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user47227
Asked: 2020-05-15 08:27:35 +0800 CST

Dell XPS 15 9570 Thermal Shutdown while Gaming

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I recently installed Ubuntu 20.04 to the internal drive of my Dell XPS 15 9570.

I'm running kernel 5.4.0-29-generic and the latest nvidia drivers. I recently upgraded the BIOS to 1.15.0.

I'm seeing thermal shutdowns whenever I try to play Steam games at high resolutions. I never saw this when using Windows 10. I've seen a few references to this online but I'm not sure if it's being caused by the BIOS, the Kernel or the graphics drivers. Any ideas what I should do?

Dell Support Discussion

drivers nvidia steam dell xps

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There might be a simpler solution than heatsinks or undervolting. TLP is what I'm using.

    I have a somewhat similar Dell as you but it has a 10th-gen CPU. I haven't had any thermal shutdowns but I don't game (just work). When I first got it, I noticed that if I load it down then it would get really hot, really quickly.

    It might not be the same on your 9th-gen CPU but on this one I noticed that the CPU advertises 3.9Ghz but it actually only supports that for 1 core and for a limited time. It's for single core bursts but Linux was basically trying to run all cores at 3.9Ghz when I loaded it down making it super hot. The real stable max speed for mine is 3.5Ghz.

    So I just used TLP to throttle it down to 3.5. It would still get a little hotter than I wanted when loaded down like that though so I shaved 5% off to make it 3.325Ghz and now I can run it fully loaded down for as long as I need to and it doesn't get overly hot. :)

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