MyPC8MyBrain

how many processes are running in the background when idle after reboot? (my guess is you are still at least x2 if not x3 higher from the count my task manager shows below; idle after reboot.)

You’re mixing up three different things 1. Edition stability (Enterprise vs Pro) 2. Servicing model (LTSC vs yearly/H2 releases) 3. Update channels (GA vs Insider builds) These behave differently and shouldn’t be compared as if they were the same. Enterprise > Pro because of stability, update discipline, and no consumer experiments. LTSC > Enterprise because it freezes features and gives you the most stable and predictable platform Microsoft makes. You are not missing essential performance fixes on LTSC. The only things you “miss” are UI changes and consumer features. If you want maximum consistency, low background churn, and a workstation OS that never changes under you, LTSC is the correct branch.

a direct comparison against an equivalent HPE configuration to sanity-check this RAM increase. Both servers are effectively identical where it matters: • Xeon Gold 6526Y • 128 GB DDR5-5600 • 2× 480 GB SATA SSD (RI) • Hardware RAID • 8× 2.5" SAS/SATA-capable bays • Redundant Titanium PSUs • The only functional difference is networking (HPE ships 4×1 GbE vs Dell’s 2×1 GbE) Publicly advertised pricing: • Dell PowerEdge R660xs: 8,939.25 link • HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen11: $6,120.28 link (HPE add 2x 480GB SSD Drives to match) Dell’s systems now land almost 50% higher for the same hardware profile.

id recommend Enterprise LTSC over Pro, its faster and de bloated for corporate environments out of the box.

Quick update on the situation, After pushing back on the sudden RAM price hike, Dell doubled down and framed it as “new pricing models” driven by market conditions. I went through several rounds of back-and-forth with their sales and finance contacts. The justification kept shifting, and it became clear the change wasn’t tied to actual upstream cost increases; it was a selective adjustment on server-grade RAM only. The ironic part is we have multiple servers and a large batch of workstations on order. Not a single workstation configuration saw a RAM increase. Only the servers got hit, and only after they realized the size of the overall purchase. That tells you everything. Right now, it looks less like a supply problem and more like internal margin tuning triggered by the current AI-driven panic in the market.

are you running Win11 Enterprise LTSC?

We’ve had our share of global “races” before - atomic, space, take your pick. The difference is those had a finish line. AI doesn’t. This one just keeps accelerating with no defined endpoint, and the collateral damage gets pushed onto everyone else. No one actually seems to know what the end goal is here. There’s no clear technological milestone that advances humanity; just financial greed and FOMO. These companies aren’t betting on a defined outcome; they’re betting on “not missing out,” and all of it revolves around endlessly training bigger models with no finish line. It’s a blind arms race that burns resources and drives prices up for everyone else. The newer crowd pushed the old guard aside, and the whole thing is being driven by this generation’s obsession with FOMO. It’s not discipline, strategy, or long-term vision; it’s reactionary hype, and the industry is paying the price for it.

Yeah, I saw that headline too. This AI frenzy is out of control. By the time the average non-tech person realizes what’s happening, the damage will already be baked in. Prices never snap back 50% in a few months; once they ratchet up, they stay there. If this keeps going unchecked, it’s going to wreck the entire market. Everyone pays for the hype except the companies driving it.

The funny part is we’ve got multiple servers on order and ten times that number in Dell workstations coming in. Not a single workstation config had a RAM price hike. Only the servers did. So the “global supply increase” explanation doesn’t hold water. If this were a universal memory cost jump, it would hit every line across the board. Instead, they selectively bumped server RAM; where margins are already padded and customers are easier to corner. That tells me this isn’t supply pressure; it’s opportunistic pricing.

That isn’t “market adjustment.” It’s straight exploitation. Vendors are offloading their AI-driven supply issues onto end users. They’re the ones pouring billions into AI buildouts and creating this demand spike; now they’re trying to make consumers eat the cost. And let’s be honest; Dell’s RAM was already inflated at roughly triple the real value. Adding another $400 overnight for the same 16 GB stick is outrageous. They’re not buying new stock at panic-pricing today; they’re sitting on inventory. This move is nothing but opportunistic markup, and it’s aggravating to watch.

This is from our Dell business sales manager letting me know that they now need to increase the price for a single 16GB stick of RAM included in our server config by additional $400 for that single RAM stick that already was quoted at around $360+. looks like manufactures and vendors wants us to pay inflated rates created by the current AI-driven market panic they themselves created.

@win32asmguy That lines up with what been observed across multiple Arrow Lake systems, the platform is touchy with PCIe power-state transitions. Disabling PCIe Power State Management might mask the symptom by preventing the low-power handoff that triggers a retrain, but I don’t think it explains the pattern here. The key detail is this, most units with the same BIOS build are not throwing WHEA17 across multiple endpoints during POST. If the BIOS setting alone were the root cause, the failure rate would be universal, not limited to a subset of machines. That leaves two scenarios BIOS/EC firmware bug that only manifests on hardware that’s already marginal (signal integrity, lane quality, power-state timing). or pure hardware variance on the board, where the firmware is exposing a weakness rather than causing it. In both cases, the common thread is that healthy units don’t log corrected link-training retries across the entire bus. That’s why I lean toward a hardware-level instability that the BIOS setting can temporarily hide, not cure. It’s still worth a try, your advice is logical, but the failure pattern doesn’t look like a pure firmware toggle issue. It behaves like hardware that only just meets the edge of the timing window and loses the race during POST.

Did you test with the dGPU fully disabled or removed from the bus? you can run a clean test by cutting onboard dGPU power and rebooting. If the WHEA17 warnings stop, it confirms the GPU endpoint is not failing in isolation, and the problem sits upstream in PCIe lane training or Embedded Controller/BIOS power sequencing. A single WHEA17 limited to one endpoint could be a corrected during boot, but once it repeats across several PCIe endpoints or appears after a GPU swap, it stops being a device issue and becomes a platform bring-up and lane training problem. The 2025 Dell HX + Blackwell workstation stack brings up PCIe lanes under very tight signal integrity and early power gating controlled by BIOS and EC. If those layers mis-train or retain dGPU high-power states after POST, every endpoint sharing that root complex will log a corrected AER event (WHEA17), even when Windows feels stable afterward. If you’re not seeing freezes, headless crashes, or ACPI 13/15 spam each minute, then you’re sitting on a bus that ultimately settles after retries. That’s why it looks fine until a power transition hits again. Traditionally, this is a motherboard or CPU PCIe root complex issue handled best by replacement, not module swaps. If you ever start seeing black screen flickers or runtime WHEA17s increasing by the minute, you’ll know the platform didn’t settle cleanly. For now, it’s stable only because it corrected itself on each boot, but a clean POST should not require correction at all.

Here’s the reality. When every major device on the PCIe bus logs WHEA-Logger Event 17 at boot, it doesn’t mean the drives, Wi-Fi, or GPU are bad. It means the system had trouble training PCIe lanes at POST and had to retry the handshake before it stabilized. That’s a firmware or board-level issue sitting above all endpoints. The spontaneous ACPI 13 and 15 events after boot point to the embedded controller and BIOS mishandling power states, and the 50-70W idle draw shows the laptop isn’t exiting early-boot high-power mode cleanly. The final symptom screen going black after an Advanced Optimus or MUX handoff without TDR logs means the panel lost its display engine at the firmware level, not in Windows. You bought a 2025 mobile workstation. A healthy system should bring up PCIe cleanly on the first try and never drop the panel without leaving a proper error trail. This isn’t about drivers or storage population. This is a foundation problem, and the correct path is replacement, not shipping your only unit away for over a week. Shipping your only unit away for 5-12 days is unacceptable for a workstation role. Replacement without Collect & Return is possible, but you must frame it as a workflow disruption and hardware foundation fault, not a driver issue. Dell escalation teams (L3/L3.5/L4) normally ship a replacement first when it’s framed as “fault in platform bring-up and panel power state corruption.” Don’t let support push you into a collect and return cycle unless they commit to a full swap. Stay polite, stay consistent, and make the warranty work for you, that’s the only leverage we still have to ensure vendors deliver stable hardware. It's your money, Time, and Data they are putting on the line with their hit or miss QC strategy, They should be grateful you are giving them another try instead of asking for a full refund.

The devices throwing those boot warnings are PCIe endpoints. The IDs map to the Intel Wi-Fi 7 module, the Nvidia Blackwell GPU core, and the Nvidia audio controller that runs through PCIe during early boot. The warning flood means the system is retrying PCIe lane initialization and link training at POST, then recovering before Windows fully boots. Now that you also see WHEA 17 during normal use and ACPI 13/15 events with 50-70W idle draw, it’s pointing at unstable lane bring-up and EC/BIOS power-state handling, not individual devices failing. This is platform power and PCIe link instability showing up when endpoints attempt memory access over lanes that never fully stabilize after EC power gating or GPU switching. If it still repeats with one SSD and a fixed GPU path, the next stop is a warranty case for the system as a whole. Don’t hesitate to request an exchange. You paid for a premium workstation, so treat the warranty as part of what you purchased. Dell ships replacements while you keep the current unit, which gives you leverage. If the next one isn’t solid, repeat the process calmly until they deliver a platform that boots cleanly and maintains stable PCIe links and power states. Years ago this is exactly how ThinkPads and Latitudes were handled swap until it works. Today’s Dell QC is hit-or-miss, so a systematic exchange cycle is often the fastest path to a clean, validated root complex and EC state. I’ve replaced Dell purchases multiple times before landing on a healthy unit. Once you get a stable chassis, migrate your data, hand back the old one, and move forward. Keep your current laptop until you confirm the incoming system is the one worth imaging. If it takes several rounds, so be it. That’s how hardware quality has traditionally been forced out of vendors, and it still works if you stay polite and consistent.