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

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@HllCntryHrrcane wrote:

BIOS version is 1.5.1 in the above tests. 

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@HllCntryHrrcane the engineering team would like some more details from you based on the results. I'll drop you a private message for your tag details if you wouldn't mind sending them on.

Thanks, Alan

@Dell-Alan D PM sent

Thx for all the work you are doing trying to get this issue resolved.

Several months after raising this issue with technical support, I received the following message from Dell Advanced Technical Services.

<<

I looked into the issue you reported and it is a normal function of the system when docked. Below are the reasons why the fan kicks on when docked with the later bios updates.

• The activation of the Intel Alpine Ridge (Thunderbolt 3) chipset adds an additional 1.5 to 3.0Watt power demand on the system CPU package. (This occurs even if the system is idle with no or minimum CPU activity registering.)
• You will see this issue most often when connected to a TB16 dock, however you may also see this on the WD15 or DisplayLink Docks.
• This power increase has the impact of slowly increasing the ambient internal temperature of the system.

You can reduce the fan speed by carrying out the following workaround:

1. Enter the BIOS using the F2 prompt at the Dell splash screen
2. 1. Go to the Performance page
   2. Uncheck the Enable Intel SpeedStep option
3. Install Dell Command | Power Manager
4. Select Quiet Mode

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Clearly this defect is know by Dell, yet they continue to refuse to address the issue through product replacement.  The 5491 system is unusable and Dell refuse to make good on this mess.  I wanted it to be noted that Dell think it is acceptable to hobble the performance of a system in order to accommodate their poor engineering.

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@RXUYDC wrote:

Several months after raising this issue with technical support, I received the following message from Dell Advanced Technical Services.

<<

I looked into the issue you reported and it is a normal function of the system when docked. Below are the reasons why the fan kicks on when docked with the later bios updates.

• The activation of the Intel Alpine Ridge (Thunderbolt 3) chipset adds an additional 1.5 to 3.0Watt power demand on the system CPU package. (This occurs even if the system is idle with no or minimum CPU activity registering.)
• You will see this issue most often when connected to a TB16 dock, however you may also see this on the WD15 or DisplayLink Docks.
• This power increase has the impact of slowly increasing the ambient internal temperature of the system.

You can reduce the fan speed by carrying out the following workaround:

1. Enter the BIOS using the F2 prompt at the Dell splash screen
2. 1. Go to the Performance page
   2. Uncheck the Enable Intel SpeedStep option
3. Install Dell Command | Power Manager
4. Select Quiet Mode

>>

Clearly this defect is know by Dell, yet they continue to refuse to address the issue through product replacement.  The 5491 system is unusable and Dell refuse to make good on this mess.  I wanted it to be noted that Dell think it is acceptable to hobble the performance of a system in order to accommodate their poor engineering.

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@RXUYDC the above note explains why there is increased fan behaviour. This is to be expected. What's not expected is the drop in performance that you reached out to me about and the temperature spikes. That is the reason why I have passed it to engineering for further investigation.

Alan

Alan,

Firstly, I want to thank you for being responsive on this site, for taking the time to reply to posts, and for taking this issue seriously.  I hope the logs I have provided will lead to a solution.

However, based on your comment there are two scenarios. Either - 

We have a subset of machines identified through this thread that are defective in some way and behaving in unexpected ways. In this scenario at some point (hopefully) engineering will fix the problem and the machine will behave “normally”.  If I understand Tech Support’s comment a “normal” machine will still need to have its performance reduced in order to make the fan noise acceptable.

OR

The behavior exhibited by my machine is typical of all systems of this type, and a much bigger issue is being masked by advice from Tech Support.

Neither scenario seems very satisfactory.

I am frustrated because I identified this issue to Tech Support within a week or two of receiving the machine.  If the response at that time had been that this was normal we would have returned the machine and got something else.

After a lot of testing and time on hold I was persuaded to return the computer to Dell so it could be bench tested and the problem addressed.  This was despite having on-site repair as part of our service contract.  This whole process took us outside the return window. The machine clearly was not fixed, and the problem we have now identified was not noted.

Now, after waiting some three months for a response from Tech Support, I finally receive a cursory email that doesn’t even address the real issue, and our requests to return the machine for a refund are going unheard.

In the mean time I am dealing with a crippled computer that is no faster than the one it replaced, gets ridiculously bad battery life because of how the systems have been disabled, and still makes far more noise than a 5490.  A growing business like ours doesn’t have the cash flow to just write-off $3000 and throw it away.

Forgive me for venting, but this doesn’t put Dell in a very good light on many levels.

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@RXUYDC wrote:

Alan,

Firstly, I want to thank you for being responsive on this site, for taking the time to reply to posts, and for taking this issue seriously.  I hope the logs I have provided will lead to a solution.

However, based on your comment there are two scenarios. Either - 

We have a subset of machines identified through this thread that are defective in some way and behaving in unexpected ways. In this scenario at some point (hopefully) engineering will fix the problem and the machine will behave “normally”.  If I understand Tech Support’s comment a “normal” machine will still need to have its performance reduced in order to make the fan noise acceptable.

OR

The behavior exhibited by my machine is typical of all systems of this type, and a much bigger issue is being masked by advice from Tech Support.

Neither scenario seems very satisfactory.

I am frustrated because I identified this issue to Tech Support within a week or two of receiving the machine.  If the response at that time had been that this was normal we would have returned the machine and got something else.

After a lot of testing and time on hold I was persuaded to return the computer to Dell so it could be bench tested and the problem addressed.  This was despite having on-site repair as part of our service contract.  This whole process took us outside the return window. The machine clearly was not fixed, and the problem we have now identified was not noted.

Now, after waiting some three months for a response from Tech Support, I finally receive a cursory email that doesn’t even address the real issue, and our requests to return the machine for a refund are going unheard.

In the mean time I am dealing with a crippled computer that is no faster than the one it replaced, gets ridiculously bad battery life because of how the systems have been disabled, and still makes far more noise than a 5490.  A growing business like ours doesn’t have the cash flow to just write-off $3000 and throw it away.

Forgive me for venting, but this doesn’t put Dell in a very good light on many levels.

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@RXUYDC thanks for responding.

I shall try and address your points in turn as best as possible.

Two scenarios - Both scenarios are inextricably linked. Customers get asked what they want from a system and the most common answer is smaller and lighter. Dell then designs a system which is smaller and lighter and a result of that design is smaller batteries, smaller fans, smaller heatsinks. The byproduct of this design is shorter battery life, higher fan noise and activity.

When these are designed we take this into account and engineer thermal algorithms to balance the performance against the need to protect the hardware. These get released and then customers complain that they are too loud. Engineering takes this on board and looks at ways to tweak the thermal performance against the fan noise. There will always be a compromise between the two.

This is where the confusion lies with your case, separating a design based issue i.e loud fan noise with the issue you are having where the performance of the system has been affected. This is where I have stepped into explain to engineering that you have evidence of the impact on the performance with the thermal throttling of the system that requires further investigation.

The system will, by design, throttle performance to protect itself, but not to the level that it impacts the ability for the system to operate. This is the unexpected behaviour that you mention.

As for the return period complaint, that's something that needs to be discussed further as errors have been made. 

Hopefully this explains the issue more clearly and engineering can get to the bottom of the issue.

We can discuss the returns issue via private message if you would prefer.

Alan

I Just bought my new Dell 5591 5 days ago. I have the same problem High Fan Noise on AC and also start up takes too long atleast 15 seconds for the Dell logo only is there any cure for it?

Thanks

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@hdk666 wrote:

I Just bought my new Dell 5591 5 days ago. I have the same problem High Fan Noise on AC and also start up takes too long atleast 15 seconds for the Dell logo only is there any cure for it?

 

Thanks

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@hdk666 thanks for reaching out to us. For the two issues that you mention, there may not be any technical faults here and may be the system working as designed.

As I have indicated above, the fan noise is byproduct of the ultrabook system design and is perceptibly louder in comparison to normal notebooks. It can be improved by updating the BIOS to the latest revision along with running the latest Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal framework driver. You can also try running the system in Quiet Mode from the Power Manager plans.

For the slow boot, is this from a cold boot, or a restart, does it happen every time?
Do you have the system setup with two drives, what are you comparing the boot time, do you have another identical system there that boots up quicker?

Alan

Hi all,

I ordered this laptop and just received it today.

 I‘m using it stand alone without any (Thunderbolt) devices connected and the system is getting extremely hot and makes a lot of noise. Even without starting any application running this occurs.

I just update to the latest firmware, but it doesn’t seem to help.

I understand what Alan writes about the compromises when putting more power in a lighter machine, however, this is a bit extreme.

Hopefully this is a software issue that can be solved, because I would hate to send the machine back to dell.

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@Churchlady1 wrote:
Alan - Our issue is that the laptop - whether plugged into the Thunderbolt or on its own, will randomly (it seems) get super, super hot, with the fan running super high and loud, and all of a sudden it will shut off. It will not come back on until it has cooled down. I then frequently need to re-set the monitor settings for the external monitor that is attached to the Thunderbolt to go back to cloning. It is super annoying and inconvenient. The heat is crazy hot. We upgraded the bios and everything else and it is still doing this randomly (and even when it is just using Word or some low resource program and not looking at videos, etc. Please help. I bought this new computer for this new employee specifically so there would be no complaints to deal with by giving them an older machine, and this has been a nightmare since we got it in July. Happy to monitor it and send you reports if you tell me how to do that so you might be able to see what happens when it goes into its hyper hot and then shut down mode. Thank you.

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Hi @Churchlady1 the system shouldn't be shutting itself down during use unless it is overheating. The system has built in failsafes to throttle the system performance if it's getting excessively hot to protect the system. The system will still be useable though.

As you are saying the system needs to be left to cool down before you can use it, there are definitely some thermal shutdown issues here. This is quite a bit different from the issue being described above by the other users.

I'll drop you a private message to get your service tag details and get a service call organised for you

Once that's done then we may require help with logs. 

Alan

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@EJ_NL wrote:

Hi all,

I ordered this laptop and just received it today.

 I‘m using it stand alone without any (Thunderbolt) devices connected and the system is getting extremely hot and makes a lot of noise. Even without starting any application running this occurs.

I just update to the latest firmware, but it doesn’t seem to help.

 

I understand what Alan writes about the compromises when putting more power in a lighter machine, however, this is a bit extreme.

Hopefully this is a software issue that can be solved, because I would hate to send the machine back to dell.

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@EJ_NL  thanks for the contribution.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by extremely hot?
What kind of temperatures are you experiencing with the system?
Is it specific to a certain area of the system?
For the fan noise, are you comparing the fan noise to another system?
Does it happen regardless of whether you are running it on battery only or with the ac adaptor connected?
Have you enabled Quiet Mode from the Dell Power Manager application?
Is the system being used on a flat solid service without any blockages to the fan outlets?

Alan

A great program to see what is going on in your system is HwINFO64.  It will allow you to see all sorts of different metrics from voltages, to temperatures, to percent usage, to clock speeds and it will allow graphing.  You can set up a few graphs and see what your laptop is doing over time.

Another tip, run the 5591 in optimized or Ultra-Performance thermal management in the dell power manger program.  This will run your fans higher and the laptop will be louder, but you will have much better performance and thermal conditions.  I even run mine on a cool pad while at the office which has additional fans blowing up into the laptop case.

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your swift reply! Please see my answers to your questions bellow :

- I didn't measure the temperature yet (just received the device today), but it's so hot that I could bake an egg on it (I am not exaggerating)

- The system is hot on the bottom on the left side (the side where the ac adaptor is connected).

- I'm comparing it with the laptop that all my colleagues have, the Latitude 5490 (we have both i5 and i7 versions of this model)

- I checked both with ac adaptor and without. I have the feeling that it's worse with the ac adaptor connected

- I enabled Quiet Mode to test yes. After enabling this mode the fan noise is acceptable. However, the system is noticable slower (with simple tasks, like opening a browser)

- I used the system on my desk

Today I called Dell because I would like to return the system and get the Latitude 5490 instead. My colleagues are very happy with the 5490 and I woud like to have the same.

First I called technical support and they tell me it's normal for this system (?).

Then I called Customer Care to return the system, however, I was told that because we are a business it's not possible to return the device.

I am extremely disappointed. Again, I completely understand that this is a heavy system that makes more noise and get hotter because of the specs, and I would accept this until a certain level. But this is extreme and not-usable.

From my testing, using the quiet setting throttles the cpu clock rate down about half so that it will not overheat with the slower fan speed. Yes it will be slow on that setting. The Cool setting will generate similar results. That’s why I use the ones I do.