I recently bought a new/old dell optiplex 7010

[madokie]

and bought a sound card and a 2 gig radeon video card that I am going to put in it. My question is do I have to go into the BIOS after I install them to tell BIOS that I want to use these cards rather than the output for sound and video from the motherboard. I'm sure I do but not real sure how to do it. I know how to boot into the BIOS no problem. My old dell computer came with a sound card and video card as I had those installed when I purchased it new and after a lightning strike I had to move my outputs to the ones on the motherboard as the Lightning strike fried my cards so I'm pretty sure I can do this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. If it's a PCIe card, it should be chosen by default.

Just be sure the monitor is connected to the video card before you boot, and the BIOS will auto-detect your card.

I had the opposite problem -- wanted to use onboard video instead of the PCIe card, which I wanted to reserve for GPU computing. Not allowed by Dell's BIOS ! Once that PCIe card was plugged in, that was my video, whether I wanted it or not.

I thought when you booted into Setup the cards were selected with a fairly simple choose-from-a-list interface, at least on the newest Dells I own (760's, a bit older). In the worst case, you'd just have two monitors connected, or try one monitor on each video output in turn.

[madokie]

2. The video card is full size

the audio is a smaller card. I have a slot for each on my motherboard.

I was thinking it would be automatic but wasn't sure. I'm a Ubuntu/Mate 16.04 user. No windows in my house and haven't been since ubuntu 9.04 actually

I purchased this computer for 300 bucks on ebay. It was made on dec 05 2013. Third generation I-5 3470 with 8 gig DDR3 sdram and a 1 terrabit HDD. I replaced the HDD with a 500 gig SSD drive
My old computer was a dell dimension 4700 that I bought new in dec of 2000. Big difference between the two. I gave 1200 bucks for the dimension 4700 with 17 inch monitor when I bought it new.

I have a 22 inch HD wide screen monitor now

Thanks

[d_r]

3. I bet it does it automatically

give it a shot.

ETA I have a put a video card in a dell optiplex running ubuntu and it just works, haven't tried an audio card.

[madokie]

4. I'll do the video card tonight

tracking says the audio card should be here tomorrow so I'll put it in first of the week

Thanks

The way Linux just finds what you have I figure I'll be ok but I needed the encouragement you all gave me.

I remember when I used to be so paranoid to open up a computer but anymore I do it with out second thought, most times that is

[madokie]

5. Well I installed the Video care and

had no problems. I'm connected to my monitor with an HDMI cable now

Thanks for all the help and encouragement. That made it easy to do

[d_r]

6. Good to hear it

Have fun