Dell XPS 8950 Fail - What next?

[Lohena]

Hi all,

So I just got a new Dell XPS 8950 all set up and working great for a week or two until I heard a loud gurgling sound likely from the AIO liquid cooling option I chose for it. Opened it up today and found oily fluid coming from the pump and fluid all over the power supply casing. Very disappointed! Dell OEM part BTW.

My question is should I replace or return this and move on from Dell? Performance wise my setup was amazing but I'm concerned this is just an indicator of things to come with Dell products.

I'm not a computer expert and I'm not sure if I'm up for building one on my own. On the other hand a custom build with the same level of components would be significantly higher (~$1400 more with Purrrfect Audio: https://www.studiocat.com/products/pro-studio-daw)

Any advice? Should I take the plunge and build my own. I have limited time to work on music and am concerned all my time will go to this rather than writing/producing music.

Thanks!
Paul

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[Nico5]

My question is should I replace or return this and move on from Dell?

A long time ago, I used to be a regular Dell purchaser, but gave up on Dell for desktop machines, mostly because they started having proprietary connectors making it more difficult to add or replace components with 3rd party parts. But if that matters, depends on one's own priorities.

I'm not a computer expert and I'm not sure if I'm up for building one on my own. On the other hand a custom build with the same level of components would be significantly higher (~$1400 ...

Here where I live, it costs relatively little extra (between approx $50 and $150 - depending on build complexity like liquid cooling, RGB lighting and if you want them to install the OS).

Assembling yourself is feasible for someone who enjoys tinkering and really enjoys attention to detail in following a manual and watching related YouTube videos. -- But it's fiddly and not stress free, since there's some pretty delicate parts involved. So unless you're really emotionally attracted to the building process, I'd recommend avoiding it.

 

[walkaschaos]

Build your own, it's fun, it's like lego for adults. Even Dells with good 'specs' use the absolute cheapest garbage components possible and their deeply integrated bloatware makes it run even worse.

 

[Daren Audio]

That doesn't give much confidence to a product that has failed within weeks.
The thing with AIO and liquid-cooling is when it fails, it fails catastrophically. A big mess.

I ended up getting air-cooled instead for that very reason as there's less points of failure compared to AIOs. Even some of the Noctua fans have outperformed AIOs. It's one less thing to worry about.

Build your own. M.2 NVMe SSDs and RAM are dirt cheap compared to markups from pre-builds.

 

[PaulieDC]

Hi all,

So I just got a new Dell XPS 8950 all set up and working great for a week or two until I heard a loud gurgling sound likely from the AIO liquid cooling option I chose for it. Opened it up today and found oily fluid coming from the pump and fluid all over the power supply casing. Very disappointed! Dell OEM part BTW.

My question is should I replace or return this and move on from Dell? Performance wise my setup was amazing but I'm concerned this is just an indicator of things to come with Dell products.

I'm not a computer expert and I'm not sure if I'm up for building one on my own. On the other hand a custom build with the same level of components would be significantly higher (~$1400 more with Purrrfect Audio: https://www.studiocat.com/products/pro-studio-daw)

Any advice? Should I take the plunge and build my own. I have limited time to work on music and am concerned all my time will go to this rather than writing/producing music.

Thanks!
Paul

With the fluid leak, you have no idea what damage is done, I would absolutely return that machine.

 

[PaulieDC]

Would you be interested in building your own? I had put together a Newegg list with component examples of what you could build for about $1300:

Computer parts, laptops, electronics, and more - Newegg United States

Newegg is proud to offer United States the best prices, fast shipping and top-rated customer service for Computer Parts, Laptops, Electronics and more!

newegg.io

For $100 more you can upgrade the i5 to the i7, but even that i5-13600 is equal in speed to the Apple M1, no slouch. Just FYI!

 

[Lohena]

Thanks for the feedback and input everyone! I think first of all I'll move on from Dell and request a refund and not a replacement. The OEM components seem sketchy.

I'll still have to decide to build my own or go with a builder. It seems like the issue for me with the audio specific builders is that they only offer DDR4 for their home studio options and I need to upgrade to the pro builds at over $3k to get DDR5. I find that strange because my Dell had the newer DDR5 and came in at $1700. Like I said the performance was great so I don't want to buy a machine with old technology.

So I started looking at some gaming builders like Digital Storm and it seems like I can get a build similar to what I had in the Dell for just a little more. Considering they're putting in better and upgradeable components and probably offer better service, that might be something I should look into.

Anybody have experience or concerns with using gaming pc builders to build for audio? After seeing how well the Dell worked for my purposes I'm more open to this option now. I mainly use physically modeled instruments with some small sample libraries and minimal live recording.

 

[Lohena]

Would you be interested in building your own? I had put together a Newegg list with component examples of what you could build for about $1300:

Computer parts, laptops, electronics, and more - Newegg United States

Newegg is proud to offer United States the best prices, fast shipping and top-rated customer service for Computer Parts, Laptops, Electronics and more!

newegg.io

For $100 more you can upgrade the i5 to the i7, but even that i5-13600 is equal in speed to the Apple M1, no slouch. Just FYI!

Thanks for putting this together! Whether I decide to build my own or pick components for a builder, this is super helpful to see what other experienced musicians are choosing.

Do you feel it's worth it to upgrade to DDR5? I've read there's a significant performance improvement and it seems that's where the future is heading thinking about upgrade compatibility later on.

 

[PaulieDC]

Thanks for putting this together! Whether I decide to build my own or pick components for a builder, this is super helpful to see what other experienced musicians are choosing.

Do you feel it's worth it to upgrade to DDR5? I've read there's a significant performance improvement and it seems that's where the future is heading thinking about upgrade compatibility later on.

I went with DDR5 because boards that support that have double the PCIe lanes which I wanted for 5 NVMe drives on board. I did a ridiculously long post on my whole build to hopefully answer some questions for those seeking to build, and I cover the ram choices there. Prices have even come down more since I wrote this, in fact, I don’t look at the price of my ram now, so I don’t get aggravated, lol! If you want to throw a pot of coffee on and find a comfortable chair, maybe this info will help:

Just finished building a new 13th Gen tower, here's the "what and why" of each component

NOTE: This post will be so big it'll break the 10,000 character limit, so I'll post in three sections. If you aren't looking to build a PC, you probably won't want to read this. ;) PART 1 of 3 My new tower is done after a year of slowly researching and gathering parts, and I'm posting what it's...

vi-control.net

 

[Nico5]

@Lohena:

I had slightly different priorities to @PaulieDC and ended up with a medium priced but rather powerful AMD based DDR system, calling it “boring“ because it’s pragmatic, not spectacular.

High level rationals, resulting technical considerations and final parts choices are in this very recent post:

I've just finished building a new "boring" Windows DAW

Why "boring"? wanted to get to a relatively high performance system for a medium price, stay highly backward compatible, avoid too much fiddling with low level settings (like CPU affinity), keep most of it for 5-10 years, and hopefully avoid "non-supported" status by most software makers...

vi-control.net

 

[Lohena]

I did a ridiculously long post on my whole build to hopefully answer some questions for those seeking to build, and I cover the ram choices there.

Haha, I noticed this thread but got lost pretty quickly! I'm really not that familiar with computer tech yet. I'll be sure to scroll this and focus on your comments regarding RAM and DDR5.

 

[ip20]

In cases like these but if it can’t be returned or if it’s a self built PC, if liquid cooling fails and destroys multiple components in a computer, is the responsibility on the owner for costs/replacement, even if everything is damaged or does the liquid cooling manufacturer have some responsibility?

 

[PaulieDC]

Haha, I noticed this thread but got lost pretty quickly! I'm really not that familiar with computer tech yet. I'll be sure to scroll this and focus on your comments regarding RAM and DDR5.

Summary: If you go with DDR4, you'll have stable rated speeds and you can use either a 12th Gen or 13th Gen CPU and the ram is cheaper. If you want the fastest ram available and also want 4 or 5 NVMe drives on the motherboard itself, then your choice is 13th Gen and DDR5. The first list of components I sent is DDR4, it's a great option. I haven't looked at @Nico5 's list that he posted yet, but check that out because he knows his stuff, I've learned good things from his posts.

 

[PaulieDC]

In cases like these but if it can’t be returned or if it’s a self built PC, if liquid cooling fails and destroys multiple components in a computer, is the responsibility on the owner for costs/replacement, even if everything is damaged or does the liquid cooling manufacturer have some responsibility?

That's a good question, but ultimately the liquid cooling makers will probably claim that they are responsible to replace a defective unit but make no claim on surrounding damage. That would probably take an appeal of some sort in small claims court and they know that nearly everyone won't do that. On this topic I stay old school and just get the huge Noctua NH-D15 tower and not worry about it.

 

[Lohena]

@Lohena:

I had slightly different priorities to @PaulieDC and ended up with a medium priced but rather powerful AMD based DDR system, calling it “boring“ because it’s pragmatic, not spectacular.

High level rationals, resulting technical considerations and final parts choices are in this very recent post:

I've just finished building a new "boring" Windows DAW

Why "boring"? wanted to get to a relatively high performance system for a medium price, stay highly backward compatible, avoid too much fiddling with low level settings (like CPU affinity), keep most of it for 5-10 years, and hopefully avoid "non-supported" status by most software makers...

vi-control.net

Thanks for sharing! Very interesting because your modeled instrument focus is similar to mine. I've never seen a build for this.

I really liked using Windows 11 when I had the short chance. I also had 32 gb RAM because I am not sure how much difference it makes for modeled instruments. I thought it is primarily needed to access sample libraries. How does RAM affect modeled performance?

Thanks!

 

[dzilizzi]

I've built two machines in the last 4 years? Maybe five. I can't keep track any more. It isn't hard, though getting my fingers in small spaces can be a pain. Lots of YouTube videos out there to make it easy. The big thing I will recommend is use www.pcpartpicker.com to check your setup. Make sure you click only show compatible parts. Start with what is important to you. My last was a motherboard that had a lot of m.2 and SATA connections because it was going to be my sample computer. Then you don't have to worry about the parts not working together.

Also, if you are not experienced, do not try liquid cooling. It is a major problem if you don't get it right. I watched some videos on doing it and decided I'm not that confident in my abilities.

 

[Nico5]

I really liked using Windows 11 when I had the short chance. I also had 32 gb RAM because I am not sure how much difference it makes for modeled instruments. I thought it is primarily needed to access sample libraries. How does RAM affect modeled performance?

If you like Windows 11, totally go for it. Lots of music makers are using it perfectly well. (I just stayed extra conservative, since I have a lot of software and hardware and some of it is quite old, and I just happen to have experience that it works well with Win10.)

I also had 32 gb RAM because I am not sure how much difference it makes for modeled instruments.

Yes, for primarily modelled instruments, 32GB of RAM should be fine - even for a pop/rock/electronica type of productions with some sampled instruments, it should be ok. It's generally film composers with very large orchestral library projects, who need the large RAM amounts. And this forum has many (most?) of those kinds of music makers. So you'll find advice often heavily slanted that way.

However, for best performance in DDR5 land, make sure you get 2 matched RAM modules adding up to the total amount. A single module or 4 modules only get degraded RAM performance.

The downside of the DDR5 story is, that the (current) situation that for best performance it's not a good strategy to fill 2 more empty RAM slots later. (From what I've followed it's unclear, if that could possibly change with future BIOS upgrades. I'm not counting on it, but would take it as a nice future surprise if it happened.

How does RAM affect modeled performance?

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure, how much the RAM speed practically matters for modeled instruments (or fx, since those are also calculation intensive). I just haven't seen any good performance tests specifically along those lines.

So I took more of a guess (for raw computer science reasons), that better RAM speed and latency helps to reduce overall latency for modeled instruments and FX.

But I may have overspent on RAM for my short term use case. However, that was extra money I was willing to spend - just in case. And either way, it hopefully means that I can delay an eventual upgrade for longer.

---

p.s. The CPU/motherboard of the old system I replaced lasted me about 10 years, so at least last time, I made some good (or lucky) guesses about where to splurge and where to save.

 

[ip20]

That's a good question, but ultimately the liquid cooling makers will probably claim that they are responsible to replace a defective unit but make no claim on surrounding damage. That would probably take an appeal of some sort in small claims court and they know that nearly everyone won't do that. On this topic I stay old school and just get the huge Noctua NH-D15 tower and not worry about it.

It’s surprising to me that on YouTube even young beginners with very expensive gaming set ups, the trend is overwhelmingly liquid cooling. But with issues like the above OP seeming more common than any would like with the possible dangers of liquid cooling, all these people of many stages of expertise or none, are still going with liquid cooling.

Seems so risky if this ends up destroying $1-3,000 worth of hardware inside or even the GPU alone! The OP is fortunate to have the option to return but self build or if it happens down the line, that option wouldn’t be possible.

I myself was started to get carried away with all the YouTube trends in desiring the Liquid cooling route for aesthetics, but after seeing OPs post, it sounds too risky!

 

[Nico5]

I also avoided liquid cooling for the time being. in addition to the extra risk of liquid damage, there’s also a risk of additional noise due to the coolant pumps. That doesn‘t matter to everyone, but is one of the many considerations in a custom build.

 

[PaulieDC]

It’s surprising to me that on YouTube even young beginners with very expensive gaming set ups, the trend is overwhelmingly liquid cooling. But with issues like the above OP seeming more common than any would like with the possible dangers of liquid cooling, all these people of many stages of expertise or none, are still going with liquid cooling.

Seems so risky if this ends up destroying $1-3,000 worth of hardware inside or even the GPU alone! The OP is fortunate to have the option to return but self build or if it happens down the line, that option wouldn’t be possible.

I myself was started to get carried away with all the YouTube trends in desiring the Liquid cooling route for aesthetics, but after seeing OPs post, it sounds too risky!

It is ALL about the killer RGB gaming build, when you have a high-end cooling system, you not only get the bling but many of the CPU cooler units have an LED screen so you can post your logo or favorite game or some obscene message. If done right it's very effective cooling, but the big air units pull their own weight but they look horrible and cover all of the fluff. The Noctua NH-D15 is super quiet and proven, so if you want a fuss-free cooling solution and have a wide enough case, run on air and skip the bling!

Look at my rig, this would be a travesty to a gamer, the black Noctua cooler totally blocks everything! I bought aRGB Ram, forgetting you wouldn't be able to see it, lol! But it's under there. Disregard the round plastic sewing kit container holding up the video card, that was a temp, lol:



So I found this rig online and you can see all the fun aRGB stuff including the cooler. Oh, the RAM he has is the same as mine, only you can see his:


You have to really want liquid cooling to manage it. You have to mount the intake tubes just right to avoid gurgling from air pockets, etc etc. There may be some members on here who love it and they can give better info on that. My frankenstein rgb wannabe sits under my desk anyway, all the RGB does is light up the carpet under the desk in the event I drop something, like a guitar pick.

Oh, just to clarify, I refer above to aRGB which means addressable RGB, and THAT simply means that the fan controller and motherboard talk to each other, so if I choose, say, and all blue running theme, the RAM and case lights and fans are all in sync. My video card is just RGB, it ignores all that and just lights up with the spectrum. That and $3.50 gets me a ride on the subway, as we used to say.