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7431
April 18th, 2020 13:00
DELL XPS 15 is unusable - Thermal issues
Hey guys, I own an XPS 15 9560.
This 1700€ laptop has become almost unusable after only 2 years... At this point, my toaster could handle heavier workloads.
I'm trying to fix some thermal issues that are occurring when I'm doing music production or gaming, but none of the posts I found here helped me.
The problem I have is a drastic drop in performance after random amounts of time. Sometimes I can game for 30 minutes, sometimes 1 minute.
I recently downloaded Valorant, which is a game that was designed to run on a toaster. It runs really well, and then after a minute or ten, the FPS suddenly drops.
I've downloaded MSI afterburner and had a look at temperatures, and nothing seems to get too hot, nevertheless when I TAB out when throttling my whole screen and desktop are laggy and stay that way for a good 10 minutes
I've tried the following fixes.
- Making games are running on the NVIDIA GPU and not on the integrated GPU.
- Undervolting with XTU
- Upgrading BIOS and intel thermal frameworks
None of the previous made a change, the computer is still unusable when I'm trying to do anything else than browsing the web.
I'm also planning on repasting my CPU.
I'm trying to understand how does my computer throttle so much when the CPU and GPU are barely getting hot, and if you guys might know ways to fix it, besides never buying any dell products ever again.
Would really appreciate some help, thank you in advance for your time
lachie8oi
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May 19th, 2020 19:00
I had the same issue, what fixed it is under vaulting with throttle stop (other softwares wouldn't work). Another thing that helps is going into the power manager and setting thermal management to ultra performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1srWgovdn8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQUOlIi4YpY
Hope this helps
lachie8oi
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May 19th, 2020 19:00
Also check the task manager for anything that is running in the back ground, eg 'voice macro' what ever that is, it was using 100% of my cpu
davreev
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June 27th, 2020 03:00
I've been having the exact same problem with my XPS 15 9560 for some time now.
When using the dedicated Nvidia card, throttling kicks in for even the most trivial games. Undervolting with ThrottleStop and adjusting thermal management in Dell Power Manager seem to make no difference.
The only reliable workaround has been running games on the integrated Intel card which often outperforms the Nvidia card as it doesn't trigger throttling. This is an incredibly frustrating solution given that the price tag of this machine is largely justified by graphics hardware that it can't actually use.
notgonnasay
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August 7th, 2020 10:00
Sadly, the latest firmware (1.19.2) has disabled undervolting because of a hypothetical vulnerability to intel processors in which hackers could use undervolting to see/manipulate some processes outside their own (Plundervolt). However, it's basically not a threat to normal users, but it has made 9560s unusable. No more undervolting. So now everything's hot, and using ~10% more power than it needs to, so battery life is about halved, and everything's ~10 degrees C hotter, and fans are permanently on, and often at higher speeds (louder). Not sure what recourse we have here. Maybe a cl*ss akshun l--suit?
For your specific issue, that intensity of throttling is a little suspicious of serious hardware problems. Google about sticking thermal pads on the VRMs. It might help, and can't hurt. Have you tried reinstalling a fresh de-bloated Windows? (assuming you're on Windows) Are there any processes in task manager using a lot of RAM or CPU all the time?
Are you operating in a hot climate? Is it in such a position as to allow maximum cool airflow? These machines have puny cooling systems for their CPU/GPU, and, unfortunately, now that undervolting is disabled, they're awful. Noisy, low-performance, short battery life. Basically, this update crippled them. However, I don't think you've updated to 1.19.2 yet. Don't! Try undervolting/repasting, and some of the other ideas.
lordclean
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13 Posts
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August 9th, 2020 14:00
@Neomarcoand @davreev ,
in case you have lower performances or even high fans speed, could you try to disable and then re-enable the nvidia driver from the device manager? This trick it works in my case at least to mute the fans noise... (see here )
g.