New Latitude 5491 High Fan on AC Power. Seems clock related

Hello Alan,

Could you confirm that the engineers are working on fix for too high temperature problems and too loud a fan after connecting the power supply or usb-c dock to the Dell Latitude 5491?

I am recently the owner of a brand new 5491 laptop and unfortunately I am very disgusted that such problems affect me. I just hope that the problems that are caused by defective software will not damage my computer.

I would be grateful for the information about where are engineers now with the fix and how long it will be necessary to wait for patch these issues.

Best,
Daniel

After originally replying I have done weeks of testing. Running throttlestop and HWiNFO I can see my clock crash to base 800mHz when system temps, not proc or GPU temps start getting around 75* C. Watching a 1080p video with my dual 4K monitors will cause it to cycle throttle all day long. Definitely a temperature issue somewhere. I have tried undervolting and that helps the proc temp but that is not the main issue of the temperature clock crash. Some other sensor is triggering the protection protocol which makes watching online videos of gaming impossible. Enabling Speed shift in throttlestop has helped a ton with standard usage performance but it does nothing for board sensor temp throttle I am seeing.  

Dell, any hope of a fix?  Will an external GPU fix the issue?  I don’t have problems unless I am docked to dual 4K monitors and start pushing the gpu. 

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@ddskorski wrote:

Hello Alan,

Could you confirm that the engineers are working on fix for too high temperature problems and too loud a fan after connecting the power supply or usb-c dock to the Dell Latitude 5491?

I am recently the owner of a brand new 5491 laptop and unfortunately I am very disgusted that such problems affect me. I just hope that the problems that are caused by defective software will not damage my computer.

I would be grateful for the information about where are engineers now with the fix and how long it will be necessary to wait for patch these issues.

Best,
Daniel

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@ddskorski as per my post above, Dell engineering are aware of the issue and are working towards a BIOS release. I am unable to provide a timeframe for the release other than it will be released shortly. 

Alan

Hi everybody,

I am considering to buy the Dell latitude 5491 i7-8850h. But according to @ZeroAviation the last bios update didn't fix the fan issue.

Has there been any improvement in the fan/cooling system for the others on that forum?

I read the thread and I saw a possible solution that doesn't seem satisfying for a brand new laphttps://www.dell.com/community/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2443283" rel="nofollow ugc">@Dell-Alan D :

"If it's loud, the same troubleshooting applies to all notebook systems
a) Update the BIOS to the latest revision
b) Update the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework driver
c) Change the power plan to quiet mode
d) Disable Speedstep and speedshift from the BIOS."

Without significative improvement, I will turn to another model. I was excited to have such a horsepower on a 14" laptop. I will be carrying it a lot and I do large data analysis. The dell 5491 seemed like the perfect computer for my usage...

Cheers

I would not recommend the 5591 or 5491 at all. When you want to use it with a dock like the tb16 then you always hear fan noise. The Dock has a fan and the fan from the notebook will work between 2.000 rpm and 3.000 rpm in idle situations. We had dell service here and they aware of the problem but they say it’s working like designed. In this case that means it was not designed for customer needs. The problem is the PCH Chip (Thunderbolt), like others said before. In his optionen it’s better to return if it is possible because they will not be able to fix it with a bios update, it is a thermal design problem. Therefore, we are really disappoint because you are not expecting such problems from a high-end professional notebook.  We will look for another manufacture who is able to understand the needs of business customers.

For what it is worth I have managed to adjust the fan noise to tolerable levels with the following settings

- Bios 1.4.2

- All other drivers are latest versions

- Speedstep enabled in BIOS

- Speedshift disabled in BIOS

- Dell default power plan with default settings in Windows

- Thermal Management set to Optimized in Dell Power Manager v3.0.0

The last setting seemed to be particularly important - the Quiet setting returned the fan to being very loud.

I am not saying this makes the machine silent, but it is certainly much better than previously, and temperatures appear to be kept normal.

We won't buy Dell again though. After almost 15 years of buying Latitudes we have now lost faith in the product after numerous recent issues.  How could this not have been discovered in design and testing?

Thanks for the tips, I'll try this out.

I hear you about Dell products. The year was rough 4 out of 4 optiplex micro had their motherboards replaced (Could not use Display port Output on dual screen) and now all 6x Latitude 5591 have fan noise issues that users are complaining about and somehow they broke ASMedia USB drivers on Thunderbolt TB16 (USB accessories are a mess on many Laptops now still waiting for solutions)

ouch....

Hi,

I work for Dell EMC sales, but I am not responsible for community management ;-)

Just came across this thread through a customer.

Please download and try:

https://www.dell.com/support/contents/us/en/04/article/product-support/self-support-knowledgebase/software-and-downloads/dell-power-manager

*mystically disappearing*

Tim The Enchanter

So the customers should live with "higher system surface temperature and reduced performance"? No, thanks.

No, that is what the fans are spinning for by default. Max Performance

Just installed BIOS 1.5.0 - Same as before... 

Can we get an honest, straight forward answer please? 

Clock continues to throttle down to 800mhz after so much heat. This system is unusable.

Can I exchange it for something that doesn't do this? That would be super.