XPS 8300 FAQ

Lockup Workarounds
Dell engineers have identified three possible root causes to this symptom -
1. BIOS CPU power management
2. Loose AMD 6770/6870 GPUs
3. Possibly defective main memory modules

Dell XPS 8300 Lockups fixed (Thanks to Ch4ng0)

BIOS CPU power management
* Turn on (or restart) your computer
* When the DELL logo is displayed, watch for the F2 prompt to appear and then press F2 immediately
* Go to Advanced- CPU Configuration
* Disable CPU C6 Report
* Press F10 and exit the Bios saving your change
* Once into windows, restart the PC one more time
* Test the PC for lockups

Loose GPU
* If lockups still occur, power the PC off. Open the case cover. Does your AMD 6770/6870 video card have a black bracket affixing the rear of the video card to the chassis via two screws? If not, I need to ship the Graphics Card Holding Bracket part number V32TR out to you. Send me a private message with your service tag, email, shipping address, phone number. Once you receive the bracket, you simply power down, open the case cover and affix the bracket to the end of the video card and the chassis using the two screws.

Defective RAM
* The next item to check is your memory. If you have GR82X 1GB or 9V62Y 4GB memory sticks, remove it from the system and retest for lockups. So if you had that memory in the white slots, remove it and move the other memory into the white slots. If the lockups cease when the memory sticks are removed from the PC, I need to replace the memory with a different vendor memory. Send me a private message with your service tag, email, shipping address, phone number

SATA
SATA 0,1,2,3 for HDD/ODD
SATA 4 for eSATA

CPUs (Sandy Bridge)
5MH9T 3.10GHz I3-2100
972H5 3.30GHz I3-2120
RGMN8 2.80GHz I5-2300 Quad
YXR1F 2.90GHz I5-2310 Quad
MHF7R 3.10GHz I5-2400 Quad
N6TKH 3.30GHz I5-2500 Quad
706FY 3.40GHz I7-2600 Quad

Dell validated video cards on the 460w power supply
KP8GM AMD Radeon HD5450 M114a
AMD Radeon HD5450 ML114A
HWHRN AMD Radeon HD5670 M206
GCJ42 AMD Radeon HD5770 P120A Juniper XT
2XTG4 AMD Radeon HD5870 U121A
HCVMH AMD Radeon HD6450 M116 & ML116 Caicos
8F60V AMD Radeon HD6670 M208a
8PJF8 AMD Radeon HD6770
Y9XH7 AMD Radeon HD6870 P125A Barts XT
4VDWW AMD Radeon HD6950 CaymanPRO for Single or Dual Card Config
VH86X Nvidia G405 M116n
YVMC0 Nvidia G405 ML116n
X78HM Nvidia GT420 M207
7K9GX Nvidia GTS450 P120N
Nvidia GTX460
Nvidia GT530 M208N
WGP2G Nvidia GTX560 D13U-15 Titanium
J8461 DVI to VGA Video Adapter
R0TCY Bracket for AMD Radeon HD5770, U120A, Nvidia GTX460
V32TR Bracket for AMD Radeon HD6950, AMD Radeon HD6870