High Idle Power Consumption After Updating to BIOS 1.40.1 on Dell Precision 7560

Hello,

I own a Dell Precision 7560 with an Intel i9-11950H. After updating the BIOS from version 1.38.1 to 1.40.1, I have experienced a significant increase in idle power consumption.

On BIOS 1.38.1, with the discrete NVIDIA GPU disabled and all power-saving options enabled, my system would idle at around 7–9 W on battery. After updating to BIOS 1.40.1, the idle power draw is now 25–26 W under the exact same conditions.

I have already tried:

• Disabling the NVIDIA GPU in Device Manager

• Setting Windows power mode to Best Power Efficiency

• Disabling unnecessary devices (Bluetooth, Thunderbolt, SD card reader)

• Resetting BIOS to defaults

• Updating all drivers

• Fresh install of Windows 11

None of these actions made any difference.

Using HWiNFO, I confirmed that the CPU Package C-States no longer go deeper than C3. C8 and C10 states are completely missing, which explains the higher idle power usage. On BIOS 1.38.1, C8/C10 worked normally, and idle power was much lower.

I attempted to downgrade back to BIOS 1.38.1, but the process is blocked by the firmware.

This change has cut my battery life by more than half when idle or under light workloads. Could Dell please confirm if this behavior is intentional, and if not, will there be a fix or a way to restore deeper C-States on BIOS 1.40.1?

Thank you.