Question Problems with refurbished Dell gaming PC

[pouya.1991]

Hi,
I have a Dell Alienware Aurora R11 gaming PC that comes with an Nvidia 3080 GPU which I bought from BestBuy as a refurbished machine 10 days ago.
I just started using it and tried to install the middle earth shadow of the war on it, and it caused the machine to crash and showing this image on the display:
https://ibb.co/ncx8Ft9

Also, I tried to use TensorFlow to use it to train a deep learning model for image classification and it caused the same behavior:
https://ibb.co/St0YPdD

I'm wondering is it a hardware problem or software?
Do I need to return this machine to BestBuy?
thanks!
--
Pouya Ahmadvand

 

[rgd1101]

check cpu/gpu temp?

probably return it.

 

[punkncat]

If I am seeing the pictures right, it appears to be artifacting. This would be a GPU problem and is, unfortunately, a very common issue to folks buying 3070/3080 series cards. IF you are otherwise happy with the machine I would look to warranty replacement of the GPU, or as above would return it.

 

[pouya.1991]

Thanks for the replies, I'm happy with the machine and prefer to replace the GPU, I'm wondering can I contact Nvidia directly regarding the GPU? or I need to process my replacement request from BestBuy or Dell?
Thanks

 

[punkncat]

If you location of purchase was Best Buy, start with them.

A very similar situation happened with a friend of mine who purchased a Cyperpower. We did some troubleshooting. He called CB right off, told them what steps we went through and they agreed. They had him contact Zotac with a service # and they are handling the repair of the GPU from there.

 

[animekenji]

Good luck trying to get another 3080 as a replacement if yours is bad. If Best Buy has an identical system on the shelf, I'd do a swap, but since people are snapping these things up just for the video cards, that's not going to be a likely possibility. Returning it for a refund is probably all you're going to be able to do at this point. You'll be waiting forever for an RMA repair if the video card is bad. There are reports now of people being sent refunds when they RMA their videocards, because nobody has any to replace them with and it's pissing people off because now they have a computer with no video card. The refund money does them no good, because they can't afford to replace them with scalper pricing in place, and if you paid scalper prices for your card, you're not going to get back more than MSRP from the manufacturer. You're going to have to return the defective card to whoever you got it from, because at least ebay will refund you the full price that you paid. No AIB is going to pay you $2000 for a defective card that retails for $400 because you were dumb enough to buy it from a scalper. This is one of the pitfalls of buying from scalpers.