Dell Precision 5510 (XPS 9550) Power Limit Throttling, CPU @800MHz under load

Update: after further testing I realized that those are VRMs between CPU and GPU overheating and causing the problem. I now placed an external fan over them instead of the bottom chip and system remains stable. I still see the Power Limit Throttling (CPU clock go to 800MHz), but only with synthetic 100% CPU+GPU load which is unrealistic.

After further googling I found that many others experience same/similar issues with both XPS 9560 and even 9570 models which is troubling. I am not a big fan of giving my laptop away for days for warranty service. How likely is it that this problem would be fixed while still maintaining good laptop performance? Or is it a good time to get back to thick laptops (never had any issues with both Latitude E6540, E6440 + i7-4800MQ that I owned previously and that benchmarked similarly regarding CPU performance).

P.S. I am also attaching a photo of sensor data when watching Youtube video (4K60). Even with near 0 load the fans spin at annoying ~4000rpm:

PowerLimitThrottling_on_Youtube4k60_Precision5510

What is the first Ambient temperature under Dell EC in HWinfo64? Should be the sensor near the VRMs, and should trigger throttling.

If this is a new condition, try reinstalling Intel DPTF which supposedly does the throttling, maybe other chipset drivers too. 

It is well known that these VRMs deserve some cooling. Many users stack a few Arctic thermal pads to send a bit of heat to the backplate (but don't overdo, makes things worse). You can look up iunlock's mod at NBR forums for a more proper solution. 

But simple video playback shouldn't be causing this, unless it really loads up the GPU. Try reinstalling Intel and NVidia drivers too, using Display Driver Uninstaller. 

Thank you for your response! The first DELL EC Ambient temperature is reading 46*C with web-browsing load, fans at 4100rpm, actual ambient temperature of ~22C. When giving some load (youtube+Cinebench) I get inconsistent results: sometimes the CPU would PL throttle to 2.5GHz when first Ambient temperature sensor reads~65C, sometimes it would hold the load up to over 80C and then CPU clock would instantly drop to 800MHz, afterwards slowly recover to normal. Hopefully, tomorrow I will get another SSD so I could both, eliminate SSD from the equation and also install a fresh copy of Windows.

Also, I was thinking of adding some quality Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8 pads in that area (over VRMs, as suggested in notebookreview forum thread about XPS 9560 CPU + GPU Temperatures), but I don't see them helping to a sufficient degree. I believe that cooling fans shouldn't be running at these speeds with ~0 load and Dell Power Manager set to Optimized.

Check this regarding Samsung 970 compatibility 

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/9550-doesn-t-recognize-970-EVO/td-p/6189249

Check and make sure your BIOS SATA setting isn't RAID.  I had increasingly poor performance, overheating, etc... and I was seeing the same reduction to 800 MHz until I changed the SATA mode to AHCI.  It's now like a new machine.  (Dell apparently used RAID mode because it was the only way to have NVMe with Win7 - but it is non-optimal with Win10).  

To change, type msconfig in the search bar, and run as administrator.  Select the 2nd tab, and select safe boot minimal.  

restart, and immediately hit F12 to go get the startup menu, then go to BIOS Setup.  Change from RAID to AHCI.

then let it boot into safe mode. 

Then type msconfig again, run as administrator, and change back to normal boot.  

Reboot to Windows, then run Dell's update utility to install the SATA AHCI drivers.  

This was an instant, night and day difference on my Precision 5510.  

i totally agree with @Sh4veD4ve  i was in this nightmare as my temp was all below 70c and still my cpu throttle down to 800mhz instantly when i open a game or put any load on my processor, 3 months with re pasting my cpu+gpu trying drivers uninstalling some from device manager, nothing seems to solve my problem till i changed my sata configuration from raid to AHCI MODE and all my problems are gone!

hope every one who has the same problem with xps or precision to see this comment and found this fix!

thank you sh4ved4ve for bings this up!

Hopefully I will be able to get a TB16 docking station with 240W power brick to test my setup. Maybe that would help to completely get rid of that power throttling issue.

When driving 2 external monitors via this https://plugable.com/products/tbt3-dp2x/ adapter, the left side of the laptop near the Thundebolt port gets significantly warmer, fans spin significantly louder than when only using a single internal monitor.

I had the same problem with a Dell 5530 - very slow with poor benchmark results and slow application response. Running Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) showed that the CPU was being throttled to 800MHz due to Power Limit Throttling. In the Advanced Tuning/Core section of the XTU, I changed the Turbo Boose Power Max (which was set at 12 for some reason) to the default 56W and the CPU now runs much faster. I will do some more testing to see if this affects battery life.

@stevewrd is the processor staying at 800Mhz in the BIOS too?

To resolve the issue with the processor maxing out at 800MHz you need to carry out an RTC reset on the system. To do this, connect the ac adaptor to the system and hold down the power button for 30 secs. If the power button is held for less than 25 secs or more than 40 secs the RTC reset process will be aborted.

More information can be found here - https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN304892

Alan

Go Start menu - power - sleep. Wait till computer sleeps. Than power up from sleep pressing power button. See CPU speed.

Hi,

Are you sure this works on the Precision 5510?  The model is not listed in the thread you posted and I cannot get it to work on my machine which is suffering the same problem.

This did not work for me. Any other ideas?