# tcc-g15: replacing AWCC on a Dell G15 with a small PyQt app > tcc-g15 is a Python and Qt front end to the WMI thermal control interface on Dell G-series and Alienware laptops, giving you G-mode switching, temperature and fan readouts and semi-manual fan control without installing Alienware Control Center. It is GPL-3.0 licensed and free of AWCC's telemetry, and it needs administrator rights to work at all. **AlexIII/tcc-g15** — Thermal Control Center for Dell G15 - open source alternative to AWCC - Repository: https://github.com/AlexIII/tcc-g15 - Stars: 846 · Forks: 53 - Language: Python - License: GPL-3.0 - Published: 2026-10-20 · Updated: 2026-10-20 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/alexiii-tcc-g15 ## What AWCC leaves on the table AWCC, the Alienware Control Center, is the app Dell ships for thermal control on its G-series notebooks. tcc-g15 positions itself as an open source alternative to it, and the README is direct about why. The complaint list is specific rather than general. AWCC has no in-program option to enable or disable G-mode. Its manual fan control is broken at the moment. It is described as a bulky, slow and visually noisy app that cannot handle basic functions. It sometimes randomly crashes and throws crash reports. And it is spying on you, which the README backs with a section on AWCC telemetry. That last point is the strongest argument, and the documentation supports it with endpoints. AWCC silently sends telemetry without any possibility of opting out, and the telemetry goes to these URLs: ``` https://tm-sdk.platinumai.net https://qa-external-tm.plawebsvc01.net ``` For a laptop owner who is comfortable with command line tools and wants to remove a vendor utility, that combination of missing features, crashes and unremovable network calls is enough to look for something else. The README even lists the components you can safely remove once the alternative works: Alienware CC Components, Alienware Command Center Suite and Alienware OC Controls. The audience is narrow and the project does not pretend otherwise. It is a tool for people who own one of a handful of Dell laptops and want direct control of the thermal subsystem. ## The supported model list is short and user reported The target platform is Windows 10 or 11, and the supported models are listed as reported by the users. The Dell G15 models are 5511, 5515, 5520, 5525, 5530, 5535 and 5590. Alongside those are the Alienware m16 R1, the Dell G3 3590, the G3 15 3500, the Alienware 16X Aurora and the Alienware 18 Area-51 AA18250. The phrase as reported by the users matters. This is not a compatibility matrix derived from a hardware survey; it is a list of machines where people said it worked. The README says it may also work on other Dell G15 and Alienware laptops, and asks people to report whether it worked or did not. That framing is honest and it also sets the expectation. If your model is not on the list, you are in the trial-and-error category, and the failure mode is likely to be an app that cannot find the WMI interface rather than a subtle misbehaviour. The topics on the repository list alienware, dell-g15, fan-control and laptop, which is an accurate summary of the scope. The app also assumes it will run with administrator system privileges, because it needs the WMI interface, and the download link in the README carries the same note. There is no unprivileged mode. ## Switching thermal modes and reading the sensors The feature set is short enough to list, and every item is something AWCC was not doing well. There is switching of the thermal mode between G-mode, Balanced and Custom. The app shows GPU and CPU temperature along with fan speed. There is semi-manual fan speed control, and an option to automatically enable G-mode when the GPU or CPU temperature reaches critical. There is support for the keyboard G-mode hotkey. The fail-safe feature is the interesting one, because it is the one with engineering behind it. The G-mode hotkey on the keyboard is a hardware level switch, and the app can watch temperatures and flip the mode itself when things get hot. The changelog for 1.5.3 shows a trigger delay added for the fail-safe, to smooth out temperature spikes, and 1.6.3 shows the tray icon gaining a G mode indication and a context menu entry for switching thermal mode, along with a fix for the tray icon rendering blurry on high resolution screens. The tray icon carries state in its artwork. The white dots in the corners of the tray icon indicate the current G mode state, with a separate image for G mode off and one for G mode on, so you can read the mode without opening the window. Hovering over a UI element shows its description, which is a small but real usability decision for a utility that has a lot of toggles. The 1.6.2 release shows the GPU and CPU model in the app, and 1.6.4 stopped limiting the displayed RPM value. These are the small fixes of a project that is still being worked on. ## The limitations the author states up front This project documents its own failure modes with a directness that is worth reading before installing anything. It requires admin system privileges to access the WMI interface. Manual fan control is not really manual: if you set the fan speed too low, the BIOS takes over and raises it automatically when the temperature reaches a certain point, to prevent overheating. That is a hardware protection mechanism, and no application can override it, which means the manual control is advisory. The autorun on startup feature may not work. It adds a task to the Windows Task Scheduler that should start the app on first sign-in after a reboot, but it may fail because of the system security policy, and the README points to issue 7 for other approaches. On rare occasions the driver may report a bogus GPU temperature, with issue 9 for that. The most serious one is the freeze. Switching the thermal mode to G-mode and back may result in a second-long system-wide freeze at the exact moment the switch happens. The README attributes this to a known issue with the Dell thermal control interface, states that it cannot be fixed, and advises disabling the fail-safe feature if you do not want the app to switch the thermal mode automatically. A second-long whole-system freeze on a mode switch is a small price for most people and a dealbreaker for some, and the fact that the fail-safe can trigger it automatically means it can happen to you without you asking. That combination of a known, unfixable freeze and an automatic trigger is the single most important thing to evaluate before installing. ## How the app talks to the hardware The mechanism is stated in one line: it is a PyQt-based GUI for the WMI Dell thermal control interface. The repository also contains a WMI-AWCC-doc.md file, which the README says somewhat documents the findings on WMI, and a wmi-test.py script at the root, which is presumably how those findings were made. WMI is the Windows Management Instrumentation interface, and the thermal control functions Dell exposes there are not a documented public API. The project is working with an undocumented interface, which explains a lot about its shape. There is no vendor SDK, no stable contract, and no guarantee that a Dell driver update will not change the fields the app reads. The WMI Python package, pinned at 1.5.1 or newer in the requirements, is what provides access to the interface. The dependency list is minimal, which is a good sign for a utility that has to run as administrator: ``` WMI>=1.5.1 PySide6>=6.9.1 windows-toasts>=1.3.1 ``` Three packages. PySide6 is the Qt binding for the interface, WMI is the interface access layer, and windows-toasts is for the desktop notifications, which fits with the tray icon and the thermal alerts. There is no hardware abstraction, no service layer and no plugin system. It is a single window and a tray icon. The packaging is done with Inno Setup, visible in the installer-inno-config.iss file, with a make-release.bat script for the release build and a tcc_g15_task.xml for the Task Scheduler entry that the autorun feature creates. ## Running from source, and where this leaves the project Running from source is two commands, and the requirements file installs the three dependencies listed above: ``` python3 -m pip install -r ./requirements.txt python3 src\tcc-g15.py ``` Note the backslash in the source path, which means the documented invocation is the Windows one. There is no mention of a Linux or macOS build, and there could not be: the whole thing runs on the WMI interface of a Windows machine. On maintenance, the repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-05-09. The tagged releases are 1.6.4 from 2025-01-18, 1.6.3 from 2024-12-12 and 1.6.2 from 2024-10-18, while the changelog in the README already lists a 1.6.5 with dependency updates, import updates and a fix for handling incompatible mode settings. So the tagged release and the current work are again slightly out of step, which is normal for a single maintainer who tags when he feels like it. The licence is GPL v3, with the copyright attributed to the repository owner. GPL is the right choice for this kind of tool in one respect, since anyone who modifies the app to support a new laptop model is obliged to share that work, which helps the next person with an unsupported machine. For an end user running the prebuilt binary, the licence obligation is not something you interact with. The real limitation is not legal or technical but practical. This is a single-machine utility written by one person against an undocumented interface on a specific set of Dell laptops. It solves a narrow problem very well, and if your machine is not in the list, none of that applies. Compare that with a generic fan control utility for other brands, which will not have a G-mode thermal profile, and with a Linux tool such as a laptop control daemon, which works across many vendors but has no access to Dell's G-mode switching at all. The choice is between a vendor-specific deep tool and a generic shallow one, and this project sits firmly on the first side. ## Conclusion Adopt tcc-g15 if you own one of the listed Dell G15, G3 or Alienware models, want G-mode control and fan monitoring without the Alienware Control Center install, and are willing to run a Windows app as administrator. Do not adopt it as a general fan control utility for other laptops, since the supported list is user reported and the mechanism is Dell specific. Verify first that your exact model appears in the supported list, that the WMI thermal interface is present on your machine, and that you accept the known system-wide freeze when switching thermal modes, which the documentation says cannot be fixed. ## FAQ ### Which Dell laptops does tcc-g15 support? The listed models, as reported by users, are Dell G15 5511, 5515, 5520, 5525, 5530, 5535 and 5590, plus the Alienware m16 R1, Dell G3 3590, G3 15 3500, Alienware 16X Aurora and Alienware 18 Area-51 AA18250. The app may also work on other Dell G15 and Alienware laptops. ### Does tcc-g15 need administrator privileges? Yes. It requires admin system privileges to access the WMI interface, and the README's download link notes the same. There is no unprivileged mode. ### What happens when I switch thermal modes in tcc-g15? Switching to G-mode and back may result in a second-long system-wide freeze at the exact moment the switch happens. The README attributes this to a known issue with the Dell thermal control interface, states that it cannot be fixed, and suggests disabling the fail-safe feature if you do not want automatic switching. ### Can I run tcc-g15 from the source code? Yes. Install the requirements with `python3 -m pip install -r ./requirements.txt` and then run `python3 src\tcc-g15.py`. The documented invocation uses a Windows path separator, since the app targets Windows 10 and 11. ### Does AWCC really send telemetry that cannot be turned off? The README states that AWCC silently sends telemetry without the possibility of opting out, and lists the endpoints as https://tm-sdk.platinumai.net and https://qa-external-tm.plawebsvc01.net. That claim is the project's own, and the endpoints are given so you can check them yourself. ## Sources - [AlexIII/tcc-g15 on GitHub](https://github.com/AlexIII/tcc-g15) - [Issues](https://github.com/AlexIII/tcc-g15/issues) - [License: GPL-3.0](https://github.com/AlexIII/tcc-g15/blob/master/LICENSE) - [README](https://github.com/AlexIII/tcc-g15/blob/master/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/AlexIII/tcc-g15/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/alexiii-tcc-g15