Upgrade An OEM PC With A GTX 1050 Ti

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Our friends over at PC Perspective wanted to know if upgrading an OEM PC with a NVIDIA GTX 1050 TI could turn a budget every day system into a gaming machine. The results of a simple graphics card upgrade were actually pretty surprising.
 
This summer I received a free Dell Studio XPS 8100 with i7 870 2.93GHz and 8GB memory from a friend that was upgrading. It had a failing hard drive, so I replaced it with an old Crucial m4 512GB SSD and installed Windows 10 64bit using a Win7 key that I got here on [H] before the 7to10 upgrade promotion ended.
It only has a 300W power supply, so video card options are limited. I didn't want to spend much money upgrading it.
I gotta say, with the i7 870 quad core running at almost 3GHz and turbo hitting 3.3 or 3.4 GHz and the SSD, this system is actually really quick for something that is now over 4 or 5 years old. It's also one of the quietest computers I've ever heard.

It had a crappy Nvidia GTS 240 video card installed that was totally outmatched by the rest of the system, so I bought an EVGA GTX 950 SSC Gaming 2GB card for $110 after rebate which I thought was a good deal for a card that did not require more than a 300W power supply. It made a HUGE difference in gaming performance while remaining fairly cheap and not power hungry.
Now with the latest black Friday deals, I grabbed an EVGA GTX 1050 Ti Gaming 4GB card for $115 after rebate to put in the same system. I'll move the 950 SSC to an older system that currently has a GTX 285 to give it a good upgrade.

Bottom line is I agree with the article that these 1050 Ti cards are pretty nice for the price and don't require an extra PCIe power cable to run which is great for OEM systems like Dell, etc.. I mean... 4 GB on the video card and no extra power required? Awesome!

Edit: Corrected error above stating EVGA card didn't need a PCIe power connector when I meant that it didn't need more than 300W of power but does have a 8pin PCIe power connector. Oops.
 
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I am too cheap to replace my kids Dell Optiplex 7020, so I convinced him to buy a MSI 1050Ti 4GB with his allowance to get the best performance without replacing his PC. He currently has Corei5 4590, 16GB RAM, 128GBSSD, and 1TB WD black. He is playing Doom 4 and Overwatch on High custom settings with ease.

I did upgrade his PS with a Corsair 650 I had laying around though.
 
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crispyb said:
I am too cheap to replace my kids Dell Optiplex 7020, so I convinced him to buy a MSI 1050Ti 4GB with his allowance to get the best performance without replacing his PC. He currently has Corei5 4590, 16GB RAM, 128GBSSD, and 1TB WD black. He is playing Doom 4 and Overwatch on High custom settings with ease.

I did upgrade his PS with a Corsair 650 I had laying around though.
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Lol that machine still probably has a good 2-3 years of above 60 fps gaming as long as you upgrade the video card. 4590 is well above average.
 
You can still upgrade from 7 to 10 for free. Just the auto update has stopped.
 
I recommend stay far away from Dell Inspiron 36xx just add more hard drive is pain in butt as it doesn't come with custom HDD sata power cable that plug in to motherboard for the two empty 2.5 bay heck they so cheap they don't even give you the 2.5 bay caddy bracket go for XPS 8910 model
 
Something Ryan doesn't mention is that not all x16 slots will supply the full 75W. Sometimes they're limited to 25W or so, especially in physically small systems.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Something Ryan doesn't mention is that not all x16 slots will supply the full 75W. Sometimes they're limited to 25W or so, especially in physically small systems.
Click to expand...
There no way your going get GTX 1050 in SFF or USFF case as those computer architecture are meant be used as client system just web, email, doc and other light apps
 
That cheap i3 pc with 1050ti should just hit min reqs for Oculus with ASW...Upgrading a cheap PC to min VR specs the same cost as the barebones PS4 VR setup (given you need/have the pc already and don't have a ps4) for a much better setup...
 
shspvr said:
There no way your going get GTX 1050 in SFF or USFF case as those computer architecture are meant be used as client system just web, email, doc and other light apps
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There are plenty of examples of ITX builds with founders edition-size cards. The funky OEM custom SFF housings are another story, but if it has a slot, some creative Dremeling might get it working.
 
trentchau said:
Lol that machine still probably has a good 2-3 years of above 60 fps gaming as long as you upgrade the video card. 4590 is well above average.
Click to expand...

yeah.. I'm in a lot of ways impressed may be to strong of a word, kinda surprised by how well even the i3 in my alienware alpha @ 2.9 does with modern games. it seems most modern intel do well to very well gaming wise.. Mainly intergrated gpus holding back.
 
My Alpha is live and kicking with many of the games as well. You have to note that it is a modified nvidia gpu in there though. I think I might replace the 1st gen alpha in a couple of years with the current gen out now. It supports the external gpu dock.
 
I just bought 3 of my kids old refurbished computers for christmas and am waiting for the low profile 1050's to come out. One of the computers was stored for it's whole life, came like it was never even opened up. Dell 9010 I5-3550, 8 gb ram 150 bucks shipped. I got a Thinkstation E31 I7-3770 /w 8gb ram for less than 200. It came with a quadro 2000....going to see how my daughter likes it, but as it's not a sff, it's not going to need a low profile card. I'm really surprised how cheap you can put a decent gaming computer together for these days.
 
I grab old computers from clients when they upgrade if it has a decent CPU. Picked up a Thinkstation S20 the other day, has a quad core xeon in it - threw in a 750Ti I got locally for $50, works like a charm! I can play overwatch on ultra on a small monitor, its for when friends come over. You can make almost any old PC into a lite gaming machine if the CPU is decent.
 
Azrak said:
This summer I received a free Dell Studio XPS 8100 with i7 870 2.93GHz and 8GB memory from a friend that was upgrading. It had a failing hard drive, so I replaced it with an old Crucial m4 512GB SSD and installed Windows 10 64bit using a Win7 key that I got here on [H] before the 7to10 upgrade promotion ended.
It only has a 300W power supply, so video card options are limited. I didn't want to spend much money upgrading it.
I gotta say, with the i7 870 quad core running at almost 3GHz and turbo hitting 3.3 or 3.4 GHz and the SSD, this system is actually really quick for something that is now over 4 or 5 years old. It's also one of the quietest computers I've ever heard.

It had a crappy Nvidia GTS 240 video card installed that was totally outmatched by the rest of the system, so I bought an EVGA GTX 950 SSC Gaming 2GB card for $110 after rebate which I thought was a good deal for a card that did not require more than a 300W power supply. It made a HUGE difference in gaming performance while remaining fairly cheap and not power hungry.
Now with the latest black Friday deals, I grabbed an EVGA GTX 1050 Ti Gaming 4GB card for $115 after rebate to put in the same system. I'll move the 950 SSC to an older system that currently has a GTX 285 to give it a good upgrade.

Bottom line is I agree with the article that these 1050 Ti cards are pretty nice for the price and don't require an extra PCIe power cable to run which is great for OEM systems like Dell, etc.. I mean... 4 GB on the video card and no extra power required? Awesome!

Edit: Corrected error above stating EVGA card didn't need a PCIe power connector when I meant that it didn't need more than 300W of power but does have a 8pin PCIe power connector. Oops.
Click to expand...

How soon we forget - this is essentially a replay of what the SAME group did with the GTX750Ti; if that made sense (and even most of us thought so), why wouldn't a more powerful GPU (with a lower TDP) make at least just as much sense? I'm hoping they do a YouTube video of the swappage (just as they did with the GTX750Ti swaps)
 
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