XPS 630 General Hardware Discussion thread

I suppose this is the place to ask this question... and hope it's not too stupid to warrant a reply:

I have an XPS630i with a pair of nVidia 8800GT vid cards in SLI configuration. I want to upgrade this to a pair of ATI HD 4870's in CrossfireX configuration.

The apparent problem is that each 4870 card requires a pair of 6-pin power connectors and I seem to have just two of these. Unless there are two more hiding somewhere, I seems to be unable to install both 4870 cards (which I already have on-hand).

Am I missing something or do I have a problem?

BTW: I have these two 4870's because I have had to remove them from my Alienware ALX, and that is because that system crashes continually with them. I say this because I want to comment that the ALX has been a constant nightmare, while the XPS has never given me any trouble. All praise to Dell's XPS... my only reliable PC.

Hello Watchwolf,

My XPS 630i came with a 750W power supply, and the wiring diagram shows four of these 6pin PCI power supplies, but the shipped rig does not have them.  When I wanted to upgrade to dual GTX 260's in SLI  I took a 4pin molex splitter and ran to the 4pin to 6pin adapter for each of the second cards.  What a wiring mess!  I do not advise this to rigs which are under the Dell Warranty (mine is with Best Buy so not that big of a deal).  The Dell XPS PSU handled the load for me with no issues, but that does not mean it will handle your cards.

If you have a Dell Warranty, you might want to upgrade your power supply in order to get the extra two 6pin PCI plugs, such as the 1000W that comes in the XPS 730 OR you can add a dedicated PCI power unit from  Dell does offer a compatable power supply for the 5.25" bay on the XPS:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A1311646&cs=04&c=us&l=en&ST=epower%20ep%20350cd&dgc=ST&cid=40120&lid=1027775

 Dell Part# : A1311646

Yes, I know another $100. for another addon, but this little dedicated GPU PSU will run your graphics cards and you will not have to upgrade your unit PSU.

Best wishes for you XPS,

Darrell WV

Thanks, Darrell, for your quick and informative reply!

It stands to reason that if the PSU didn't supply the proper number of connectors to power the pair of 4870's, then it won't have the power to safely run them either. So I need more power.

Yes, I bought the rig directly from Dell with the 4-year full service contract. But the next obvious question is, would a PSU upgrade be covered? I mean, it is for an optional video card upgrade, so it makes me wonder if this wouldn't be similar to your medical insurance not covering an elective procedure. I hope someone from Dell can enlighten me about this. Or, I suppose, I could give them a call. However, when I wanted to add a multi-media card reader and they told me the reason my order kept getting canceled was installing this unit into my 630i wasn't possible... so I got one elsewhere and it worked just fine... it has dimmed my hopes they are helpful about such matters.

The dedicated PSU looks interesting and I'll probably go that route. Still, I hope to hear from some Dell guru about the PSU upgrade before I sink more $ into this rig. Not that it wouldn't be worth it, like I said, this is a terrific PC.

Thanks again,

 WW

Version 1.0.12 is available to download.

1.0.12 has been available for over 3 months now.

I see they un-floated this thread now.  I guess you have to go through the faq to get to it.  I hate this new forum.

Not necessarily.  Like Darrell mentioned you can use splitters to get the required connections, that is why they made splitters in the first place.  The PSU provides 72amps minus a few so you are probably looking at around 55-65 of usable amps because the PSU has 4 +12V rails.  You need to check the 4870 xfire config and see how many amps it requires.  I believe that the power requirements of the 4870 is comparable to the gtx 260 and 280 so a PSU upgrade shouldn't be necessary if you have 2 of those but i would check first.

Now you're right on. Here's why:

The latest wrinkle in my problem is really about the Alienware ALX and the constant BSOD problems I've been having with it and Vista . It seems The ATI HD4870 in Crossfire and Vista with a multi-core CPU don't mix well. That's why I replaced them with nifty new GTX285's in SLI. Except for one small detail that I should have thought of in the first place *DOH!* The ASUS P5E3 MB doesn't support SLI. So now those GTX's are going into my good ol' XPS.

The GTX 285's use less power then the HD4870's. The recommended PSU specs for 2 in SLI is 650W. I'll be fine with the 750W PSU. So all I need to do is configure the splitters.

I hate to say this, and maybe in this XPS thread especially, but you don't want an Alienware PC. It's been nothing but trouble since I've had it. Numerous support calls and even having to send it back, it's still not up to the specs I paid for. I wish I'd bought the XPS in the first place.

Thanks for all your help. I think it's all good now.

WW

Jas461; yup - I too have the blinking HDD LED problem.  I've just followed the advice in FAQ; sending a note to Support - having now read of your experience, not expecting much success.

Hello guys,

My 19in1 media card reader with integrated bluetooth has never worked.. I've tried every single driver available and none of them seem to work, in fact, none of them seems compatible with my system.

Dell support has only instructed me to reset computer to factory settings and I've already spent a lot of time installing all my personal software and configuring my system so I was expecting a littble bit more of them.. Also my main DVD unit (DH-48C2S) seems to be defective as it produces an awful sound when being used. I already reinstalled the latest firmware for it and the problem persist.

Any help will be much appreciated!

ricardosj88,

Call Tech Support, I'm sure that's what you don't want to hear but If you have an optical drive problem they need to fix it. As for the media card, I had

the same problem with drivers. Check in Device manager and make sure that Bluetooth is enabled and the media card is also enabled. Download the drivers from Dell's site instead of the Resource CD. Let me know if that works, if not I will send you the link for the right one.

Mike

Mike,

That's one thing I can't find neither the media card reader nor the Bluetooth device on the Device Manager.. As for the drivers, which one should I use because all the ones I found on the Dell site none of them list the XPS 630 in the compatibility section.

Thanks,

Ricardo.

Hello Mike and ricardosj88,

I have both a XPS 630i and a 730 H2C.  I used the 19-1 card reader with BlueTooth found on the Dell Drivers & Downloads under the XPS 730/730X section and it worked for me.

It does not state that it is 630i compatable, but when I saw it said it was XPS 420  compliant, I thought why not try.  I did save and then ran so that I could remove it if I need to, but the reader works great and the BlueTooth shows as working now.  I do not have any BlueTooth devices, so I can not speak to that issue.

Best,

Darrell WV

Ricardo,

Sorry for the delay, here is the link to the drivers that worked for me: http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&releaseid=R152639&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=203335

These installed fine and so far no problems, hope this helps.

Mike

I went to the Dell download site today just to check if there was anything new, and there was a new Dell Diags. ver. 1344A0.  Anyway, when I went to update my diagnostic partition, it said I had version 1345A1.  I didn't update, because I wasn't sure if I had a newer one or not.  Anyone know?

Mike,

I tried the driver you sent me, however in the middle of the installation process the setup asks me to turn on the bluetooth device by either pressing Fn+F2 (which I can't since Fn button is only on laptops) or using the ON/OFF switch (which doesn't exists in my case).. Thanks for the help, any other suggestions? I think I'm just calling Dell to drop by because I'm beginning to think the media drive is unplugged, defective or smthg like that because its just nonsense.

I'm going to take the opportunity to ask you this.. I tried Ubuntu on my xps 630, installed it inside Windows so no new partitions were created.. However after I succesfully unistalled it, the OS selection boot menu still appears every time I turn on my computer.. Any clue on how can I remove the Ubuntu option? It's unistalled already.. I tried a couple of things I found on some blogs but none of them worked..

Thanks pal

Ricardo.

Ricardo,

Sorry you are having problems, I will double chech the drivers tonight when I get home. I can tell you that I did not have to press any F keys to

help install. In Device Manager, make sure that the Media Card is enabled. I know the Dell Tech went through several different drivers before getting

the right one if that is of any help. I will email you after 8pm cst tonight with additional info.

Mike