Has anyone else got any experience with Dell XPS 15 Laptops? For some reason, mine has started to suddenly overheat quite considerably. The laptop runs hot, sitting at 58 - 62 degrees c at idle and almost immediately touching 97deg exporting a 30 second video. Is this a common trait or do we think something's is hindering it's cooling ability? Core Temp readout after 30seconds of exporting a video file in Premiere.
Whip the base off, check the fan is still spinning unobstructed and give it a blast of compressed air. I'd redo the TIM with some good quality paste whilst you're in there as well. Looks like you've got a slight contact issue. Of course, if it's still under warranty you should probably get Dell to do it for you...
Of course it's just fallen outside of the warranty period so i'll be attempting this myself. Not a problem though i've done this kind of thing before. If successful, i'll post a tutorial on here in-case any other members encounter the same issue. There's a few "quirks" about the laptop that should also be known but i'll address these in the tutorial at the same time. If unsuccessful, i'll post a tutorial on exactly what not to do.
Go for liquid metal (I don't think the heatsinks are alu, but you check). It's on laptops that liquid metal truly shines. Careful with the CPU, there's no IHS on these chips usually, heatsink goes straight onto silicone.
Try undervolting with Intel's XTU. Also remove and re-TIM the heatpipe assembly. A combination of both of these knocked about 20 degrees off my peak temp. Also, if you're planning on blasting the fan with compressed air, hold the blades to stop it spinning up.
Oh and if you're feeling patient and courageous and seeing that it's out of warranty, you could always lap the heatsink.
Just changed the paste on my XPS 13 9360. The Dell application was terrible, far too much and was overflowing everywhere. It had also gone quite hard so it was due a change. Replaced it with some Arctic Silver 5 and temps are much improved and the fan stays off for much longer.
No such thing as too much... but anyway, they most likely just had a hardening paste which isn’t going to do much good. AS5 isn’t recommended due to the conductivity, but it’s fine so long as you’re careful with the application. MX4 would be my recommendation here.
Thanks for the info TMDD. The tube of AS5 was nearly gone and since the die wasn't that big I thought I'd use it up. I can understand why Dell and pretty much all OEMs just gob it on but when the paste is pretty much covering the whole CPU rather than just the die(s), thats just far too much IMHO.
The thing is, too much is not a thing... it’s a very common misconception. You can apply an entire tube to a tiny die and it won’t matter. It squishes out and it’s done. There’s plenty of evidence to support this.
Purposely bought non-conductive TIM for this reason. Used Kryonaut Thermal Grizzly in the end. I had some Arctic Silver 5 however I have seen reports that it can be conductive so thought best not to. Idle temps now in low 40's and load temps improved greatly. It no-longer throttles when playing CSGO under the same settings and while it does get warm when exporting video, it's no longer anywhere near as bad.
I've always seen great results from doing just that to pretty much any laptop that I touch/repair/buy for friends/colleagues. I haven't done it to my current laptop, but it doesn't get *that* warm. I'll swap the paste at some point, though.
Kryonaut is amazing stuff. Over the years, I've sworn by AS5, MX-4, IC-Diamond but nothing tops Kryonaut. After 12 months under a GPU cooler, it's still a paste with no sign of drying out.
On a further update to the temps of the XPS15. Running CineBench 5 times consecutively peaks the processor temperature at 82 degrees. Idle temps now 40 - 45degrees. Very happy with the re-TIM and even when gaming there is no thermal throttling at all.
Kryonaut everything. I stripped the cooler off my 1 month old Strix 1080Ti and repasted it - sorry Asus. Still got an improvement in temps, by about 3 or 4c. Nothing major but like I said above, I stripped it down after a year and the paste hadn't started to dry yet, not even close so the longevity of this product is the best I've come across to date.
