I have had a Dell XPS 8700 since 2016, I can say I’m a proud owner, as I think it is a great machine, and it is still running and delivering good performance in comparison to newer systems, DELL really did a good job on this one. I know about the infamous Pcie 1x, and so on, but beyond that 8700 is a wonderful machine.

Mine lately has developed some issues (It resets by itself with Windows event 41, and no minidump, or memory dump at all). I do not think these issues are hardware issues. I have tested RAM, Processor, etc. multiple times without finding anything wrong (I have run the BIOS tests, including the extended version, 3 times, all OK). I think the issues are compatibility issues from the BIOS-UEFI, Windows 10, and hardware components and windows drivers (I decided NOT to use the DELL drivers, as it seems the ones included with Win 10, or Intel Website are far more stable on this days), it seems if you have Bluetooth devices connected it gets worse (I have a Logitech mouse).

Off course I can understand Dell has a lot of newer systems to maintain and need to sell newer systems. I would respectfully ask for a new BIOS revision A15 to tackle some of these incompatibilities, especially with Windows 10 power management, and newer video cards, as the Nvidia GTX 16 family.

Lately my machine resets sporadically sometimes 4 times on a day (Mostly during gaming, as it seems not to happen on normal office and surfing). I suspect the Intel 7260 card, and a new video card (Nvidia 1650 Super) are the culprits, I selected the 1650S because of it lower TDP, as the 8700 still have the default PSU (Its always connected to a UPS), I think the video card is not defective but it is not 100% compatible?. I have never had temperature issues, I live on a city where most of the year you have chill and mild temperatures, and my case do not report high temperatures, CPU cores are between 37 and 55 (Celsius), most of the time on late 40s, GPU on late 30s but usually not reaching late 50s while gaming.

I’m using the latest version of Windows 10 (2004 – 19041.450), I ended using the first version of Nvidia Driver I could found for this card (441.20), as I think is the most stable. (The card is not overclocked, neither the system, 4790 processor (Without a K) is not overclockable. I have been using a RAID 0 of 4 CRUCIAL MX-500 480GB each with no issues whatsoever as my main storage.

These resets are driving me crazy; I had a RX 470 before the 1650S, and remember having similar issues when installed it, ended up disabling Bluetooth and using only USB mouse and Keyboard to maintain the system stable.

Currently I have no money to afford buying a new system with the same or similar performance to this one. It has 32 GB in RAM, they have never been removed and work solid since 2016.

Please advise or share your experiences thinking I must solve it with what I got, investing 100 or 150 bucks but no more than that.

Thinking on (Please advise):

• Replace PSU (My PSU seems to be ok, is the original one 460w)
• Get rid of Intel 7260 and replace Bluetooth and Wi-Fi with another piece of hardware. (I do not trust 7260, as I’ve seen a lot of different issues on the web with this card.
• Get rid of Norton Security and use Defender and Windows Firewall
• Go back to RX-470 (Was more stable, but I didn’t have Bluetooth devices when using it, so maybe it’s just an impression)

I’m not a heavy gamer, and I only play from time to time (Old games, and racing games, like forza 4, but I need a solid machine for photo and video edition, and office stuff, that works stable and just do not reset by itself.