m16 R2, BSOD when gaming, AWCC or Nvidia?

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help me understand how to cure these frustrating issues with multiple BSODs.

Proud new owner of an Alienware m16 R2 from September 10th, 2024, after 9 years with a Dell XPS 15. Wanted the gaming (Valheim, BG3, lots of others) as well as a decent laptop for study, work and play. Specs are Intel Ultra 9 185H 2300 MHz, 64GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070.

Set up out of the box. Updated all Windows updates, latest NVIDIA drivers, etc. Downloaded Valheim via Steam and sat back to enjoy. Relatively quickly got my first BSOD. They only appear when playing games and it looks stack overflow related perhaps? Game plays, then slows, then freezes and then BSOD with the DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION code. I'm not running the games at max settings (in fact, I'm running Valheim in Low mode across the board and my 9 year old XPS 15 could run this!)

I have analysed multiple DMP files via WinDBG (attached, for the different types of faults). It appears to be multiple issues with the NVIDIA driver, Alienware Command Centre (which I did try and uninstall once, and it keeps coming back) and perhaps others. Over the past 4 days I have rolled back drivers, reinstalled Windows, etc. I'm probably at 20+ BSODs now in total.

I wasn't expecting to have these sort of issues out of the box and I'm not the most computer savvy so any assistance greatly appreciated : )

NVIDIA driver BSOD I think?

AWCC BSOD?

Not sure about this BSOD?