Aurora R3 Lockups & nVidia Driver problems

The problem is 2 fold. 1) Dell shipped out a bad batch of their OEM 560TI cards. I was one of them. I just got my computer yesterday and had to practically yell at a phone tech to get them to ship me a new one. 2) THEY ARE NOT REAL 560TIs!! And this is causing MAJOR havoc with nvidia drivers from their website. These "560 TIs" are really 570s with some of their cores burned out to turn them into what dell/aw is calling a "560TI" WHY dell bothered to do this, I have no idea. If you continue to have issues, get a retail 560TI and send the 560TI back to dell and get some sort of refund

Some other issues i ran into is if you put retail cards into the new aurora r3 and try to run 2 video cards, the cables near the base of the case push on one of the GPU fans. I guess dell didn't figure on people putting in a GPU with dual fans (the cable push on the card near the back). So If you run 2 non dell cards, then re route your cables. Overall, I'm very happy with this machine. I have turbo mode up to 4.9Ghz and stable (after 48 hrs of prime95 testing).

Since uninstalling Respawn I have had no lockups, or bluescreens. The SLI option is now visible and has been for 6 days now.

Back when the Aurora-R3 first started shipping and lots of people where having BlueScreens and Lockups ... it was reported that some users had success (in making their systems stable again) by clean installing their Win7-64 and then loading on the required Dell drivers.

This makes sense, because Respawn (or Dell Data Safe Local ... or whatever they are calling it these days) does not get re-installed.

The CPU on prime95 never goes over 65C. So no worries there. Funny thing is if i try 5Ghz, Windows will just up and crash. So for me, going faster isn't a heat issue. It's an issue where the cpu physically won't go any faster. 4.9 is the highest stable speed I can get out of this. Normally games are GPU based and do not need a fast cpu. However, I'm a long time everquest 2 player, and that game draws 75% or more of its graphics, spell effects, using the CPU. Plus having very fast 8 cores really helps with things link folding @ home, seti @ home, etc.

... the cables near the base of the case push on one of the GPU fans.

Yes, Dell knows because it can happen with any dual-slot card. In fact, they did a video showing how to clamp them down in the holders. There are also some user threads here somewhere (with pics) about re-routing cables.

Glad to hear you got something to work.

Man, that's a crazy fast OC Just watch those CPU temps. Have you tried HyperPI testing (or is Prime95 better)?

Here is a little gem for everyone. Thanks for eveyone's input. IT's refreshing to get practical advice and experiences.

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)

British mystery author & physician (1859 - 1930)

Never a truer word spoken about computers.

I crunch collatz@home, milkyway@home, einstein@home and Spinhenge@home. Great way to burn in computers and find "little problems" LOL

I'm not a big gamer these days, but I have a couple of teenage grandkids who wanna "beat em up, shoot em up". So I'll have to get back in the "game".  I'm a Pro Photographer and do some video work as well. I don't really need 2 GPU's (most of the time) but I crunch collatz,einstein, milkyway@home. My DxO Optics Pro Elite program is seriously CPU/RAM  intensive, but the R3 is about 3 times faster than the XPS. Specs are actually pretty close other than the R3 having 2 GPU's.

Here we go again...

Day 7 and the "thing" is now locking up, rebooting at random and I'm getting all sorts of unidentified hardware errors.

I think I'm going to invoke the South Carolina "Lemon Law" unless I get this piece of junk fixed in the next couple of business days. I have now lost more income than the R3 cost me in the first place. I originally gave the R3 2 stars, it's now worth 0 at best. Tech support comes in at -2 Stars and falling.

Update...

Another long call to tech support, this time very helpful. Should get a visit in next few days. Graphics cards definiteley suspect. Watch this space for updates!

I too am the victim of this Aurora R3 lockup issues !! I believe the system is flaw somehow and still getting lockups from playing games and 3D Mark 11 or graphics intensive applications. But I am running an retail GTX 590 @ stock speed and OC profile 2 still have random freeze and lockups. Chris M on the other Aurora R3 lockup forums are not responding and this is the only fresh forums I can find so I am guessing I am not alone here... my config as follows

i7 2600K OC 2 @ 4.1

Retail Kingston Hyper X 8GB (XMP enable @ 1600 Mhz)

Retail Box Inno3D GTX 590 (original GTX 460 SLI) on nVidia latest driver

Crucial 128GB SSD A09 firmware w/Clean install of Win 7 Ultimate 64bit (OS) Bay 1

2x Western Digital 1TB in Bay 3 & 4 (no RAID setup)

Alienware Command Center reinstalled (NO re-spawn installed)

875W stock PSU

Dell 23" U2311H monitor

Stock DVD Burner

Retail Box LG Blu-Ray BD-RE

Still having lockups from time to time even thou I turn all the fans to 100% (PCI, HDD and GPU fans) still freeze !!!

Please help !

I was a victim of the lockups on my R3. Even after a clean install of my own retail copy of Win7-Ultimate.

How I got the freezing to go away?

Set "Turn off hard disk after" to "Never", restarted computer and I've never had a freeze or lockup since.

Now if only I could get StarCraft to not be technicolour....

Both my nVidia GTS 450's have been replaced today. Both GPU's are now operating within a couple of degrees of each other. I still think they are running hotter than they should, but 72C is better than 83C! I suspect that the original "hot card" didn't have any thermal gel/pad to transfer heat away from the GPU (see earlier post)

Suggest you download GPU-Z which will allow you to check sensor readings and tell you the actual load you are putting on the GPU etc.

All my fans are now running on auto and so far no problems.

Both GT450's have been replaced today. Temp difference between the cards is about 5 (F). SLI option is now available but only after SLI ribbon cable was inverted/reversed!

I'll let you know if anything changes.