Aurora-R1, replacement for Nvidia GTX 260 graphics cards

Question

Hello All,Advice sought, I have a very nice Dell Aurora PC purchased in June 2010 cost a small fortune £3K at the time. It has served me faithfully ever since until this weekend. I have established that the Graphics Card (Nvidia GTX 260 x2 linked sli?). Has developed a fault and needs to be replaced..The PC was primarily purchased to play PC games, Hence why the system has 2TB HD-Storage and 12GB of Ram. In the intervening years i have got married and had children which mean our PC now has to deal with all kinds of domestic use, Home work, accounts, Facebook etc.I am no longer able to financially throw a lot of money at the problem. The one legacy item I still play and love is WOW.So my questions are thus: What do I replace the 2 GTX cards with. I would like to stay with Nvidia. I no longer play pc games having gone to xbox, however It must be able to handle the Graphics of WOW. Lastly it needs to be on a budget.I thank you all for reading this post, and in advance for any help or assistance you may be able to offer.Kindest RegardsTonyPS CPU is an Intel (I7 CPU 930 @2.80Ghz x2)

speedstep · Answer

Newer Pascal based cards work fine even in older Dells.

The only down side is that GPU Ram is in short supply so cards cost quite a bit more than even 2 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa9b0TkTsLM

Newer Radeon R series Cards Like the RX460 DO NOT WORK AT ALL with older Dells.

GTX 260 PCI-E can easily be replaced by a ZOTAC 4 gig GTX 1050TI MINI and you will be very happy with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUOrnp2PjK4

https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-DisplayPort-128-bit-ZT-P10510A-10L/dp/B01MCU1ERO/

TCherrington · Answer

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for your reply and your advice.

I did as you recommend and purchased the ZOTAC card, alas I have been in a world of pain since.

I should point out NOT BECAUSE of your advice, but the fact it is over 5 years since I installed a clean edition of Windows and the ZOTAC / NVIDIA drivers will not install correctly.

So I have decided to upgrade and install a fresh copy of Windows 10 pro 64bit.

I am thinking of replacing my two original 1TB (raid) drives with one New 2TB drive.

Do you have any advice?

Kindest Regards Tony Cherrington

Tesla1856 · Answer

@TCherrington wrote:

1. Advice sought, I have a very nice Dell Aurora PC purchased in June 2010 cost a small fortune £3K at the time. It has served me faithfully ever since until this weekend. I have established that the Graphics Card (Nvidia GTX 260 x2 linked sli?). Has developed a fault and needs to be replaced..

2. I am no longer able to financially throw a lot of money at the problem. The one legacy item I still play and love is WOW.

You have an Aurora-R1.

1. It would be virtually-impossible for both GTX-260's to go bad at once. I would have dropped back to one GTX-260 in the main slot. Your problem could be many things. If it worked 100% properly again with one-or-the-other ... you would then know that indeed it was one of the video-cards causing the trouble.

2. Yes, one GTX-260 should run WoW fine. The game-engine isn't very demanding.

Tesla1856 · Answer

@TCherrington wrote:

1. So I have decided to upgrade and install a fresh copy of Windows 10 pro 64bit.

I am thinking of replacing my two original 1TB (raid) drives with one New 2TB drive.

Do you have any advice?

Kindest Regards Tony Cherrington

1. That is fine. This is the same model, but your idea of clean-install is better (I was being lazy). :Smile:

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General-Read-Only/Alienware-Aurora-R1-Windows-10-Pro-Upgrade-Smooth-sailing-so-far/td-p/5512004

and

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/M-2-NVMe-bootable-options/td-p/6073037

2. I would break the RAID, wipe those spinning-HDD, and use them for separate storage drives.

Install a 240gb 2.5inch SATA SSD as C: (for all Windows, all Apps, all Programs, and even WoW will fit).

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8900-running-out-of-space-GPU-upgrade/m-p/6178113/highlight/true#M18387

TCherrington · Answer

Thank you for the advice, I am going to do as you advise regarding the drives, however I now have another question for you, which SATA type do I need I, II or III?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Kindest Regards Tony Cherrington

TCherrington · Answer

Thank you. Do you recommend a particular size? I currently use around 1Tb of my 1.7tb space.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Please first read the 3rd linked thread above. It explains how it works. 240gb-512gb should be fine. You are keeping the spinners as (now blank) D: and E:

Tesla1856 · Answer

You are welcome. If you have any more questions, just ask.

Tesla1856 · Answer

@TCherrington wrote:

however I now have another question for you, which SATA type do I need I, II or III?

You get a 2.5 inch SATA-3 SSD. I like Samsung, Kingston, or Intel.

Even though the SATA controller in Aurora-R1 is only SATA-2/300, it will work fine. Not only will it be 2-3 times faster than your current spinning-HDD, the IOPS are off-the-scale higher. Believe me, your Aurora-R1 will not only boot much faster, programs will load faster, and the whole computer will feel much snappier.

TCherrington · Answer

Will do. Thank you for your kindness, will let you know how it goes.

Tesla1856 · Answer

How's it going? Did you get machine running with just one of those video cards installed? You were going to clean-install Windows-10/64bit.

TCherrington · Answer

Thank you so much for your reply,

I am having a complete nightmare. I replaced the graphics card completely with the one recommended.

I got the kingston 240GB that you recommended.

All good so far you would think, alas this is not the case.

I disconnected the two 1TB HD's and turned off the Raid in the Bios. I nstalled the new drive, confirmed that the SSD was there.

I booted from a dell windows 10 recovery disk. No joy at all as the software could not find an active partition. The same from an official windows 10 pro usb.

The upshot of this, is tomorrow morning, i will be going to the microsoft create windows media page. Using a friends laptop. As for some unknow reason the tool will not run on my PC.

So I am hoping that tomorrow I will have better news.

speedstep · Answer

GT 1030 all the way to GTX 1080Ti works in almost all Dells.

Your issues are not knowing how to install windows.

AHCI Advanced format drives REQUIRE F6 mass storage drivers to "SEE" a hard drive to partition and format and install on.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005646/technologies/intel-rapid-storage-technology-intel-rst.html

https://www.dell.com/support/article/lt/en/ltdhs1/sln146650/system-image-support-for-advanced-format-hard-drives-on-dell-business-client-notebooks-and-desktops?lang=en

Table 3: Operating System Requirements for Clean Installation on Advanced Format HDD's

(1) The Intel RST Driver version 9.6 or higher can be found on the Dell Support website in Dell Drivers and Downloads for your system under the SATA drivers section.
(2) Refer to the Partition Alignment Options section.

Microsoft® OS Installation Method	Windows 7 & Windows 7 SP1	Microsoft Vista SP1 & Microsoft Vista SP2	Microsoft Vista	Microsoft XP
Using Dell Operating System Media Or Using non-Dell off-the-shelf Operating System Media	Apply Microsoft KB Article: 982018. Install/upgrade Intel RST Storage driver to 9.6 or later. (1)	Apply Microsoft KB Article: 2470478. Install/upgrade Intel RST Storage driver to 9.6 or later. (1)	Install/upgrade Intel RST Storage driver to 9.6 or higher. (1) Use Alignment Tool (2) to ensure Advanced Format drive partitions are properly aligned.
Using Windows PE 3.0 or prior Note: If using a Win PE version earlier than 3.0, apply Windows Automated KIT	Apply Microsoft KB Article: 982018. Install/upgrade Intel RST Storage driver to 9.6 or later. (1)	Apply Microsoft KB Article: 2470478. Install/upgrade Intel RST Storage driver to 9.6 or later. (1)	Install/upgrade Intel RST Storage driver to 9.6 or higher. (1)
Using Windows PE 3.1	Install/upgrade Intel RST Storage driver to 9.6 or higher. (1)

Table 3: Operating System Requirements for Clean Installation on Advanced Format HDD's

Tesla1856 · Answer

@TCherrington wrote:

1. I replaced the graphics card completely with the one recommended. I got the kingston 240GB that you recommended.

2. I disconnected the two 1TB HD's and turned off the Raid in the Bios. I installed the new drive, confirmed that the SSD was there.

3. I booted from a dell windows 10 recovery disk. No joy at all as the software could not find an active partition. The same from an official windows 10 pro usb.

The upshot of this, is tomorrow morning, i will be going to the Microsoft create windows media page. Using a friends laptop. As for some unknown reason the tool will not run on my PC.

4. So I am hoping that tomorrow I will have better news.

1. Good

2. Also good

3. Right, you should use the Media Creation Tool to create the official installer media.

4. Actually, sounds like you are doing pretty good so far.

TCherrington · Answer

Yahoo, we have lift off as they say.

I got sent down a blind ally by one of the above posts, once I ignored it, and used the creation tool on the Microsoft website we were cooking with gas (also a UK saying, meaning all went speedily and well)

I am however left one puzzle, under the device manager there is an exclamation mark by Serial ATA Controller. After digging around the dell website I am left with 2 driver options (1) SiL3132 (2) intel.

In the Bios "SiL3132 - e - SATA" is enable. It would appear that the hardware infrastructure is Intel.

So I have a 50/50 chance but as the setup has gone so well I would prefer to get it right.

Once again, many thanks for your advice and help.

Kindest Regards Tony Cherrington

Alienware Desktops

Aurora-R1, replacement for Nvidia GTX 260 graphics cards

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