{"id":5051,"date":"2023-06-26T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/?p=5051"},"modified":"2023-06-26T13:23:53","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T18:23:53","slug":"nvidia-rtx-for-alienware-alpha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/nvidia-rtx-for-alienware-alpha\/","title":{"rendered":"NVidia RTX for Alienware Alpha"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2018 I bought a gaming computer to replace my aging Dell 17″ laptop. The game I wanted to play was VRC<\/a> – which didn’t require a lot of horsepower, but I wanted to potentially play other games. I found an Alienware Alpha<\/a> with decent specs and bought it. One thing that interested me about all Alienware systems was the ability to connect them to the Alienware Graphics Amplifier (AGA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Not knowing what the baseline performance of the Alpha would be, I bought the graphics amplifier just in case. Turns out to be a good decision as Dell (who now owns Alienware) discontinued the graphics amplifier in 2021<\/a>. But I still had one new-in-box from 2018 \ud83d\udcaa<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4000-series RTX in the AGA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not really knowing what works and what doesn’t with the graphics amplifier in 2023, I just went ahead an ordered whatever RTX video card seemed like the best bang for the buck. I dropped $600 on an 4070 by ASUS<\/a>. But when it arrived, I found the fans on the card were so huge that once installed into the graphics amplifier, the lid wouldn’t close \ud83d\ude29<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was clearly time for me to do the research that I should have done earlier (besides determining what is the best bang\/buck). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3000-series RTX<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I found a few articles on reddit that indicated the 3000 series is the easiest<\/a> road to plug-and-play with the AGA. The drivers work, the cards fit with the lid closed, and the power requirements don’t require an upgrade of the AGA’s power supply unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ordered a used EVGA card<\/a> from Amazon thinking I could save some $$$. At $300, the 3060 Ti was half the cost of the 4070. It fit nicely inside the graphics amplifier, but wouldn’t actually work – Windows always reported the dreaded “Error code 43.” Running several scripts didn’t alleviate the “Error code 43” problem<\/a>, but led me towards some other troubleshooting tips. I used GPU-Z<\/a>, which detected the video card but listed 0MB of VRAM \ud83d\ude25<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I had ordered from Amazon on purpose because of their return policy, so back it went. This pursuit was getting old, but I soldiered on. Next I ordered a brand new 3060 Ti manufactured by ASUS<\/a>. I didn’t have hard evidence that it would fit, just a hunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It fits with the lid closed, and<\/em> it shows up in GPU-Z as expected, and<\/em> it works just fine with the Alienware Alpha. 3rd time’s the charm!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n
Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2018 I bought a gaming computer to replace my aging Dell 17″ laptop. The game I wanted to play was VRC – which didn’t require a lot of horsepower, but I wanted to potentially play other games. I found an Alienware Alpha with decent specs and bought it. One thing that interested me about… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[164,141],"class_list":["post-5051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casual","tag-dell","tag-windows"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5051"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5064,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions\/5064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}