win32asmguy

I did not have issues with the micron 3500 512gb SSD included with my Pro max, but I also used W10 so maybe that helped with avoiding the SSD issues posted above. I also have a 4tb sn8100 which has worked well in the hydroc g2 but I did not test it in the pro Max.

@Easa nice post! If you happen to run some combined load stress tests could you monitor if it periodically trips the ia: rapl/psyspl2 throttle flag reducing the CPU to around 15w until the power supply is disconnected and reconnected? Oh and for Optimus make sure advanced Optimus is not enabled as it is pretty buggy.

I think they might consider exposing manual fan control a security concern at this point. To be completely honest I was surprised that the Pro Max 18 Plus does not yet have its EFI variables write protected yet like the Zbook and Thinkpad. The fan noise is better than the previous Precision 7780 and also Thinkpad P16 G2. I spent a bunch of time over the weekend trying to find a way to prevent the power adapter performance locking issue. It seems like it will always eventually happen if the system is in performance mode and under any kind of high load scenario where the battery is draining down while plugged in. I have to box it up and send it back as their support said it was "operating as designed".

24GB Hynix M-die CSODIMMs boot at 7200 with tREFI at 16k, 1.2v. You can also tune NGU via Intel XTU, so I have it set to 30x up from the default 26x. Sadly D2D is not accessible so it is still at the stock 21x. Supposedly that one is less important based on some tuning I have seen on 285K setups.

They may as well cap the 18 Plus at that wattage as well because these drain down the battery above 170W from the CPU+GPU. In theory its designed for 175W GPU + 58W CPU, but the closer it gets to 200W (where thermal throttling starts to occur) drain can be up to 20% per hour. It begins recharging the battery while under load if a charge threshold is set, at a rate of 5W, and reduced CPU+GPU TDP until charging stops again. They also periodically trip some kind of throttling condition which can only be reset by unplugging / replugging the power adapter or a cold boot. Until that happens the CPU is stuck at 15W. I am not sure how extensive Notebookcheck tested their system but it occurs multiple times per hour on my system with the current bios and drivers.

The performance is pretty inconsistent with the battery disconnected. The GPU floats between 60W and 120W while the CPU is around 45W. I guess it does not want to get anywhere near the higher performance limits so a transient spike does not trip the power supply. I tried to ask Dell for a way to disable this feature as I prefer to keep my battery charged at 80% reserved for use when needed. Nor do I want the excessive wear and heat as it continually drains and recharges under the supposed 200W sustained load capability. From what I have heard this is working as designed.

There is probably a hidden bios option in there somewhere I have not found yet that flags it to require CSODIMM. It can boot aftermarket CSODIMM modules not sourced from Dell. 24GB Hynix modules work well as single rank timings are better and the modules generate less heat than dual rank. The CAMM2 modules have a heatsink built for them so that is what I would choose if I needed more than 2x24GB (highest single rank capacity). My biggest annoyance is still the battery drain under load that is by design. I have a custom charge range set from 70% start to 80% stop, and if the system is under load it is basically always either discharging down by up to 20W per hour or charging back up at 5W (trickle) - 60W (express). Sometimes it decides to express charge the battery even if you are under load so whatever compute task that is running just gets throttled instead. I have even seen the firmware trip some kind of internal throttling protection where the CPU refuses to go over 20W until you unplug and replug the power adapter.

If you can find 64GB CSODIMM modules they likely would work. But I think the regular SODIMM 64GB modules available from Crucial currently would not work as the system would not post with a SODIMM installed when I tested.

@AL123 Have you been able to test the TB5 dock to see if it reduces or eliminates battery drain with the higher 300W power delivery? I can see the CPU pl1 is dynamically set to 58W so combined with the 175W for the GPU seems like it's consistently too much.

I spent a couple of hours using the laptop last night at full load and at some point it went into a throttled CPU mode where frequency was being clipped to under 3ghz due to psysPL2 according to hwinfo. After checking a few things unplugging and replugging the USBC charger got the CPU up to full performance again. Also of interesting note the display appears to support advanced Optimus. However only VRR in regular Optimus mode.

Ah that makes sense. I don't mind the plastic surface. It's higher quality than the latitude palm rest. All that matters to me is surface temps not be scalding. I do believe they are better than the precision 7780 was.

Yeah I found magnetite in the promotional materials and I guess the keycaps are the same material? The palm rest looked like plastic from first glance at this image: The magnesium alloy cage is around the bottom area of the palm rest, as you can see here: Throttlestop and XTU do not allow adjustment of undervolting or most multipliers. That all falls under the overclocking umbrella which cannot be enabled. PL1 can in theory be overridden but may interfere with Nvidia power limits.

I like discussing performance and comparing it against others. I agree an owners louge is about due. Well its possible I was wrong on the palm rest material. I was going back through the docs and everything says its supposed to be Magnetite, which is a metal. It may be injection molded plastic bonded to the metal, but hard to say from the photos of the palm rest compared to holding one in hand. SREP is a tool that patches the bios at runtime to show all configuration options available. In the case of the Pro Max 18 Plus bios it appears that Overclocking is not compiled in, so still unavailable. However, memory overclocking is there so I did a quick test disabling SAGV and setting tREFI to 16k both of which worked. SAGV is probably something you would want to keep enabled as it can reduce battery power consumption. You can also set TccOffset so the CPU throttles before 105C if desired. Unfortunately we cannot adjust D2D (21x) or NGU (26x) clocks and sadly the 285HX is not a higher bin on those than the 275HX. These are the parameters Intel calls "200S Boost" on desktop along with activating XMP. Right now I am trying to figure out what the threshold is where battery drain occurs. It appears that 200W in Ultra Performance mode is enough, but 170W in Optimized mode does not. It seems like the "Adaptive C-states for Discrete Graphics" also causes it to drain the battery more agressively so it may be best to disable if you care about battery health. My machine needs a repaste job as it thermal throttles at 200W but the CPU PL1 is being set to 58W in combined loads so in theory it can pull more power.

@Easa yes the surface of the palm rest is a smooth plastic. There is a mag alloy rib case to give it rigidity. It's a similar design to the p16 g2. Also I believe only SSD slot 1 is gen5. SSD slot 2 is gen4 but also CPU pcie lanes so it's the best place for a scratch drive. Slots 3 and 4 are connected to the PCH. Tb5 uses pcie lanes bifurcated from the GPU. Hence why the GPU is 8x instead of 16x. Sorry for moving it but I wanted to try and keep non-performance discussion out of that thread. It has been fun benching the pro Max 18 plus over the weekend. Oh, and SREP does work to modify a few performance parameters.

Yeah the palm rest is plastic but I like the feel of it more than a metal or rubber finish. In Ultra Performance mode RAPL sets PL1 to 58W, and the GPU can go up to 175W. So in theory it is designed for up to 233W sustained. However I see battery drain at 200W sustained with thermal throttling so beyond that will need lower ambients or a repaste to see if it can really go higher. The Dell TB5 dock is also supposed to supply up to 300W. I do not know if that extra is utilized or could prevent the battery drain. A TB5 eGPU could work well here if it has improved the latency and bandwidth over TB4. I saw they are starting to test TB5 out over at egpu.io forums so it will be interesting to see how they do. We have both TB5 and TB4 on this machine wired to CPU PCIe lanes so its easy to compare both. https://imgur.com/jxLwhNE https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/142596374?

W10 support is rare these days. I found one setting that seemed to stop the battery drain so far. It is called "Adaptive C-states for Discrete Graphics". With it disabled the CPU stays at 30W and the GPU stays at 140W in Optimized mode and battery drain does not occur. I would think if its designed for up to 200W combined loads then that should not include any battery drain in the specification. The palm rest is no longer rubbery! Its a nice chance from the previous generation.

Its the default paste job which is not PTM from the looks of it. However it is also not E31 either so we do not have to worry about leaking LM shorting the motherboard. The interesting part about its cooling design is that the vapor chamber sits between the CPU and GPU. The fans can also be removed easily for separate cleaning which is nice. I actually get quite a bit of dust build up on my machines as I am not in a climate controlled environment. Sadly the Alienware is a consumer gaming oriented device so it ends up dragging along all of the stereotypical characteristics that I hate. Performance wise with this generation the Consumer and Business model are very close. Its a more expensive 5090 mobile variant but does offer comparable performance, VRR support in iGPU mode and I think the drivers should work as well as Geforce as long as its not trying to play a new title on launch day. So far WoW has not had any of the weird BDPROCHOT throttling I experienced on the 7670, 7770, or 7780. The iGPU clocks itself at 550mhz under load but I guess that is enough for Optimus and UI snappiness.

@electrosoft Starting to run the Pro Max 18 Plus through its paces. https://imgur.com/a/32ivRNC https://www.3dmark.com/spy/58934149 It has full W10 driver support which is great. Surprisingly enough, WoW runs properly on the P-cores without any micro managing via Process Lasso just like it does on W11. SuperPI also selects the best P-core when run as well so CPPC / Thread Director must be working better now with Arrow Lake. I have heard the GPU can sustain 150W and that leaves around 50-60W for the CPU in combined loads. However when running OCCT while I was working on another project I noticed it was down to 180W combined load after a while. It also was draining the battery (12% over the 1 hour test) so the 200W advertised really is not sustainable or good for battery health. I am hoping the "Optimized" performance mode is one where it keeps limits out of the battery drain range.

That a pretty good price for the config. Mine is 285HX, 1x16GB CSODIMM, 500GB Gen4 SSD, RTX 5000 Blackwell, QHD+ with 8MP camera, 3year Prosupport. It was about 5100USD before taxes. I upgraded to 2x24GB 6400 CSODIMMs and will likely get a 4TB SN8100 as a boot drive soon. I will note this machine does not support regular DDR5 SODIMMs - fails to boot with an incompatible memory error. Going forward CSODIMMs should be better but right now we only have them with JEDEC timings which are not quite as good as the Kingston Fury 5600 / 6400 XMP kits.

I wish they offered an 18 inch 1920x1200 120hz panel as well. It's a great resolution for an internal panel that matches the dpi of my external 27 inch 2560x1440 displays. Miniled would be nice too I guess but FALD should be off by default as the dynamic contrast ratio really messes with productivity apps. It's nice this year the 18 inch feels like a flagship model again. In the past it seemed like the Precision 5770 and 5690 were the favored devices and had better engineering albeit at lower overall power limits. I have not seen Mano G post about these yet but I think it's a model to be proud of!

How is fan noise at idle? Does the profile have greater hysteresis so fans do not spin up/down quickly as load spikes occur? I would hope that now we have a very large vapor chamber and cooling capacity it can absorb these much better than the precision 7780 did.

Another thing that interested me about the Dell Pro Max 16/18 Plus is that its USB-C ports are modular - so if they wear out it should in theory be a much cheaper spare part instead of a complete motherboard. 275HX runs pretty well at 55W with the 5090 mobile at 95W. Its pretty quiet operation for a 16 inch at 150W combined load. With the 2025 Intel Uniwill IDY you can tune its GPU between 95W - 175W so its easy to come up with a comfortable profile and experiment to find the best performance on the curve. It also helps to boost D2D and NGU clocks but I am unsure if that can be done on workstations as they are usually very locked down. Undervolting is less of an issue this year so at least we do not have to worry about that.

Well for me the Pro Max 18 Plus stands out from a performance perspective. Having access to full 175W GPU in a mobile workstation was previously not offered from any brand. Its also going to stand out a bit with memory latency as it does not have the usual 2DPC SODIMM limitations. Finally this year it has a vapor chamber and more cooling capacity that is closer to what you can get from a high end gaming laptop. So far the single review and user reports about it seem promising. My order should eventually be delivered. I think it is currently clearning customs into the US which is pretty backed up right now. Eventually we should have more user reports and reviews of the Zbooks and Thinkpad. It will be easier to compare them at that point. I would say if they stick with the same keyboard as the Thinkpad P16 G2 then it would likely be a good choice if you were doing lots of typing.

Interesting. I still have my X370 as well. It's a version purchased from System76 their open source firmware. I also had the speaker audio distortion issue and found it to occur when the Nvidia GPU was over 80C. I could try that quality setting too. I fixed my igpu issues actually by swapping to a 1920x1080 144hz display. It also helped my Linux experience as it removed the need for any scaling. It still runs very hot under load even with a single SSD and only single rank memory. I wish it were as thick as the x170.

Even in the USA getting an order to go through is a pain. I have had two quoted orders cancelled for no explaination. It seems they do not want to sell a machine without a preinstalled OS. So hopefully this time around it will go through. There is now a video unboxing / review of this model as well. I have not completely watched it but so far looks good. We might finally have a workstation that can stay decently close to the current median similar gaming tier results.