Dell :: S-XPS 1645 AC Power Throttle Investigation

This thread is getting too large, and too difficult to find useful information. Thank you to everyone who has put forth efforts into the investigation. At this time I feel we can safely say that there isn't any investigating left to do, so without further ado, please direct yourselves to this great help-thread with information about what the problem is, and how you can circumvent it:

S-XPS 1645 Throttling Info. and Updates

====obsolete information====

I've removed all the old information as its mostly speculative, and replaced it with useful factual information.

The following is from a post made by our user Khaledseif on the Dell Forum. I feel this update he posted is so well-written that it deserves to be included here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khaledseif

Here is our group findings so far

1. The power conservative BIOS forces the system to throttle to 7x when the power consumption is around 90 watts due to one or more of the following reasons:

a. Limitation of the power supply capability

b. Limitation of the motherboard to accept more than 90 watts (This reason is from DELL, but we suspect it)

c. To increase the battery life

d. To limit heat generation

obviously DELL should be blamed for poor design if it is a, b, or d.

2. Thanks to unclewebb there is a software now to unlock the throttle, this one will almost certainly put the 90 watt charger to rest or fire.

3. Due to the power limitation, it looks like the people with the RGBLED are most affected by the problem due to the added power consumption.

4. DELL is aware of the problem, but according to them it only affects a small percentage of people that put the system on full performance.

5. DELL keeps saying that the 130 watts adapter is not the solution of the problem, which is quite true as it needs both an adapter and BIOS update.

6. After a long wait, DELL acknowledged that there is a problem and that they will address it soon without announcing a time frame.

7. We as a group lack the trust in DELL fixing the problem to our satisfaction.

I think most of our group will agree on the above.

With all the above said, i am quite happy that mine was returned back to DELL after a frustrating experience with DELL level 1, 2, and 3 technical support. This doesn't represent the other members as most of them are happy with their notebook but expect action from DELL.