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Mine overhearts 100 celsius on loading programs. I am not the only one. Many report the issue with the 1.4.1 BIOS upgrade (probably related to the fan settings/profile). It has been almost half a year and about 4 updates to the BIOS and people say they have done nothing to fix the thermal issues allegedly related to the BIOS. I am at 1.8.0 and this BIOS certainly hasn't fixed mine. With the overheating, my CPU scores around 660 on Cinebench which is review benchmarked at scores of around 800 (presumably with the shipped BIOS 1.3.0 or below), so I am getting 82.5% out of my CPU with it frequently hitting 100 C and game captures using OBS Studio being really bad. The CPU can get up to around the review benchmarked performance by undervolting the core and the cache using potentially dangerous overclocking software, but it won't reduce temperatures without also lowering the TurboBoost overclock which brings the CPU performance down again as well. If I want to get mine running at under 80 C, I need to decrease it to 3.0GHZ which brings the Cinebench score down to 640. And even when the CPU is maxing out at less than 80 C somehow the computer is still almost melting at the top of the keyboard, which begins to spread around the rest of the keyboard after a couple of hours of gaming. (In contrast to the CPU, the GPU runs at a good temperature and can overclock to a regular 1060 mobile level.) To make matters worse, they won't allow you to downgrade to the last popular BIOS, which is 1.3.0. There is no way of getting around it, believe me I have tried. They block it whether you attempt to install direct from the installer package or you insert the BIOS into the ESP partition to try and trick it into thinking it is the current BIOS that you are reinstalling. They won't give you a BIOS that properly controls the thermal side, not will they allow you to control the fan settings, and they won't allow you to go back to the last good BIOS! Software solutions like SpeedFan don't support this motherboard (and probably Dell in general). Dell simply don't seem to care about customers of this brand. I will try repasting the thermal paste on the CPU, but haven't gotten around to ordering any yet. I bought a cooling mat which arrived just today which I want to try out before throwing any more money on it (including the amount I spent a new screwdriver kit). If it is the BIOS (and at this stage I am probably inclined to believe it's a mixture of a bad paste and the BIOS fan settings especially as the fans behave oddly in this computer) the solution might be to avoid upgrading the BIOS at all costs, at least above 1.3.0, if yours comes with that version or under. My experience isn't great enough to comment on battery life, but it seems better than my previous laptops and ebay doesn't allow a middle ground option so I just said 'yes'. EDIT: I applied thermal paste and it reduced the temps maybe as much as 20 C, but it is still not enough. I was getting a 80-90 C average with games on medium settings, and worse when I tried to capture them with OBS Studio. I have to still underclock the CPU. Dell released a 1.9 BIOS that gave some cooling features, and it reduced it as much as 15 C if I recall but combined with the thermal paste it is STILL not enough.Read full review
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A nice little price with big performance from Dell. Keep up a good work ..
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good laptop with long battery but heavy and has thick bezels
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