jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

My son's new Dell arrived yesterday. It's an XPS 8940, while mine is an 8930, which seems to have been discontinued. The cases are quite a bit different.

One concern with mine was the D drive getting up to 110° and higher when copying a lot of files. I replaced the small top fan with a 120mm, and I added another 120mm to the front. Unfortunately, there is no intake grill in the front for air to enter. I'm going to cut a hole n the front panel. The attachment of the side panel on the 8930 is ridiculous!

This is funny. The 8940 has a grill in the lower front for air to enter. but I doubt I'll be able to add a fan because the chassis behind the plastic panel is not flat. Aside from the small CPU fan, there is just one small fan on the back panel. Although the grill area is large, I don't think a 120mm fan will fit because of interference with components inside. It looks like it will have to struggle along with that one small fan.

One surprisingly nice feature is the cage and spring bracket for an SSD. Usually, if you don't order a component, Dell doesn't make accommodations for it. UPS delivered the SSD a day early, so the timing was perfect, and the Samsung Migration program let me clone the 1TB Toshiba C drive.

Question: Am I correct in assuming that "SATA 0" on the MoBo must be used for the C drive? "SATA 1" would be for D, etc? The cable from SATA 0 is too short to reach to the SSD, so I had to use a 90° cable that sticks out too far to slide the side panel back on.

While he's at work, I'll install his programs. This is a good example of why a separate D drive for data is a good idea. I removed the drive from his other computer and put it into this one - everything is there.

Bayou

110F, or 110C?

If F, don't worry about it. If C, the computer should be returned for defective design.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

So it has been asked by me and many others without a response, do you use air conditioning and if so, what do you keep the thermostat set at? I live in very hot and humid Florida and have never had heat issues with the standard installation of cooling in a Dell computer.

I currently use a pretty large gaming rig for multiple applications at one time and have 3-5 virtual machines running off of it at any given time. I've had cooling issues once when my GPU had an accumulation of dust on the heat sink, and since then I do regular PM and everything works as designed.

1. Computers need an area with good circulation. You had one picture where it was tucked into a open-faced nook and those are never a good place for a computer as the hot air doesn't have room to move away from the PC.

2. If the ambient room temperature is too high, no amount of "sensible" cooling using fans will work.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Answering your question I say, SATA 0,... is the necessary physical mapping of the software system to the cable. It has to happen somewhere. So that is fixed. However, the logical mapping between the drive letter is done is something else. The special thing about the C: drive is it contains the boot instructions. You need to align that matching. This old brain seems to remember that is done in BIOS since you can boot from some alternate media. Also modern machines have one or two m2 slots not necessarily SATA. One is expected to be configured as the C:, boot drive.

Your saga is why I have decided to have Puget Sound build and configure my next machine rather than DIY. As you have noted cooling is absolutely important to the life off the system and involves interplay between the case, fans, motherboard and CPU/memory/video adaptors. It helps to have a specialized engineer and instrumentation on you side.

gsmith051 Loc: Fairfield Glade, TN

Jerry.....,it looks like you have a big problem with the XPS 8940. Just read on Google that one person’s office temp went up 7 degrees while he was using the 8940. Others have said same thing about the tower. Others have said send it back to Dell 🌝 Good luck to you.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

Here is an output from my server which is running on a Dell Studio XPS (forget the model). Note that the ambient temperature in my house is 74-76F:

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I don't use A/C, but I doubt that would make a difference. It's generally in the mid 70s in here, even when it's hot out - lots of shade trees. I just checked, and it's 70.8° F on top of the desk and 71.6° F at the rear of the computer enclosure. The D drive is 91°.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Well, that's not good.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

Oh, well that beats my 90F+ temps with 90% humidity today.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

The right angle sata cable I'm using now has that metal release clip, so it's too high to allow the side panel to slide into place. I ordered a couple of lower cables from B&H. They cheaper and a lot faster at delivery than Amazon Prime.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Local computer repair shops are either closed or are not anxious to take in customers, so we'll both be using these Dells until the others start working again.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I’m hoping he was kidding. If a computer can raise the temperature in an office by 7 degrees, than he must be working in a restroom stall. Btw, 110F is only 43 deg C. It could be cooler, but that wouldn’t worry me.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I worry easily.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Well life’s too short to worry Jerry - let’s figure out to cool that sucker some more

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

When I get back to it, I'm going to see if a 120mm fan will fit in back. I'll wait till I get the Sata cable from B&H so I can put the side back on. With proper air flow, the temp will probably be different.