Dell tricked me with the XPS 9500, now I need a different solution

Tbaile · May 20

Hello everyone,

I've been the first of many people who trusted Dell when launched the XPS 9500 back in Spring 2021.

After just 3 years of use (software developing and occasional photoshop) the machine randomly turns itself off by it's own reporting a "ASF2 force off" in BIOS power logs.

I've already looked around at the issue and it seems that the are only partial workarounds available and not solutions to a wide spread issue that plagues many machines.

Now, the question, what should you think I need do with it?

I'm not keen into throwing it into the trash bin due to the amount of money spent on it (1899€), but everything points to a faulty issue that Dell will never aknowledge.

Here in Europe the motherboard replacement part is around 500€/700€, however since the issue is so widespread, it won't ensure the issue will be ultimately solved.

I'm posting here just to shed light on a big problem that a corporation blatantly ignores and possibly asking for a replacement for my trustworthy laptop companion.

Thank you all in advance.

Thomas4 · May 20

In an old thread on Dell's website, although not your specific model, both former and later models in the same family were mentioned, the problem could be that the thermal pad at the heatsink is too short and a thermal pad cut to fill in the missing and that the thermal paste on the CPU was dry and needed to be reapplied.

Levent · May 21

26 minutes ago, Thomas4 said:

In an old thread on Dell's website, although not your specific model, both former and later models in the same family were mentioned, the problem could be that the thermal pad at the heatsink is too short and a thermal pad cut to fill in the missing and that the thermal paste on the CPU was dry and needed to be reapplied.

That error seems like a generic error. It seems to throw it for many different reasons but all results with force shutdowns. People are reporting different things working for them.

Tbaile · May 21

Sadly, I’ve already tore apart the laptop but with no luck whatsoever.

The issue is not thermal related since it can happen even seconds into boot sequence (either Linux or Windows)

I’ve already reinstalled everything from scratch, but it’s no driver/firmware issue (or it is a faulty firmware at the core, but we don’t actually have a confirmation)