XPS 730x General Hardware Discussion thread

Go to start then right click 'My Computer' then go to manage, then go Disk Management, then check if the Hard Drive is 'activated' if it is then it will be blue if not it will be black, to 'activate' it, right click and click the button 'Mark Partition As Active', it should then work.

Sorry for the budge....I have a 920 system and have installed a new WD re-3 hard drive. Windows/system doesn't recognize it so it can be formatted. When I initially boot my system I see it recognized in one of the first screens that pops up. It doesn't show in the Device Manager under disk drives. I searched around in Windows help and found that my DMA controller was disabled. Would turning that on enable the system to recognize the new hd?

I have the Intel Matrix Storage Manager installed on my system from factory and wanted to have a mirrored raid setup. When I select actions in the Manager a pop-up window shows  that a Raid volume can't be created for a number of reasons even though it sees the installed new hd. Formatting seems to be the issue or just recognizing the hd.?

I have any info needing saving already on an external drive.

I'm a bit of a newbie at this stuff.  Thanks for any input.

It doesn't show up in disc management? I get a disc showing; Healthy  ( EISA configuration), Recovery D 2 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary partition), and OS C 277 GB Healthy

( System,boot,.....,primary partition)?

I don't have any IDE/ATA etc controllers showing up in my Device Manager. Is this a problem?

Virtue,

Thank you for the information you posted.  It is all very valuable to me, as I have been trying to fix my Sleep/wakeup issue, and it's nice to know I don't need to waste any more time!

I will also look at the CAB-200 with regards to the slow boot.

And, your recommendations on the i920 overclocking are interesting and I will try them out.  If that is the case, I am definitely wasting power now!  :)

Thanks again.

UPDATE:  It appears that the Sleep issue for non-stock BCLK speeds was fixed by Asus for their P6T board via a BIOS update.  I would hope (expect) that Dell will quickly fix this problem via a BIOS update also.  

Another "find" that some might find interesting.  In almost any other situation, you cannot clone a drive (Vista) that was set to AHCI to a RAID set with an onboard Intel RAID.  It wouldn't boot, and there is no way around it (from what I could find).

Interestingly, I was able to clone a single AHCI drive from my XPS 730x to a RAID 0 stripe set on the 730x, remove the original drive, and boot successfully from the RAID 0 set!  I did this on TWO different 730x systems, so I don't think it is a fluke.  Somehow the drivers are already installed for RAID and AHCI !!

The XPS 730x makes RAID migration a simple task!  (not as simple as some magical automatic migration, though).  BTW, I used GHOST to do the cloning and made sure I had the partition on the RAID set already created and aligned.  Then I just did a partition-to-partition clone.

Works great and now I'm getting an average of 415Mb/s read on two Vertex SSD's!!

Would someone be so kind to put togather a quick guide on how to get RAID started on the 730x? 

Hi Dahermitt, have you read the ‘Working With RAID’ section of the Dell Technology Guide for the 730x?

That Section starts on page 83 of the Guide. 

If you have specific questions after reading that please Post them.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xlob/dtg/en/en_dtg.pdf

Bob

Hello, My XPS 730x i7 940 will be arriving next week and i had some questions as to certain upgrades for it ( i am going to buy a few things rather than upgrade thru Dell because it is cheaper ) Anyways, I am looking to upgrade the Video card and Ram. If i am not mistaken the 730x comes with 1066MHZ ram. What ram do i need? what MHZ? and will i benefit ANYTHING from the upgrade at all? should i just stick with whqat it comes with or is there a better option? and as for a video card i am looking to get the EVGA 01G-P3-1285-AR GeForce GTX 285 SC Edition 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16, I assume this is the correct card for the 730x? I also had a few more questions. I have the i7 940 ( AIR COOLED NOT H2C system ) am i able to overclock the system at all? or no? is over clocking only available on the H2C systems and the systems that are factory overclocked? Also, if anyone could comment or suggest any other upgrades that i can order so that way it could arrive at the same time my 730x does that would be great. Any advice or comments would be great, thanks for your time!

Congrats on your new system!  You'll love it (once you get the bugs worked out!).

YES, you can overclock a 920 or 940 based 730x air-cooled system.  Your only recourse for doing so is by bumping UP the main reference clock (BCLK).  This, in turn, increases the speed of other components, namely your RAM, so YES, you should upgrade your RAM to DDR3-1600 RAM.

I have used, and recommend, either CORSAIR TR3X6G1600C8G (a 6GB kit) or OCZ 6GB kit (OCZ3X1600LV6GK).  Both work great, and run very cool, even overclocked.

With my i7-920 system set with a BCLK of 180Mhz, by RAM is running at about 1400 with super fast timings of 7-7-7-1T, and my CPU is running between 3.6 and 3.8Ghz (nonturbo and turbo, respectively).

As far as video cards go, my supplied cards are fine (SLI'd 9800's and a single GTX 280 1GB) in both my XPS 730x systems, so I'm not in the market to upgrade, but that card you referenced should be fine.  Maybe a more hardcore gamer could chime in there and bless that card or recommend something better?

Good luck!

Hello, My XPS 730x i7 940 will be arriving next week and i had some questions as to certain upgrades for it ( i am going to buy a few things rather than upgrade thru Dell because it is cheaper )

Anyways, I am looking to upgrade the Video card and Ram.

If i am not mistaken the 730x comes with 1066MHZ ram. What ram do i need? what MHZ? and will i benefit ANYTHING from the upgrade at all? should i just stick with whqat it comes with or is there a better option?

and as for a video card i am looking to get the EVGA 01G-P3-1285-AR GeForce GTX 285 SC Edition 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16, I assume this is the correct card for the 730x?

I also had a few more questions. I have the i7 940 ( AIR COOLED NOT H2C system ) am i able to overclock the system at all? or no? is over clocking only available on the H2C systems and the systems that are factory overclocked?

Also, if anyone could comment or suggest any other upgrades that i can order so that way it could arrive at the same time my 730x does that would be great.

Any advice or comments would be great, thanks for your time!

hi everyone, how many ram can i upgrade in the future ? can it really support 12 GB of ram ?

thanks

Memory 6GB Max
F680F 1GB PC3-8500,1067Mhz,128X64
Y996D 2GB PC3-8500,1067Mhz,256X64
PP403 1GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,128X64 (Vendor: QIMONDA)
H345K 1GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,128X64 (Vendor: CORSAIR)
N046F 2GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,128X64
F891K 2GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,256X64
PC3-10600 1333Mhz and PC3-14400 1800Mhz - We have no plans to add support for this memory. You can try but we cannot guarantee functionality.

Memory 6GB Max F680F 1GB PC3-8500,1067Mhz,128X64 Y996D 2GB PC3-8500,1067Mhz,256X64 PP403 1GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,128X64 (Vendor: QIMONDA) H345K 1GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,128X64 (Vendor: CORSAIR) N046F 2GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,128X64 F891K 2GB PC3-12800,1600Mhz,256X64 PC3-10600 1333Mhz and PC3-14400 1800Mhz - We have no plans to add support for this memory. You can try but we cannot guarantee functionality.

hi, thanks for your replied,

i just want to understand why it only support 6 GB ?

Yes I am curious also why only 6gb?

With Vista 64 Ultimate it should be able to handle much more than 6gb.