brand new Bolt X - not what I expected

I received my new Bolt X a week ago. It's beautiful. Aesthetically pleasing, *even tho they didn't have the DS air flow board they substituted with the Corsair Commander Pro), all is well. I loved it. top-end components Z490 mobo i7 10700k, 2080 Super, Corsair Vengence, Seagate Firecuda Nvme, CPU & GPU both hardline watercooled. Everything should be perfect....or so I thought.... A couple of days in I finally got my games installed. I played for a few minutes and it powered down. No BSOD. so fast forward a couple of days later. it ONLY does it while gaming. I ran OCCD benchmark tool and put the GPU and CPU at 100% load for 5 minutes and temps got up to 80-90C on the CPU. not sure if this is normal, but it still didn't power down. I called DS and talked with Bon who was super helpful and he said lets keep the glass side panel off and see if that helps. Well. it does. So far. Played games for 2-3 hours and it was fine. Put the glass back on and it shut down within minutes. The only thing we can think it is, is the PSU. it sits inside the case and doesnt vent or breathe anywhere except within the heat of the case. and those copper fittings? they're VERY hot. so they add heat the internals of the case. the only solution we have come up with is to keep the glass off the side or maybe remove the back side panel of the case. all would be logical reasons to fix the problem. but not when I did nothing wrong. there are no 3.5" drives. just an SSD and a NVME installed. This is an engineering problem. How doesnt everyone have this problem? do I have a faulty PSU? I dont know. but for $4000 im not going to leave PANELS off my PC. what I have done to see if I can mitigate the probem is buy 2 slim 120mm fans and im going to slip them under the base. (there is room) and I'll tie them into the corair commander and see if sucking hot air out or blowing air in will help. its hard to say. im at a crossroads right now.....

I have a Generation 1 Bolt, Revision 2. I can't speak much to the Bolt X but with my own experience and those I've read over the years Bolts are just hot beasts. However, as you say, DS wouldn't sell the Bolt X en masse if you had to remove panels to use it without overheating. You are absolutely correct, for that price (or really any price) you shouldn't need to modify the OEM case to prevent issues. I have a few guesses about what this could be, but the best piece of advice I can give you is unfortunately the most mundane - just keep working with DS on this. If Bon was thinking it might be the PSU, I'd try contacting DS again and referencing your ticket number to make sure they know the issue isn't resolved to your satisfaction as you purchased the Bolt X as a complete machine, not something you should have to remove parts from for it to function. Here on the forum we're just customers (with the exceptions of Alex, Stellar, and Nav) and while we can try to provide a few steps to help figure out exactly what the issue is, if this is some core hardware issue then working directly with DS is your best option. 

Edited by Tidgxor - 20 Aug 2020 at 12:35pm

Originally posted by scooby092477 I received my new Bolt X a week ago. It's beautiful. Aesthetically pleasing, *even tho they didn't have the DS air flow board they substituted with the Corsair Commander Pro), all is well. I loved it. top-end components Z490 mobo i7 10700k, 2080 Super, Corsair Vengence, Seagate Firecuda Nvme, CPU & GPU both hardline watercooled. Everything should be perfect....or so I thought.... A couple of days in I finally got my games installed. I played for a few minutes and it powered down. No BSOD. so fast forward a couple of days later. it ONLY does it while gaming. I ran OCCD benchmark tool and put the GPU and CPU at 100% load for 5 minutes and temps got up to 80-90C on the CPU. not sure if this is normal, but it still didn't power down. I called DS and talked with Bon who was super helpful and he said lets keep the glass side panel off and see if that helps. Well. it does. So far. Played games for 2-3 hours and it was fine. Put the glass back on and it shut down within minutes. The only thing we can think it is, is the PSU. it sits inside the case and doesnt vent or breathe anywhere except within the heat of the case. and those copper fittings? they're VERY hot. so they add heat the internals of the case. the only solution we have come up with is to keep the glass off the side or maybe remove the back side panel of the case. all would be logical reasons to fix the problem. but not when I did nothing wrong. there are no 3.5" drives. just an SSD and a NVME installed. This is an engineering problem. How doesnt everyone have this problem? do I have a faulty PSU? I dont know. but for $4000 im not going to leave PANELS off my PC. what I have done to see if I can mitigate the probem is buy 2 slim 120mm fans and im going to slip them under the base. (there is room) and I'll tie them into the corair commander and see if sucking hot air out or blowing air in will help. its hard to say. im at a crossroads right now.....

I'm having the same problem, same build. I've tried tweaking MSI Afterburner and the iCUE app. I can't get the 2 fans over 1479 RPM each (less than 3000 combined).

im thinking its a venting issue. This system has the highest specs and even with water cooling, do you know where all the heat goes? NOWHERE! there isnt a single exhaust fan on this system!! ive stuck a fan on the inside under the PSU to blow air OUTSIDE the case towards the bottom but it still shuts down after 30 minutes of Flight Sim 2020.. im pissed. they're like "maybe you shouldnt have your setting so high" like wtf ..are you kidding? i just bought a $4,000 PC and they want me to turn my settings down????? this is bullsh*t.

Mine shuts down while playing MS Flight Simulator 2020 at ultra settings. This also occurred while playing Grounded and Hell Let Loose at the highest settings. I went into BIOS to check the fan speeds...Chassis fans was set to Normal and the CPU fan was set to High. At idle CPU is 40c, GPU is 37c, Mainboard is 40c, Fan Speed is 2700-3000 (according to IOBit Performance Monitor).

I'm sorry to hear about your issues, please contact our team, we will help make this right. You should be able to enjoy this PC with max settings without worrying.

Feel free to reach out to me as well via email "[email protected]".

Originally posted by Warmocker

Sorry to hear of your issues that sucks. I own a Bolt that I ordered in early 2018 so I don't know what gen that is, but I've never had the issues you explain. Of course we don't have the same hardware in it either I have a GTX 1080 and an i7-8700 cpu in mine.

There's only one issue I have with mine and it only started in the last 6 months. If I plug my headset mic in I often have to play around with sound settings to get the mic and headset to work (its not the headset. I plug it into my laptop -- it works first time every time).

So that's annoying but I never over heat. (knock on wood)