Looks like a nice rig . . . with the exception of the air-cooled processor. Are you sure the noise is coming from your graphics card and not the CPU fan? If you have the tiny tinker toy CPU fan it will be an insufficient cooling solution, even for a 65 watt processor. Consider opening your side panel and confirm the noise source.
I am still under warranty until April, 18th 2023, but I do not want another replacement because I am soured on this build. I asked if they would send me a replacement with the NVIDIA 3080 instead (which is slightly cheaper than the card I have), but they will only send a replacement of the exact same specs. If they will not give me a refund, my only option will be going for another replacement but I really just want my money back and never deal with Dell ever again.
I understand your frustration. However, this is a user forum . . . just trying to help each other out. We cannot answer for Dell/Alienware. Since you can't return the R14, we can try to help you get it working properly, if you are interested.
I am not exactly sure what you mean by "sputters out while gaming". Since you have the air-cooled CPU, the first thing I would check for is thermal throttling/power throttling. I am actually much more familiar with Intel/nVidia components, but there are others familiar with AMD that should be able to help trouble-shoot your rig problems.
It was definitely coming from the GPU. The replacement actually doesn't have the noise problem though. But this one still crashes all the time with errors on startup related to the graphics card, requiring driver reinstallation every time to launch games, and sputters out while gaming. It's very disappointing, I wish I had returned immediately instead of wasting time trying to get it fixed. The return policy makes no sense to not let someone return a defective product, plus seems like it would be cheaper to just give me money back rather than more replacements that are probably not gonna work either.
I know, I just needed a place to vent my frustration with Dell's policy. I am willing to try and fix it. I am pretty sure this is all related to the graphics card though. Here is how it will typically go, I boot up the computer, maybe have a few browser tabs open, I leave or something, when I come back the computer is asleep and will not wake up. I hard reboot the computer and the blue Windows recovery page comes up, shown below.
I choose "restart my pc" and then it comes up normal. I log in and will typically have some errors in my notifications or pop ups like the ones below.
I can't launch any games at this point because my driver is disabled in device manager as shown below.
So I reinstall the drivers for the millionth time, maybe add in another reboot if it says to. Then I can launch games again. What happens during the game, is it will freeze and make a loud repetitive noise, usually whatever the last noise that was made in the game, like it got stuck on that moment. After a couple seconds it will recover and it goes back to normal, but this happens frequently when I am playing games, and is very disruptive when playing competitive games.
The way around the crashing is to never leave it idle, but it's really frustrating when I am working on something and just need to get up to go to the restroom real quick but have to shut down my PC to avoid the crash and that whole rigmarole. It crashes as soon as it goes to sleep I think, and changing my sleep and power settings has not helped, it will still crash after being idle for a little bit of time. Sometimes I catch it right before it falls asleep and am able to wake it back up before it goes dark, and then I will see this message in my notifications.
I truly believe I have tried all the troubleshooting possible, been through the ringer with their technical support and done many things on my own to no avail. I believe it may actually be an issue with Dell's OEM driver for this graphics card. Or I got two bad cards in a row and am just unlucky.
That is a lot of good and useful information. I can certainly see why you are frustrated. Are you able to use a program equivalent to Intel's XTU (perhaps Ryzen Master) to determine if your CPU is throttling during games?
If you set your Power & Sleep settings to "Never" and the 'Additional power settings' to "Balanced", does your rig still go to sleep?
Would you care to try something else, just in case? I don't know about the crashing and such, I have an R13 with your same graphics card, and in general everything was great, except there was a hidden setting with AMD cards causing an issue. I'm wondering if it may be part of it only because you say you go idle a bit and it crashes. This hidden power thing turns on when idle or when you turn off the monitor and there is no ability to turn it off normally or see it even exists. No matter what you try to set your power settings to, this hidden setting on the AMD card tries to go into this "Ultra Low Power Setting" and causes a lot of issues.
On the off chance you see this and didn't exchange it for another PC (I really would if I was you, I have that card and my PC works great other than this issue), please give it a shot just in case. It *may* solve the problem of being able to be idle without crashing.
This is mainly for a different issue of losing the display, but I've heard of it causing crashes as well and it turns on automatically when you're idle, so it's possible it could be related and it's worth a shot.
1) Click Start - Type regedit.exe, right click on it and select to run as Administrator.
2) Back up your registry in case you make a mistake. Click on File, then Export, and save a copy of the registry somewhere.
3) In the registry editor, press F3 and type EnableULPS, hit enter.
4) It probably will find this as the first search entry in a sub folder 0000. Make sure the value is only "EnableUlps" and nothing more (NOT EnableUlps_NA).
5) Double click the registry entry for EnableUlps and change value from 1 to 0.
6) Again, do not touch anything else, such as the related file named EnableUlps_NA
7) Continue to press F3 and look to see the EnableUlps file in the other numbered folders (0001, 0002, and so on - for my card it went up to 0006). It will probably already be 0 in the other numbered folders, but in case it's not, if it is 1 in any of those, double click the registry entry and change them from 1 to 0 in the other numbered folders as well.
Continue to press F3 and you will also see the same entry in a Driver subfolder (EnableUlps). Double click on it and set it from 1 to 0 wherever you find the specific entry.
9) Save these instructions for the future. When you update your Drivers or have to do system rollbacks etc, it may come back, and you may need to disable this function again. It's the cause of a number of awful issues we have on AMD cards.
In case you're worried that this is disabling something important, it's not. ULPS stands for Ultra Low Power Setting. It's this ultra low power mode, unrelated to your usual power settings. It's nearly useless, causes all sorts of issues, and you don't have to worry that you're turning off something important.
DellNotEvenOnce
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 18:00
Graphics Card
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16GB GDDR6
Item number: 490-BHCB
Processor
AMD Ryzen(TM) 9 5900 (12-Core, 70MB Total Cache, Max Boost Clock of 4.7GHz)
Item number: 338-CCXY
Memory
32GB, 2x16GB, DDR4, 3200MHz, XMP
Item number: 370-AGKI
Hard Drive
1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD (Boot) + 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
Item number: 400-BMPD
Operating System
Windows 11 Home, English
Item number: 619-APTK
Chassis Options
Dark side of the Moon 750W Platinum Rated Power Supply, Air-Cooled Processor and Solid Side Panel
Item number: 321-BHEL
ProfessorW00d
4 Operator
•
2.4K Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 18:00
What are the specs of your Aurora R14 (CPU, graphics card, RAM, liquid or air cooled, PSU, storage)?
ProfessorW00d
4 Operator
•
2.4K Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 19:00
Looks like a nice rig . . . with the exception of the air-cooled processor. Are you sure the noise is coming from your graphics card and not the CPU fan? If you have the tiny tinker toy CPU fan it will be an insufficient cooling solution, even for a 65 watt processor. Consider opening your side panel and confirm the noise source.
DellNotEvenOnce
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 19:00
I am still under warranty until April, 18th 2023, but I do not want another replacement because I am soured on this build. I asked if they would send me a replacement with the NVIDIA 3080 instead (which is slightly cheaper than the card I have), but they will only send a replacement of the exact same specs. If they will not give me a refund, my only option will be going for another replacement but I really just want my money back and never deal with Dell ever again.
ProfessorW00d
4 Operator
•
2.4K Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 19:00
I understand your frustration. However, this is a user forum . . . just trying to help each other out. We cannot answer for Dell/Alienware. Since you can't return the R14, we can try to help you get it working properly, if you are interested.
I am not exactly sure what you mean by "sputters out while gaming". Since you have the air-cooled CPU, the first thing I would check for is thermal throttling/power throttling. I am actually much more familiar with Intel/nVidia components, but there are others familiar with AMD that should be able to help trouble-shoot your rig problems.
New2Aurora
1 Rookie
•
26 Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 19:00
Are you still under the 1 year warranty...?
DellNotEvenOnce
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 19:00
It was definitely coming from the GPU. The replacement actually doesn't have the noise problem though. But this one still crashes all the time with errors on startup related to the graphics card, requiring driver reinstallation every time to launch games, and sputters out while gaming. It's very disappointing, I wish I had returned immediately instead of wasting time trying to get it fixed. The return policy makes no sense to not let someone return a defective product, plus seems like it would be cheaper to just give me money back rather than more replacements that are probably not gonna work either.
DellNotEvenOnce
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 20:00
I know, I just needed a place to vent my frustration with Dell's policy. I am willing to try and fix it. I am pretty sure this is all related to the graphics card though. Here is how it will typically go, I boot up the computer, maybe have a few browser tabs open, I leave or something, when I come back the computer is asleep and will not wake up. I hard reboot the computer and the blue Windows recovery page comes up, shown below.
I choose "restart my pc" and then it comes up normal. I log in and will typically have some errors in my notifications or pop ups like the ones below.
I can't launch any games at this point because my driver is disabled in device manager as shown below.
So I reinstall the drivers for the millionth time, maybe add in another reboot if it says to. Then I can launch games again. What happens during the game, is it will freeze and make a loud repetitive noise, usually whatever the last noise that was made in the game, like it got stuck on that moment. After a couple seconds it will recover and it goes back to normal, but this happens frequently when I am playing games, and is very disruptive when playing competitive games.
The way around the crashing is to never leave it idle, but it's really frustrating when I am working on something and just need to get up to go to the restroom real quick but have to shut down my PC to avoid the crash and that whole rigmarole. It crashes as soon as it goes to sleep I think, and changing my sleep and power settings has not helped, it will still crash after being idle for a little bit of time. Sometimes I catch it right before it falls asleep and am able to wake it back up before it goes dark, and then I will see this message in my notifications.
I truly believe I have tried all the troubleshooting possible, been through the ringer with their technical support and done many things on my own to no avail. I believe it may actually be an issue with Dell's OEM driver for this graphics card. Or I got two bad cards in a row and am just unlucky.
ProfessorW00d
4 Operator
•
2.4K Posts
0
July 22nd, 2022 21:00
That is a lot of good and useful information. I can certainly see why you are frustrated. Are you able to use a program equivalent to Intel's XTU (perhaps Ryzen Master) to determine if your CPU is throttling during games?
If you set your Power & Sleep settings to "Never" and the 'Additional power settings' to "Balanced", does your rig still go to sleep?
MacTravity
6 Posts
0
December 19th, 2022 04:00
Would you care to try something else, just in case? I don't know about the crashing and such, I have an R13 with your same graphics card, and in general everything was great, except there was a hidden setting with AMD cards causing an issue. I'm wondering if it may be part of it only because you say you go idle a bit and it crashes. This hidden power thing turns on when idle or when you turn off the monitor and there is no ability to turn it off normally or see it even exists. No matter what you try to set your power settings to, this hidden setting on the AMD card tries to go into this "Ultra Low Power Setting" and causes a lot of issues.
On the off chance you see this and didn't exchange it for another PC (I really would if I was you, I have that card and my PC works great other than this issue), please give it a shot just in case. It *may* solve the problem of being able to be idle without crashing.
This is mainly for a different issue of losing the display, but I've heard of it causing crashes as well and it turns on automatically when you're idle, so it's possible it could be related and it's worth a shot.
1) Click Start - Type regedit.exe, right click on it and select to run as Administrator.
2) Back up your registry in case you make a mistake. Click on File, then Export, and save a copy of the registry somewhere.
3) In the registry editor, press F3 and type EnableULPS, hit enter.
4) It probably will find this as the first search entry in a sub folder 0000. Make sure the value is only "EnableUlps" and nothing more (NOT EnableUlps_NA).
5) Double click the registry entry for EnableUlps and change value from 1 to 0.
6) Again, do not touch anything else, such as the related file named EnableUlps_NA
7) Continue to press F3 and look to see the EnableUlps file in the other numbered folders (0001, 0002, and so on - for my card it went up to 0006). It will probably already be 0 in the other numbered folders, but in case it's not, if it is 1 in any of those, double click the registry entry and change them from 1 to 0 in the other numbered folders as well.
Continue to press F3 and you will also see the same entry in a Driver subfolder (EnableUlps). Double click on it and set it from 1 to 0 wherever you find the specific entry.
9) Save these instructions for the future. When you update your Drivers or have to do system rollbacks etc, it may come back, and you may need to disable this function again. It's the cause of a number of awful issues we have on AMD cards.
In case you're worried that this is disabling something important, it's not. ULPS stands for Ultra Low Power Setting. It's this ultra low power mode, unrelated to your usual power settings. It's nearly useless, causes all sorts of issues, and you don't have to worry that you're turning off something important.