Aurora R12, not overclocked, crashing while gaming

Updating the NVIDIA driver seems to have worked. No timeout BSOD’s since the update.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I also just received an Aurora R12 3090 11900KF this past week and started receiving the CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT ERROR. The computer would also freeze and get the pixelated black screen. My machine has all the windows updates, nVidia updates, and Dell updates as of 5/1/2021. The issue normally occurs of just playing two or so games of Call of Duty. The issue was happening on a regular occurrence. 

I read the post of changing the BIOS overlock feature to OC LV 2. This has seem to resolve my issue since the issue has not occurred again. 

I will see about testing OC disabled and at LV 1 again to check if issue occurs back on those settings.

On a side note, the heat from the top of the case sure does get hot. My thermal scanner was reading 124-130 F right after playing a game. My room sure will get toasty this upcoming summer.

I am having these same issues.

 My temp fix for a push and pull .https://www.amazon.com/AC-Infinity-MULTIFAN-Receiver-Playstation/dp/B00G05A2MU

I also don’t see the need to overclock with these high spec systems. My R11/3090 I9-10900KF does just fine on its own as well for the gpu, overclocked disable still runs @ 1935MHz and the temps are perfect. The vram temps are around 86-96c. 

Its the motherboard. It was made poorly and cannot regulate the voltage like a high end gaming motherboard should be doing. I have the R12 but with the 3080 and 11700kf. Have had the CPU replaced already and I haven't even had it for one week. Didn't fix the issue. You can see the issue if you run a hardware monitoring program. For me - my voltage was spiking up to 1.6 almost 1.7 not even OC'd!!! That's crazy high. And as a result my temps were skyrocketing towards 100 degrees Celsius which forced it to crash. And to make things even better, Dell opted to make the bios the most plain and limited in regards to gaming options and customizing the motherboards configuration that in doing so they shot themselves in their own foot. If they had included the ability to customize the MB config - we gamers could more than likely fix the voltage issues ourselves by doing a little bit of tweaking/trial & error. But since they didn't - as you and i know - we reap the outcome of having a very expensive rig that repeatedly crashes........... and there is nothing we can do about it.

... and we are back to constant BSOD Watchdog_Timeout errors.

After a couple weeks of 1 or 2 BSOD’s a day at most, we are up to 10 today. No changes were made to BIOS settings or NVIDIA drivers. There was a Win10 update a few days ago, but no immediate effect was observed.

I’m at a loss what to do at this point, other than wait for this upcoming BIOS update.

Frustrating.

Have you resolved this issue? I have a new r10 that constantly crashes playing Warzone. To the point where it will crash before even loading into a match

Maybe check your Vitual Memory  page file size. You may need to go custom settings. So if you have 32gb Ram set initial and max @ something like 32000. 

Same issue with my brand new R12.  More info here:

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/Aurora-R12-Clock-watchdog-timeout-error/td-p/7856899/page/4

That’s interesting thanks for sharing.

Digital VRM is the way to go. Analog VRM is not sufficient anymore, unless you use high end VRM components. Which these are not. 

For these CPU's you need a lot of Amps on the VRM section to be able to keep them stable at high frequencies. Because of the high current requirements, even the slightest voltage fluctuation will cause huge swings in power delivery (V * A = Watts), causing instability. 

That's why you need a digital VRM, to control that and give you access in the bios to something called voltage droop control, which in turn allows you to change the way the VRM regulates it voltage during up and down swings. There's usually like 10 or more different voltage drop controls. With an analog VRM you don't have the option to change the VRM behavior, and the analogue is often to slow to react to the swings.

I had the same issue. Dell support try to install older bios by going to there website, click on download, get a prompt that Said "you can't downgrade bios" and told me "WE can't do anything, get a refund". Poorest support ever for a 3k cost ...

Yep, pretty much same thing here from tech support. Wanted me to spend another $100 for better tech support and said, oh well, can't be fixed. Unreal

R12 3080 i9-11900KF 32gb Ram, arrived yesterday. all drivers/firmware updates done. Spent hours on the phone to support due to BSOD even on startup, sometimes after playing 20mins on Eurotruck Sim. Not overclocked. Support said I'm within 14 days so perhaps return for a refund. Not really the answer I was looking for.

I had the exact same issue with my R11 10900kf 3080 I got BSOD when i overclocked it threw command center.......I ended up emailing Alienware tech support and we went back and forth for 1 month trying to solve it and never did so they sent me a new R12 11900kf 3080 and had no problem.....best bet if still under warranty call them up and if they can’t resolve they will most likely send a new one to you