1610ftw

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.

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

AFAIK, there is still no manual fan control option for Dell systems released on 2021 or later.

It is a sorry state of things that the big three workstation laptop manufacturers Dell, HP and Lenovo seem to have no way to manually control their fans. At least Dell used to be decent when it comes too keeping fans quiet most of the time while not reducing power. HP seems to have an issue going back to the early Zbooks and to a lesser degree Lenovo, too.

Sorry to hear that you are missing the door - would that door be for the PCIe 5.0 slot?

I am also surprised about the number of different bottom designs - do you not have the one in the picture you posted above but a third option?

I would like to have a look into the service manual for the Pro Max 18 Plus but it seems a part number is needed for that - does anybody have it?

Shame that connectivity is effectively reduced by one port with all current TB5 eGPUs as they only allow up to 140W power delivery and therefore one of the USB-C ports has to be occupied by USB-C power delivery even in cases where only proper CPU performance is desired.

Also I take it that there is still no fan control option for these so hopefully the Pro Max 18 Plus fans have enough hysteresis?

5 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

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?

Plastic if done well is also my preferred material for the palm rest.

233W is substantial but I guess that they did not really do the math on that one when the dock delivers up to 300W yet the biggest power brick is limited to 280W.

I am checking egpu.io every few weeks ad I would have thought that by now we would have numerous TB5 eGPU solutions but that doe not seem to be the case. In fact at least over here it is for now only the - very spartan - Razer box.

6 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

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.

That sounds excellent regarding the palm rest! It makes me want to check it out, this always was something I did not like at all.

The CPU at 30W in combined loads seems to be a very low though, aren't you CPU limited in most games with such a low power uptake?

Ultimately the way this is designed it seems to be a good option for people who can make use of an external GPU so that all the power budget can go to the CPU when docked.

18 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

@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.

With W10 support and the performance you are getting it looks like a keeper.

I am surprised that at 180W combined load with a 280W power supply it still drains the battery, Dell needs to look into that.

Is the palm rest still rubbery?

9 hours ago, AL123 said:

On the Pro Max 18 Plus I ran Cinebench 2024 10 Min multithreaded CPU test at the same time as a real 100% GPU compute workload (rendering) as a bit of a torture test. the  Ultra 9 285HX CPU hovered around 60-65W and NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell around 140-150W 

 

overall system power was around 250-260W with brief spike to over 300W 

 

really impressive although it would be nice to be able to fine tune the CPU dynamic PL1 in BIOS/ Dell software, but this seems like Dell struck a decent a balance for such an intense workload. The GPUs can take more power than the CPUs without overheating it seems 

 

Fan noise remained tolerable for me and the chassis of the laptop remained remarkably cool compared to previous generations. 

200 to 215W combined seems pretty good given that you still deem system noise acceptable and that it can be sustained for some time.

Best implementation for power limits this gen may come from Lenovo from what I have seen in a 9i review, looks like they have a couple of sliders to dial that in from within Windows which is pretty cool as it also allows to use less than the combined maximum power limit to go below the manufacturer defaults.

Interesting discussion, can somebody please update me on max CPU, GPU and CPU-GPU combined load for these?

175W to the GPU of course seems nice but not really that much of a benefit when total power for GPU and CPU combined is 200W which I recall was the number given by Dell for the Pro Max Plus 18?

@win32asmguy I will be interested to hear about your impressions of the Pro Max 18" compared to the Clevo X580 when it comes to the output you can achieve at a a fan noise that is acceptable for you. Having been able to go from an essentially empty bios where you cannot do anything (Clevo) to one where you can adjust it all (Uniwill) must have been great and I assume that the Dell may be not as bad but still closer to the Clevo when it comes to adjustment options. I am still stunned how bad the Clevo bios is - it essentially gives no advanced adjustment options at all except for memory when oveclocking is enabled. That is not worth it however as it messes up the CPU performance that is worse with overclocking enabled than out of the box without it.

@AL123 Congratulations on your 18", it seems like a logical choice this year unless more than 128GB memory is needed on a given budget - 256GB memory at CAMM 2 prices will really drive up the price!

Same old story it seems with HP - impressive hardware hampered by crappy automated fan control and stupid decisions when it comes to sustained power levels. It is quite an achievement to reduce the max CPU power uptake to 85W with a vapor chamber and the 18" form factor but count on HP to get it done and at the same time annoy customers with stupid "AI" fan logic that cannot be bypassed.

Review at notebookcheck, looks pretty good:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Legion-9-18IAX10-review-Lenovo-s-first-18-inch-gaming-laptop-is-almost-a-home-run.1110106.0.html

They are getting a few things wrong I think as I am pretty sure it has TB5 and there is also a version with a matte screen.

My eyes are not getting any younger so I would never settle for something smaller than the biggest available size 😉

But if you consider 16" then there are of course more choices as you can also include the regular Lenovo Thinkpads.

Just check what you really need - if you could actually make use of more than 128GB then the selections gets a lot smaller but if 128GB is enough then there is a lot more to choose from as you can get away with two memory slots.

As for the GPU I would go with Nvidia to be on the safe side - better to not run into unforeseen issues.

A workstation with 18" and with the option to upgrade to more than 128GB is rare.

In order of pricing these are your candidates that I would look into when you may want more than 128GB and non-garish looks:

Clevo X580

Lenovo Legion 9i

Dell Pro Max 18"

HP Zbook Fury G1i 18"

I would consider the Clevo to possibly not being robust enough for the kind of work you want to do and as for the Lenovo I am not sure, you may want to research that.

The Zbook seems to be built like a tank and very serviceable and it takes normal memory up to 256GB, as do the Clevo and Lenovo.

The Dell only does so up to 128GB, above that you have to buy some hideously expensive memory from Dell themselves or third party offers that also are very expensive.

I would think that build quality of the Dell is up there with the HP or maybe only a little bit behind and longevity should not be an issue with both. I prefer the cleaner surfaces of the HP and it seems to be available at reasonable prices when you do not need the maximum GPU option:

https://www.lap4worx.de/hp-zbook-fury-g1i-18-zoll-98l71et

https://www.lap4worx.de/hp-zbook-fury-g1i-18-zoll-98l73et

In any case, you should spec them out with for example 192GB bought at the best possible price which for all but the Dell would be aftermarket and you can also minimize SSD size, only get the smallest possible one with your order and use your own to complement or replace what is in there, these have 4 SSD slots! Don't forget to check the warranty you need, that is probably not that easy to get at 60 months but 36 will be no problem at all for all the above choices. 

Oh and you can get a replacement GPU for the 7750 for very cheap:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/205066228932

So you will be able to shop around a bit while you keep using it.

On 8/11/2025 at 6:24 AM, electrosoft said:

Superior cooling and noise levels with the Alienware 16 and 18 2025 models....

 

I'm telling you, outside of a lack of an open BIOS, hardware wise, these redesigned models are my favorite hands down. I can only lament the lack of a 9955HX3D/5090 model. It would absolutely rip in this chassis and cooling.

Unfortunately I strongly dislike colors that are not a neutral black / silver / grey base color and these are what - blueish / turquoise? And do they still have the rubber-finish on the palm rest?

Also not a fan of the inverted mainboard design that makes maintenance a pita. Too bad Alienware has decided to go that way.

With that being said I love that they don't give a shit and make these quite deep and heavy and also the cherry keyboard is great and of course the cooling.

3 hours ago, electrosoft said:

Yeah, not doing backflips over the gpu score. Problem is Acer (yet again) went with a lower power variant. Temps are.....ok on the GPU but the performance is not great overall.  It is going to chug at native resolution though 1600p is going to bury it. It is meant for 1080p with modern games.

 

There is a lot of bloatware installed so I'll be giving it a clean install to wipe all that away.

 

To make your image post, use the "Direct Link" option to copy and paste....

 

Here is a "cold" run first on boot with the Acer. Unlike your system with a wide variance, ALL my cores are within 10c of each other (88c-98c) with most of them pegged at 98c both E and P cores. So for your system it looks like a heatsink/thermal application issue definitely.

 

First run ~33k still around 145w cap:

 

 

 

by the third run, score is down to 26k and falling....

 

 

Thanks, that third run looks rather pathetic!

I imagine temperature differences would be a bit higher if it wasn't for thermal throttling but still not nearly as high as with mine.

Clearly there is little to be gained from running the CPU at 145W. Probably closer to 120W are needed to avoid excessive thermal throttling.

20 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

How much memory and storage does yours have installed? Maybe the temps with it maxed out could be higher than if it is only two SODIMMs and a single SSD.

 

I could definitely believe quality control variance with the heatsink exists. Those should be using PTM7958SP from the factory along with their special VRAM putty. If yours has the 5070Ti mobile then I would also wonder if its using the same heatsink part as the 5080/5090 mobile variants.

 

The latest one I have preordered is a Dell Pro Max 18 Plus. If it performs as listed on its spec sheet it could be a solid machine. Even better if their memory is set to gear2 when using 2x16GB instead of the aweful gear4 that the X580 and all other 2DPC laptops use.

The lower core temps seemed fine with one SSD and 4 memory sticks, but after your post I wanted to make sure and went down to two memory sticks in slot 2 and 3 - no change unfortunately. Only having three instead of four screws for the CPU part of the heatsink probably doesn't help.

The heatsink is the same as the one in your pictures and here so that should be OK:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/schenker-key-18-pro-e25-3/5.html

Waiting now to hear from the reseller.

That Dell Pro Max 18 Plus (naming inspired by Apple?) looks nice and I would have considered it if they had regular memory - but then you probably would have avoided it so now I look forward to hear how you like yours. Did you order it with the 5090?

Regarding gear2 and 4 I completely agree - it is a very unfortunate limitation and I would hope that somebody can come up with a way to make switching between the two options possible, at least when only using two memory sticks.

17 hours ago, electrosoft said:

@1610ftw had a chance to run this 16" Predator Helios through some quick paces and you'll feel better (or not) to know it is a monster throttling hotbox too with the 275HX testing with CB23 thermal throttling and only scoring 31752 pulling ~145w hitting 101c.....

 

 

 

Mobile 5060 scores lower than my old mobile 3070ti in the NH55. The Acer users the 85w 5060 variant. 

 

 

 

Not sure how I can reconcile the OLED 2560x1600 resolution with a 5060 in there.....

 

 

 

Thanks man, that is indeed disappointing. I had a 3060 in my X170KM that scored almost 10000 and that was a long time ago. Not what I would call progress!

A QHD display and the 5060 are not a very good match when gaming, for QHD I would want the 5070 Ti for better memory, more CUDA cores and higher power limit.

But let's see you beat this shameful display of core temperatures ranging from 68 to 100C, despite the fans running at maximum, would be cool if you could also post yours:

Edit: No idea how to get the picture post directly, do I need an account with imgur?

The other sites I am still posting on just let me attach pictures directly but here we obviously still have that limit and I do not want to erase what I already posted.

Edit 2: Found this handy site that creates direct links for imgur:

https://imgur-direct-links.vercel.app/

5 hours ago, Papusan said:

It will be like this when Intel mixed the cores clusters for Arrow Lake. And they did it to reduce max temp for the more powerful P-cores.

 

Yeah, I saw that at guru3D I believe and thought it was a great idea - I would still like my p-cores being listed one after the other and not with E-cores intermixed, it makes it much harder to check which is which when looking for temperature differences.

In any case my unit seems to have an issue that is coming from the lower left "#2" corner as that is where the hottest P- and E-cores can be found and even P-cores #4 and #6 are still pretty hot.

9 minutes ago, electrosoft said:

Yeah, those temps are crazy high for only pulling 142w unless you got the worse silicon sample known to mankind....

 

Refresher, here is my Alienware 18 pulling 170w and topping out at 68c:

 

 

I do have an Acer Predator 16s Helios 275hx + 5060 for eval that arrived a few last Friday I just cracked open for comparison but that core differential is not normal unless like I said you ended up with a dud CPU sample. I know @win32asmguy was pulling over 200w in his unit.

 

@Talon what is a sample spread on your desktop 285k?

Yeah, my thoughts exactly, that can't be normal and indeed I was not sure which was which but now I remember: Your Alienware topped out below 70C and @win32asmguy tested the X580 with a max temperature that was in the 70s - certainly nothing dramatic while over here some cores are cooking. Hopefully something that can be fixed and not a seriously bent heat sink.

I just want to be prepared and not complain about something that is inherent in these chips but from what I can see it is not normal. 

So I got the Clevo X580 and connectivity is really disappointing as I ran out of USB-A with it very quickly, two USB-A imo is still a joke for a desktop replacement but hey we have two 2.5 Gbe RJ45 connectors... Also there is no fingerprint sensor which is really strange as Schenker even sells the X580 as a workstation. Other than that the case is not looking great but very stealthy with no pulsating lights or any crap like that although it overall feels less solid when picked up compared to my Raider 18. 

But I knew this before and the Clevo is the only 18" QHD game in town that is both relatively affordable and has at least three SSD slots which is a must for me. I am also rather pleased that I can still use Clevo Fan Control which is the kind of utility that I prefer to bloated control centers of various kinds.

So I am now testing the CPU and it looks like to me that the temperature variations between cores stink - is this an Arrow Lake thing?

Here is what I got from a cold start after a single CB R23 run, max CPU power according to HWiNFO is only 142W:

CPU: 275HX

temp range P-cores: 68 to 96C - 28C temperature differential!

temp range E-cores: 78 to 98C - 20C temperature differential

So in other words the cooling is pretty much crap both with regard to max power uptake and temperature differences between cores.

A run with the Raider 18 HX with comparable power budget and the 14900HX resulted in ca. 20C lower temps and temperature differentials between 5C (E-cores) and 9C (P-cores) which is how it should be.

Hopefully somebody like @win32asmguy or @electrosoft who have experience with this gen mobile chips can confirm that differentials like this are not normal for the 275HX as then I will have to haggle with my reseller about how to do a repaste.

Also what is it with the P- and E-Cores being all mixed up in HWiNFO - Intel could not arrange these in P- and E-groups as before? It is no wonder they are going down when they cannot even get things like these right any more...

2 hours ago, triturbo said:

Clevo, 8GB, non G-Sync, Prema BIOS. Runs rock solid, but it is slower than the 1070, so I wanted to make it equal on the expense of power and heat. 
 

The system seems strong enough for something like 250~260W, the cooling is the one holding it back and I’m making a new, hopefully better one. 
 

Seems like it. Maybe I’ll leave it at that, if I can’t find more elegant solution than the wires to the MXM slot. 
 

It is a shame the 1070 did not work out, it would have made things a lot easier!

My 8740W is with my youngest son right now and indeed the cooling is pretty bad, we have solved that for now with added cooling via external fan as otherwise temps ramp up too much and the external fan is also still pretty quiet. HP does not see to have planned this workstation with peak performance in mind.

If you go ahead with some kind of modding for higher power uptake then I hope you are right that the chassis is as robust as you estimate!

In any case it is a great combo - Dreamcolor 16:10, GTX980m and top of the line CPU!

Wow - way to go!

What 980m did you get for it?

If you can pull up to 213W from the wall I would strongly suggest to leave it at that.

This is a very old chassis by now and it can get pretty hot in places so 213W is probably the absolute maximum that HP was comfortable with when the 8740W was new so why not leave it at that? Also this is probably an EC limit like MSI is using and very hard to get around and there would be the risk of bricking your beautiful machine.

On 7/26/2025 at 11:04 PM, electrosoft said:

 

I'll take a look later when I get a chance to really play with it hopefully sooner than later.

 

Not really sure it needs any type of repaste atm but we will see. For example, just recently had the chance to meaningfully put the Raider through the ringer from top to bottom with the new July BIOS and newest MSI Center to get the fans under better control but it may need a repaste/PTM because the CPU runs pretty toasty.

 

On the other hand, this Alienware is running ice cold in comparison. Even in full overdrive mode pulling as much as it wants, it caps out at ~170w, temps cap out at 68 and it scores 38368. Compare that to the Raider w/ a 285k out of the box needing some love. Overheating like crazy, pulling 200w+ and only scoring ~35k in R23. Could be cooling, TIM and a bit of silicon lottery at play on my end.

Cool to hear you are having these two for testing! Currently waiting for my Clevo X580 as all high performance options have issues for me this year so I am going for something where I do not expect top notch but just OK performance and what is very important a QHD panel, 4 memory and 4 SSD slots 🙂

I would suggest to use Throttlestop power limits to even out power consumption in a comparison as for some reason MSI never sets meaningful power limits for its laptops and often goes up to 220W for the CPU alone that cannot be sustained in normal operation.

Looking at the Raider and Alienware cooling solutions I would expect the Alienware to be able to pull anywhere from 15 to 30W more than the MSI at a given temp and noise level so a more meaningful comparison would probably be with the MSI being limited to somewhere between 150 and 170W via Throttlestop. 

As for fans I have never really used automatic fan curves on MSI as they are just very bad and that was starting with the GT72. These days I strongly suggest Feature Manager and a custom fan curve - that works really well and prevents the fans from being annoying all the time.

On 7/23/2025 at 11:08 PM, KING19 said:

 

Agreed but its a step in the right direction. The biggest con is the price for it.. 😬 

Biggest con for me is the UHD screen - I will not get a laptop with that kind of screen If I do not have to, QHD it is.

I hope that this will not be the last Lenovo 18" model or that they maybe add a lower cost option of this one with a QHD screen.

I would like to see a less silly version of this with:

5070Ti

QHD screen

regular surfaces

less obstrusive logo and light bar

Other than that there is a lot to like with lots of firsts for Lenovo.