XPS 8960, waking during sleep, turning on the GeForce 4060 Ti light and waking monitor

and a tested, VESA compliant cable
* why aren't you testing using the provided G2724D DP 1.4 to DP 1.4 cable?

I happen to have an external HDD connected (WD Easystore)
* Using Sleep on a Desktop with added storage peripherals will always lead to issues. Disconnect the added WD Easystore HDD from the XPS 8960. Then do a Start--> Power --> Sleep.

Why does having an external HDD cause the GeForce card to light up and then turn off? That cycles the monitor long enough just to says scanning for signal, it does not have a signal from the DP, and then says its going to sleep. What is the connection?

We did not have this issue with the XPS 8930 this PC replaced.

The GPU lights may not be waking the monitor. Something is waking the system which turns the GPU lights on and wakes the monitor at same time. 

You could try this to see if you can ID a culprit: Right click Start and click Search. Type in Command Prompt. Right-click Command Prompt in results list, and Run as administrator.  At the prompt, type in: powercfg -lastwake and press Enter. No guarantees it will find anything.

If that doesn't help, type in: powercfg -waketimers to see if a timer has been set to wake the PC.

If still no help, try temporarily setting Power Management tab in Device Manager so USB mouse can't wake the PC. That could tell you if there's random mouse shaking or vibration that's triggering the wake.

You can also try disabling wake by Ethernet and WiFi on their Power Management tabs in Device Manager too. 

I have pretty much the same issue- and more..

Brand new 8960 with GeForce 4070 out of the box.

No external devices except a logitech wireless keyboard and mouse

Lights on the graphics card come on randomly when the system is sleeping.

Monitor stays off.

last wake = 0

wake timers = none

tried the power management suggestions above.

Interestingly - changing the mouse setting so it cannot wake the system decreases the frequency of the graphics card lights on issue but does not eliminate it - and also does not disable the mouse-wake function - moving the mouse still wakes the system.

Might be related:

When the system is on

The Dell sound bar - when on - randomly and every second or two makes a pop sound - the same sound it makes when first accessed by playing something.  It has made that initial pop for years on the old machine but now it's continuous.

Device manager screen updates/flicks on/off continuously.

Get that 2 tone ding/dong sound randomly when playing any audio or video - either from a file or from YouTube.  

@txfromwi  -

1. What happens if you set Sleep to never and enable/use Hibernation instead?
   
2. Try this:  Settings > System > Power > Power Mode> Best Performance
3. What version of BIOS is installed?  You need the latest XPS 8960 BIOS to fix Intel's problems with 13th and 14th Gen CPUs.
   
4. Scanned thoroughly for malware lately? Malwarebytes (free) is useful for this.

Silly me, I would have thought that a machine ordered after that BIOS update would already be updated...

Anyway, updated BIOS.

Malwarebytes reports no issues.

When I manually put it in hibernate then it stays well and truly asleep - lights on graphics card stay off.

But when it's simply asleep the lights on the graphics card randomly turn on/off.

Since it's brand new, nothing is running that it does not come with other than Malwarebytes.

All those other issues when it is running continue... 

Some success!

The speaker pop has been resolved.

It was plugged into the monitor for signal.

I relocated it to either the back or front port on the computer and the pop goes away.

WITH speaker pop, I get the continuous USB connect/disconnect sound ONLY when playing audio or video.

WITH OUT speak pop, I get the continuous USB connect/disconnect sound all the time, non-stop.

Those might just be red-herrings...

I have tracked it down.

It also explains why Device Manager keeps refreshing.

A USB Mass Storage Device appears and disappears from the Device Manager list.

"Device cannot start - reconnect"

Port 3, Hub 5

Driver is up to date.

Device USB\VID_0BDA&PID_0307\407240094701 was configured.

Driver Name: usbstor.inf
Class Guid: {36fc9e60-c465-11cf-8056-444553540000}
Driver Date: 06/21/2006
Driver Version: 10.0.22621.1
Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Section: USBSTOR_BULK.NT
Driver Rank: 0xFF2003
Matching Device Id: USB\Class_08&SubClass_06&Prot_50
Outranked Drivers: 
Device Updated: false
Parent Device: USB\VID_0451&PID_8046\6&55b9e34&0&3

Google says it's a card reader.

Appears to be part of the mother board, but visibility is bad back there.

Is this fixable or is this a dead motherboard???

Try updating the Realtek card reader driver to latest version, 10.0.22621.21366, A02. See if that helps. 

Don't know what you mean "visibility is bad back there". The card reader slot is directly under the PC's power button on front panel. If it's still connecting/disconnecting after you update the driver, try putting an SD card in the slot to see if it's recognized and stops the bing-bonging...

Open NVidia Control Panel. Click Manage 3D settings in left panel. Then scroll down right panel to Power Management and change the setting to Prefer Max Performance. Close NCP and reboot boot. Does that help?

"WITH speaker pop, I get the continuous USB connect/disconnect sound ONLY when playing audio or video.

WITH OUT speak pop, I get the continuous USB connect/disconnect sound all the time, non-stop."

As for the USB sound, if it's unwanted, turn off all system sounds.  Don't know if that will help with the speaker pop or not.

Turn off system sounds in Win11/10

Solved:

The USB connect and disconnect sound is mirrored by Device Manager refreshing.

A USB port comes and goes on Device Manager and when I capture the screens, I can obtain the error codes.

Dell Support looked at my screen captures and said "Ooof", literally...

Dell uninstalled and re-installed all the USB's and software, then ran some diagnostics that they have on their end.

It's a bad USB section built into the motherboard.

So back to Dell for a new motherboard.  

Hopefully this closes this issue!

Hope the new motherboard solves the problem!

Post back and let us know what happens...