Dell Pro Max 16/18 Plus (2025 model) pre-release discussion — MB16250, MB18250

[1610ftw]

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.

[Easa]

4 hours ago, AL123 said:

the HP Fury 16 G1i is definately better looking than the Dell Pro Max 16 or 18 Plus, but the fan noise under heavy multithreaded or GPU load is very loud, distracting for others in an office environment I’d have to put noise cancellling headphones on at home it’s that bad! 

 

 

Back when I tested the Fury G11 I remember the fans were really loud, especially ramping up and down with no apparent reason. It was really, really annoying. If the new Fury acts in a similar way, then that is a hard pass from me. 

[AL123]

12 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

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

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. 

[AL123]

11 hours ago, Easa said:

 

Back when I tested the Fury G11 I remember the fans were really loud, especially ramping up and down with no apparent reason. It was really, really annoying. If the new Fury acts in a similar way, then that is a hard pass from me. 

I didn’t spend long enough using it to see if they ramped up and down sensibly in day to day work but certainly if you do any heavy multi threaded CPU or intense GPU workload it gets loud! The sort of loud where all your colleagues turn their heads! 

[win32asmguy]

17 minutes ago, AL123 said:

 

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

 

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.

[Easa]

40 minutes 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 

 

 

What was the CPU temperature during the first seconds of heavy load (PL2) ? 

[1610ftw]

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.

 

 

[AL123]

13 hours ago, Easa said:

 

What was the CPU temperature during the first seconds of heavy load (PL2) ? 

I think on all of these it’s pretty rediculous peaks at 105 intel limit for very short time then comes back down to more resonable levels. Seems like the fans should spool up quicker or maybe for the tiny surface area it’s just hard to cool! 
 

I can’t test on the system I have here as it’s on our domain which means only approved applications are allowed for cyber security standard compliance 

[AL123]

13 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

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.

I’ve been using it a bit today just installing software and in office environment I haven’t really noticed the fans, this is with it set to balanced power plan with best performance under settings 

 

I did note on the base pro max 16 the fans kicked in a lot more often when set to best performance under power settings but not noticed that on the pro max 18 so far.

 

my only annoyance with the Pro Max 18 fans is on boot it spools up quite fast and cuts out abruptly. when joining via intune and installing  updates it did this several times and made me think it was failing to boot a few times but used all my patience and waited all was fine just misleading noises!  
 

Not great for user experience I can imagine some users will be panicking and holding the power button when nothing wrong! 
 

 

[Easa]

2 hours ago, AL123 said:

I think on all of these it’s pretty rediculous peaks at 105 intel limit for very short time then comes back down to more resonable levels. Seems like the fans should spool up quicker or maybe for the tiny surface area it’s just hard to cool! 

 

Even the Pro Max 18 peaks at that 105?

[capitainealbator]

Hello! 🙂

I tried contacting DELL again to find out if the RTX5090 graphics card would be available; I was told that it would not be...

 

So I'm going to order a Pro Max 16 Plus with the following configuration:

 

• Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 285HX vPro®
• NVIDIA® RTX™ PRO 4000
• 64GB: 2x32GB 6400 MTs DDR5 CSoDIMM, non-ECC (don't know if it's cheaper to buy it outside of Dell...)
• SSD 1 TB

Please I need some advice: which screen do you recommend? 

 

Thanks for your help,

Regards 🙂 

[Aaron44126]

23 minutes ago, capitainealbator said:

Please I need some advice: which screen do you recommend?

 

There are only three screens.

• The high-resolution UHD panel (touchscreen / OLED)
• 1920×1200, 500 nits
• 1920×1200, 300 nits

Do not get the 300 nits one. That is a basic, cheap screen. The 500 nits panel will be brighter and have better color. The "best" screen would be the UHD / OLED, easily, even if you aren't planning to use the "touch" capability at all. Though if you aren't used to dealing with "scaling" in Windows, or if the price is just not worth it to you, then it might be better to get a lower resolution screen (the 500 nits one).

 

Also worth noting is (I believe) the OLED panel will be glossy and the others will be matte.

 

The reason that there are so many options is because the camera and antenna setup is lumped in with your screen choice for some reason.

• If you would like to use "Windows Hello" face recognition to unlock your laptop, pick an option that says "IR camera".
• If you would like to use 4G/5G wireless (cellular) service with your system, get one that says "WWAN". (That's just for the antennas. You will also need to get a dedicated WWAN card.)
• Otherwise, get whichever one is cheapest (that has the display panel that you want).

[AL123]

3 hours ago, capitainealbator said:

Hello! 🙂

I tried contacting DELL again to find out if the RTX5090 graphics card would be available; I was told that it would not be...

 

So I'm going to order a Pro Max 16 Plus with the following configuration:

 

• Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 285HX vPro®
• NVIDIA® RTX™ PRO 4000
• 64GB: 2x32GB 6400 MTs DDR5 CSoDIMM, non-ECC (don't know if it's cheaper to buy it outside of Dell...)
• SSD 1 TB

Please I need some advice: which screen do you recommend? 

 

Thanks for your help,

Regards 🙂 

I tested both and the OLED definately has better colours, however i am sensitive to reflections and found the glossy screen too much, but then we have a lot of glass and overhead LED lighting in our offices. I’m also not convinced by 4k on such a small screen windows apps still don’t seem to be perfect at scaling 

 

the 1920x1200 500 Nit is impressively bright and a nice matte finished which I preferred, would be nice if it were QHD like the Pro Max 18 but being slightly smaller still looks sharp enough to my eyes 

[AL123]

7 hours ago, Easa said:

 

Even the Pro Max 18 peaks at that 105?

Yeh it just seems to be a very brief moment then the cooking kicks in, always sounds worrying but it’s within the Intel specs and we haven’t had widespread issues with the previous generation and they generally seemed to run much hotter. I suspect it is just getting harder and harder to cool these tiny chips, small area lots of heat, I think the GPUs are bigger dies which might explain why they can sustain higher power limits but not 100% 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

After collecting feedback here and watching some of the review videos, I think I can tentatively justify some of the new design choices. That’s not to say I like them—but the more exposed aluminum look may be part of the thermal strategy.
 

From everyone’s reports, thermals seem solid, even if no one can pinpoint exactly why. My guess is that the exposed chassis is acting as a better heat conductor than the old plastic brackets.
This is speculation based on what we’ve seen so far.

[capitainealbator]

@Aaron44126 and @AL123 : thanks very much for you quick reply 😉 

 

I saw dimensions of Pro Max18 and Pro Max16 and, in fact, the 18 is not hugely bigger than the 16 🙂

 

Dimensions of the Max 16: 

width 360mm depth 259mm

 

 

Dimensions of the Max 18: 

width 402mm depth 280mm...

 

So the question of choice arises to finally buy a Pro Max 18 🤔

 

Please could you tell me which screen you would choose if you were buying an 18? 

 

Thanks very much for your help! 

Regards from France. 🙂 

[Easa]

The actual screen is the same, you just have the option to choose Microphone, Webcam and WWAN antennas. 

[AL123]

19 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

After collecting feedback here and watching some of the review videos, I think I can tentatively justify some of the new design choices. That’s not to say I like them—but the more exposed aluminum look may be part of the thermal strategy.
 

From everyone’s reports, thermals seem solid, even if no one can pinpoint exactly why. My guess is that the exposed chassis is acting as a better heat conductor than the old plastic brackets.
This is speculation based on what we’ve seen so far.

Storage review have now tested both the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus and HP Z Book Fury G1i their findings seem similar to my test units 

 

https://www.storagereview.com/review/dell-pro-max-18-plus-blackwell-rtx-pro-5000-performance-to-go?amp
 

The new Dell cooling design is innovative, taking risks but clears most of the rear of the laptops for cooling so 3 bigger fans and massive vapour chamber. 

 

Plus the third fan is primarily drawing cool air from remote vents as the vent directly above it is blocked off and it is sealed off from from the sides/ other fans by foam. I credit this with keeping the chassis much cooler vs previous gen 
 

The vents at the back are also huge, with a big gap between screen and keyboard, and a large foot to raise it off the surface it can really move some air! 

[Aaron44126]

4 hours ago, capitainealbator said:

Please could you tell me which screen you would choose if you were buying an 18? 

 

In this case there is exactly one screen option. You just need to pay attention to the other things listed in that box. Do you want IR camera for "Windows Hello" face recognition, or WWAN antennas?

 

I am personally bummed that for some reason there is no 4K option for the 18". It's not OLED, so surely they could have found a suitable 4K panel.

[capitainealbator]

Many thanks @Aaron44126 and @Easa

[AL123]

2 minutes ago, capitainealbator said:

Many thanks @Aaron44126 and @Easa

No worries if it helps I tried both and went for the Pro Max 18. I move between office and home office/ meetings and almost never need to use on trains etc I’d just use my phone for emails. If I neeed more portability I might have gone for the 16 but the 18 inch screen is so impressive, bright, QHD is perfect balance and for me Matte screen is best 

[capitainealbator]

Thanks @Aaron44126, I think you're absolutely right 🙂

 

I don't know if the RTX5000 is worth the cost compared to the RTX4000, which seems more than adequate and would correspond to an RTX5080....

[Aaron44126]

15 minutes ago, capitainealbator said:

I don't know if the RTX5000 is worth the cost compared to the RTX4000, which seems more than adequate and would correspond to an RTX5080....

 

RTX 4000 Blackwell ≈ GeForce RTX 5080 mobile

RTX 5000 Blackwell ≈ GeForce RTX 5090 mobile

 

These days, if you're looking at NVIDIA GPUs of the same generation in a laptop, the main thing that is going to determine the performance is just the power limit that is set in your system.

 

If RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 have the same power limit, they will have the same performance for most loads (<5% difference), even though the RTX 5000 has more CUDA cores. The main reason to pay extra for the RTX 5000 would be if you can make use of the extra VRAM, or if you will be running AI loads that use Tensor cores only (using all the Tensor cores without using the CUDA cores might not push it to the power limit, so you could actually benefit from more Tensor cores in the RTX 5000?).

 

I haven't been paying close attention, so I am not actually sure if RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 have the same power limit in this system. But that has been the case for the past several generations of Dell flagship workstations, so I think it is a safe bet.

[win32asmguy]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

I am personally bummed that for some reason there is no 4K option for the 18". It's not OLED, so surely they could have found a suitable 4K panel.

 

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!

[Easa]

1 hour ago, capitainealbator said:

Thanks @Aaron44126, I think you're absolutely right 🙂

 

I don't know if the RTX5000 is worth the cost compared to the RTX4000, which seems more than adequate and would correspond to an RTX5080....

 

Basically what @Aaron44126 has said. The only reason for the RTX5000 is the VRAM, otherwise it is a waste of money to buy that kind of GPU in a laptop. The RTX4000 is the smart choice here, as it is just a bit more expensive than the lower RTX3000 + has a decent 16G VRAM, but still hugely cheaper than the RTX5000. Besides, its still the same die / chip, just with less cores enabled.  

 

39 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

 

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!

 

As usual, Dell completely screws up the display choices - they should look at the possibilities HP is offering. The DreamColor panels on the Fury series are amazing. I must say that the current offering on the Pro Max Plus 18" is something that I am absolutely fine with, as the 2560x1600 is my go-to resolution in laptops, but I get your feeling. And as for the flagship model, yes. I do not like the aesthetics and I am an avid hater of the naming scheme, but otherwise, it is the first Dell laptop since M6800 that has caught my attention.

 

Oh, and I also have to mention that I just received a price offerings from both Lenovo and Dell. Funny thing, the Pro Max Plus 18" configured with RTX4000 (other specs are the same) has the same price as P16 Gen3 configured with RTX3000 + of course the significantly reduced power budget.