Dell XPS 15 9520 - Solving the throttling

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Dell XPS 15 9520 - Solving the throttling

Рет қаралды 22,251

Күн бұрын

How to semi-permanently fix the XPS 15's dopey and erratic power throttling behaviour.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:42 - Part 1: A warning about the XPS's VRM cooling
01:53 - Part 2: You NEED a stand or cooling pad
02:19 - Part 3: Motion throttling: what it is, how to stop it (do this first)
03:06 - Part 4A: Power throttling: The RECOMMENDED solution
04:57 - Part 4B: Power throttling: The "I want ALL the performance" solution
06:48 - Conclusion
Download ThrottleStop: www.techpowerup.com/download/...
Disclaimers & important information:
All products shown on this channel were purchased through normal retail channels with my own money for the purpose of bringing you an unbiased and objective review.
No potentially tampered-with or cherry-picked "review units" have been provided by any manufacturer.
No third party has had any influence on the content of this nor any future videos. All opinions & performance data contained within are my own. I do not watch or read any other channel or website's reviews before completing my own unless I find an unusual or suspicious performance, quality or battery life result. Double-check all performance data and measurements with other review outlets before making a purchasing decision.
Any pricing, availability, or performance information shown was accurate at the time of filming. Please check for any updated information & pricing before making any decisions based on the contents of this video.

Пікірлер: 101

@KliqHP 11 ай бұрын

Mate. Thank you SO much. I've been looking for a fix for over a year and was going to call it quits today and sell it for a fraction of the price, but you saved it. Thank you so god damn much

@samawol4161 2 жыл бұрын

I don't even own this laptop but this is an impressive and simple guide. I plan on buying a Dell G15 and may consider following this guide at a basic level and adjusting the settings to suit my config of course, if i find the temperatures excessive.

@ItsTripTips Жыл бұрын

Thanks! This fixed my throttling issue exactly as you described :)

@Reaper31292 2 жыл бұрын

Excellent video, thanks for the info.

@HydrantTV 11 ай бұрын

I’m currently at a stage of applying liquid metal onto my XPS 15 and whilst waiting for nail polish on the GPU to dry out, I decided to get some food and watch a KZfaq video or two. And I’ve come across to one review on my main page and liked your channel. Then I saw this video. I actually don’t know how much I can help you, but it has to be one of the most helpful videos I’ve seen in a while. When I apply the liquid metal and cut the plastic pieces covering VRM, I’d show you the results.

@manveersingh3241 Ай бұрын

any updates?

@jonathanr4160 2 жыл бұрын

This man doing the job that Dell engineers should be doing lol. I'll never game on an XPS after my 9560 with the i5 7300HQ and GTX 1050 would throttle to hell even playing lightweight games. I also realized that people who said XPS could game ok were full of it or playing 25 year old games. Beautiful machine and built well, but the XPS line has always had terrible out of the box thermals/annoying hidden power limits.

@pranshusahu8678 Жыл бұрын

Man I can understand your pain as I too own the 9560 and I had bought it after watching tons of videos online that showed them playing AAA games on the 9560 comfortably but when I tried my used to throttle to hell even in CS GO! I realised most of these people must be from really cold countries or are just straight up lying. It is surprising that even after 7 years of the 9560, Dell is still doing the lousy job on XPS cooling... pity because I love my 9560 on every other thing but won't buy another xps anytime soon.

@siyzerix Жыл бұрын

I did see a guide on youtube which made that 1050 XPS game pretty well for hours by severely undervolting the i5 7300hq (still maintained its 3.1ghz clockspeed) and the 1050 was undervolted too. You can repaste them both as well. My legion y520 with 2 small heatpipes and just 2 fans stuck next to each other, managed to make my 1050 clock to 2ghz with vram clock at +829mhz stably for days. My i5 7300hq was always at 3.1ghz and didn't cross 70. 1050 stayed at 60.

@akqo Жыл бұрын

@@siyzerixdoes the dell precisions laptops have thermal issues too, please tell me because i found dell xps 15 9570 and dell precision 5530 in the same price and i want to buy the xps but all consumers suffering from heating issues

@siyzerix Жыл бұрын

@@akqo Have a look at reviews. I cannot say for sure. But they shouldn't overheat. However, like any laptop, you HAVE to tune it to get good temps

@akqo Жыл бұрын

@@siyzerix of course, thanks for your response bro

@logbreakr Ай бұрын

Thank you so much, I have an XPS 9530 and had horrible performance issues for months with the CPU clock speed going down to 1 GHZ whenever I opened an intensive program. I had the fans and thermal system replaced, updated all my drivers, changed every setting etc. and nothing worked, but part 4B worked perfectly for me. It's great to finally be able to use my laptop.

@bbbeast Ай бұрын

I think I’m also having the same problem did you just open the software and did only part 4b?

@istafaniazi3533 Жыл бұрын

I've yet to try this out but I am so glad you made this video. Keep up the effort man! You're a godsend and I don't think I'll have to worry about replacing this laptop if this works out

@thomasmiller1406 Жыл бұрын

Thank you man so much. Using this as a work laptop its a power house but gaming by god what a pain in the rear. If this can keep a constant framerate i will be very happy

@JokobZuma Жыл бұрын

did it work?

@matthewgumabon7498 10 ай бұрын

This did wonders for my XPS 15 9510 (2021 model) with an 11th gen i9 and RTX 3050Ti. The 9510 actually doesn’t have that plastic layer, so all I did was re-paste the CPU and GPU with thermal grizzly and replace the existing thermal pads with nicer ones. I think that alone helped a bit, but changing these TPL settings in TS helped significantly! I gained over 200 points in 3DMark Time Spy. It’s a shame Dell locked out most of TS undervolting settings for new models. I’ve seen some Reddit posts where people managed to mod the new BIOS versions to enable the locked overlocking and voltage controls, and actually gain performance and battery live by undervolting, but the BIOS modding process is way too involved to waste precious time over.

@mikeknierim70 15 күн бұрын

Thank you mate

@dylangovender Жыл бұрын

@NuclearNotebook Something you didn't cover in the video: what settings should the Dell Power manager be on? Especially interested in the scenario 4A (ie, not removing the insulating plastic)... what Dell Power manager settings would be best?

@GillBearToe 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you

@theprofessional3678 2 жыл бұрын

did you have any screen tearing issues? Ive been completely unable to get v-sync to function, nor do any fps caps work through nvidia control panel

@GlassJAwTTT 5 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for this. So suprised that this isn't a more discussed issue! This laptop has been a complete shit box for the past year for me.

@DaneReidVoiceOver 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks

@pz3783 2 жыл бұрын

Hey @NuclearNotebook - this is such an awesome guide, would you be able to do a quick video tutorial on the internal stuff (re-pasting and repositioning that plastic strip) ? That way We can follow your guide from start to finish. Thanks!

@dylangovender Жыл бұрын

+1 on this. Was about to write a comment asking @NuclearNotebook to make a video on how to "handle" the insulating plastic. Like an ifixit video but on how to get the laptop in best shape.

@iddra1868 Жыл бұрын

I have the i9 version and I had to pull the limit down to 35W, otherwise it would run at about 50W in games which didn't leave enough power for the GPU. Now the GPU is at 45W, CPU usage is 20-30% so it's still far from a bottleneck. I also removed the plastic and repasted it with SYY-157. I tested it in F1 22 on Ultra for about an hour, it averaged 63 FPS.

@joshgeneblazo7042 Жыл бұрын

How did you keep your watts at 35? i did what you did and mine hovers around 20W

@cupakabrs 11 ай бұрын

I'm really struggling with a 1050Ti Dell XPS 15 9570, i7, 16GB RAM laptop. Tried some advices from this video, but still the Dying Light 2 is unplayable, Can you suggest different settings? Seems I also don't have such items in device manager, so I cannot turn them off...

@mardon85 Жыл бұрын

I guess you could combine this with a GPU undervolt using MSI afterburner also?

@agentastro9758 26 күн бұрын

Would this guide also work on a dell XPS 15 9560 model?

@mrwho995 7 ай бұрын

Is there a video going in the details of how you did part 1? Would be greatly appreciated

@fanikurti2420 11 күн бұрын

How do you get the upper left corner wattage info?

@anjasaja 7 ай бұрын

is this applicable to Precision 5560? i have i9 and rtx a2000

@allanholmwinther9899 Жыл бұрын

Can you do this on a xps 17" 9720.

@huray9802 3 ай бұрын

Which cooling pad you use? How much did it cost?

@fanikurti2420 11 күн бұрын

About the cooling pad, it looks to me that the fans of the xps, take the cold air from behind and PUSH DOWNWARDS the hot air to exhaust (where the qwertyuiop keyes are). If this is the right dynamic, than, having a coolpad that pushes upwards forcingly the same hot air that the xps fans are trying to get rid off by exhausting downwards... it seems not productive. Actually i bought i cooling pad even before watching this video and it does absolutely nothing to the temperatures of the cpu or gpu. The system keeps having the same temperatures with or without it. I guess because the xps fans do not suck the air from down and exhaust towards the back of the laptop but they suck from the back and exhaust downwards. Do you have any idea about this?

@gladniggo Жыл бұрын

Is it worth disabling turbo boost?

@gladniggo Жыл бұрын

What do you think about removing the wrapping on the bottom of the case and connecting it via thermal pads to the heatsink?

@Ba5447 3 ай бұрын

I didn´t removed the wrapping in the middle of the bottom case, but I have used the thermalpads to connect the bottom case and the ends of heatsink together. The result is as expected, lower fan noise and hotter bottom case, but not too much (you don´t get burn if you touch it)... Feel free to ask what you want to know!

@Randy-bd6kj Жыл бұрын

Could method 4A damage the computer?

@fklstv7 Жыл бұрын

Would you do anything different for the turbo power limits on the i9 12900-HK and 3050ti XPS 9520? The default Long and Short Power PL-1 and PL-2 is set to 115 instead of 45 and 75.

@aranneidhardt5925 Жыл бұрын

if youve got a K series then you should be focusing on undervolting your CPU in the FIVR section rather than worrying about TPLs (or do both).

@roleair8647 2 ай бұрын

Why does throttle stop stop working after like 20 minutes everytime I have it on

@mikehawk7307 Жыл бұрын

I know this has been on KZfaq for a while now. But I got the 2022 model and I did what you said and it made it worse. I tried it with The Division 2 and before I used Throttle Stop I was getting around 38 to 45 fps at ultra at 2100P. I used Throttle Stop and it dropped like a rock. It went down to 24fps.

@dosgos Жыл бұрын

On older XPS models, we could: - boost fan mapping with Dell Command I Power Manager (ultra-performance or cool). - SpeedShift was the best way to quickly adjust CPU performance (EPP of around 80/255 was the lowest that allowed max turbo clocks). EPP of 255 is worst performance with low power consumption. - Elevating the back of the laptop with a pencil or eraser to allow more cool air into the laptop provided a nice boost to performance (for those who don't have a cooling mat). - Repasting the CPU and GPU as the factory paste was rubbish. Don't over tighten the heatsink else something breaks. - Some electrical tape between the fans and radiators as the old ones had a lot of air leakage (hopefully that has been fixed by now). - Some put thermal pads on the VRM mosfets (maybe to the heatsink). That is a trade off as the VRM temp sensor used to throttle the laptop at a low temp. This reduces cooling available to the CPU and GPU, however. Dell frequently mislables that VRM temp sensor so manually confirm. - ThrottleStop had some great tweaks on the forums. I think Intel is running newer chips much harder so there isn't so much room to tweak. Afterburner can be great too.

@BenGodot 10 ай бұрын

Are these not needed anymore?

@dosgos 10 ай бұрын

@@BenGodot No idea. The newer XPS models still are thin-and-light so will struggle with heat and power. All thin-and-light laptops suffer this to a point. I don't know what tweaks work on the newer models. Research throttling of a particular new XPS and determine if that would impact your use cases. These target daily us rather than heavy gaming, for example.

@Alex.Hilman 6 ай бұрын

@@dosgosActually it's not Dell fault to be thin and small. It's intel fault that is still too hot even in 2024. Like MacBook which are thin and cool

@damianoparravano7022 2 жыл бұрын

Hi, thanks for sharing. Would you recommend such tricks for a Dell XPS 15 9570 (i9-8950HK, 4K UHD, GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q)?

@Nite85 Жыл бұрын

rather undervolt since its a K series

@AlessandroMian Жыл бұрын

Thats great, I have the 7590 model. I made a clean install of Windows and since Dell Power Manager (now My Dell) is crap I dind't install any Dell software. I had to repaste the CPU and GPU, and used throttlestop to adjust the power limit properly. Also I'm still able to undervolt the cpu since I didn't upgraded the BIOS, and that helps. The XPS is a great laptop, but seems that Dell is doing everything to not making it the best laptop on the market, to me this is insane.

@hadifjamalluddin3319 2 жыл бұрын

EGPU is the option right? If does, make a new video about egpu that suitable with I7-12700H.

@speakerlover13 2 жыл бұрын

I have been curious about egpu as well. How would the cpu perform if there is no load on the built in gpu?

@smo_kweed62 Жыл бұрын

Do I have to click on “Turn On” on the main window of ThrottleStop so that the changes I make in the TPL Window take place? Currently it says “Monitoring” on the Top Bar of the ThrottleStop Window. I use ThrottleStop version 9.5

@smo_kweed62 Жыл бұрын

Also the changes I make in the TPL window do not seem to be saved upon a reboot of the system. I have to go through the steps in ThrottleStop every time I reboot

@patrickday3393 Жыл бұрын

I was considering just applying Liquid Metal to the cpu and gpu on the laptop myself. I haven’t gotten it in yet, but I will see if those plastic bits cause as much issue for me as they did you. What tools would you recommend using to remove the plastic if it does appear to be an issue?

@patrickday3393 Жыл бұрын

Also to anyone who removed the plastic from the bottom, does anyone notice any major differences between the bottom plate temperature when the laptop starts running

@JesseJamesHeadrick Жыл бұрын

After your tweaks and optimizations, what was your experience with battery life on this model? I’ve been struggling to pick either this model or the MacBook Pro 14. I am not married to either ecosystem.

@KingAkidia Жыл бұрын

Appreciate this guide! Got a 9520 for a really good price and this makes gaming much more achievable, crazy how dell butchered the throttling on this thing.

@AndyMac508 Ай бұрын

remember to hit the Turn On button in throttlestop after applying settings.

@mrgrellow6985 2 жыл бұрын

i can't seem to find NVIDIA platform controllers and framework in device manager, i have a dell xps 9500 btw (gtx 1650 ti)

@pranjal651 Ай бұрын

Dude are you still facing the issue , because I have same config as yours , I also have xps 9500 , what did you actually do to fix it , because my laptop is throttling even playing cs 2 on low preset

@mrgrellow6985 Ай бұрын

@@pranjal651 Hey, you're not gonna like my answer but I just bought a new laptop. I couldn't fix any of the issues and the screen won't turn on anymore, Dell is just a shitty laptop brand imo. Me personally, I would try and maybe get some money out of the xps maybe by selling it or trading it in (idk if they will give money for such an old model) and just get a new laptop, either a macbook or a gaming laptop with an actual cooling system.

@realisthw Жыл бұрын

THANKS U MAN!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

@8peterp Ай бұрын

long term effect is code 43 and GPU de-soldering itself or dies ,dell technician just changed my MB

@SRKHD Жыл бұрын

Does the whole throttlestop reset after you restart your laptop?

@KingAkidia Жыл бұрын

Try setting a task in task scheduler to open throttlestop at startup. Settings should save just make sure you lock them in.

@Anbbins Жыл бұрын

So how is the plastic sheet attached to the computer? Like do I have to remove the whole heatsink to get to it?

@NuclearNotebook Жыл бұрын

Yep, it's stuck under there, but comes off easily with the heatsink out of the way.

@Anbbins Жыл бұрын

@@NuclearNotebook Well that's rude of them. Guess I can take the opportunity to apply better thermal paste lol. Ughh

@Collinormous Жыл бұрын

I've had my 9520 for about 2 weeks now and its great - but throttling was annoying. This has def helped but I'll still hit 100c on the CPU and 75 on the GPU when testing with Cyberpunk. It'll start having a stutter reliably every 2-3 seconds almost without fail after 30 min or so of testing.

@Collinormous Жыл бұрын

Update: I repasted the CPU and GPU with Liquid Metal, and replaced the thermal pads with higher quality - temps will still climb to 100c but the CPU and GPU stay at a higher boost clock for longer. Now the CPU will stay at around 75 watts and GPU at 40 almost indefinitely. No more stutter, just smooth gameplay now.

@Nite85 Жыл бұрын

@@Collinormous I also want to do this with my 9520. would you mind sharing which thermal pads you got? also, did you remove the plastic sheet like he did?

@Collinormous Жыл бұрын

@@Nite85 I used Nab Cooling NB Supermax 15w thermal pads, and I didn’t fully remove the plastic, but cut it away from the mosfets so they’d have direct contact. I also taped off around my gpu and cpu with kapton tape just incase any Liquid Metal manages to escape.

@Nite85 Жыл бұрын

@@Collinormous cheers. Will get some pads. They have different thickness tho right ?

@Matt-fo4gg 2 жыл бұрын

Great video, legit turns it into a capable (relatively quiet) gaming machine, echoes all my findings too 👍 I arrived at a similar setup at your 4B. Locking the MMIO value is the key, was so happy when I found that. With PL 1 and PL 2 you can set them to the max your CPU can handle then reduce the turbo time down to something like 4 seconds (since they can't sustain it anyway but it's great for bursty workloads like video editing) I set PL 1 to 58w and PL 2 to 93 (allowing it to turbo in both states) then on another Throttlestop preset, I used the tick-box to disable Turbo on the main window. That way I have the same PL limits across both, but one profile allows turbo (work) and one disables turbo (gaming) which effectively limits it to 45w anyway. This means I can leave the laptop in Optimized power mode too - however Ultra Performance seems to have a slightly more aggressive fan curve. Either way it takes a few minutes of gaming for the fans to arrive at their max speed too, so it can thermal throttle for the first moments in-game until it stabilises. In regard to the laptop stand/cooler - I found even elevating the rear of laptop 1-2cm (any amount is better than none) had a substantial effect since the laptop's feet are so tiny. For those that travel with this you can just carry a small kick stand/bigger feet for the back. Or just prop a book under the rear edge away from the vents when you game.

@MsDomsim Жыл бұрын

Regarding the stand - I think LTT came to a similar conclusion. Elevating the laptop delivers nearly the same results as a active cooling stand, about 1-2°C worse.

@Matt-fo4gg Жыл бұрын

@@MsDomsim Ah cool, I'll have a look at that video. Yeah it seems any elevation (even small) will help and then it's diminishing returns after that. It seems to make sense when I think about it too, since the internal fan isn't going to increase it's throughput just because it's getting forced air faster. It just needs more room to pull in air at it's own pace. Active cooling pads make sense for things with a more passive design though, I imagine the passive M1 would benefit if the base is effectively used like a heatsink.

@GinkaBESTWW 2 жыл бұрын

Do you have speedshift/speedstep or c states enabled in bios?

@NuclearNotebook 2 жыл бұрын

BIOS was reset to defaults for this video - so I believe all of the above were enabled

@JesseJamesHeadrick Жыл бұрын

Is undervolting not an option on this model?

@NuclearNotebook Жыл бұрын

No, locked out unfortunately.

@chutrekon8726 Жыл бұрын

Hi, how thick is thermal pad you use??? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z9hjqtaZqbfXho0.html

@havoc0370 Жыл бұрын

Throttlestop is not working for me

@8peterp Ай бұрын

Kryonaut pumping out ,Kryonaut Extreme less. Hydronaut is better choice long term

@siyzerix Жыл бұрын

For additional performance, you can undervolt the rtx 3050ti and OC its vram by as much as possible. That should net an additional 10% performance boost, if done correctly and how lucky your silicon lottery is.

@marlo8850 6 ай бұрын

A premium Laptop shouldnt need something like this.

@supercellex4D 2 ай бұрын

Protip: With the Vostro 7510 and a heatsink rework you can coax a total computing power of over 100W with the throttlestop anti-DPTF hack, a PROCHOT 100C lock hack and ultra performance mode on that shitty RTX 3050 I am a mac user now, that machine is in the garbage. Don't do that.

@kianmoiny7860 2 жыл бұрын

Please fix my nitro fan issue 😩

@NuclearNotebook 2 жыл бұрын

What's up with it?

@kianmoiny7860 2 жыл бұрын

@@NuclearNotebook cpu 40C and the gpu is idle but the laptop suddenly starts ramping the fans as if I were gaming with it. This happens whenever I’m doing light work with it like watching movies or light browsing. What is the problem? Sometimes I just leave it overnight so it can download games or whatever and the fans go crazy suddenly. The temps are always low 50s high 40s.