Dell XPS 15 9570 benchmarks + temps

[custom90gt]

So I did a lot of testing on the new Dell XPS 9570 so I figured I'd share the results here just for fun.

I am open to running benchmarks that are requested provided I have the benchmark and time to run it. I'll also try to put up a few pictures of the repaste and iunlock's mod.


Specs of my 9570:
CPU: i7-8750H
GPU: 1050 Ti Max-Q
Ram: 16GB DDR4 2666MHz
SSD: 512GB 960 Pro
Screen: FHD
Battery: 97WHr

Stock Benchmarks with windows power slider at "better peformance" and dell fan settings set to "optimized":
Time Spy - 2492
Time Spy Extreme - 1158
Fire Strike - 6840
Fire Strike Extreme - 3454
Fire Strike Ultra - 1748
Sky Diver - 21648
Cloud Gate - 27919
Ice Storm - 98789
Ice Storm Unlimited - 96910
3DMark 11 Performance - Cannot complete at stock
3DMark 11 Extreme - Cannot complete at stock
Unigine Heaven Extreme - Cannot complete at stock
RealBench -
Cinebench R15 -115.2 fps, 1203 cb, 174 cb
PCMark 10 - 5173
PCMark 8 Home Accelerated - 4148
PCMark 8 Work Accelerated - 5497
PCMark 8 Home Conventional Battery - 6:38


Thermals:
Please note I am using an older version of Prime95 (28.7 build 1) and doing Small FFTs.
Undervolt settings are -170mv on the cpu and -145mv on cache for all undervolt tests.



I am also highlighting in red areas that I consider troublesome.

- - - Updated - - -

Undervolting:

As you can see from the results above, the biggest bang for the buck temp and performance wise is an undervolt. I won't bore you with how to do it, but if you're a novice you can find plenty of guides on youtube.

I will tell you that I had good luck testing the stability of my undervolt with realbench stress test to quickly get me in the reasonable numbers. I solidified my results by running AIDA64's stress test overnight to ensure it would be stable. So far it's way more stable than when Dell shipped it to me. I can actually run 3dmark 2011 and Haven benchmarks.

Every CPU is different in how it will respond to undervolting (otherwise intel would have the lower voltage already applied), however here is where I ended up:
CPU core -170mv
CPU cache -145mv


Repasting:

I noticed some really good temp drops/higher clocks with repasting, especially when combined with an undervolt. You can see my results above.

I will post some pictures on the repaste, but there are a ton of guides out there so I won't go over that. In my application I used Kryonaut thermal paste for the CPU and GPU and I replaced the stock Dell VRAM thermal pads with K5 Pro. While K5 Pro is not anywhere near as good as my Fujipoly thermal pads, it's better suited for the uneven and quite frankly terrible heatsink. It allows the memory to make contact with the heatpipes in the areas that were previously not even close to touching.

One thing I did notice (and have in pretty much every XPS I've owned) is that the heatsink was bent slightly. Another quality issue with Dell. I took my time and very very very carefully bent it flat. I won't go over this here, but if you try it on your own be careful. I can't stress enough how easy it is to bend those heatpipes and cause real damage to it.

 

[custom90gt]

Iunlock's mod:
Credit goes to iunlock on notebookreview for all of his work on the 9560:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ures-benchmarks-xps-15-9560-kaby-lake.802345/

Pictures:
Sadly just the one to show where I placed the heatsinks for the Mk5 variant of the iunlock mod. I have pictures of the others but since results were less than desirable I decided not to post them.



I don't have a picture of the thermal pad on top of the ram/heatsinks but that's only because they are stuck to the bottom cover. I used 2mm cheap thermal pad for the ram and vrm heatsinks.

Results:
So this has been a total struggle. Here are my attempts and there is a chart that shows the results in a 30 minute realbench stress test when compared to the undervolt+repaste+ram padded with cheap thermal pad.

Mk1 - all VRM components with sinks and thermal pad between the copper sheet and all VRM heatsinks as well as chokes. Ram with thermal pad to bottom cover and PCH with heatsinks and thermalpad between the sinks and bottom cover.

Mk2 - all VRM components with sinks and thermal pad between the copper sheet and all VRM heatsinks but NOT the chokes. Ram with thermal pad to bottom cover and PCH with heatsinks and thermalpad between the sinks and bottom cover.

Mk3 - all VRM components with sinks and thermal pad between the copper sheet and all VRM heatsinks but NOT the chokes. Ram with thermal pad to bottom cover and PCH with heatsinks and thermalpad between the sinks and bottom cover. Formed a copper bridge from the bottom of the ram to the copper shield with some very thin copper sheets - this was a just for fun.

Mk4 - all VRM components with sinks and no thermal pad. Ram with thermal pad to bottom cover and PCH with heatsinks and thermalpad between the sinks and bottom cover.

Mk5 - only the VRM near the first ambient sensor padded (5 total) and their heatsinks sinked to the bottom of the case. Ram with thermal pad to bottom cover and PCH with heatsinks and thermalpad between the sinks and bottom cover.

These are the 30 minute Realbench stress test results below which show the ambient temps:




Benchmarks:
I've decided to re-benchmark the system with the -170mv undervolt, repaste, and heatsinks on the VRM surrounding Ambient sensor #1 (same settings as the stock runs for comparison):
Time Spy - 2600
Time Spy Extreme - 1201
Fire Strike - 7048
Fire Strike Extreme - 3536
Fire Strike Ultra - 1759
Sky Diver - 22354
Cloud Gate - 28702
Ice Storm - 99246
Ice Storm Extreme - 97088
3DMark 11 Performance - 9667
3DMark 11 Extreme - 3460
Unigine Heaven Extreme - 1136
RealBench -
Cinebench R15 - 118.9fps, 1254 cb, 171 cb
PCMark 10 - 5249
PCMark 8 Home Accelerated - 4189
PCMark 8 Work Accelerated - 5474

Encoding - I wanted to do a little bit on encoding (or is it transcoding in this case) for people that do that sort of thing. I am a total novice when it comes to this stuff so I will explain the tests I ran. I downloaded a 96fps "honey bees" 4k clip and a 1 minute Elysium 4k clip from http://4ksamples.com. I used Handbrake to convert them from 4k to 1080p mkv using the "H.265 MKV 1080p30" preset. I then looked at the logs to get the time taken. I also converted the first 10 chapters of Deadpool in 4k to 1080p using the "fast 1080p30" preset. I did this twice to show some potential differences. The first time I did it with the modded system including the undervolt. The second time I did it with all of the mods in place except for the undervolt. Sadly I didn't think to do it when it was stock or differences would have been even greater. After all that blathering here are the results:

Modded WITHOUT undervolt (mm:ss):
Honey Bees - 3:32
Elysium - 1:34
Deadpool - 43:03**

Modded WITH undervolt (mm:ss):
Honey Bees - 3:24
Elysium - 1:30
Deadpool - 35:47**

**surprised as I am? I double checked the encoding logs and hwinfo logs and everything is correct. It's amazing what an extra 572mhz x 6 cores will do with encoding. Just imagine how long it would have taken at stock...

Tabulated results:


Looking at those results it may not seem worth it to mod the laptop. I will say that the increased stability was worth it, I had more BSOD's than I could count out of the box. Also with demanding applications it was very much worth it. I would recommend doing an undervolt at the very least as that had the biggest impact.

I ran an hour of realbench and I didn't have any of the massive throttling that I had before. The Dimm temp stayed below 62C the whole time and the laptop bottom was warm but not hot.

Over all I'm pretty satisfied with how everything worked out. It was a ton of work, but hopefully I've been able to help someone else here.

Summary:
If I had to rank order what I think is worthwhile here is how I would do it.

1. Undervolt - by far the best
2. Cheap thermal pad between the ram and case bottom - super cheap and easy to do
3. Repaste - a little more advanced but worthwhile, especially in keeping the max temps down
4. iunlock mk5 mod - basically just try to cool some of the VRM near that ambient sensor - only really if you want max performance, but I don't know if the juice was worth the squeeze so to speak on that one.

 

[custom90gt]

Lol tough crowd

 

[habbajabba]

If turbos at 4.1. Why are max clocks barely 3.4? Win10?

 

[custom90gt]

If turbos at 4.1. Why are max clocks barely 3.4? Win10?

It doesn't all core turbo to 4.1ghz, that's only when one core is being used.