Enable undervolting on your Dell XPS 9500/9510/9700/9710 (or others)

[Custom90gt]

One of the posts that went down with the ship when NBR died that I needed today after picking up a cheap XPS 9510 from Best Buy, so I figured I'd repost it here.

 

Dell's lack of undervolting on their recent XPS systems is super annoying but thankfully on their 10th/11th Gen stuff there is a way around it. I've tested this on my 9500, 9700, and 9510 and it worked like a champ. It does NOT work on some 11th Gen (such as my wife's 9310 2-in-1 i5-1135G7). It does work on the Precision variants such as the 5560 (same as the 9510) and 5760 (same as the 9710).

This quick tutorial is something you use at your own risk. Neither myself or NBT is responsible if you mess something up, it doesn't work for you, or anything else happens. I cannot take full credit for this, I found this page which helped me tremendously.

It has been suggested that these variables can change with different bioses, and that's possible. It's also possible that Dell with enable undervolting on their own, but not likely. Having said that these flags have been tested and are working on:
Dell XPS 9700 Bioses: 1.04, 1.06, 1.32, 1.5.0, 1.6.3, 1.8.2, 1.9.2, 1.12.0
Dell XPS 9500 Bioses: 1.4.0, 1.6.1, 1.7.1, 1.8.1, 1.9.1, 1.12.0

Dell XPS 9510 Bioses: 1.5.1, 1.9.0, 1.12.0

Dell XPS 9710 Bioses: 1.4.1, 1.9.1

If you don't have one of the bioses above or you want to upgrade your bios and it hasn't been tested please view the guide found here.

 

Click the spoiler below for the common basic steps required to enable undervolting.

Spoiler

Create a EFI USB Boot Drive

1. Download the grubx64.efi file from v1.0 alpha release available here.
2. Get (or format) a blank FAT32 flash drive.
3. Create a folder called EFI. Within this EFI folder, create a folder called Boot.
4. Place the grubx64.efi folder above into the EFI/Boot folder path.
5. Rename grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi.

You should now have a flash drive with one file, bootx64.efi, located in the path X:/EFI/Boot (where X is your flash drive’s drive letter.) Time to boot it!

Disable Secure Boot in BIOS and Boot Prepared EFI USB Drive
Before your computer can boot the EFI flash drive, you will have to disable the Secure Boot option in your BIOS. To do so simply go into the bios with F2 and under the boot options there should be a Secure Boot mode, set that to disable. After that leave your USB drive in and hit F12 to select your USB drive to boot from.

Click the spoiler below to learn how to enable undervolting on your XPS 9500/9700 & Precision 5550/5750.

Spoiler

Edit EFI Variables of Interest (again after verifying they are the CORRECT variables):
Once in the EFI shell simply type (without the quotations):
"setup_var CpuSetup 0xDA 0x0"
"setup_var CpuSetup 0x3E 0x0"
Once you change the variables, you can simply unplug your flash drive, reboot, re-enable SecureBoot, and boot back into Windows.

Now you can actually use throttle stop to undervolt!

 

 

Click the spoiler below to learn how to enable undervolting on your XPS 9510/9710 & Precision 5560/5760.

Spoiler

Edit EFI Variables of Interest (again after verifying they are the CORRECT variables):
Once in the EFI shell simply type (without the quotations):
"setup_var CpuSetup 0xDF 0x0"
"setup_var CpuSetup 0x43 0x0"
Once you change the variables, you can simply unplug your flash drive, reboot, re-enable SecureBoot, and boot back into Windows.

Now you can actually use throttle stop to undervolt!

 

 

 Click the spoiler below to learn how to enable undervolting on your XPS 9520/9720 & Precision 5570/5770. - Thanks to @TwistedAndy

Spoiler

Edit EFI Variables of Interest (again after verifying they are the CORRECT variables):
Once in the EFI shell simply type (without the quotations):
"setup_var CpuSetup 0x43 0x0"
"setup_var CpuSetup 0x10E 0x0"
Once you change the variables, you can simply unplug your flash drive, reboot, re-enable SecureBoot, and boot back into Windows.

Now you can actually use throttle stop to undervolt!

 

Other notes:

If you're running windows 11 you must disable virtualization features in the bios to get TS to work.

[Aaron44126]

Just a note that I think the Precision model numbers are wrong, did you mean to start them with "5"?  I.e. Precision 5550/5750, 5560/5760.

[Custom90gt]

29 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Just a note that I think the Precision model numbers are wrong, did you mean to start them with "5"?  I.e. Precision 5550/5750, 5560/5760.

 

Good call, I even looked at the bios name and still managed to get it wrong, lol.  Not enough coffee this am.

[TwistedAndy]

Here're the commands for 9520/9720 with Core i9-12900HK:

setup_var CpuSetup 0x43 0x0
setup_var CpuSetup 0x10E 0x0

[TwistedAndy]

Unfortunately, Dell completely locked undervolting on XPS 15 and 17 2022 with recent BIOS updates. Those commands do not work anymore. You can find more details here: Dell False Advertising.

[Custom90gt]

3 hours ago, TwistedAndy said:

Unfortunately, Dell completely locked undervolting on XPS 15 and 17 2022 with recent BIOS updates. Those commands do not work anymore. You can find more details here: Dell False Advertising.

 

Ugh I wonder if the variables switched or if it's completely blocked now?  Makes me not want to update the firmware on my 9510...

[TwistedAndy]

The variables and offsets are the same, ThrottleStop shows CPU as unlocked, but the offsets are not applied. Also, they are not applied if you specify them in BIOS in the same way as you unlock undervolting.