1610ftw

15 hours ago, OneSunOne said:

Have any of you with the Ultra9 285HX chip done any Cinebench tests? Results from online reviews, like Notebookcheck, get MultiThread scores around 3800 although I'm only getting 2820. I'd like to see how my results compare to other users' results. 

I think you mean 38000 and 28200. Your unit should easily be capable of a 35000 score and for example Notebookcheck even got A 38500 score in their review, possibly a better binned chip:

https://www.notebookcheck.com/Dell-Pro-Max-18-Plus-Test-18-Zoll-Workstation-mit-USB-C.1167532.0.html

Thanks - that is a big surprise to find all of these for download on the bottom of the revision history page!

I had a look at the release notes and it may be possible that I do not need to go back that far but we shall see. In any case it is great news to be able to have that option and I will download the files for possible later use.

That sounds like quite the journey to get to a bios that still allows fan control and undervolting!

Not sure I would risk bricking mine if indeed so many downgrades are needed but even if I wanted to I would not know where to get the files - where did you get yours?

11 hours ago, SvenC said:

 

BIOS updates and weekly full virus scans (ESET, have to use, company policy...) bring up the fans loud and clear.

 

Sometimes too many browser tabs (e.g. with animated advertising like winfuture.de) uses a few cores with high load

Visual Studio updates in sequence for 2019, 2022, 2026 and Preview and SSMS updates.

 

Normal work is pretty silent - but hey, whats normal anyways 😉

 

I would buy it again - only wishes: 1920x1200 pixels 500+ nits on my 18" and the name Dell Pro Precision 7 oder 9 😉

Loud and clear fans sounds like a lot of fun 😄

I happen to like the QHD resolution but I am not so sure how much my usage would cause the fans to ramp up as quite often I have a lot of tabs open and the only thing that keeps my current MSI Vector from ramping up is a very granular enthusiast fan control that Dell does not offer.

Yeah, I also miss the old naming convention, bad idea to so blatantly copy Apple.

On 1/2/2026 at 4:41 PM, SvenC said:

Here is mine with iGPU only

Thank you, I like that they kept all three fans!

Have you observed the fans ramping up with higher CPU usage or observed any notable throttling?

With the CPU getting most of the cooling and power and no additional thermal load I would expect the chassis to be more well behaved than the versions that also have a dedicated GPU.

Haha, yeah you don't want to be responsible if something goes wrong 🙂

You could use feature manager though as it is basically a heavily slimmed down and lean version of MSI center and it is therefore much nicer to use than MSI center.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MSILaptops/comments/1dtkjij/in_case_you_want_to_get_rid_of_msi_center/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&embed_host_url=https://notebooktalk.net/index.php

On 12/18/2025 at 1:10 PM, SvenC said:

 

Not sure what you would like to me?

Which cable switch?

Which bios option switch?

I did not follow your case here and too little time to do now.

Could you provide context and test questions again? And I'll see if I can be of any help.

 

My PM18P is with iGPU only and I kept my dock WD19DC with that Dell specific double USB-C cable which is using the two USB-C ports on the left side of my laptop. The dock uses an old "power brick" with 240W. IIRC the laptop gets around 210W from the dock with that dual USB-C connector.

 

I do not connect an additional power adapter to the laptop - power only from WD19DC - and have no problems.

 

Big difference in our setups is: no power draw from a dGPU. I do not need a dGPU for my work and that makes my WD19DC a supported dock.

@SvenC or somebody else with the iGPU only version, is your heatsink different / less beefy than the one that is supplied with the higher end GPUs that is pictured here?

W11 sleep probably consumes too much power to keep cool but not enough power to trigger the fans to run fast enough to keep temps down.

You could try to go to a lower sleep state again as you had S3 on W10 and now you are at S0 with W11.

That is if Dell has not updated your bios and robbed you of that option, in that case you have to hibernate if you want to keep temperatures down.

@kojack I recently treated myself to the Vector 18 with AMD CPU and indeed the MSI fan curves are pretty worthless unless you can live with silent mode but as that seems to limit the GPU quite a bit I doubt that.

So if that is not the case I suggest you look into this nice piece of software:

https://codeberg.org/Sparronator9999/YAMDCC

If you scroll down here somebody posts a profile for your Cyborg or so it seems:

Cyborg 15 A12UC profile, use at you own risk of course:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DdwH0KGt9yhNbVOrUG7ZI6jGkeNBiTTJ/view?pli=1

I have used a self-made profile for the Vector for a couple of weeks now and I had zero crashes.

How safe it is I cannot say of course but it is safe to say that I am not a fan of the MSI software for our laptops, not even the more simple one from MSI Turkey that would be another alternative if you want to bypass the overly annoying MSI center:

I have used that one before and it is possibly a bit safer / official but I prefer the better granularity of YAMDCC. Another bonus is that YAMDCC also enables me to put the fans on full blast from time to time without having to touch my Vector when docked - very convenient.

18 hours ago, tennic said:

 

I successfully unlocked the original BIOS (v1.07.08), and used it like that for a long time, then I needed to relock it to send the notebook in for service, and at that point I discovered that it was no longer possible to relock the bios (the operation concluded normally, but it remained unlocked), and I also discovered that the update was impossible, both with another original BIOS, and with another XMG BIOS (which had always worked before), a message appeared regarding a different length of I don't know what. Some time ago I wrote a post about this

Oh, that is too bad. I am not even sure what I did with mine but the CPU is still overclockable and I can also undervolt it and I was able to play a bit with the memory. At last in theory as it is not possible to do much tweaking with 4x32GB sticks...

On 12/9/2025 at 4:21 PM, BYTEHAT248 said:

Has anybody purchased the BIOS Unlock from Eurocom, and is it worth the 120$ over just using the unlocking tool?

Im assuming its not even kinda worth it, unless its some kind of updated BIOS

I would avoid but then I already got an expensive bios and inept support from them, might as well have burned that money and would have been a lot better off.

That aside there are several bios options to choose from, including one that has been mentioned earlier in this thread that even unlocks obscure settings like the ones for the Intel iGPU. I used that version for a while and then switched to the last XMG bios as supposedly it is very stable and with a 10th gen CPU it certainly is.

Or add Clevo bios unlocker to your current (non-XMG) bios and you are set, it is mentioned earlier in this thread and there are multiple links in the first post to get you started.

Hope you get to the bottom of this as your GPU temps at only 140W do indeed seem excessive.

Can you check which temperatures you end up with in Time Spy?

In my experience its max temps are a better indicator for temps you may find in gaming and I am curious how much lower they would be than your Furmark temperatures.

Just checked a run I did with an XMG P775 with the 9900K and it went up to 62C tops with an almost 11K score but if I had to guess it is possible that I kept the bottom cover off and I always prop up the back by about 5cm with a folding stand.

51 minutes ago, Kniben said:

@1610ftw You asked if somebody could use an E-meter to measure actual power draw from the AC side. Here are the results, mind you (-450 core increment)

Furmark 3840 x 2160: 198 W

prime95 Small FFTs, all 8 cores: 194 W

Both of the above: 322 W

 

The thermal pads I used were stock and I used them since I bought the thing in 2019. I doubt the technicians at XMG did a poor job during assembly, but I noticed one of the thermal pads not covering the inductor at the bottom and that tiny square chip. So perhaps the coil just died. I also don't know if the inductors are staged according to core frequency, meaning not all of them are used, if the core frequency is set to a lower limit. I can achieve stability by reducing the core increment by -450, while tway needed -700. Heck, I don't know how the GPU regulates its power, all I know is, when things get hot, they break or at least degrade over time and I think that has happened with the coil I mentioned. Perhaps the GPU is unsalvageable and I should buy a replacement.

Thanks for taking those measurements - at least 322W is no problem for the power supply provided that it is not defective..

Your temps seem quite hot and I suggest you get those temps sorted out first, as with a total power uptake of less than 200W your GPU probably only consumes 150W and it should be a lot cooler at 150W.

With a card that old I would shoot for 70C max for the GPU and 85C for the VRAM when gaming and then take it from there and replace only when these conditions have been met and it is still acting up.

If you are not sure what to do you could either improve the existing pads and add some PTM7950 or you could get some thermal putty which is a bit more forgiving but also more of a mess:

So I checked and 80W can be sustained with a 10 minute CB R23 loop.

Due to the anemic fan speeds the CPU reaches up to 99C

I made a quick check with lower limits and I arrived at around 95C with 75W and 90C with 70W power limit.

I also checked 55W and that is more like 80C and the fans ramp down already with that power target.

That is all with the laptop closed and including the GPU and with the back propped up by about 4cm for better airflow.

2 hours ago, tway said:

Yeah it's unfortunate the P775 has these design flaws, but also I find your experience with Eurocom crazy... 

 

I personally never bought from them since they looked like scammers to me, but for the prices they're charging I expect them to fly out a representative to your doorstep as customer support 😂 who do they think they are charging this much? Apple? They are very clearly trying to exploit us, I have talked to so many private sellers with overpriced Clevo parts who point to the Eurocom ebay shop as a justification. And this is their goal all along, they know exactly what they're doing. Best we can do is not buy from them, I don't know how they aren't out of business or anything by now, some of their items have been sitting for over 2-3 years with no sale. 

 

Anyway this is off topic now but hopefully this dissuades people from giving those scalpers any money. It wasn't always like this but as of present that company is doing much more damage to the community than adding anything of value. @Kniben I hope it's just your thermal pad placement that's bad so you don't have to buy a new motherboard, especially from them. I've attached images I found in some threads that I used as references to check thermal pad placement, hopefully these help.

 

 

 

 

Last thing about Eurocom from me: In the end it was almost comical to see how they weasled themselves out of doing the right thing. It was not about a big amount of money and I shudder to think what would have happened if I had bought something really expensive from them.

Looking at your GPU it is clear that paying attention to the pad thickness and choosing the right pads seems to be quite involved and makes me consider to finally try my thermal putty that I have sitting arround for quite some time now - if only it wasn't so messy.

35 minutes ago, tway said:

Bruh no way, I had already checked thermal pads and paste after the initial comment by runix but nothing seemed wrong at the time. Today I took the heatsink out and decided to check it against a proper diagram and realized one of the pads was actually too short and didn't cover all the necessary components, whoever placed these before me probably got the wrong size and it would have been very difficult to tell without the diagram. So I added a piece and now I can't get it to shut off even at pull power, at least for now. Thanks a lot for the help everyone, can't believe it was a stupid thermal pad causing all this.

 

Just curious @1610ftw which company are you referring to? I think I know who it is but just wanted to make sure so everyone knows who to avoid 

First off, glad you got it solved!

I think there are a bunch of issues at work here and it would be really cool if somebody could put his power-brick into some kind of watt-o-meter  and measure real power draw at the wall. From what I recall the old power bricks that were rated for 330W could go up to 400W and I am not sure how realistic it is to sustain even 330W for any length of time, certainly rather improbable with stock cooling.

As you mentioned Eurocom I thought it was clear that I meant them.  Personally I didn't have the best experience with their hardware and a software purchase turned out to be a real dumpster fire of a customer experience.

I wanted to post this earlier but it took me some time to remember the context I had seen it in.

Before anybody buys a motherboard from a certain company on ebay that I and others have not had the best experiences with please consider the original design of the P775.

Especially with a GPU pulling 200W it is easy to see how there would be problems considering the official 250W combined CPU and GPU limit for this chassis that you can see here in comparison to the X170:

source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Clevo-to-release-monster-17-inch-X170-gaming-laptops-powered-by-Intel-s-Comet-Lake-S-10-core-desktop-grade-CPUs.453755.0.html

So as @Khenglish points out the embedded controller will most probably cause a shutdown at some point given the relatively low combined TDP and no new motherboard or 780W power supply will change that.

Wow - I am impressed 🙂

I will have a look at my Zbook 17 G6 later to let you know what I can get in temperature and sustained watts over a 10 minute CB R23 run.

Unfortunately no Intel XTU for me due to the stupid locked down bios.

The 5000 is a very nice card - I only have the 4000. 

3 hours ago, poprostujakub said:

i7-9850H. But I think that I resolved the case - it does this without battery. I have it partly disassembled because it waits for GPU so I didn't put battery in it. With battery clocks spikes to 4.6 GHz at about 100 W (and then thermal throttes by 20% according to HWInfo) then drops to 55 W at 3.6 GHz and 85 °C. But I'm dissapointed in cooling solution and fan curve, they would be good for multimedia use, not for workstation. 

That is indeed interesting and another design fail.

Unfortunately my Zbook 17 G6 is also the one laptop that empties its battery in record time when not connected and I haven't had time to get to the bottom of it.

The fan curve is really stupid. I suggest to get PWM7950 for it to keep temps as low as possible but even then the fan curve is severely limiting power due to its emphasis of silence over anything else.

If you ran updates already then it probably does not matter any more but if you haven't you should block bios updates in device manager as previous bios versions would allow third party fan control and undervolting via Throttlestop or Intel XTU but HP took all of that away in later bios.

What I would do to mitigate issues further is to use Intel XTU in order to limit maximum CPU power to something like 75 or 80W and you can also try to limit the hottest cores to lower max clock speeds - usually the 9850H will run very hot on a core or too which will cause it to throttle a lot faster than needed. If that is not possible you can still use Throttlestop to limit maximum power to the CPU and again I would go for 75 or 80W as that will give you a more even user experience than the spiking that you get when power is ramping up to 100W. I am also not sure if it is possible to go back to an earlier bios but I am lucky in that I am in a situation where I do not have to risk going back as my use case is such that I can live with the current fan curve.

This is a magnificent chassis with very bad software and on top of that is is also completely locked down in the final bios version which is a worst case combination. Because of that it will also be my last HP laptop for now until I see that they have a design that has great hardware AND software.

Which CPU do you have and what are your settings in power options?

You want max CPU power at 100% at least when connected to power. Even at 99% the turbo boost will be disabled and it may be that this is happening and/or you are stuck in power saving mode. At 2.9GHz you probably have the Xeon E-2286M?

53 minutes ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

While I’m already on a roll… what happened to the Xeon option in the new lineup? And we’re still stuck with no real keyboard upgrade path on the flagship models. You basically need to buy a teenager’s Alienware if you want a proper keyboard or a non-ISV GPU out of the box.
 

And yes, I’ll say it outright: I miss the old clicky keys, and everyone in the office can deal with it. If they offered a lever that advanced the paper like a typewriter, I’d probably add that too just for the experience. 😅

Xeons are history since Intel started with big / small CPUs so not sure if you are serious? 🙂

You should look at the Legion 9i for this gen - it has the keyboard, GPU and screen that you want and it is also a more powerful machine that won't drain the battery while you are gaming.

On 11/6/2025 at 12:11 PM, Mr. Fox said:

By some miracle USPS managed to "redeliver" my already delivered 4TB NVMe. Team Group did not repair the old one. They sent a new one. Knowing how inexpensive the parts are that go into them, and factoring in the costs of shipping and handling, sending it to Taiwan to "attempt" repair was truly idiotic and reflects a lack of regard for the people that buy their products. I will still be a brand detractor after this. I've got a bunch of Team Group drives and flash storage, but not planning buy from them again based on this. I changed my Amazon review from 5-star to 1-star based on the 6-week RMA experience.

Sorry to hear about your experience - having to send the SSD to Taiwan really sucks!

BUT: At least TeamGroup is one of the companies that extends its warranty to people who buy their SSDs second hand while with others you get nothing when one of their SSDs break.

At least this is the case over here for companies like Corsair, Crucial, Lexar and Samsung.

The best case would be owner agnostic warranty in combination with a service address in the country where the drive was purchased. I think that where I live (Germany) this may only apply to Seagate SSDs.

1 hour ago, OneSunOne said:

 

Thanks for the feedback. Only device connected is a Razer wireless mouse. 

Oh, that is bad. You should definitely not have these issues with only a wireless mouse attached to it. Better give Dell a call, they may need to replace it.

1 hour ago, OneSunOne said:

 

I recently received my Pro Max 18 Plus, but I’ve been experiencing several persistent issues:

• The system freezes for a few seconds whenever it switches between the Nvidia Optimus and Intel graphics cards.

• When streaming video, it periodically freezes for half a second or longer and emits a buzzing sound through the speakers. During these moments, Intel GPU usage spikes noticeably in Task Manager, and the display occasionally goes black for a second or two.

• Most concerning, the machine freezes and crashes several times a day. It usually begins with the same freezing and buzzing issue, after which the screen goes black. Audio from the video that was playing continues intermittently, but the system never recovers. I have to perform a hard reset each time.

I’ve already run multiple hardware diagnostics, but no issues were detected. Any suggestions what I could try? 

 

My specs are: 

 

Intel 285HX 

RTX PRO 4000

64gb CSODIMM RAM 

 

 

 

is this a setup with external monitors or something else that is connected via Thunderbolt?

My X580 does not play nice with my Thunderbolt gear and also crashes but no issues when no Thunderbolt connection is active.

5 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

 

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".

Yes that is possibly true about the manual fan control and I guess that I could live with fans that are as well behaved as the ones in that I had in the 7760.

Sorry to hear that you could not get the locking issue fixed. It inspires little confidence to see all of that happening with the workstation that potentially is the most powerful between the big three manufacturers.