XPS 8300, displays white or black screen

I think I will bite the bullet and go for a new PC. The Dell XPS 8940 looks good and will give me a significant boost to the speed I have been used to. Pity I don't live in the States though as the US site offers a whole range of options to customise your PC which their UK doesn't. I want one with Bluray optical drive like my old 8300 has but the UK version only has a DVD burner. So would need to swap that out and buy another drive. The memory option also means I would need to discard the supplied 16mb of memory if I want to go to 32mb from the start! Still we always lose out on deals in the UK. May well keep this old computer and do some rebuilding as well.

At least the new Dell has USB 3.1 Gen 1 as against my current slow USB 2.1. Though I see their are even later generations which I am surprised this latest Dell hasn't got!

@Fly-Catchers   - Why not just get a USB3.1 BluRay drive and keep the internal DVD drive?

Why would you have to discard the OEM 16 GB of RAM? The XPS 8940 has 4 DIMM slots for RAM, and more than likely, Dell will install 2x 8 GB. So all you need do is buy another 2x 8 GB.

Many Dell users buy RAM from crucial.com because they guarantee compatibility, if they recommend it for a specific PC model. I'm pretty sure they sell/ship to the UK...

DesktopHopefully will get a new pc in the next month or so. And will indeed get an external Bluray player. In the meantime I am still tinkering with my 8300! Because although I have got those hard drive error messages I still wonder if that would cause these graphic glitches? I can boot up ok. Open word documents and surf the net. But if I view my photos through the picture folder and go full screen I soon get this effect. For the moment it is not always them shutting down. And can sometimes clear the screen by closing the effected window. This effect is somewhat different to the glitch on my original graphics card which just gave a completely white or black screen which you could not recover from. That card is now dead. I have tried to find a newer driver for this older card but it appears to the last and latest they produced. It is a very old Radeon card. Running any video options like iplayer, YouTube or DVDpro also crashes the system. But none image software seems ok.

It's possible the old video card isn't fully compatible with the version of .net or some other essential OS file that's installed by the current version of Windows. So I don't know if the issues with this card add much to understanding the rest of the problems.

And of course, one of the HDDs in your RAID0 is on its way to the dumper and that could explain these problems too. 

Only you can decide if you want to invest more time and money for a new HDD in this PC...

Is the XPS 8930 still available from Dell? I just searched Dell's sales pages for XPS models with 9th Gen CPUs, which is what's in the XPS 8930, but all it offers is XPS 8940 models which have 10th Gen CPUs. You might still be able to get an XPS 8930, if that's what you want, from a "Big Box" store or the giant online retail site...

Have you looked on these forums to see what users are saying? Both have issues with heat and fan noise, especially when gaming. I have an XPS 8930 with 9th Gen i7 CPU, and it's very quiet and runs cool for me, but I don't game.

Advantage of the XPS 8930 is/was customization including amount of RAM, an optional upgrade to a 850W PSU from Dell, or an after-market PSU upgrade. The XPS 8940 has a non-standard custom PSU, like the G5 5090. An upgraded PSU is only available with the XPS 8940 Special Edition but it's just 500W. Since many of the latest GPUs require >500W PSUs, that might limit GPU upgrade options in the future. And the XPS 8940 seems expensive, at least to me...

Only you can decide what fits your PC needs and budget...

If your backup disk was made when you had a RAID0 setup, it won't work if you install an SSD now which would have to be installed in non-RAID mode.

Here are the storage specs for the XPS 8940:

The XPS 8940 uses an M.2 SSD as the primary drive with Windows on it. So if you buy a SATA SSD for the XPS 8300 now, you'd have to install it in one of the 2.5" cages in the XPS 8940 and use it for extra storage or for backup since the OEM M.2 SSD is the primary drive.  NOTE: If you get a SATA SSD now, you'll need a drive tray to hold a 2.5" SATA SSD in one of the 3.5" HDD bays in the XPS 8300.

Don't know how much stuff is stored on your RAID0 array now, but suppose you remove the bum HDD and then wipe and install Windows and apps on the remaining HDD in a non-RAID setup? That way you won't spend extra money now, even if you eventually get a new PC and could move a new SATA SSD into it.

Since MS stopped supporting Win 7, you may be forced to upgrade to Win 10, whichever drive setup you use in the XPS 8300. It may still be a free upgrade, as long as you have a readable Win 7 product key sticker on the PC now.  Even if you have (or buy) a Win 7 installation DVD, you won't be able to update it beyond what's on that disc because Win 7 fixes and security updates are no longer available...

I don't know if that PSU is compatible. First thing is to measure the existing PSU so you get an idea of what might fit.

And then search these forums for threads that discuss replacing the PSU in the XPS 8300 to see what others have used.