Aspire TC-603 PCIe boot and GPU question

nPHYN1T3
nPHYN1T3 Member Posts: 5 New User
edited March 2023 in 2017 Archives

My roommate bought this machine to slowly upgrade. Sadly the spec listed on the site she bought from was shall we say...BS. So far I've modified a new PSU to run her GPU but now she wants to set up a RAID array. Sadly RAID was listed as a feature but this machine does not in fact support it. So she got a PCIe RAID controller but it also does not work. Can anyone chime in on if this machines board will in fact allow booting from a PCIe device?

 

Next up is the GPU. While I've got the PSU and GPU working for some time now the BIOS is terrible. It disables the IGP when a GPU is inserted in the 16x PCIe slot but the board won't output to the card. This means any BIOS work or low level POST data stuff you have to take the GPU out. This is a real PITA to constantly take out the GPU to reinstall the OS, change BIOS settings or just see what is going on some times. For example stupid Windows 10 and how it forces updates...some times you can power on the machine and it sits with a black screen for 40 freaking minutes because that stupid OS is updating but its progress screen is at a low enough level the mother board doesn't output to the active GPU. Same situation can happen shutting down. Has anyone found a fix for this or know if Acer plans on a BIOS update to address this horrid behavior?!