XPS 15 7590: Early indications suggest that Dell has addressed the cooling issues that plagued previous generations of the XPS 15

Are you still with us? The release of a service manual is not necessarily newsworthy, but one keen-eyed Redditor has got the r/Dell subreddit talking about one item contained within it. The thread, started by u/danielee0707, contains a picture of the heatsink that Dell has used in the XPS 15 7590, which has a crucial change from the one used in the XPS 15 9570.

Having owned an XPS 15 9570, one of its biggest shortcomings is how it cools its Voltage Regulator Module (VRM) metal-oxide-semiconductor-field-effect transistor (MOSFET). These run incredibly hot and send the system into a state of unnecessary thermal throttling. There are countless forum threads about this issue with the XPS 15 9560 and XPS 15 9570, with Douglas Black and iunlock having published extensive guides on how to mitigate VRM MOSFET-related thermal throttling. Solutions include covering the MOSFETs with thermally conductive pads and small heatsinks to wick away the heat to the main heatsink.

It seems that Dell has finally listened and has adapted the heatsink in the XPS 15 7590 to include active VRM MOSFET cooling. The photo below shows the change, with the heatsink in the XPS 15 7590 containing a vein of aluminium running over the VRM MOSFETs. In short, this additional part of the heatsink should do the job of third-party modifications, negating the need to add thermal pads or small heatsinks.

So, the XPS 15 7590 may not suffer from the same heat issues that have been plaguing the XPS 15 series for at least the last two generations. Dell has promised the device will not be affected by any DPC latency issues either, which has been an ongoing battle for current XPS 15 owners. If both these fixes persist, and that is a big if considering their ubiquity on the XPS 15 9570, then the XPS 15 7590 is shaping up to be an excellent upgrade despite its modest CPU and GPU improvements.