Aurora R8, running hot?

liquid cooling is not some magic panacea.

in the best of cases (not all are)

1: it moves the heat outside the PC to the room (not inside PC case !) if room is hot, you lose.

2: it can have a huge radiator, even 2 times need, lets say heat is 200w watts so get 400w cooling tower.

3: then run a huge fan on it , the larger that better (more CFM PER RPM) large fans moves more air and is quite.

Three tiny fans  screaming would stinks. IMO.

The faster CPU and GPU use lots of heat to run games, about 300watts all by them selves.

this heat must go somewhere,  and only you can control that,  the PC can be any where or earth.

a 90f garage.

a 90f closet.

a 90F cabana on a Mexican beach.

or condo with 68deg F, room.

surely all places are not the same.

personally i'd have made my own. picking the best parts,  for water cooling that made the least noise, at 300W.

It's been reasonably cool here. I'd say the room was probably 75 F or cooler when I was having these issues. I have no AC, just a window fan, but it has not been very hot lately.

"2080s is not 1 card there are many cards, with that chip series name."

Yeah, unfortunately, I don't know what mine is. I just bought the prebuilt Aurora R8 with the best specs I could get. Is there a way I can figure this out?

"is the fan speeding up at it gets to hot, if not, that is wrong. (settings wrong in bios, IDK) but are wrong"

Yes, the fan is definitely kicking in when it is under load. It's fairly loud. I just this morning installed a new BIOS driver, so maybe that will help. I have not had the chance to play anything yet. In addition, I have changed my "thermal" setting in Alienware Command Center to be "Performance", when it used to be "Balanced." Maybe that will help as well. I will check this evening, but I have a feeling it won't help much. We'll see.

what is your ambient room temps/? first and always first, I cant see you or it, or your room.

some run PCs in a closet, again I cant see it.

70F or 95F room?????????

I cant know that so is first always,

many PCs are on tropical islands and no AC (HVAC) home cooling at all, or are you down under and it's cold.?

80C is hot, most processors (intel and AMD) CPU self slow down near there, 80c and

CPU   and halt at 90c. (intel spec)

modern PGUs now do the same (they got smarter), self throttle down if too hot (not saying I now your exact GPU, lacking full oem p/n and sku)

2080s is not 1 card there are many cards, with that chip series name.

is your water cooling working right, just because it's water , it still has a fan. (and same heat to expel)

is the fan speeding up at it gets to hot, if not, that is wrong. (settings wrong in bios, IDK) but are wrong

some folks don't like fans to run fast, so slow them and this causes the GPU to have a lower life span, if run too hot, you do know that heat kills all silicon made, (the more heat the worst it gets!!!)

the USA military (spec) we do just that to prove the parts can last using heat, and clock rates,fast... milspec.

so learn from that,  learn to run the fans faster, and cooler room...

many silicon planets (fab) run 65F temps in the building just for that reason. million dollar systems last longer.

the best water cooling is large radiator (overkill)and large slow fan that turns quiet unless needs to go faster.

cool and quiet costs MORE.

Thank you so much for your in-depth reply! I really appreciate it, as I am a total beginner when it comes to hardware.

2. Improve airflow in the casing either by setting a more aggressive curve in AWCC or swapping out the fans for better 3rd party fans. Liquid cool the GPU.

When I was configuring the machine to buy it, I didn't see a liquid cooling option for the GPU. Is that a third-party only thing as well?

3. Your liquid cooling is for the CPU only so let's focus on that. For it to cool down the CPU, the fan as to push the heat from the radiator out the top of the casing. How fast was the top fan spinning when you hit 70C? You're hitting maximum TDP @ 85W for CPU temp in the 70s. Trying spinning up the fan (warning, Dell fans will sound like an airplane during takeoff once you hit 50% in AWCC). Same for GPU, try ramping up the front fan. That's what feeds the cool air to the GPU blower fan.

Hmm, I am not sure about how fast the fan was spinning. Where do I go to look for that statistic? Is it in the HWMonitor? And I will definitely try adjusting the fans in AWCC this evening and experimenting with the same games.

4. Oh yeah! XPS/ R7/ R8 owners have either experienced loud noise, high temps or both! And we've come here to learn how to fix it/ share our pain/ bleep at Dell/ etc.

Haha. Well, that does sort of make me feel better, in a strange way.

there is no win for GPU in the small XPS/R7/R8 chassis.

It's interesting, because a few people have told me that this is a small chassis. It's actually the biggest desktop I have ever owned! It makes me wonder how small form factor towers work at all.

The astute reader would then say move away from blowers! That's what yours truly did too by shunning Dell's GPU and swapping in a twin open fan card. Wrong answer again. First, the chassis is so small that there is barely space for the hot air thrown out by the open heatsinks to go anywhere. You say there are holes on the side of the chassis? Reach behind your R8 and pull that nice black panel release. Now carefully remove the left panel and look at the inside. Before that, note there are 12 horizontal openings on the outside. Now how many openings are on the inside? Less than 8. That metal plate with honeycomb pattern has a solid part that is EXACTLY level with the graphics card PCIe slot is. Dell never wanted anyone to stray from blower style so they never needed to open out the vents for an open fan style card.

So you're pretty much stuck with either a hot blower card or buy a Strix or something and still have it run warm. Or you can liquid cool the GPU but that's a different story altogether.

Thanks for all these details! It sounds like, then, the issue is just how this tower is designed and the fan blower style Dell GPU. If liquid cooling is something I'd have to get from a third party, maybe I should return this machine and look at a different manufacturer that offers it. Before purchasing this machine a few weeks ago, I hadn't bought one in years, so I don't have much knowledge about modern hardware. I expected a modern gaming machine to be able to run everything at high quality right out of the box.

You've given me a lot to try and to think about. Thank you so much again!

1. Are these temperatures dangerous?

2. How can I lower the temperatures?

3. I bought liquid cooling so this wouldn't happen. Is there possibly a problem with my cooling system?

4. Does anyone else with an Aurora R8 see this problem?

5. Do I need to only use certified Dell drivers for my GPU? Someone on another forum told me that I needed to, but Dell support said I didn't so I am really confused.

1. Not yet. But close.

2. Improve airflow in the casing either by setting a more aggressive curve in AWCC or swapping out the fans for better 3rd party fans. Liquid cool the GPU.

3. Your liquid cooling is for the CPU only so let's focus on that. For it to cool down the CPU, the fan as to push the heat from the radiator out the top of the casing. How fast was the top fan spinning when you hit 70C? You're hitting maximum TDP @ 85W for CPU temp in the 70s. Trying spinning up the fan (warning, Dell fans will sound like an airplane during takeoff once you hit 50% in AWCC). Same for GPU, try ramping up the front fan. That's what feeds the cool air to the GPU blower fan.

4. Oh yeah! XPS/ R7/ R8 owners have either experienced loud noise, high temps or both! And we've come here to learn how to fix it/ share our pain/ bleep at Dell/ etc.

5. You don't really need to.

Someone educate me here: is this RTX 2080 card yet another blower shipped in the R8? Either way, there is no win for GPU in the small XPS/R7/R8 chassis. This Turing chip itself has TDP of 215W and from your image posted, you have maxed out on 215W. So you are generating 215J every second and you need to have somewhere to throw that heat away. Enter the blower:

Blower cards usually use that one fan to take in the air from the chassis that comes from the front fan. Suppose your front fan is spinning fast enough to supply the cool air (btw, your room is quite warm at 32C based on idle/ startup temp so that's even more disadvantage). Now that little fan blows the air across the VRMs and GPU die before making its way out the back of your R8 chassis. Do you think that little fan is going to remove all 215W? Nope. You're lucky if it's even 70% at 2800rpm you posted. So you're stuck at 80C and the card throttles.

The astute reader would then say move away from blowers! That's what yours truly did too by shunning Dell's GPU and swapping in a twin open fan card. Wrong answer again. First, the chassis is so small that there is barely space for the hot air thrown out by the open heatsinks to go anywhere. You say there are holes on the side of the chassis? Reach behind your R8 and pull that nice black panel release. Now carefully remove the left panel and look at the inside. Before that, note there are 12 horizontal openings on the outside. Now how many openings are on the inside? Less than 8. That metal plate with honeycomb pattern has a solid part that is EXACTLY level with the graphics card PCIe slot is. Dell never wanted anyone to stray from blower style so they never needed to open out the vents for an open fan style card.

So you're pretty much stuck with either a hot blower card or buy a Strix or something and still have it run warm. Or you can liquid cool the GPU but that's a different story altogether.

Thank you so much for your kind, in-depth reply! I really appreciate it, as I am a total beginner when it comes to hardware.

2. Improve airflow in the casing either by setting a more aggressive curve in AWCC or swapping out the fans for better 3rd party fans. Liquid cool the GPU.

When I was configuring the machine to buy it, I didn't see a liquid cooling option for the GPU. Is that a third-party only thing as well?

3. Your liquid cooling is for the CPU only so let's focus on that. For it to cool down the CPU, the fan as to push the heat from the radiator out the top of the casing. How fast was the top fan spinning when you hit 70C? You're hitting maximum TDP @ 85W for CPU temp in the 70s. Trying spinning up the fan (warning, Dell fans will sound like an airplane during takeoff once you hit 50% in AWCC). Same for GPU, try ramping up the front fan. That's what feeds the cool air to the GPU blower fan.

Hmm, I am not sure about how fast the fan was spinning. Where do I go to look for that statistic? Is it in the HWMonitor? And I will definitely try adjusting the fans in AWCC this evening and experimenting with the same games.

4. Oh yeah! XPS/ R7/ R8 owners have either experienced loud noise, high temps or both! And we've come here to learn how to fix it/ share our pain/ bleep at Dell/ etc.

Haha. Well, that does sort of make me feel better, in a strange way.

there is no win for GPU in the small XPS/R7/R8 chassis.

It's interesting, because a few people have told me that this is a small chassis. It's actually the biggest desktop I have ever owned! It makes me wonder how small form factor towers work at all.

The astute reader would then say move away from blowers! That's what yours truly did too by shunning Dell's GPU and swapping in a twin open fan card. Wrong answer again. First, the chassis is so small that there is barely space for the hot air thrown out by the open heatsinks to go anywhere. You say there are holes on the side of the chassis? Reach behind your R8 and pull that nice black panel release. Now carefully remove the left panel and look at the inside. Before that, note there are 12 horizontal openings on the outside. Now how many openings are on the inside? Less than 8. That metal plate with honeycomb pattern has a solid part that is EXACTLY level with the graphics card PCIe slot is. Dell never wanted anyone to stray from blower style so they never needed to open out the vents for an open fan style card.

So you're pretty much stuck with either a hot blower card or buy a Strix or something and still have it run warm. Or you can liquid cool the GPU but that's a different story altogether.

Thanks for all these details! It sounds like, then, the issue is just how this tower is designed and the fan blower style Dell GPU. If liquid cooling is something I'd have to get from a third party, maybe I should return this machine and look at a different manufacturer that offers it.

Before purchasing this machine a few weeks ago, I hadn't bought one in years, so I don't have much knowledge about modern hardware. I expected, perhaps naively, that a modern prebuilt gaming machine would be able to run everything at high quality right out of the box.

You've given me a lot to try and to think about. Thank you so much again!

Yes, the fan is definitely kicking in when it is under load. It's fairly loud. I just this morning installed a new BIOS driver, so maybe that will help. I have not had the chance to play anything yet. In addition, I have changed my "thermal" setting in Alienware Command Center to be "Performance", when it used to be "Balanced." Maybe that will help as well. I will check this evening, but I have a feeling it won't help much. We'll see.

In AWCC, create a custom thermal setting. Under the front and top fans settings, use fixed speed and walk through the various speeds starting from 30% up to 70%. That way you don't need to guess at what point on the fan curve you're on.

Warning: if you swap out the front and top fans for aftermarkets, AWCC settings may go out of whack because the PWM set/ tach values differ. Please go through the various forum posts on the correct aftermarket fans to get because some can cause boot failure due to AW BIOS behavior.

When I was configuring the machine to buy it, I didn't see a liquid cooling option for the GPU. Is that a third-party only thing as well?

It's a third-party only thing. Here are the posts from XPS and Alienware desktop boards:

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8930-SE-CPU-amp-GPU-Water-Cooling-External-Rad/m-p/7313118#M24911 - @Anonymous 

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8930-GPU-and-CPU-Liquid-Cooler-PSU-Case-Swap-Upgrade/m-p/6137280/highlight/true#M16363 - @HanoverB 

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/Experience-of-Buying-an-Aurora-R8/m-p/7352232/highlight/true#M11643 - Yours truly

Hmm, I am not sure about how fast the fan was spinning. Where do I go to look for that statistic? Is it in the HWMonitor? And I will definitely try adjusting the fans in AWCC this evening and experimenting with the same games.

AWCC only tells you percentage of maximum speed. It is quite accurate when using stock fans shipped with your system. Unfortunately I haven't solved this myself. Speedfan doesn't work. HWMonitor doesn't have fan speed information.

It's interesting, because a few people have told me that this is a small chassis. It's actually the biggest desktop I have ever owned! It makes me wonder how small form factor towers work at all.

SFF either sacrifice performance to have very low power draw through lower TDP CPUs and GPUs or high end gaming systems with some custom liquid cooling solution. You can find a number of posts about these in overclocking forums. The R7/R8 looks big because of the plastic panels surrounding it. Once you remove them, you'll see the inside frame is quite compact especially with the creative PSU swing out mechanism.

Before purchasing this machine a few weeks ago, I hadn't bought one in years, so I don't have much knowledge about modern hardware. I expected, perhaps naively, that a modern prebuilt gaming machine would be able to run everything at high quality right out of the box.

Welcome to the club! 

Thanks for the resources on liquid cooling! I don't know anything about building or modding machines, though, so I am not so sure I want to try my hand at installing third party stuff.

Maybe I will look around to see if any prebuilts of other brands offer liquid cooled GPUs or at least better airflow, now that I know that it is likely the culprit. For the cost of this machine, it is disappointing that one has to buy additional third party parts to get it to play games with good temps. I may end up returning it if messing with the fan settings doesn't work.

Thanks for your help! I appreciate it.

Neither did we. Look how much fun we are having learning. 99% of the information you need is in this Community, or an external source is provided.

Yeah, this community has been really helpful thus far! I am very glad I posted here.

Oh, cool. I was not aware of the price match thing. It is very slightly lower in price, but not by much. It's weird, but they aren't even selling machines with a single RTX 2080 any more; just the 2080 Super or the Ti. I just ordered this thing the last week of July, and already the graphics card is not being sold? I wonder if it is because of this heat issue.

And thanks, I'll check out Origin. I think I briefly looked at them when I was deciding on brands, but because I hadn't heard of them before I passed them by. But again, I have been out of the computer market for so long that I only know of brands that were big in like 2009. xD

I'm going to mess with my fan curve while playing games in a few minutes, so we'll see how that goes! Maybe this whole thing will work out okay!

Wow, you totally weren't kidding about the fans being loud! I set them to be a fixed speed of 50% and it sounded like an industrial fan was sitting next to me. Interestingly, I have the top and front fan set to 50%, but their speeds as reported in AWCC were not 50%: the top was like 56% and the front was 39%.

The max GPU temp when playing Rage 2 with these speeds was 79 C (oh boy), and GPU utilization still got up to 100%. I was going to try 70% fan speed, but it was overwhelmingly loud -- like a jet engine. I could not imagine playing with it like that!

Also, Rage 2 keeps crashing now after like 15 minutes. I don't know if that is related, though. Perhaps it is from me not uninstalling previous GPU drivers before updating them in Geforce Experience.

There was a big sale over the weekend, it ended early this morning. 

REPLYING TO: 

Oh, cool. I was not aware of the price match thing. It is very slightly lower in price, but not by much. It's weird, but they aren't even selling machines with a single RTX 2080 any more; just the 2080 Super or the Ti.

@LocalEwok , perhaps a more standardized method of measuring the system would help? Do you have either Unigine Heaven, 3DMark or Furmark installed? Using one of those to benchmark your system would help in narrowing down the root cause(s). You'll have to use it in tandem with a monitoring overlay program like Rivatuner from MSI Afterburner or NVIDIA's own monitoring program. Start with one of the lower end benchmark like 1440p at medium-high setting and observe the following from the monitoring overlay:

GPU temp, GPU utilization, GPU fan RPM, GPU voltage, GPU power, GPU clock, GPU memory clock, CPU temperature, CPU utilization.

Unfortunately there is no way to overlay the case fans during benchmark thanks to Dell motherboard and AWCC so you need to play it by ear. Familiarize with how the fans sound at 30, 40, 50, 60, etc percents. Then as you see the benchmark drive up temperature, you can also hear if the fans do get progressively louder.

From your posts, I can see you love gaming but maybe not so much tinkering with a gaming rig. You want a turnkey solution and believed AW to be the best in terms of design, performance, and price. Similar to you, I last looked at PCs around late 2000s and also have the thought that AW is the way to go for a gaming system. That's why I haven't kicked my R8 to the curb. I've made some mods, hopefully to bring it to the potential its designer(s) meant for it to be before blatant cost cutting business decision took precedence.

Which brings me to @Anonymous comment on OriginPC. Yep, these were ex-AW folks who went on to create another gaming PC brand. However, their days of total freedom may be numbered. Corsair acquired them a while back and I can see the choice of parts for customization being narrowed down... duh. Nevertheless, there's still hope because I believe Corsair is coming from a position of power, already a strong brand with great product offerings for custom high performance gaming systems.

@r72019 , I just noticed that the sale went away too! At that sale price, that $200 card would make it perfect to buy all the right fans + AIO to cool the R8 down.