does ok but even 1440 is pretty rough on FPS. 

I concur, constant throttle crashing with the latest BIOS update and high workloads.

I'm no expert, but It has to be associated with the CPU running at TJMax all day.

It has something to do with power allotment.  This is an issue where the power allotment is exceeded and instead of the cpu throttling to a normal level it goes all the way to 800Mhz.  From what I hear from the engineers it is C State configuration issue and somewhat changes with what Dell Power plan you are running.  The engineer told me to stay off "quiet" and "cool".  They are going to severely throttle as intended.  "Optimized" and "Ultra Performance" are where most of use should be, but those are not working correctly at the moment in Beta Bios 2.  Their comment on the last crash log I sent them was this is much more load than we saw previously.  My comment back was so...the load should not dictate the response.  The load should dictate how quickly it throttles but not how much.

Well I stand correct.  The engineering team sent this to me today.

The core engineering team did confirm that all logs provided, the NGFF sensor is still being triggered.  When the NGFF sensor touches its EC throttling point (66°C), this causes the 800MHz CPU frequency.

I am not sure what the NGFF sensor is, but I assume the temp increase is still tied to power used.

After the latest BIOS update. My machine is now 80% unusable.

I can say for certain, that I will never buy any Dell products ever again for our company after this experience. I can't develop on it, can't even barely watch youtube.

Dell has also publically failed to acknowledge the issue, and promise us any type of fix within a reasonable time frame.

HllCntryHrrcane,

Thanks for the well documented post. We are having a similar issue as you are having with our first 5591 that we put into circulation. The demand for having dual 4K at our offices doesn't seem like it will stop only increase. For this reason we decided to go from the 5590 to 5591, the literature says it supports our setup.

I'm commenting so I can follow where this goes.

A cooling pad helps a lot. Cuts down on clock crashes significantly. Hope this helps other folks with same issues.

@MrOctober67 

I had this exact conversation with my Del Engineer contact last week.  What have you seen that says the 5591 is 4k capable and with dual monitors?  I am preparing my info to send him.

I ask Dell last week, what is the end game here?  We purchased these 5591s to support 4k monitors with docking stations.  The crash throttling is bad and may or may not ever be fixed by the backend engineers, but the FPS on 4k is also terrible when the system is not crash throttling.  Like sub 10fps bad.  I too am greatly disappointed.  We have sold Dell products for 20 years, and we have Latitudes internally in our company for at least 14 years; however, we now have zero confidence in this product.  I once told a room full of our customers that I would never use a laptop other than a Latitude for business and education applications.  I will not say that now.  Several times, I have been told Dell has no reports of this behavior; however, 4 units I have personally touched all have this systemic issue and it appears you guys do as well.  More over, as I learn more and more I see that the MX130 will likely never have the horsepower to run 4k well.  You can probably use it for office applications but when you feed it video it goes to its knees.

I can say, do not run any Dell power setting but Ultra Performance or Optimized.  Quiet and Cool are both terrible.  I can also say make sure Dell Power Management is installed and the service is updated so that you can see the power choices when you open the program.  I have had to update several times for some reason.  Also, run windows power setting Performance mode.  This will help but it will not keep you from crashing throttling.

Mine has been on a cooling pad since the second month.  Still crash throttles.

I have a similar problem when I use a non-Dell power adapter with my Latitude 7480. I have a client with HP docking stations. Once, I forgot my power adapter and I tried to use the HP's one. I got the same behavior of the clock going down to 800Mhz immediately. So there is a certain problem with Latitude's power control in general. Hope they will fix it soon as I use Latitudes a lot and waiting for 5591 coming soon to my hands.

I've just been upgraded to a 5491 (i7-8850H/MX130) as my work PC with a TB16 dock and I noticed the same issues. However after I saw it throttle to 800Mhz under 5% CPU load and with core temps between 50-55 degrees I decided to look into it a little further. What I've found is that this issue seems to only be triggered when you exceed 60watts input power on the Thunderbolt/USB C port.

I've found that using the following docks cause throttling even when used with nothing other than an AC adaptor plugged into them:

• The TB16 which is 130watts over Thunderbolt.
• The WD15 which is also 130watts (for Dell laptops only, 60watts for non-Dell) but over USB C.

I have found a dock that doesn't cause throttling - the D6000 Universal dock which is limited to 60watts over USB C. While using that to supply power does cause other issues (slow charging and the laptop will dip into the battery if you put it under high load) I could hammer the CPU and GPU all day without the throttling issue.

Also I've found that with any wattage AC adaptor plugged directly into the laptop works fine regardless of what else you have plugged in. A 65watt AC adaptor will cause the same slow charging issues as the D6000 dock but still no throttling. I've also tested 90/130/180/240watt adaptors without an issue. I'm currently running the laptop with 2 x 1440p monitors on a D6000 dock using the USB A adaptor with a 90watt AC adaptor plugged in beside it and haven't the throttling issue no matter how hard I work it.

All testing done with the latest publicly available BIOS/Firmware/Driver updates on Win10 Education ver. 1803

Please try BIOS 1.7.4 does it solve the issue?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=80jtg&oscode=wt64a&productcode=latitude-14-5491-laptop

As I said, all my testing was done with latest BIOS, firmware and drivers which includes that BIOS version.