New 1st time build, research not enough, advice requested.

Both a GT 1030 or an RX 550 will play 4K video quite well.

Yes, with either card you can run multiple displays at once.
 
I managed to find a good deal on a MB, CPU, DDR4 bundle for £270 and sold my old parts on ebay for £160. The total upgrade cost was £110 and I picked up a used RX 480 8GB for £110 and sold my faulty card for £28, so the total cost of the upgrade was around £200.
Parts are a lot cheaper in the US so I would guess it would cost you around $200.
 
swingdjted said:
So the Gigabyte card you linked could make this machine handle 4K video playback, such as 4K youtube vids or home recordings from my camera (Lumix FZ1000) if I were connected to a 4K display? That would be good enough for me. Even if it could simply play 1080p @ 60fps smoothly, it would be worth it to buy that card.
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Yes. See this link for details: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=318937

swingdjted said:
Right now, my current video card needs a dedicated wire from the PSU to run it. I don't see where I would do that with this Gigabyte card. Is that to say that I won't need that wire anymore? In other words, is the card receiving enough power from the slot on the mobo?
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The 1030 doesn't need extra power from the powersupply as the PCIE slot provides 75W which is enough.

swingdjted said:
Another question: with the Gigabyte card, can I run a 1920x1080 monitor plus a HDTV simultaneously like I do now with my current card?
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That card has the following ports:
1 x HDMI 2.0b
1 x SL-DVI-D

So you can drive 2 displays as long as they connect via those ports or you use some kind of converter.
 
This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for, at least for playing those videos in a smooth way.

Thank you for all of your input and the link to the Kodi website; it was very helpful.

I'm going to order the gigabyte model and hopefully it will work well. I will post again after I install it and use it for a while.
 
TheFlayedMan said:
Alternatively, you could buy a budget graphics card such as an Nvidia Geforce1030 for $84.99

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...iption=1030&cm_re=1030-_-14-932-004-_-Product
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Good news!

The Gigabyte card liked in the quote above arrived this afternoon. I removed the old card, which is this EVGA GTX 260...

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130370

...and I installed the new card. The first thing I noticed is that it is very small and lightweight by comparison. Upon starting the computer, everything showed up in 800x600 resolution, so I adjusted that in the Windows display/resolution settings. Also, it had automatically reverted out of the Windows 7 Aero setting and into the basic theme, but before I could adjust that, it was telling me to restart to apply some plug-n-play settings. Upon restart, everything looked good.

I tested it with some 1080p@60fps videos, both from Youtube and from my camera. The video playback quality was perfectly smooth. The old video card had 1080@60 video inconsistently speeding up, slowing down, stuttering, or freezing.

Next test was to run a music video at 1080p@60fps on the TV while simultaneously running a few different music visualizations fullscreen on the monitor (1920x1200@60fps). It still did the job without hesitation.

These tests are non-scientific, but are useful to me and are real-world in nature. No need for gaming on this box, so as far as I can tell, this computer is back to doing more than I need it to do.

Thank you very much for your suggestions. This fix is really all I needed, because the rest of the hardware doesn't give me any issues with speed at all when it comes to the tasks I give it.

So one last question, what on earth can I do with this old GTX 260? It's only worth just over 25 cents if I sell it as electronic scrap at the scrapyard. Any other uses? Throw it in the air for skeet shooting?

Thanks again.
 
So it has been very good for the most part. This COVID-19 thing has me using that computer quite a bit more often. There is a small issue with the above video card. Ever since installing it, I noticed that after a few hours of run time (used to only notice once a week, but now with increased use, it's more like once a day), the screen goes black and the entire system hesitates for 3-5 seconds, including audio. No programs crash or anything, so a little patience allows me to tune it out, but is there a fix for something like that? Otherwise it was an excellent suggestion that made my computer very usable and as fast/practical as anything I could buy today for what I do.
 
400px-Necro_Main.jpg
 
Hey, all y'all,
I posted a new thread over in the Home Theater section. I'm not sure how many of you General Hardware folks visit there, but I think that you would be very helpful with a new HTPC sized system that I would like to build from scratch. I'm sorry if this is a shameless crosspost; please let me know if this is a rules violation and I won't do it anymore. Either way, if you help me I will be eternally grateful. Here's the thread:
https://hardforum.com/threads/first-build-in-12-years-please-help.1996022/
Thanks again.
 
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