XPS 17 9720 (2022 model)

[Steerpike]

Does anyone have any advanced information about what changes may be coming to the XPS 17 in the latest 9720 iteration, other than the obvious new intel processor? 

I'm about to buy the 9710 but someone suggested I should wait for the 9720. My requirements are:

1. FHD display (1920x ...), non-touch (to keep it light); non-glossy surface
2. Integrated Intel graphics (to keep power / battery life / fan noise to a minimum)
3. No numeric keypad (I don't like how the numeric keypad forces the main section off-center to the left)
4. 2nd SSD slot (so I can install a 2TB stick), replaceable RAM (or 16 GB built-in). 
5. Light-weight. 

I wish the XPS 97x0 were lighter, (like the LG Gram) but it checks all the other boxes so I think I'm willing to put up with the weight. 

[astrohip]

All I've heard mentioned (rumored?) is the processor update. The current 9710 meets all your checkboxes.

I bought a 9710 earlier this month. I don't need the faster processor, the i9-11900H is more than quick enough for my needs (YMMV depending on your needs).

I have this quirk where I don't like to buy a laptop (or a car or a phone, for that matter) when it first comes out. I like to let the manuf work thru the initial bugs. So I waited about halfway thru the lifecycle of the 9710 to order it. The touchpad issue was history, the screen problems all behind it. If I waited for the 9720, I'd have to wait until year end again. But that's me.

Between the i9-11900H and the Kioxia SSD... plenty fast. I'd have to aftermarket a Sabrent to go faster, and honestly, for my needs, overkill.

One example: I convert a lot of FLAC files to MP3. Large files, processor intensive. I timed one conversion. My old XPS 15 (no slug... i7, SSD, made in 2016) took 2:25 mins to convert this one folder. My new XPS 17 took 24 seconds.

 

Good luck!

[Steerpike]

Speaking of the touchpad ... how is it?  I've had terrible ones on some laptops! misfires, palm fires, etc. I used to find that synaptics made great ones, alps made bad ones, but that may be different now. I often use the laptop on my lap so a mouse is not always an option. 

In all honesty, I could live quite happily with my current 2014 Samsung NP930X5J in terms of processor speed; I even throttle it down most of the time to keep the fan from running (I hate fan noise!) by setting max processor power to 70% in power options!  But the 8 Gig fixed RAM is killing me as I open up to a hundred browser tabs at a time, plus excel, word, outlook, etc. It still limps along fine but 16 Gig would really help.  My current 2TB SSD is SATA, so any modern SSD is going to be better. A 17" screen will be a slight improvement over my current 15.6", especially in the same footprint.  Only the extra weight of the 9710 is a negative, but I don't travel as much as I used to. 

[astrohip]

16 hours ago, Steerpike said:

Speaking of the touchpad ... how is it? 

It's fine. I don't use it much, I live & die by the mouse. But when I do need it, it does what it's supposed to.

My big concern going into the XPS 17 was whether I would be constantly bumping into the touchpad as I typed, causing weird and unexpected mouse movements. They made it bigger than the touchpad on my old XPS 15, so I had some worries. Turned out to be a non-issue. Haven't had a single problem with it.

[Steerpike]

1 minute ago, astrohip said:

It's fine. I don't use it much, I live & die by the mouse. But when I do need it, it does what it's supposed to.

My big concern going into the XPS 17 was whether I would be constantly bumping into the touchpad as I typed, causing weird and unexpected mouse movements. They made it bigger than the touchpad on my old XPS 15, so I had some worries. Turned out to be a non-issue. Haven't had a single problem with it.

Since you don't use the touchpad much, though, do you have that setting enabled that blocks out the touchpad when mouse is connected?  That may explain why you aren't seeing misfires?  The trackpad misfire issue is one big reason I don't want a laptop with numeric keypad; the kepyad pushes the 'main' keyboard off to the left, which then means your hands are off-center to the left. Some designs keep the trackpad in the middle, which is crazy as mis-fires are going to occur even more. Others skew the trackpad to the left, which looks bizarre, and is still awkward. 

[astrohip]

19 hours ago, Steerpike said:

Since you don't use the touchpad much, though, do you have that setting enabled that blocks out the touchpad when mouse is connected?  That may explain why you aren't seeing misfires?  The trackpad misfire issue is one big reason I don't want a laptop with numeric keypad; the kepyad pushes the 'main' keyboard off to the left, which then means your hands are off-center to the left. Some designs keep the trackpad in the middle, which is crazy as mis-fires are going to occur even more. Others skew the trackpad to the left, which looks bizarre, and is still awkward. 

Nope, it works. Just tried it now, can use both mouse & trackpad. No misfires (PS: thanks for this word, I knew there was a better word out there).

While obviously YMMV, I have no issues with typing causing msifires.

[Steerpike]

With your new XPS 9710, does the fan ever kick in while the machine is idle?  I tend to be a bit obsessive about fan noise, and I always have task manager active so I can see the little 'performance bar' in the tray area, to correlate CPU activity and fan noise. What I've noticed over the years is, even background tasks (eg, search indexing, and probably hundreds of other 'housekeeping' tasks that windows decides to do) will increase CPU enough to trigger the fan. For the past several years I've addressed this by throttling the CPU at 70%; at 70%, the fan never kicks in unless I'm doing something really serious.  On the VERY few occasions I actually need a lot of horsepower (video encoding, etc) I restore it to 100%.

(For reference - control panel / power options / change plan settings / change advanced power settings / Processor power management / Maximum processor state - 70% (for battery and plugged in). 

[Aaron44126]

On 1/30/2022 at 1:55 PM, Steerpike said:

For the past several years I've addressed this by throttling the CPU at 70%; at 70%, the fan never kicks in unless I'm doing something really serious.  On the VERY few occasions I actually need a lot of horsepower (video encoding, etc) I restore it to 100%.

 

Trick that I use on my systems...  I like to set the "maximum power state" to 99% which effectively disables turbo boost (CPU won't go above mid 2 GHz range).  This is mostly to keep the fans under control.

 

Windows 10 has a "power slider" that appears if you click the battery icon in the system tray, if you have the power profile set to balanced.  Setting it to the far right setting causes Windows to ignore the "maximum power state" option that you have set and run the CPU at full (turbo) speed.  Setting it to the middle setting restores the CPU speed limit.  So, setting it up this way makes the power slider an easy way to enable or disable turbo boost on the fly.

[astrohip]

23 hours ago, Steerpike said:

With your new XPS 9710, does the fan ever kick in while the machine is idle?

Disclaimer: My hearing ain't worth toots, so I'm not the best to ask. Having said that, I don't hear it come on when idle.

I'll run some tests over the next day, doing some CPU-intensive stuff, and see if it kicks in, or if I can hear it.

[Steerpike]

16 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Trick that I use on my systems...  I like to set the "maximum power state" to 99% which effectively disables turbo boost (CPU won't go above mid 2 GHz range).  This is mostly to keep the fans under control.

Windows 10 has a "power slider" that appears if you click the battery icon in the system tray, if you have the power profile set to balanced.  Setting it to the far right setting causes Windows to ignore the "maximum power state" option that you have set and run the CPU at full (turbo) speed.  Setting it to the middle setting restores the CPU speed limit.  So, setting it up this way makes the power slider an easy way to enable or disable turbo boost on the fly.

That's very interesting - thanks!  Do you have a good reference page that explains this in more detail?  I had never noticed that 'slider' before in the power icon. I see that it's presented as a slider but it's really just a 3-position switch - low, medium, high. As soon as I slid it to the high setting, my fan kicked in!  Is it your experience that it's not the max power state per se that is triggering the fan, but rather the turbo boost? Back when I first discovered this trick, I tried setting max processor state to 95, 90, 85, 80, 75, 70%. It wasn't until I hit 70% that I found the fan would be pretty much silent all the time, so that would suggest setting 99% wouldn't cut it for me.  But regardless - now that I know about the slider, it seems like I can essentially toggle the setting on and off much easier; I won't need to go to the advanced power options applet just to override the limit.  There are times when I'd like to speed things up just momentarily and don't bother due to the number of steps I have to go through. 

[Aaron44126]

4 minutes ago, Steerpike said:

That's very interesting - thanks!  Do you have a good reference page that explains this in more detail?

I discovered this by accident.  Never saw it documented anywhere.  I think that I will make a post about it in the "Windows" section here with some screen shots so that I can refer back to it when making the suggestion to other users.

One thing that you can do though is open up Task Manager and go to the Performance tab where it shows the current CPU speed.  Try changing the power slider and see how it changes the CPU speed in real time.

[Steerpike]

I just placed an order for the 9710!  I ordered the most basic config available - i5, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, Windows Home; FHD+, UHD graphics. My plan is to replace RAM and add a 2 TB SSD. Delivery anticipated Feb 17 or before. Total cost with tax circa $1470.  My first new laptop since 2015!  I absolutely adore my Samsung NP930X5J 15.6" machine, so let's hope this Dell is as successful! The only reason I'm replacing it is the fixed RAM at 8 GB. I already installed a 2TB SSD and everything else is great. 

[astrohip]

19 hours ago, astrohip said:

I'll run some tests over the next day, doing some CPU-intensive stuff, and see if it kicks in, or if I can hear it.

Question: Anyone have some suggestions for programs that stress a processor? I mentioned I wanted to push mine, to see if/when/how the fan reacts. But I'm not sure any of my programs really push an i9 that hard. 

Maybe some freeware/public domain piece of software designed to push the CPU?

Thanks in advance!

[Aaron44126]

39 minutes ago, astrohip said:

Question: Anyone have some suggestions for programs that stress a processor?

I think Prime95 is the go-to program here.  It's free.

[astrohip]

40 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

I think Prime95 is the go-to program here.  It's free.

Thanks... off to learn more.

[Aaron44126]

2022 XPS 15 and XPS 17 with Alder Lake CPUs are now available to order.  Copy/pasting from a post I made in the Precision area:

 

Specs are basically as you'd expect...  Up to Core i9-12900H, up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM, individual SSDs up to 4TB (two NVMe drives can be installed).  XPS 15 can be configured with Intel Iris Xe graphics, GeForce RTX 3050 or 3050 Ti, and XPS 17 has an option for GeForce RTX 3060.  Pre-configured with Windows 11 only.

 

XPS 15 gets three screen choices: 1920×1200 (FHD+), 3840×2400 (4K+), and an interesting in-between one 3456×2160 ("3.5K").  XPS 17 just gets FHD+ and 4K+.

 

They are available to order immediately, but XPS 17 + GeForce RTX 3060 won't be available until sometime in April.

 

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebooks/sr/laptops/xps?appliedRefinements=30232,39795

[markd89]

I'm interested in the fan noise also - both for the XPS 17 and XPS 15.

 

I currently have an XPS 15 9550 with repasted CPU, undervolted and fan controlled with software (Linux). I have the fan set to come on at 65c which is very rare. Mostly it's completely silent.

 

With the 11th generation CPU's Intel disabled undervolting which removes one tool to reduce heat. I wouldn't mind upgrading but not if I have to hear the fans.

[Aaron44126]

14 hours ago, markd89 said:

I'm interested in the fan noise also - both for the XPS 17 and XPS 15.

 

So...

• Starting with 2021 Tiger Lake (11th gen) systems, Dell has changed how fan management works, and existing techniques to control the fan speed manually do not work.  AFAIK, no one has figured out manual fan control for the newer Dell systems (be it under Linux or Windows).
• That said, the system's "automatic" fan management is much improved and more granular than before.  Older systems jumped between a few different discrete fan levels based on operating conditions, and you could definitely hear when the fan level changed.  The newer systems operate the fan on a smooth curve and it ramps up and down gradually.  My Precision 7560 (11th gen) runs the fans between 1000 and 1500 RPM under a light "office" workload, which is inaudible.  The fan becomes audible at around 2000 RPM.  Prior systems didn't have any automatic fan speeds between "off" and "≈2400 RPM", so you would always hear it if it was on.  User @Steerpike mentioned that he did not hear the fans at all in an XPS 17 9710 (11th gen) during his time with it.
• You can further keep the fan speed down by limiting the CPU speed.  I keep turbo boost disabled unless I'm running a CPU-intensive task.  Turbo boost can be flipped on or off pretty easily on Windows, as you can tie it to a power profile; I'd think there would be tools to handle this on Linux as well.
• Undervolting is still possible.  You have to change some EFI variables to enable it, and then you can just use regular tools to manage undervolting under Windows or Linux.  Intel runs their CPUs closer to the margin now, though, so you likely won't be able to do a >100 mV undervolt. 

[Asleep]

17 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

User @Steerpike mentioned that he did not hear the fans at all in an XPS 17 9710 (11th gen) during his time with it.

I have heard just one momentary whisper of fan noise for about 5 seconds from the 9710/11800H/3050since it arrived April 7. 

 

I expected some fan noise when I installed or ran my trading platform, which is a resource hog, but so far I've had none. I don't game, but I've had 40+ windows open with an HD video running and my trading platform spinning in a fast market and Slack and Chess titans on full settings and so far nothing, zero fan noise. Only a 3050, though.

 

I bought these cool little laptop feet for $12 to lift it off the surface a bit but I'm not sure I even need them.  

[MartinRo]

I got my new XPS17(2022) today. From what I have currently tested, the fans are hearable depending on load. Eg. while compiling a bigger Visual Studio project, the fans startet do blow audible. On the other side, while typing here, no fan to hear. Will have a closer look on that the next days.

[Aaron44126]

16 minutes ago, MartinRo said:

I got my new XPS17(2022) today. From what I have currently tested, the fans are hearable depending on load. Eg. while compiling a bigger Visual Studio project, the fans startet do blow audible.

 

Earlier in the thread I mentioned this turbo boost trick:

 

On 1/30/2022 at 9:24 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Trick that I use on my systems...  I like to set the "maximum power state" to 99% which effectively disables turbo boost (CPU won't go above mid 2 GHz range).  This is mostly to keep the fans under control.

 

I have since written up directions on a number of options to enable/disable turbo boost on the fly.  Something you can look into if fan noise is an issue and there are times that you would be willing to sacrifice performance for quiet.  I have found that it does make an impact on my Precision 7560 so I keep turbo boost off unless I need the extra CPU power.

 

(Also note the different thermal profiles that you can select from the BIOS or from the Dell Power Manager app.)

[MartinRo]

Yepp, I use the quiet mode in Power Manager app, and that's fine for me in regards of performance and noise 🙂

[TwistedAndy]

I have been using the Dell XPS 17 9720 with Core i9 12900HK, GeForce RTX 3060, and FHD screen for about 1.5 months.

Here are some notes:

 

- Noise. I've measured 38±1.5 dBA on the 40cm distance under sustained CB R23 MT load with in the Optimized power mode.

Under full load (both CPU and GPU in AIDA64) the noise level is higher (nearly 45-48 dBA), but it is still lower than my old Dell Inspiron 3779 with 8750H and GeForce GTX 1060 (48-50 dBA).

Under regular work the laptop is mostly silent (the noise level is less than 30-32dBA ambient noise in my office).

- Performance. I get ~18200 after first round and ~14500 CB R23 MT score sustained with 45W CPU package power and slight UV (-0.115V/-0.050V).

On the Ultra-Performance mode I get ~15700 points sustained (55W), but the noise is higher (41-42 dBA).

 

I can set the power limits even higher (to 75-80W) and get nearly ~17200 sustained, but the noise level will be also higher (43-46 dBA).

From my perspective, the performance increase is not worth the higher noise levels. I use the device mostly in the Optimized mode with 45W total package power limit. 43-46 dBA is not loud and allow working without headphones, but I prefer having less noise.

 

The sustained performance on battery is nearly the same because of nearly the same power limits (40-45W).

Sustained CPU temperatures are pretty low (somewhere between 75-80C under CB R23 MT).
 

- Battery life. I get 8-12 hours during the browsing with 30% brightness and 30 tabs open in two browsers, Slack, IDE, etc.. Configurations with the 4K screen will run a few hours less. I use my device mostly at home, so I don't care too much about that

- Dimensions and weight. My device is pretty light (~2.15kg). Options with the 4K screen are heavier (~2.4kg). In terms of dimensions it's comparable with many 15.6-16.0" devices

- Ports. I really like an opportunity to charge the device from any port, but I miss the regular USB A ports. I ended up with using a wireless USB hub using the VirtualHere app and my router (RT-AX68U)

[astrohip]

Thanks, nice write-up. I have the 9710 (i9-11900H, 4K display). The fan does seem to come on at some odd times, when I'm not doing anything stressing the system. But it's not loud enough to concern me or even look into. Love the display.

 

I don't really miss a USB A port, I've upgraded everything to C. Except... Logitech doesn't make their Unified Dongle available in anything but "A".😡🤬

 

 

[saturnotaku]

I had an XPS 17 9700 and loved most everything about it. The only thing I didn't like was the lack of a high-refresh screen, which was a real problem when gaming especially because the display didn't support FreeSync even when running through the iGPU. I wouldn't even care about 165-240 Hz - just 90 would be enough for me to switch right back.