Intel specifies 100C for the CPU but the system will throttle before it hits that limit to prevent damage, same goes for the GPU. Clock speed will increase/decrease depending on the thermal headroom. The XPS is a thin laptop so expect it to run hotter than an Alienware or Inspiron Gaming series which have much bigger cooling mechanisms as they are larger.
The 9560 will downthrottle the CPU / GPU clock frequencies within seconds if they get too hot. You can observe this using HWinfo64.
With the cooling system working normally (good paste, no dust in the cooling fins), such downthrottling should not occur when running-load stress tests for the CPU (Mersenne Prime95) or the GPU (Unigine Heaven). Unfortunately, due to the borderline thin thermal design and the lack of QC, throttling due to bad cooling paste application in mass production is common with XPS straight out of the factory.
In case of heavy workloads on the CPU and the GPU at once, power limit throttling will kick in within minutes. In this case, CPU/GPU limit temperatures may not be reached, but the mosfets in the VRM area which have no active cooling get too hot (one of the "ambient" sensors in the seventies). Some mods show that a better thermal solution is possible within the same dimension, but this is pretty involved.
avtella
66 Posts
0
March 3rd, 2018 16:00
Intel specifies 100C for the CPU but the system will throttle before it hits that limit to prevent damage, same goes for the GPU. Clock speed will increase/decrease depending on the thermal headroom. The XPS is a thin laptop so expect it to run hotter than an Alienware or Inspiron Gaming series which have much bigger cooling mechanisms as they are larger.
samos1111
489 Posts
0
March 6th, 2018 02:00
The 9560 will downthrottle the CPU / GPU clock frequencies within seconds if they get too hot. You can observe this using HWinfo64.
With the cooling system working normally (good paste, no dust in the cooling fins), such downthrottling should not occur when running-load stress tests for the CPU (Mersenne Prime95) or the GPU (Unigine Heaven). Unfortunately, due to the borderline thin thermal design and the lack of QC, throttling due to bad cooling paste application in mass production is common with XPS straight out of the factory.
In case of heavy workloads on the CPU and the GPU at once, power limit throttling will kick in within minutes. In this case, CPU/GPU limit temperatures may not be reached, but the mosfets in the VRM area which have no active cooling get too hot (one of the "ambient" sensors in the seventies). Some mods show that a better thermal solution is possible within the same dimension, but this is pretty involved.