Dell XPS 13 Fan and Heat problem

Mustaf,

Thanks for bringing this to my attention and I apologize for your experience.   Can you describe the heat/fan issues and I will fwd this to the team to address.

thx

As I mentioned on my first post, I received the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Laptop yesterday, April 4th, 2013 loaded with ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The only new software I installed so far is Ultimate++ application development framework. Last night I tried to do some C++ development with the laptop and after about 45 minutes, I could feel the middle area of the front side of the keyboard was getting very warm (and I mean very warm). I thought this should not happen since I am not doing any heavy data crunching, just simple C++ coding. Then the stupid fan turned on and was unusually loud to the point that my wife was setting on the other side of the table commented “Wow, the fan is really loud”. Anyway, I left the Laptop without touching it for over five minutes and the fan kept on going strong and wouldn’t shut off, it is so distracting. The only way I could get the stupid fan to shut up is by restarting the system. I am so disappointed!

By the way, scanning the web, I noticed that many people experienced these two particular issues with Laptop. Well, I should have checked the web for any issues with this Laptop before ordering one.

Mustaf      

You can install the "i8kutils" package and with""i8kfan -1 0" you can force the fan to stop.

Hi Mamadou_Kante, have you fixed the fan issue by upgrading Ubuntu?

I've been having fan issues on all my laptops with ubuntu - I was hoping that it got better with this one but not really... On battery the fan goes on quite a bit with just browsing and some coding... plugged in it's on about all the time. I don't care about it plugged in, but on battery it eats the battery - I'd love to see better support for this.

I've had my XPS13 for over a year and the fan and overheating has been an issue since the first week.  I'm just wondering when this is going to become more than a nuisance?  Sometimes the keyboard is so hot that I cannot continue to type - this has to be damaging the machine.  Is there any known resolution?  The only thing I'm seeing here addressing how to turn the fan off, but I need the laptop to be cooled down.  I'm not doing any heavy work at all - just standard windows, email, web surfing.

It got better for me, not sure what did it, but updating the kernel and maybe most important - turning off bluetooth seemed to have made it better.

Any news? I got some heat complication...

Every time I do something different from surfing web, using libre office or coding with gedit, I get loud fan and the bottom part of the display become warm...

It's so strange: every time I open Eclipse or running Tomcat, everyone in my office look at me frightened by the noise.

I have the fan noise problem as well on my xps13 Haswell (apart of the inexplicable high-ditching sound in the background).

The cpu fan is getting pretty loud if I simply play videos on youtube in 720p resolution.

I have a two year old XPS 1340 that was constantly overheating and shutting down. 

In the hopes someone else may benefit by my experience: After taking off the back of the laptop and then removing the fan assembly itself, I found the vents were totally clogged with dust. Blew them out with canned air...problem solved! FYI it is totally impossible to clean these vents without removing the fan assembly (which is fairly simple and the instructions for which can be found on youtube)!

hi, 

Six days ago Dell released a new BIOS update that fixes the fan acoustics:

BIOS Update:

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/xps-13-l321x?driverId=C0VG5&fileid=2902722114

Post that says this update fixes the problem:

http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2012/03/21/xps-13-fan-noise-fix/

How will Ubuntu Users apply the fix ? will they have to install windows , apply the fix, then re-install ubuntu?

thanks

Pamanes7, on 4.10.14 you wrote "six days ago dell released a new BIOS update...." Why then, when I check the update does it show a release date in 2012. Seems very suspicious:

Hi there

I fixed this problem with jupiter for any version prior to saucy salander. Starting saucy salamander, there is a new fan management utility called tlp

http://askubuntu.com/questions/360549/jupiter-in-ubuntu-13-10-laptop-overheating

With that I have a temperature around 50°C and sometimes higher when I am using flash on a web browser

Dear George...

I've just bought the XPS 13 core i3, when I start working with it, why it's getting hot on the keyboard?

This is unusual for me. Because I have 2 Dell Laptop with different serries...not like this.

I fell uncomfortable with this. And I spent a lot of money for this.

This makes me dissappointed.

What should I do?

Tks.