NAS Graphics Card Decision

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csnv

Limp Gawd
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Joined
Nov 11, 2009
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Hi guys, I'm trying to decide what card to get (i have a spare lanparty s939 to use as a NAS machine). Now, I'm looking at the "cheapest, lightest, least heat output, OLD" pci card. I don't think I will be using it to do anything spectacular. Just enough display the text.

Do you guys have any suggestion?

Thanks in advance!!
 
Most of the PCI video cards are from a era before widespread power usage measurements were done. I would think at this point look for a passively cooled card in the used forum for as cheap as you can find it is the best answer. If anyone can help you on power usage figures you can try contacting AMD or Nvidia once you've found a couple of cheap ones. They should be able to tell you the power draws.
 
can use an online PSU calculator to get an idea of what a card is going to do impact wise

but honestly, any ancient PCI card (like some of the TNT2, GeForce 256, Rad 7k, etc pulls that I've got in the shop) will work, unless you want something super fancy

just make sure you get something with proper drivers for whatever OS you're going after (some older 3DLabs hardware doesn't support XP for example, but works fine with Win2000 or *nix)

an alternate suggestion would be something "newer", like GeForce MX or the 6200 PCI
basically as long as it doesn't have an auxilary power connector, it isn't gonna draw more power than the PCI slot can deliver by spec (which I believe is at absolute maximum 25W)

in short:
you're putting more energy/concern into this than its worth (or than the card is gonna draw :p)
 
It is going in a small storage area with the temperature can go up to 100F. The less heat output, the better for it. Maybe that: ATI Rage128 PCI Video Card for 10 dollar will do =)
 
csnv said:
It is going in a small storage area with the temperature can go up to 100F. The less heat output, the better for it. Maybe that: ATI Rage128 PCI Video Card for 10 dollar will do =)
Click to expand...

you realize that this will probably be similar in power draw to something newer, like a GF4 MX, because its so ancient and inefficient

seriously man, 100* F isn't hardly a thing to these chips (you're talking about ~37*C, problems start at ~50-60* C, if not higher, would be more worried about the CPU burning up than the GPU in this scenario)

doesn't really matter what you get (as I've said before), but if you're convinced that you need to buy some 10 year old piece of junk or else you can't sleep good at night, go for it, but I'm telling it doesn't matter



jeremyshaw said:
PCI does 25W... max.
Click to expand...

:eek:
 
I kept my old Trident PCI card around for a while as a spare. I'm not sure about driver support now, but this 9685 is cheap and should do fine for simply displaying console stuff, assuming it's supported by whatever OS you're using.
 
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If you use VNC, you don't need to have a video card. Just use one to setup the box and then pull it before putting it in place.

At 100F, I would worry more about the harddrives than anything else. When you start getting that hot, it will be hard to keep the drives cool and they will likely have a shorter lifespan because of it.
 
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