XPS 8940, with RTX 3070 power supply upgrade?

Clarification. Those are two different subjects, Maximum Power Consumption versus PSU wattage requirement.

I stated the OEM RTX video card "Maximum Power Consumption". I never mentioned the PSU size because our OEM video cards work with our OEM PSU.

I completely agree with you

"It's like buying a Corvette and never driving it above 40mph."  : @napski  Driving is very far Brother you aren't even ready to put on the seat belts. I am using an RTX 3070 (custom build) PC. I didn't upgrade the PSU still using my 550w Coresair PSU which is 3 years old. I can use GPU and processor to it's 100% utilization and still Drawing well below 500W. Lemme add that PC has 6 Fans plus an Additional 6 port PCIe hub. In my personal experience I have learned not to trust official numbers. 

But again you have 30 days to return the machine. Why not put double the load of what you are actually planning to do with this PC and see how that performs. I mean edit a RAW 4K footage or Launch a Game with ULTRA NIGHTMARE settings

My views are my own, I am not a Dell employee. 

I bought my new 8940 on July 17, 2021 with an 11th Gen Intel i9, an HDD and SDD, and an upgraded graphics card.  I then added a second hard drive.  The system crashed on me three times in the first two weeks (BSOD).  I put in a ticket the third time but they couldn't find any issues remotely.  Since then, it has shut down unexpectedly eight times.  Every time was when I was working it hard - movies, gaming, music simultaneously, etc.  Everytime I get a BSOD shutdown and an Event 41 Kernel-power error.  I am absolutely convinced that it is because the power supply is undersized for the configuration I have. It is a common problem with Dell's (I own 8 of them), but I was able to upsize power supplies in other desktops.  There doesn't seem to be a solution for the 8940 and I am very unhappy about it.  I so wish I had returned it in the 30 day window.

Yeah, good point.  The reason I suspect the PS is that my CPU temps don't seem to be running high.  The highest I have recorded is 181F. 

Do you have any suggestions on how I can narrow down the problem?

Re: There doesn't seem to be a solution for the 8940 and I am very unhappy about it. 

have you thought about name brand SFX 750-850w psu with a commercially available 24-6 pin adapter to solve the presumed psu under power issue?

they are a bit expensive but if you resale your Dell 500w it may defray some cost.

@ChucksBucs  Sorry, but Event 41 Kernel-power errors only mean the PC was not shut off normally. It's a "generic" error that something unexpected happened to prevent Windows from shutting down correctly. It doesn't say anything about the actual cause for the unexpected shutdown.

That doesn't mean the PSU wasn't overloaded, but it could equally have been heat issues since the i9 is a furnace and the heat sink/fan used with the i9 in the XPS 8940 may not be sufficient when it's under all the load you put on it.

Max out at 68C when running Support Assist video card stress test.  I engaged Dell support last night after posting, and they think it is an Nvidia driver error based on this BSOD minidump file.

@ChucksBucs  - But what about the GPU temps?

You didn’t give us any information.

What is the TDP of your GPU and CPU?  Do you have enough wattage to cover everything?

Also, I have an older Gold Rated 360W Power Supply that only supplies 8A across the 6pin PCIe power rail.  That paired with 55w max off of the SATA was not enough to power my 3060ti but worked flawlessly with my 2060 Super and 3060 12GB because simply TDP ratings.

My 3060ti runs just fine off of my XPS 8940’s tiny 360w power supply with the 18A rail. (I have another power connection coming off of the motherboard just in case)

That card is only 200W TDP while the true 3070 is only 220w.

I’m going to upgrade to the 3070 now and not change my power supply to the 500W one, you know.... the one that Dell states with work with Video cards up to 225W TDP?

Hopefully you guys won’t get too rustled.

I didn't give you any information because I have no idea how to get the information you referred to....in fact, I have no idea what you mean when you say "TDP".

The 500w PSU has both of the  connectors and enough power along the single rail to the 220w TDP 3070 GPUs, that’s why Dell offers it as an option since the 18amps it provides is enough to cover it.

I’m currently running a 3070ti. FE in my XPS 8940 with additional rails coming off of the CPU rails since my card is 290w TDP.  Dell PSUs are tanks and my processor is only 65w (i5-11400)

I totally agree with your comments.  This appears to be an industry wide situation.  Although I am a satisfied Dell owner and consider them to be one of the best OEM computer companies, they are .