Hardware Experts! Help with my computer and ways to upgrade it.

12/23/2017 | By Laz A. Mataz

[Lazamataz]

My old home computer died outright sometime mid-December. I use it for some fairly intensive gaming (Fallout 4, (actually all the Fallout installments), Total War: Rome 2 (which required an upgrade to a Nividia GeForce GTX 970 video card) and personal computer-development efforts in Visual Studio 2014 and SQL Server 2012. The computer was bought new from MicroCenter in late 2013.

So I went on Amazon, and a Refurbished Dell caught my eye. Here are the specs:

Processor: Intel Core 7th Generation i7-7700 Processor (Quad Core, up to 4.20 GHz, 8MB Cache, 65W) 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 | Dell Wireless 1707 Card (802.11BGN + Bluetooth 4.0, 2.4 GHz) 2TB 7200 rpm SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive | NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 2GB GDDR3

I assumed it was a full-sized tower, when I got it last night, I discovered it was a minitower. Ok, no worries.

This morning when I began working on it I discovered it has a small-form, anemic power supply (230 watts!) and only one fullsized card slot. The PSU wattage concerned me, but at least I could take out the Nividia GTX 730 and pop in my GTX 970.

Wait, I thought: what about wattage.

So here is my question to those who know all about hardware:

1) Can I find a small form PSU that can get me the wattage I need (400-500) and not cook the insides? Do most small-form PSU's vent directly outside the case, preventing that cooking?

2) Can I find a video card for gaming that will have some horsepower, say 4 gig of onboard RAM, that will either have lower power needs or that will be okay with the higher wattage small-form PSU? And do I have to worry about the higher power video card cooking the insides?

3) Will I be able to run a second hard drive? I will. 2TB is not nearly enough, and I still have to migrate all my stuff from the other drives (if I can, of course, if one, the other, or both, still work)? I understand drives are relatively low-wattage so I am probably okay on power.

or

4) Do I need to return this mini-tower as unsuitable to my needs?

[DaveA37]

It would appears, from your discussions, you know more about computers than most of us. Personally, I would take that underpowered new unit back, speak with someone who actually “knows” computers and the go from there. If you need more “horsepower”, buy a tower that will do what you want instead of (pardon the expression, “bastardising” what you already have). Best of luck.......Now I’m off to buy a new computer to replace my wife’s “laptop”. :)

[Lazamataz]

Rome 2 is pretty good. When you first try primitive warfare, it mostly looks like a big group of guys all milling about in one big blob, but after you learn some techniques, you can really make some tactical successes. I think the ballistas and trebuchets are overpowered, tho.

[Lazamataz]

It would appears, from your discussions, you know more about computers than most of us.

Thanks, but I am a software guy. Not so much a hardware guy.

[Nifster]

Wishing you good luck on this. Mini towers are a pain

[Nifster]

Memory????

Don’t think so

[Wonder Warthog]

"Don’t think so"

Rule One of "speeding up Windows". Load up on memory, to the limit the machine or your checkbook will accept.

Rule Two of "speeding up Windows". Put the OS on a SSD.

If you've got an older machine with only 8 gigs, do both. You will be pleased with the result.

[Bikkuri]

Laz, why don’t you build your own from scratch? Then you would know exactly what you are getting from the start.

I haven’t bought a pre-built PC since the early 80s... always build my own.

;^)

[xp38]

I didn’t know there was a Pong ping list :(

[lightman]

Ping.

[minnesota_bound]

#28 The link for the Computer Wattage Calculator is a great site.
I put in my pc specs and it says I need 797 watts.
My power supply is 850 watts....

[BraveMan]

Seems like a lot of horsepower for the money. Any issues?

[stylin19a]

thanks. I found that site hoping I wouldn’t have to buy a new PC. PSUs have a little wiggle room from max wattage.
I have a crap 250w PSU and I didn’t want to buy a new PC. This one is only 8-9 years old or so. Has a Compaq label on it and came with Vista. Went thru 4 upgrades.
And I really didn’t want to add a new PSU.

Most things that use power will have the power usage somewhere in the specs.

I wanted to turn off the integrated graphics and install a graphics card.
I decided to get a PCIe graphics card plus I added a gigabit ethernet low profile PCI and turned off the integrated old controller.
I used that calculator to first see if I could even do it...came up with room to spare.
So far, so good.

[wastedyears]

Dude, you’re better off putting your own together. You get exactly what you want.

[Squantos]

What are you doing with it ? Anonymous Surfin the net ? Gaming ? Mining bitcoins ? Cyberwarfare ( https://www.azcwr.org ) ? Editing ? Writing ??

All different machines Bub ....

[minnesota_bound]

The Dell desktop models and Dell monitors we have at work have that 250 watt power supply and I wanted to upgrade the video card as I have to wear my 1+ reading glasses at work, while at home I do not as I have a better Radeon R9 270x video card. It says it needs a minimum of 500 watt power supply.... I use a LG monitor and Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H motherboard.

The upgraded graphic card that Dell recommended for that model at their forum where people asking how to upgrade their models was $30 and made zero difference when I tried it out. I even brought in my old Asus monitor and still no difference so I figure it is the video card/dell motherboard.

[minnesota_bound]

Check out this story.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3616279/posts

I will only charge you $5,000 which is the Christmas special.

[stylin19a]

The Chipset on my MB is Nvidia. Who makes my MB ? I don’t know. Too lazy to look.

I picked up a Nvidia GeForce GT 710 with 1 gb and no fan.
The recommendation for this card was for 300 watt PSU for a 2gb config that pulls 19 watts with a TDP max of 25w. (Though I think it’s more than that)
I pulled a useless PCI modem and was able to keep the total watts on my PC @ 196 ish

Near as I can figure, your home card is way better and there’s a reason a 500w PSU is recommended.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7503/the-amd-radeon-r9-270x-270-review-feat-asus-his/16

not sure why a MB should care about which graphics card you use as long as you have the proper slot(Graphics Card Interface) and PSU to handle it. So i’m guessing it’s the graphics card.

this site allows you to do a build, so start with the Dell MB then go from there. Takes a bit to get used to. Once it (or you) find the MB, you can click “Compatible GPUs” and will bring a list of a graphics carsd that can be used with the MB.

http://www.pc-specs.com/pc-custom-builder/mobo?&compatFilter=false&perPage=100&minPrice=0&maxPrice=none&showAll=true&minRating=&popular=&makes%5B%5D=GigaByte&formFactor%5B%5D=ATX&socket=&ramType=&sortby=socket+desc

good luck.

[minnesota_bound]

Speccy - tells you the specs of your pc.
http://www.piriform.com/speccy

Belarc Advisor - tells you more
https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor

[stylin19a]

hey...thanx. Downloading ‘em now.

Merry Christmas

[Rome2000]

Love Speccy

Gamers need to install the Riva Statistics Tuner and MSI Afterburner

Run them concurrently and pick which stats you want to see displayed in the top let corner of the monitor.

CPU and GPU and RAM utilisation, temperature, fan speed, frame rate, all in real time.