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February 7th, 2026 17:31
Aurora R1, FTW power upgrades! :)
Hello friends :)
In 2009 I bought the amazing Aurora R1 with i7-920 and the legendary hd5870.
Through the years I upgrades it with i7-990x and 6x4gb ram, and msi gtx1070ti.
Tha original psu should be 875w.
I'm just wondering if with upgrading this system with a used gtx3060ti or gtx3070 will give some gains or not... (according to Gemini, yes).
It's just for the fun of doing it, of course. Perfectly aware that the best solution would be to build a new PC but it would not make sense for me since I don't need/want a pc for gaming. I'm a casual gamer enjoying more the upgrading/oc/tuning to take out the max I can from systems I have than just playing games.
Many thanks for everyone wanting to help me :)
Tesla1856
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February 8th, 2026 05:26
My 2010 Aurora-R1 is still Intel-i7-930 with 12gb tri-channel ram and 875w-PS. I swapped my old AMD-5870 for a MSI Nvidia GTX-1070 Gaming-X (still a pretty awesome card). I've got Windows-11 Pro on mine (free upgrade using my original Windows-7 Pro 64bit key).
I installed a SATA-3/600 PCIe-card a few years ago and so now have bootable SSD at 550-speed. Added a USB-3.0 card of course. I run Kodi on it in Home Theater (HDMI 1080p to projector and Denon-Amp as 6.1 HD-Audio) with wired-ethernet.
But after 15-16 years I think we got our money's worth out of them. I would not suggest putting any more money into it. Just use it as is (and keep your fans and LC-radiator fairly clean).
Anyway, those are RTX cards and your CPU and PCIe-bus will hold you back. Also, your SSDs are a bit slow at 250-300 speed. As you know, these Aurora-R1's are non-UEFI (no SecureBoot) so stay away from any possible Root-Kits.
If I ever retire mine, I'm gonna try dropping the AMD-5870 back in and keeping the GTX-1070 for another casual/secondary use system or lite-build. Like my (circa 2012) Apple Mac-Mini ... one of the best computers I ever bought (because it's still working and viable).
(edited)
user_a99c08
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February 9th, 2026 23:43
That's a great point about the SATA 3 PCIe card! I think I'll look for one of those instead of upgrading my GPU. Thanks for the suggestion!
May you advise for a good PCIe card? you got a x1 or x4?
May I have issues booting win10? (yes, I'm still on win10...).
And finally, have you managed to control everythign of the R1 on win11? I mean leds and fans. Is everything ok?
(edited)
Tesla1856
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February 10th, 2026 00:43
I purchased this FebSmart FS-S6-Pro PCIe SATA-3/600 Addin card. I used it with Windows-10 for a while. Booting the SSD C-Drive was a must for me also (and it works fine).
Controller ships in AHCI-mode ( and says to set BIOS to AHCI-mode ) ... so I did that.
Also these 18-in 90-degree SATA-3 cables (since space with SSDs in trays is tight in front).
Yes, AWCC v2.8.11.0 works fine with Windows-10 or Windows-11.
I'm still running original BIOS A09. Never plan to upgrade it as it's worked fine all these years, and reportedly ... A10 messed up some Aurora-R1 and/or their USB ports (and then Dell never fixed it). I think whatever BIOS version you are running, just leave it alone.
Since projector is 1080p I can also run Windows games on it (even at 1080p ... still looks pretty). Steam is installed. I have a Sony Dual-Shock 4 wireless controller, and can race cars (like Forza Horizon 4) with steering as accelerometer in DS4. Ends-up being similar to Asphalt-8 racing on Apple-TV-box.
That's about it. Be very careful with it as they are old. If you need anything, just ask/post ... but you might need to mention my user-name so I get a notification.