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Trying to improve Wife's PC...

H

HyperTension

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Messages
1,220
Sigh... I'm trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit....

We currently owns a Dell XPS Studio 7100, specs as follows:

CPU: 3.0 AMD PHenom II X4 945
MOBO: 780G
Memory: Hynix, 3GB (9-9-9-24-1T)
Video: AMD 5450
HD: Seagate, 5400rpm, 500GB
PSU: Bestec 460W (ATX0460
OS: Windows 7 Home (32bit)

I've changed out the HD to a leftover WD 150 Raptor, but it's really loud in that case and I may have to change it out for a WD 1TB Black or Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST1000NM033 just to make it quieter. Interestingly, per WEI, my index went from 4.5 to 5.9...

Going to replace the rear fan with this: Noctua NF-B9 / 92mm http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608027

I'm going to pick up some generic DDR3 this afternoon. I'm pretty sure the Hynix that's in there is 1.5V, and I'm going to get it up to 4GB today. Based on where the memory is already, it looks like the slots are right next to each other vs. "every other one" on every other PC I've ever worked on or built. Leaning towards Crucial, given their positive history with OEM motherboards.

Not sure what video card to get... It obviously needs to be below 125W TDP due to the nature of the PSU, and I'm torn between the HD 7770 or the GTX 650. I'm partial to NVidia (running GTX 780), but I want the best performance to price (less than $150).

I do have 2 open 6 pin PCI-E connectors (labeled P8 & P9) on a single line from the PSU to run to a video card if needed, but given that its an Dell OEM PSU, I'm extremely hesitate to even think about stressing it.

I'm estimating current power usage at around (CPU: 95W, Raptor: 10W, Assuming another 10W for Seagate PSU, Motherboard: Assuming 5W, HD 5450: 20W) 140 watts total.

Any suggestions are more than welcome, and really do not have an issue with green vs. red, really looking more for best "bang for the buck".

Thanks!
 
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What exactly is this machine doing 99% of the time? Unless she is gaming, she'll never see a benefit to the GPU. If it were me, SSD for the OS and a non-shitty PSU.
 
My 11 y/o likes to play tf2 on it.. Hence leaning towards a more performance based GPU. I probably should have clarified that in the OP.


**EDIT** It seems that the majority of systems that were reviewed on the web were running ATI 5870, which has an estimated TDP of 188 watts on the same PSU...

**UPDATE** Tired to put in an old 8800GTS (640) and with black screen... Think it needs to be below 100 watts??
 
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HyperTension said:
**EDIT** It seems that the majority of systems that were reviewed on the web were running ATI 5870, which has an estimated TDP of 188 watts on the same PSU...
Click to expand...
Yes that was when the PSU was brand new. And more than likely some of those systems had larger PSUs. Considering that you've probably had the system for longer than a year or two, I don't think it's capable of its full rated wattage anymore. So I still don't trust that particular PSU. With that said, I would not recommend anything higher than the HD 7750 with that PSU.

But a replacement PSU is only $45:
$45 - Corsair 430CX V2 430W PSU

That would let you get most GPUs on the market now. I'd recommend geting the HD 7790 since it's faster than the similarily priced GTX 650 Ti and comes with three games that you or your son may enjoy:
$140 - Sapphire 100356OCL Radeon HD 7790 OC 1GB PCI-E Video Card (Free Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Bioshock Infinite, & Tomb raider)

As for the SSD, I recommend the Samsung 840 or Samsung 840 Pro.
 
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There's actually a low profile Radeon 7750 to my knowledge somewhere on newegg (If you can't upgrade that power supply)
But as already mentioned, if you toss in a new PSU you can get a beefier video card.
Since the Radeon 7790 was already mentioned, that would be a good route to go.
Don't forget to look around for some deals here from forum members, too, though
 
Swapping out the PS (assuming Dell hasn't used any annoying proprietary connectors to make this impossible) and putting in a new video card won't hurt. However, I think your biggest gain would be from installing an SSD as the boot drive. Keep the mechanical drive for mass storage. For SSDs, 128 GB is a good size, 64 GB is acceptable.

This will be somewhat painful, as you'll likely have to install the OS from scratch. Even if you don't have to reinstall, it's probably worth doing so.

I'm not sure I understand why your existing video card isn't adequate for Team Fortress 2. The game is a few years older than the Radeon HD5000 series. Usually the video cards that hit the market a couple of years after a game is published are more than capable of handling the game, even if they're in the moderately-priced/low-profile tier. Maybe TF2 is an exception.
 
Jeffman said:
Never had a problem with the handful of rebates I've done through them. They've always been great.
Click to expand...
I had a string of rebates on stuff for my build last year, and got all of them eventually.

I even got one of them despite having sent in proof of purchase for a different item than the rebate was for. Oops. Guess they were just looking for *a* receipt, not really reading it.
 
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