Inside Dell XPS 15 (9560) – disassembly, internal photos and upgrade options

Since the new Dell XPS 15 (9560) shares the same chassis and last year’s model, the disassembly process is identical. there’s no dedicated service cover but the bottom plate comes off easily.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2n4ZV1H

1. Removing the bottom piece

As we said earlier, the backplate comes off easy without any hassle. You just have to remove all the screws around the edges and the ones hiding under the cap with the XPS logo as shown in the photos below.

2. Storage and battery

Unlike the previous version, the new XPS 15 (9560) offers a standard M.2 SSD solution and you can easily find 2280 sticks on the market if your’s doesn’t come with an M.2 stick. Ours did and it had an Intel-made 600P-series PCIe NVMe-enabled SSD.

And here comes the tricky part. There are two main configurations on the market – just like before. One of them sports a bigger battery with no 2.5-inch drive while the other offers the 2.5-inch drive – or at least a slot for one – but packs a significantly smaller battery pack. Our unit, for example, doesn’t have a 2.5-inch HDD but offers a slot for one and Dell has kindly provided a bracket for it but not an HDD cable connecting the device to the motherboard, which in our opinion is more important than the bracket itself.

And as for the battery – it’s rated at 56Wh on our unit while the “only SSD” variant offers a 97Wh unit. The latter is usually paired with an UHD screen but that also depends on the region you are in.

3. RAM and Wi-Fi card

The motherboard holds two RAM chip slots located under the heatsinks. Our unit came with two 8GB DDR4-2400 chips.

The Wi-Fi card is located next to the left cooling fan (with the bottom of the machine facing up) and it’s a Killer 1535. A reliable Wi-Fi module solution that’s used mostly in gaming laptops.

4. Cooling system

The cooling design doesn’t seem to have changed at all compared to the previous model but we’ve seen better cooling performance solely on the much cooler GTX 1050 GPU.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2n4ZV1H

The full review of the Dell XPS 15 (9560) can be read here.

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Fateh Azim
6 years ago

Hi Rossen. After so so much research on forums, your word hold credibility. Thanks. I Now i need to know, in place of the hard drive space other than the ssd, which hard drive can i install? I will order the transposer cable. But tell me the hard drive? I dont know if its mSata, or Sata, or hdd, or the 7mm 2.5 ssd (or will i need the 9.5mm case?), or what? Now i know the options i have are pretty stupid Cz I am not learned in the types of disks but you czn understand my question i… Read more »

Brahms
Brahms
5 years ago

Great laptop. dual SSD + HDD is a greatest feature of this laptop. Dell XPS 15 >>> Macbook Pro 15″

Trump Supporter (@maietta)
Reply to  Brahms

Absolutely. The reason i bought this machine in particular is because Mac OS X can run in a virtual machine (albeit with a lot of work), on top of Windows 10 Pro. The price was steep for all the perks but I didn’t get the 4K monitor and opted to get the standard 1080p display which is quite nice and helps with ensuring good battery life, which this laptop certainly has. I have the 97 watt hour battery which makes me wonder if the second internal data connect is available to install a second SSD on for a RAID setup.… Read more »