I have seen people saying that the 3060 TDP for the intel G15 is 90W however i asked a dell representative about it and he said that the tdp was 115W and i did specify that it was the intel version. Can anyone solve this confusion?

Hi all, I thought of sharing my Dell G15 Ryzen Edition Gaming Laptop mining experience here so others may benefit from it one way or another.

TLDR summary (some info in summary below are now outdated, see replies for updated info):

• Two Dell G15 Ryzen Edition Gaming Laptop, each with NVIDIA RTX 3060 6 GB Samsung VRAM, TGP of 115 W (boost of 125 W)

• Running NiceHash QuickMiner 0.5.2.0 RC

• Mining 24/7 generating profit of about $3.16/day, minus electricity cost

• Ambient temp.: 72-76 °F (22-24 °C)

OCTune settings:

• 1st Dell G15: core: 1125 MHz, VRAM: 8559 MHz

• 2nd Dell G15: core: 1125 MHz, VRAM: 8465 MHz

OCTune stats:

• 1st Dell G15:

  • Hashrate: 48.96 MH/s (max)

  • GPU core volt.: 693 mV

  • Power real: 80-81 W

  • Efficiency: 600-610 kH/J

  • GPU core temp.: 64 °C

  • GPU VRAM: 62 °C

• 2nd Dell G15

  • Hashrate: 48.37 MH/s (max)

  • GPU core volt.: 700 mV

  • Power real: 84-85 W

  • Efficiency: 570 kH/J

  • GPU core temp.: 64 °C

  • GPU VRAM: 61 °C

Long journey detailed below:

After jumping into laptop mining with my EVOO Gaming Laptop EG-LP7-BK RTX 2060, I decided to expand my mining rigs. I ended up buying two Dell G15 Ryzen Edition Gaming Laptop for $1,225 & $1,079, + taxes. Relevant specs. are: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, 16 GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. In the end, I was able to get the 1st laptop price adjusted back down to $1,079 due to their price matching policy (Dell kept lowering the price of the G15 over the span of weeks). This helped lower my ROI to about 12 months, which is better than the EVOO laptop that I initially started mining with (looking at almost 15 months). The same reason why I got the EVOO was to first mine as much as possible to pay their sunken cost and then use them to replace aging laptops around the house to stay relevant with laptop performance and technologies.

I experienced the first time Windows 10 setup hesitation after the network screen ("Now we have some important setup to do."). I did some Google research, and it turns out that Dell has outdated Windows 10 on their G15 laptops, so it takes many hours for Windows 10 setup to download updates. So the solution was: just leave it alone for a few hours and it'll chug along. That's what I did when I got the second Dell G15 laptop. Don't keep rebooting the computer or try other things. Just let it do its background updates. Be prepared to lose hours to get the laptop updated on the day of receiving it. Hopefully this will help out others.

BTW, in order to disable the "Sign in" screen with the slideshow of pictures around the globe, one must first select "Never" under "Require sign-in" under Sign-in options, part of Windows 10 settings. If you don't do that and removed Windows Hello sign-in, it'll forever keep requesting sign-in when it's not supposed to anymore.

I also ran into an issue where the laptop fans were not active and it allowed my GPU to get overheated, reaching 90+ °C in a short period of time (less than a few minutes). The first laptop rectified the problem down the road after several reboots and hellish temperatures (didn't check for laptop fans working, but relied on notebook cooler to do the job). The second laptop, I checked to see if the laptop fans were operating, and they were not according to Alienware Command Center. So I had to forced OCTune to set the fans at whatever default value, then it started to run to cool down.

Alienware Command Center (ACC) presented its own problems on the way, on both Dell G15, especially after I updated each Windows 10 to the current 21H1. ACC would load up, but get stuck with the blue dots spinning in circle without ACC finish loading. It appears that if I reinstalled/repaired ACC (maybe also with repairing Microsoft Visual C++ 20xx Redistributable) through Windows 10 Apps & features, it finally worked again.

I made sure I stabilized the hashrate by enabling Windows 10 Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. I tried disabling the IGP (AMD Radeon Graphics) of the APU (Ryzen 7 5800H) via Windows 10 Device Manager, but that doesn't seem to do anything other than not allowing my laptop screen to turn off but go blank with the backlight on. I'll later try to disable the Hybrid Graphics/Advanced Optimus setting in the BIOS (added in 1.2.0) to see if it adds anything to either the stability or performance of the laptop. I also disabled NVIDIA's dynamic boosting according to this post here, which supposedly reduces power usage.

After experiencing setting up the EVOO laptop aforementioned, I recognized that I'm also a victim of semiconductor quality. As you can see above, even though I bought the same exact laptop configuration from Dell, the second laptop is less of a stellar performer compared to the first one. The 2nd Dell G15 VRAM would be stable at 8490MHz or even 8486 MHz (hashrate of 48.4 MH/s) for a day or so, and then the Excavator starts to restart/crash. The second one is still in the middle of tweaking (8490 MHz -> 8486 MHz -> 8480 MHz (48.37 MH/s) -> 8475 MHz -> 8470 MHz -> 8465 MHz -> 8466 MHz -> 8467 MHz -> 8468 MHz -> 8469 MHz -> 8490 MHz -> 8489 MHz -> 8485 MHz) while I type this out. I know I'm safe when I set the VRAM to 8465 MHz, but I'm trying to find the best optimization for it. So far, if the second G15 crashes, I have to let it run around 8465 MHz and then some time later, let it return back to higher clock (i.e., 8490 MHz) to get the best hashrate as possible. But judging by Windows Event Viewer, VRAM clocking in at 8490 MHz is not sustainable because NVIDIA's display driver crash was indicated.

I currently stack the two Dell G15 and an EVOO gaming laptops on a 5 tier wire storage rack by Trinity that I bought from my local Costco for $50. It's also available from Home Depot but more expensive. This allows more airflow to the laptops with the notebook coolers and easy to move them around if needed. I would like to expand my laptop mining farm to a maximum of two more, but is challenging on two fronts: locating the elusive Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16" with RTX 3070 from local Walmarts for $1399 and up front funds. I'm not in a rush to expand anyways, since I know mining DaggerHashimoto (Ethereum) will come to an end towards the end of 2021 or beginning of 2022. My ROI for these Dell G15 can still happen if I can achieve half of their cost before ETH 2.0 arrives and BTC to rise back up to all time high. Otherwise, I'll have them mine other profitable coins. I'll still be happy to obtain these gaming laptops for less than what I should've normally gotten them for.

Update 7/15/2021: After answering a question regarding TGP of the RTX 3060 below, I further dug up that the boost power rating is 125 W for the RTX 3060, found under NVIDIA Control Panel -> System Information.

Update 7/16/2021: Increased my hashing rate just a tiny bit. 1st Dell G15: 48.66 MH/s -> 48.70 MH/s. VRAM clock is now at 8535 MHz; 2nd Dell G15: 48.37 MH/s -> 48.40 MH/s. VRAM clock is now at 8482 MHz. Both Dell G15 have been stable for over a day now without any HW error.

Update 7/29/2021: 1st Dell VRAM can take some more overclocking. Now cranking out 48.84 MHs @ 8560 MHz (+1559 MHz). I did try 8570 MHz and it crashed/restarted the Excavator, resetting back to 8560 MHz. As for my 2nd Dell, it's just a disappointment that it cannot perform similar to the 1st Dell. VRAM clock anything above 8460 MHz (+1449 MHz) would crash/restart the Excavator. So I'll have to settle with 48.25 MHs for stability, even though 8490 MHz could last for a while.

Update 8/20/2021: 1st Dell VRAM wasn't as stable at 8560 MHz, reduced VRAM to 8555 MHz. Increased GPU core to 1139 MHz as there was a little bit more hashrate before saturation.

Update 8/23/2021: After adjusting Windows 10 Power Settings in my Lenovo mining laptop by reducing CPU min/max % (1%/25% respectively) to further enhance power resources (lower power consumption), I tried to do the same with my Dell laptops. Unfortunately, Advanced Settings for any power plan lacked additional settings, similar to how this user reported here for their Dell laptop. I tried the CsEnabled registry hack, but that doesn't work. Turns out that CsEnabled was removed from Windows 10 since version 2004. I tried the registry hack of restoring the minimum and maximum processor states, but the 1st Dell laptop was unresponsive to the adjustment of the processor states (2nd Dell laptop worked).

9/4/2021: Overclocked the Dell laptops VRAM by a little bit more after adjusting the Power Settings. 1st Dell VRAM is stable at 8559 MHz. 2nd Dell VRAM is currently being tweaked.

9/8/2021: I finally resolved one of the two Dells' Windows 10 Power Options issue previously reported where it was unresponsive to adjustment of the processor states. It turns out that the Windows 10 Power Options got corrupted somehow. I came across this solution here and the solution worked by restoring the default schemes (powercfg -restoredefaultschemes) and then modifying the settings as usual.

9/18/2021: Dell 1 for some reason have its GPU temperature rise up almost 75 °C, VRAM at 65 °C. I found out that the notebook cooler partially failed, due to shoddy USB port. Luckily it comes with 2 USB ports, so I swapped to the other working USB port. Bringing the notebook cooler back in working order did bring the temperatures down, but not down to its usual. Perhaps sign of internal thermal management for Dell 1 also experienced something? Placing a fan blowing at the keyboard area drops the GPU temperature down to 70 °C, VRAM down to 62 °C as a temporary fix. My initial conclusion is after inspecting power draw from GPU (both GPU-Z and OCTune), which remained the same, would point me in the direction of concluding that the internal thermal management for the GPU was probably effected. The fans are still working fine (Alien Command Center reports 7x% speed and I can feel the heat exhausted). I highly doubt a driver update caused this rise in temperature (update: backtracked to previous NVIDIA driver, still same thermal issue). My best guess is thermal paste deteriorated. Looks like I'll just have to disassemble the laptop to investigate the thermal issue one day. Dell 2, I executed a VBIOS update (DB15W_ZPE). It was not found by Dell Update, but through Dell's online support website. VBIOS updates to 94.06.1E.00.2F from 94.06.17.00.35. Dell states "Supports Dynamic Boost 15 W to enhance the graphics performance." This raised the ceiling 125 W TGP (10 W boost) to 130 W TGP (15 W boost). After the VBIOS update, nothing has changed with respect to current mining performance from the VBIOS update itself. I experimented if the VBIOS allowed my laptop extend additional performance by further overclocking the VRAM, managed to increase Dell 2 VRAM to 8467 MHz from 8465 MHz. I'll keep on slightly increasing it until I find the edge of stability. I'm keeping Dell 1 as baseline to compare VBIOS performance before updating it to the current VBIOS.

2/11/2022: Dell 1 had its core clock lowered to 1125 MHz and still achieved about the same hashrate when it was at 1140 MHz. Also, cleaning the dust from the grills of Dell 1 and 2 have improved operating temperatures. However, that's just on the exterior of the laptops. I have yet to disassemble it to clean out any dust inside. So it might still be the thermal interface have deteriorated, but definitely dusty fan grills and most likely dusty fan blades themselves are affecting active cooling.

2/18/2022: I put out the time to open up the Dells to dust off the fan blades on the inside. This helped lower the operating temperatures by about 1-2 °C. Still, one day, a redo in thermal interface is most likely going to happen. Especially for the Dell1, as the GPU temperature still remains high.

Currently, Dell1 is at 72 °C/63 °C (GPU/VRAM) and Dell2 is at 65 °C/63 °C (GPU/VRAM) with ambient temperature at about 24 °C (~75 °F).

5/13/2022: For some strange reason, my Dell2 kept on crashing lately for the past week. The temperature and the power consumption would climb within a minute going into the red zone and crash the laptop. I cleaned out the fan vents (it was dusty), but that actually didn't resolve it. I tried updating AMD & NVIDIA drivers to the latest, QuickMiner to the latest RC, then downgraded the video drivers and QuickMiner. Still didn't resolve the issue. I decided to disable NVIDIA's dynamic boost and that resolved the issue. I'm not sure what made triggered NVIDIA's dynamic boost. Currently, Dell2 core GPU is at 1110 MHz, core volt. at 700 mV, and GPU memory at 8460 MHz, achieving a max of 48.40 MH/s, GPU and VRAM temps. of 68 °F/67 °F (20 °C/ 19.4°C).

Hi everyone,

I bought the following laptop (with free return) and trying to figure out if Dell underpowers the GPU from the MAX TDP. I can't find a spec or site that speaks to this laptop specifically.

Thoughts?

https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/dell-laptops/g15-ryzen-edition-gaming-laptop/spd/g-series-15-5515-laptop/ng155515_sb_s25e

G15 Ryzen Edition Gaming Laptop

what is the wattage of the gpu (rtx 3060) ???? i heard many opinions some said 70 to 90 watts and others said 115 to 125 or 130 watts ??
i want any owner of this specific machine to tell me please
dell help and support also some say 70 -90 and some others said 115 so even dell don't know !!!!!

Hello everyone I am going to buy a Dell g15 5511 Intel core i5 16 gb ram Rtx 3050 15.6 monitor (120hz) What do you think about it Ps: it's for coding/studying/lite gaming