Dell XPS 9575; The death of my 2:1

reptileexperts · April 25, 2019

I have posted a few topics on this PC. The idea was fun, the actual use was decent, but the QA was painful.

The XPS 9575 was a 2 in 1 that offered near desktop grade CPU performance (thinking back to i7 4790 era here) with AMD graphics in a new hybrid chip. 16gb of ram. 100% Adobe RGB 4k display. NVMe storage. Wacom pen use.... it was slated for designer and creators in my opinion, and when it worked it worked... well, well! However, the stability of drivers dell released, and the quality assurance of the hardware leaving their facilities (not to mention part availability) kills what could have been a solid device.

Since owning the unit in June of 2018, I have had:

2 technician visits to the unit - both made it worse

3 send offs to the repair facility

1 direct exchange replacement laptop sent (december of 2018)

and now 1 indirect exchange replacement coming this weekend (9570 model)

The motherboard fried on the first laptop within 1.5 months of owning the unit. Tech came out and replaced it, but made things worse which I then fixed.

Thunderbolt 3 went out no eGPU was able to be used. Laptop was sent back motherboard was replaced.

USB C went out, laptop was sent back, replacement unit was sent

Mouse started stuttering then went out, tech was set out and replaced mousepad / keyboard / palm rest all together, which resulted in none of them working anymore. Motherboard had shorted during the installation.

So fast forward now, the unit was sent back to dell again for repair, and they informed me the daughterboard had failed and needed replacement as well, but the parts were not available in a reasonable time so they offered a replacement OR exchange for a like unit. The upside to this, the department that reached out to me was very kind, respectful, and wanted to ensure I was happy (A first during all of this) and they have offered a 9570 max config to replace my 9575 max config (i7 though, not i9 but I have asked for that so we will see). Either way it goes however, I am finally feeling like a happy customer.

The reason for this post? If you are looking for a 2 in 1, avoid the 8705/6G chipset. It may just be dells boards that are having so many issues, but it seems this chipset is losing momentum in the industry. The GPU was tolerable for cuphead, but could not produce anything playable in any other game. The CPU ran wildly hot until you undervolted it. Its a solid machine build wise. Form factor is second to none. However, the QA is not up to snuff and you'll spend more time with it in repair than in daily use. Here's to hoping my new 9570 offers a better end experience.