Aurora R12, issues, please help

Question

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB GDDR61TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s11th Gen Intel Core i7 11700F (8-Core, 16MB Cache, 2.5GHz to 4.9GHz w/Intel Turbo Boost Max)Air Cooled I'm having a few issues that can't seem to resolve on my own. I'm fairly new to maintaining a PC and fixing some issues. My major issue with my R12 is, what I'm guessing, is bottlenecking. I've only had the PC since November or December of 2021 and this issues has been the same since day 1. I've updated drivers, went to Dell support to update everything except the BIOS which I was told to not update BIOS otherwise my issues will get worse. After updating what files I didn't have updated (except BIOS) the issues got a little better but still makes using the PC a hassle. When the issue is at it's worst is when I'm closing out a game or ALT+TAB to check on something else. When closing a game it sometimes takes minutes for everything to stop lagging and freezing up during and after closing the game. It only does this on high demand games, which by my specs the games i'm playing should have absolutely no issues. When I turn the graphics up in games it makes the computer and game lag spike very bad and sometimes freezes the game on screen for a short period. Even on medium settings it will do this on most games. Just very frustrated and a fix for this would be much appreciated!  Did I not match the correct parts when putting the PC together via Dell online? Will the BIOS update resolve the bottlenecking?

JOcean · Accepted Answer

This web page may help you. By inputting some information about your system it will identify a source of bottlenecking. I think the problem is twofold. That video card does not really help max the performance of the CPU and an HDD, even 7200 RPM, is nowhere close to the performance of an SSD. Preferably an M.2 NVMe SSD or at the least a SATA 2.5" SSD. For a GPU you should probably be looking at an RTX 2080 or better. However with prices as insane as they are now it is probably best to wait until they come back down to earth a bit. The R12 is a very sweet system but that GPU is not doing you any favours paired with a powerful CPU.

Also you could consider clean installing Windows. I would bet with all the Dell software and who knows what other apps you have running at startup, it could bog down the system. Personally when I get a new Dell I like to clean install Windows which wipes off all the unneeded bloatware. If you would rather not go through that trouble then instead consider running Task Manager. Look at the Startup tab and any programs that are not must haves at startup can be disabled. If the system runs much better after that then you have found the offending program/s. Programs such as Steam (games), Cortana, Epson or HP print monitors, etc. really have no reason to be running at startup and affect system resources.

Also you never stated how much RAM you have in the system. That can also affect performance but I assume you have at least 16 GB or more?

RodsterB · Accepted Answer

Ding..ding..ding. The single of RAM is your problem. That is causing your spikes and lags. If you go with a 16GB dual channel 8x2 setup, you’ll watch your performance increase by a lot and your performance issues could very well be solved. A GTX 1660 Super for 1080P is still a nice card today even at mid high to high settings.

Prometheus_ · Answer

8GB, 1X8GB, DDR4 32000

It appears as though I bought parts that weren’t really compatible, which would’ve been nice to know before purchasing. I put it together via DELL, probably should’ve been a warning when mixing parts known to cause issues when paired together. I’m going to upgrade RAM to 16GB and get an SSD compatible with my Aurora R12 instead of running a SATA. I’m learning, lol. I love how the R12 is easy to open and access to everything is very simple.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Like @JOcean says, that spinning-platter HDD is really dragging you down. Replace that first with a NVMe-SSD.

A 512gb one should hold all Windows, All apps and programs, and even a couple of your favorite games.

https://www.groovypost.com/reviews/what-is-nvme-m2-ssd-drive-how-fast-is-it/

Your Intel main-processor is nice.
That Nvidia GTX-1660 (while not high-end these days) should be fine for 1080p gaming at medium-to-high graphic-effects settings.

That 8gb is minimum these days with Windows-10 and a nice-game loaded. 8gb x2=16gb would be better if you plan to play nice games. Get exactly matching DIMM-modules and it will run in Dual-Channel Mode.

Be sure nothing is over-heating (by using CPUID's HW-Monitor or HWinfo64) and don't have a bunch of non-sense Apps and processes running in the back-ground while you play.

Prometheus_ · Answer

Would this one work with my setup? I’m assuming so because it was under related products to the Aurora R12.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-memory-upgrade-16gb-1rx8-ddr4-udimm-3400mhz-xmp/apd/ab535020/memory

BookHatter · Answer

Speedstep is broken as well. I managed to fix it thankfully.  One week having this thing and I've spent such time fixing and then find more issues to fix

mako64 · Answer

Yeah you’ll see a big difference on the 2 stick ram and ssd upgrade , also look up pc gaming rig tuning that’s a big step too. Disabling any auto updates - Noticifications ect. There some great YouTube videos of course about it.

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Aurora R12, issues, please help

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