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Comment by pseudosavant | Hacker News Reader

This x1000. A co-worker of mine just switched to Mac because of a horrible experience with a $4000 Dell XPS with a discrete GPU that had chronic overheating issues that seemed to be a design defect. Dell would replace it with a refurb and they all had the issue. Forums online showed other people all had the same experience. Dell just ignored it.

Dell would die a quick death without corporate IT.

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To be fair though, it is physically impossible to run a discrete GPU on any reasonable workload without overheating in a chassis like the XPS. You simply cannot dissipate 100-ish watts on a continuous basis in that form factor.

I guess it's a philosophical question whether Dell should stop selling these kinds of machines, or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money.

I have a semi-portable Dell Precision M6500 from 2011. It still runs and does what it should, but it weighs 4 kg and is 3.5 centimeters thick. Both those numbers are twice that of an XPS 15, and it still throttles down the quad-core i7 after about 120 seconds at full load IIRC.

I have one of those too out in the garage. It runs a hobby CNC router, so it's basically bathed in very fine sawdust often. I'm astonished every time it actually boots up.

> or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money.

This comes off as victim blaming.

As a consumer, I would expect the hardware I buy to be able to dissipate its own heat. If it can't, that's a design flaw that Dell needs to either fix or stop selling the product.

Some people prefer to buy a GPU and underclock it. Maybe you need fast GPU memory more than GPU compute cores for some algorithm.

I do that with one of my GPU servers, because the alternative is switching to liquid cooling and that's more work than I want to put in right now.

The term "victim blaming" is overused as a piece of manipulative rhetoric 90% of the time, but in this case, I think it's completely accurate - as a consumer buying a product from a large company (as opposed to a shady man in a trenchcoat in an alley), you absolutely have the right to expect and demand that your purchase works as advertised, and the responsibility is on the seller to ensure that their marketing matches reality.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that false advertising is illegal in most countries, including the relevant one here (the US).

> The term "victim blaming" is overused as a piece of manipulative rhetoric 90% of the time

Going off-topic, but yup. It's not victim blaming to point out when a victim didn't even take normal precautions. For example, if you're crossing the street, then even if the walk signal says WALK, you should still be looking to make sure there aren't any drivers running the red light. While yes, if you get hit by a car, it's the fault of the driver, you still failed to take the necessary actions for self-preservation.

Hell, there's a pedestrian crossing near me that isn't at an intersection, but has yellow flashing warning lights that turn on when you press a button. There's also a speaker that says "Cross street with caution, vehicles may not stop".

They shouldn't sell the hardware then.

Dissipating a 100W GPU isn’t that difficult in a thin laptop, you can find plenty of companies doing so. Dell presumably has an issue because they don’t want to redesign the internals to dissipate that much heat.

Back when dual GPU’s where still a thing they actually needed laptops to be thick or wide, but 100w isn’t that bad.

What about using those cheap vacuum cooler attachments like the ones sold on Amazon? https://www.amazon.com/laptop-vacuum-cooler/s?k=laptop+vacuu...

The commonality there is Intel. My XPS doesn't even have a recent driver package for its integrated Vega GPU because Intel refused to support it.

Also, the 2017-2019 Intel MacBook Pros are poorly suited to "professional" workloads, throttling under load or if, get this, the "wrong" (Intel) TB controller is used. There are reproducible TB bugs that are abandoned, and I still believe T2/BridgeOS was Apple's response to Intel's poor security design; they were forced to design adversarially against components they couldn't trust.

> The commonality there is Intel. My XPS doesn't even have a recent driver package for its integrated Vega GPU because Intel refused to support it.

Intel website shows their most recent Vega M release is 1/27/22. If Dell isn't keeping their drivers up to date, that's their problem, but the Vega M drivers are out there, Dell probably just isn't putting out releases.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19269/radeo...

anyway, more broadly, this is, unfortunately, just AMD's driver support model. For the longest time they would not even put out iGPU driver updates for their own processors, instead offloading this responsibility to the laptop vendors themselves (who, of course, did not give a shit). i.e. exactly what's happening with your dell.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Better-late-than-never-Radeon-...

And I don't know what people really expect here - Intel is dependent on AMD for drivers, they absolutely cannot write and support a whole new driver stack for an AMD product, if AMD sandbags (like they did previously to OEMs) then Intel is pretty much stuck. AMD got shamed into supporting their own products, finally, but they're absolutely not going to give Intel an inch more than they are contractually obligated to. It's in their financial interest to make your experience as shitty as they can.

Of course, it was probably a mistake for Intel to attempt to collaborate with their largest competitor, and they definitely should have made sure the contract was airtight. But there's really no good reason for these not to be supported by mainstream Adrenalin drivers.

I'm facing a similar issue on a Dell XPS 15, purchased in 2020.

That, plus structural defects cause case flexing when picked up, resulting in the touchpad being inoperable and (more recently) freezing the system entirely.

This is even when the pick up is very gentle -- the case flexes under its own weight. If I type too hard or rest my hands too heavy on the system it can also occasionally cause the issue.

The issue started two days out of warranty.

Both my XPS 13 and XPS 15 rock on the table due to being flexed somehow.

Last week I was sitting in a meeting and tilted my screen up a little on the XPS 15 so I could see past some glare from lights and the hinge snapped. It has the smallest little piece of metal at the point it snapped, about 3-4mm wide and 1-2mm thick, it was no wonder it snapped, so work had to give me a new XPS 15. The hinge itself is plastic-welded to the chassis so it can't just he replaced without the whole chassis being replaced.

I was planning for my next laptop to be a Framework anyway but my (£1600) XPS 13 is only ~2 years old so I am a little way from wanting to buy a new laptop just yet.

This sort of behaviour from DELL is confirming that going Framework is probably the right choice.

EDIT: Also don't get me started on the i9 / 4K XPS 15 a friend of mine bought that seems to want to kill itself any time it's switched on, and has never worked correctly since day dot.

>>Both my XPS 13 and XPS 15 rock on the table due to being flexed somehow.

I've had XPS laptops all the way back in 2010, then 2013 and then 2016 - they all rocked on a table, it's like Dell's factory is crooked and they are physically incapable of making an even laptop.

my XPS 15 7590 is dead flat. I have encountered ones that rock, but it's because the owners would slide them across tables and wear the rear 'table-leg' bumper unevenly. I tend to pick the laptop up and re-place it when I need to move it rather than slide, and i've had good luck.

Now, I agree that kind of thing shouldn't have to be thought about as a wear item -- but it seems to be one.

I assure you I do no such thing, and two for two my XPS laptops "rock" on the table.

Neither laptop has any wear whatsoever on the rubber feet from sliding them on a desk, or on anything else for that matter. I'm a software engineer, not a savage.

From my rudimentary testing, the front right corner is a little bent upward compared to the rest of the laptop. If I touch that corner with one finger it rocks, on both models and on any level surface.

Both of my machines are older than your 7590 but they both did it since new.

I got a 2020 model this week when the hinge broke on my XPS 15 but I'm yet to test if it suffers the same issue.

>>but it's because the owners would slide them across tables and wear the rear 'table-leg' bumper unevenly

I assure you all of mine did that straight out of the box. When the second one did it I was like "Huh, what are the chances" but I almost expected it with the third.

It's a big shame. They have so many little details right but really wooshed on overall quality it appears.

Definitely.

I've been through my fair share of laptop brands over the years.

Leaving Apple out of the equation, the XPS is still the best built, thinnest (though not lightest) laptop I've had that's got the grunt to get my work done.

The XPS 13 is disappointing because of the soldered WiFi meaning I can't swap out that crap Killer WiFi for Intel.

> Dell would die a quick death without corporate IT.

Unfortunately Dell is cheap, make (or at least used to) fairly robust computers for their price with spare parts that can easily be found. Mac is much more expensive and good luck sourcing parts from other brands. Lenovo went downhill when they were sold off.

What do you mean? High-end XPS laptops were about the same price as equivalent Intel Macs - judging just by features (RAM, etc), of course MacBooks have much superior build quality.

I’d reckon equivalent M1 Macs are much cheaper.

If you value your time >20$/hr macs are cheaper because you don't need to waste 20 hours fixing stuff.

And if you're OK with the "Apple" way of doing things.

The moment you deviate, all bets are off.

>> Mac is much more expensive

I think that was a valid argument before Apple Silicon.

Remember when Dell was only in the black on their balance sheet because of Intel payola [1]?

Is Corporate IT the real reason Dell continues to exist, or is it Intel?

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells...

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