New Kaby Lake XPS 13: coil whine

@Justin C

Thank you for your support.

Can you tell us if A02 motherboards have reached the maintenance stock ?

I ask you that because @Zyell said he got a new A02 motherboard following a support request for the coil whine issue (message from 31 Jan 2017 18:22 on this thread).

Hi Greg_FR,

Happy to work with you.

Yes, I shared Zyell's post with Dell engineering on Tuesday and they still maintain that A02 is not yet available. I understand that this is a contradiction and I am working to solve it.

Hello All,

I purchased an XPS13 in mid-2016,  which produces an irresponsible amount of coil whine. I've gone through 3 repair attempts now, with no luck.

1st Repair) I sent XPS13 to Dell, they changed heatsink and fan, ineffective strategy for motherboard based coil whine. No fix

2nd Repair) Dell technician came on site to swap motherboard. The technicians from the 1st attempt stripped the motherboard screws so he couldn't do anything. No change, no fix.

3rd Repair) Laptop again sent into Dell, motherboard replaced. No fix. And now one of my speakers is blown out.

I'm not sure what the lemon laws are for electronics in your states, but three attempts for a business to make something right should be enough. This is just irresponsible, plain and simple, to take >$2000 for a laptop and leave your numerous(judging by this thread alone) customers stranded with faulty equipment and red-herring repair attempts. I asked for a refund, and was stonewalled by support. No chance.

I'm now being asked by the robotic support team to send it in again for a 4th try at making things right.

When will there be relief? When will we, your loyal customers be delivered the quality and service that we expect from Dell, and that we invested in with our hard earned money?

We chose Dell over the other companies, the Apples, the Alienwares, the HPs, because we had trust in your brand. When will you deliver on this trust and make things right? Enough with the half-measures, enough with the time estimates, and delays, and working with internal teams for predictions of shadows of hope.

Just fix it, and do the right thing.

Alienware is owned by Dell, and (at least my Alienware 13r2) have the exact same problem as the XPS13 :( along with that, there are a number of other problems as well, such as a buggy touchpad and a USB-C-port that doesn't work. I personally love the build quality and feel, but the lack of support combined with the amount of problems means that this will likely be the last Dell I'll own :/

I received my xps 13 9360 yesterday from dell Malaysia factory (delivered to Australia). The manufactured date was 25th Jan 2017 with motherboard version A00.

In a very quite environment, on plug, still can hear (sometimes) light coil whine from 30cm away. On battery, can't hear coil whine unless less than 10cm distance from upper left corner.

On full load test with Prime95, in terms of coil whine, didn't find any difference from the idle.

I'm in mid 30s and sensitive to noise. For 2 days use, coil whine is not bothering me so far.

Yeah. I think I'm not interested in this model anymore.

Check this nice video. this is supposed to be a DEV machine. they sold it as DEV machine having UBUNTU. no dev can work with this buzz noise in their head for 3 minutes... DELL should recall the machines, not try to sell or replace motherboards. They dont refund me 

According to their support i was 1 day delayed and they cannot DOA !! haha this is *** guys... this is totally ***. Stay away from this machines

you reported the issue outside of the DOA period since the case where created the 12 of January and you got the system 31 days earlier. So I'm not going to be able to take this as a DOA so we are not going to be able to replace the system or refund it.

The anger is rising here Project Sputnik managers.

This is a premium machine and is marketed as a Dell flagship product and demand s premium service/attention to detail.

Drastic action is needed now; not mealy mouth solutions in the distant future.

There are many loyal Dell fans here; hoping, hanging on to every word posted but it does seem like a lot of can kicking is happening and nothing definitive.

Goes back to the previous models this issue though, years ago.

I also wish it was possible to disable that *** brightness thing on the FHD model. It's really quite annoying seeing the screen fade in and out, I can do that myself.

In order to see what motherboard revision I had received, I followed your (@DELL-Justin C) instructions to check the diagnostics section, which you have now stated is invalid.  So I guess I didn't receive this new revision after all?  I suppose this could explain why the noise isn't truly gone, only modulated?  Although, I don't understand why my touchpad and touchscreen failed to function until I upgraded the kernel afterward...

As Greg_FR mentioned, it would be good to know when it is truly in maintenance stock.  I will be sure to check on the motherboard itself this time before the tech begins.  Thanks.

@supercuio, I do not have the necessary equipment to perform these comparisons unfortunately.

Hello @DELL-Justin C,

I am another one very disappointed and very frustrated buyer of your "Macbook killer"(NOT). It cost me 2200 EUR. My past ultrabooks (not Dell) cost around 1300 EUR and I had no problems. Now I decided to move forward making the great mistake to buy this thing. I appreciate your effort into this thread but I want some answers for the sake of my hundreds wasted hours trying to solve the numerous problems.

Note: I will not mention the SO BAD sound card. The speakers produce a crispy noise all the time. The sound is so awful even with headphones. I have noticed that on Linux also (dual boot). I will not also mention the *** wireless card (Killer??? not at all). It gives me a download speed of 500KBytes (tested on Ubuntu too) while at the same time and location, other laptops and my smartphone of 100Euro, get the speed of 10MBytes (20xtimes the Killer). Instead, I will focus on the subject of this thread.

1) WHY WHY WHY in the first place you let that defective product go into production? Dell just put together the pieces and you hadn't money to pay at least 1 person to use that for a while??? Please don't answer me like "Not all the units are faulty, just a few ones". You know very well that this isn't the case. Try a simple search on google and you will figure it out by the number of results and endless conversations.

2) OK let's say that you decided to lower the quality of your product in sake of quick money. I know how business works. But you exceeded the limits. Me and thousand others completely lost our enthusiasm. I would like only to give me a rational explanation why Dell refuses to address this issue all these years. It is definitely unacceptable. We feel like you wanted just our money and you didn't just pass your machines under quality control.

2) WHY and HOW all other companies have managed not to have coil whine? Dell's official response is that it is a normal situation if the sound cannot be heard in noisy environments. Listen to that: The "Macbook killer" produce that annoying zip sound even on noisy environments.

3) NO, I can not  accept the solution of the famous "Situation 1". I work mostly in quiet environments and I want my ultrabook COMPLETELY silent as ALL other brands. We are on 2017!!!. Will the new motherboard manage that? Should I wait or return it back like thousand others??

Could you please give me a rational explanation for all of these?

I know Justin, this is not your responsibility. You did your best - I believe that. Please just show my message and all the thread to your supervisor. That should be Dell's FIRST priority. Dell should address this problem at last. You loose money.  At least do it for you, not for us. Just take a look at the forums to see how many people returned this faulty ultrabook back and went for more reliable brands.

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards

Just want to update on what happened to my XPS 9360. After almost 3 months of back and forth with support, finally i was refunded. It wasn't my first option since i requested to provide me with a replacement machine that doesn't have coil whine issue. Once they decided to refund, it was another hurdle to get full refund on a machine that i didn't use at all due to this issue. Anyway, all sorted and refunded.

Thanks so much to Justin C for your help and support in this forum. Apart from your answer in this forum, the local support didn't even answer a single question or provided any explanation on what the issue is. It was a very frustrating experience since it was like talking to machines that do not understand human language.

Apart from this issue, XPS is a very decent machine and hope Dell can sort it out and of course improve the customer support.

any news on the motherboard?

Hi Justin,

Any word on the motherboard for service stock?  Do you have any answer from engineering as to why even the A02 motherboard can't completely eliminate the coil whine?  The more I use my laptop, the more I am being driven crazy with this noise, I question would I even be able to deal with the A02 motherboard given it doesn't completely eliminate the coil whine.

I hope you understand that I am having a hard time understanding why that this problem can't be completely eliminated; leaving me and many other customers to question the effort Dell is putting into resolving this issue.

Hello Justin,

I looked for my motherboard version as per your instructions, it says A00.  Does that mean its not the newest replacement version?

To everyone else:  Does the coil whine get worse over time?  Mine is only audible in quiet environment right now.  But I am afraid of it getting worse over time.  Will that happen?

Thanks.