XPS 730x General Hardware Discussion thread

That sounds like such a bummer, I hope there's a resolution to this soon.  The overheating of the video card sounds logical, hope the upped fans help.

I have read that thread about the random crashes, and it seemed that they were just the Extreme Overclocked Processors that were having troubles, it bums me out that some of the lower processors are also.

Kendra

Now when you say you disabled Dell Thermal Monitor. Does that control just the Video Card fans or other fans? I use Rivatuner and the last time I remember it only lets you adjust fans for the video card. Is that what you mean?

It makes logical sense that those who dont have problems are less likely to post on a Vendor support forum than those who do not. I have to say - I was one of the first (at least on this forum) to get a 730X. I received mine about a month ago and have had virtually no problems aside from a  well known issue with creative sound cards and Vista.

I have an I7-920, 6GB DDR3, 2XGTX280 in SLI and a Velociraptor HD. As for the temperature potentially causing an issue - its possible. It seems to me that the majority of folks having problems either have the ATI GPU and/or the overclocked processors. The reason I dont think its an issue (at least with the Nvidia cards) is that I ran my cards with stock fan settings for over a week playing several very intensive games (Farcry2, Left 4 Dead, AoC, etc...). I use Everest and was able to monitor my thermals using the LCD on my G15 Keyboard. My idle temps on the GPU's were about 45 C. Load would climb to 65.

In addition - my tower is inside of a closed cabinet. I have custom fans I built into the cabinet that I turn on to exhaust the hot air out. The temps I listed above are with the cabinet fans on. During 1 gaming session I forgot to turn on my cabinet fans and after a good hour of playing I realized it when I saw my GPU temps at 95C!!! The interesting thing is that even at that temp - the PC ran perfectly! No glitches, freezes or anything. I now use Rivatuner to control my fans and the temps are even lower now than what I listed.

One other thing to consider - one of the first things I did was to uninstall the Dell thermal monitor software. Its limited and Everest and Rivatuner do a much better job of monitoring and controlling fan speeds.

Good luck to you also jsimon, our systems will be great!  :emotion-1:  

After reading this and other posts, I've only seen one or two systems (with lower processors) that had this problem, most others have been the overclocked Extreme processors.  I am in no way putting down those processors, LOL.  It actually made me feel better, because I couldn't afford those systems!

Kendra

Hello all,

New to the forums and have a few questions that I hope don't come off as too ridiculously stupid.  Ordered my XPS 730x on the 4th and am very much looking forward to its arrival.

Firstly, Chris Mixon mentioned earlier in this thread that the i7-920 isn't overclockable.  However, I've read numerous articles and reviews about the i7-920 touting how ridiculously overclockable it is.  Is there something in Dell's proprietary motherboard or BIOS that prevents overclocking the CPU, or is the 920 indeed overclockable?  Has anyone successfully overclocked a 920 in their 730x?

Secondly, I ordered my machine with 6 GB of the Dell stock RAM (3 x 2 GB).  Will I see a noticeable performance increase if I upgrade the RAM to something else?  (If it's faster than 1066, I assume I would have to overclock it, and would appreciate knowing what RAM anyone else is using if they upgraded).

Thanks a lot!

I just noticed something because I was thinking of adding another 280 at a later date and figured while I'm waiting for pc to arrive I would search for the 280 on dells site product number and see how much it retails for.  The number it gave me in my build for the 280 was 320-7602 which maybe this changed I dunno but I couldn't find it on the site.  Does anyone know which one it is? I found these ones is the item number on order spec list different than the part number?  Was just curious since I know you can use diff 280 it will just run at lower speed.

Hi all, Im new to the form and I also have the dell xps 730x system.  I have the i7-920 @ 2.67ghz with 6gig of ram, 2x 280 in sli mode, windows vista x64 home premium and i just have the stock fan cooling.  My system runs great, its fast and i don't need to overclock the cpu but I did try to overclock it.  From 2.67 to 3.8 it was stable and I notice a difference of performance.  But a few weeks after that it crashes and gave me a blue screen or stopped error but i think it wasn't the overclocking that caused it.  It was some driver fault for windows vista x64.  I reinstalled my OS and everything else and updated my drivers especially for my keyboard and mouse which i have a g15 logitech keyboard and a g5 logitech mouse.  Now it seems like its running smooth and i haven't received any error except some other application errors. 

For the GPU(s) i think i had a driver error also because i didn't install it correctly.  When you get your system, the first time you run it and if you want to update the driver for your gpu(s).  I suggest uninstalling them first, cleaning the register, removing any other files in the folder and install the driver.  That is what i did for mine and now its perfectly fine.  You said....

" The reason I dont think its an issue (at least with the Nvidia cards) is that I ran my cards with stock fan settings for over a week playing several very intensive games (Farcry2, Left 4 Dead, AoC, etc...). I use Everest and was able to monitor my thermals using the LCD on my G15 Keyboard. My idle temps on the GPU's were about 45 C. Load would climb to 65.  "

Mine did the same thing except i made my gpus fan to go to 100% when i am gaming and my temps were around 55c - 60ish.  Aalso ran the front cpu and pci fan to 50ish or more (70-80%).  If you have a bad speaker system, then you would hear the fan running loud.  For me it was like normal hehe it cooled my gpus and it never reach past 70c on those settings. 

I tried using rivatuner but I'm not that good at those programs.  The thermal monitor for dell is ok but for my gpus i use EVGA precision v1.40 which show me infos about temps, clock speed, fps when you are playing games, etc.  You can also set it to show in your g15 keyboard if you have one or on your screen while playing games. 

(this is for people who doesn't know how to reinstall there OS)

If you want to reinstall your OS, simply open up the dvd drive, put the dell cd (operating system cd) that came with your xps 730x system, restart your computer, keep pressing F12 until it says its goin to the set up screen, i forgot the exact words.  From that screen, select boot from cd or dvd or whatever.  Just follow the instruction from there.  Or just read the manual that you got from dell.

this system kick by the way, it kills any games you run, it's just a good system...i just hope in the future it wont give me errors(blue screen)

Hilzen, thanks for sharing your i7-920 overclocking experience. I knew that thing was overclockable!  Did Chris mean that it wasn't factory overclocked?

Sorry, just one more follow-up, Chris - I've read a lot about the Intel-provided "Turbo Mode" for the 920 in the BIOS.  Enabling this is still within warranty, right?

Chris,

I had assumed that about the warranty - but you stated flat out that the i7-920 cannot be overclocked.  That's different than saying that it's capable of being overclocked but overclocking isn't supported by the warranty.  These are gaming computers...I'm assuming most people are going to be doing some overclocking, warranty or not.

Thank you, by the way, for taking the time to answer our questions.  The extra info is very useful!

On a side note (this question is for everyone else, as I know Chris can't answer order questions), my 730x is scheduled to ship tomorrow, but the order status line says it's still in the "build stage".  Should I assume shipping will be delayed, or do the tesing and boxing stages happen relatively quickly?

All,

We do not support overclocking of the I7-920 and I7-940. Any hardware failures will not be covered by the Dell warranty.

When I last check the bios, I think it was in defaut that it's enabled.

So I received the dreaded email from Dell:

"Dear Dell customer, we regret to inform you of a delay in your recent Dell order. If your order has not shipped within 5 business days, we will provide you with an update."

I ordered my i7-920 / 6gb ram / hd 4870 x2 / 1TB-7200rpm system on Dec 31 with an initial estimated ship date of Jan 12.

I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed next week.  Hopefully the delay won't be more than 1 week, cuz by then the GTX295 should be out and might drive prices of other video cards down..

The Wait continues...

KC

Now when you say you disabled Dell Thermal Monitor. Does that control just the Video Card fans or other fans? I use Rivatuner and the last time I remember it only lets you adjust fans for the video card. Is that what you mean?

I completely uninstalled the Dell Thermal Monitor. I believe it may also control some of the case fans. Yes - Rivatuner is used to control fan speeds for the video card. You can also use it to overclock your video card, however I do not use it for that.