Okay, I am in a little bit of a predicament. I have games that I would love to play now, but can't because of my graphics. I have the money to upgrade what I want, but I am not sure if I should just sell of this pc for whatever I can get, and save that plus the money and get a newer better one (when I say get I mean build) I purchased this HP desktop (a6203w) about 2 years ago. I have 4 gigs of ram, an AMD athlond 64x2 4400+ 2.3ghz processor, it came with the Asus M2N68-LA motherboard, and an integrated nvidia 6150se graphics, and a 230w or 250w PSU not sure which. Now I was either thinking of taking the few hundred that I have, and buying a new processor, the AMD athlon 64x2 5600+ 2.8ghz at 89w, and a new PSU like a 300w or 400w, all the video cards I seem to look at say that range of wattage, and I was looking into the 9800gtx+ card, the ATI 4670, 4770, or 4870, or is there a better card? The case is a stock HP case, not HUGE not TINY, and it has PCI expressx16 but not the 2.0 PCIe. Help? Advice? I don't want to have to wait forever and a day (like a few years) to have a good comp to play games, and I'm not looking to maxx crisis with full AA on my comp either. I am looking for mid settings and 30 fps ish. Thanks.
You havent told us how much money you have to spend. Even if your computer would fit the new cpu and psu, your case isnt designed to handle the heat put out by a gpu like a 4870.
Oh yeah, sorry >.<. I am look at around 300 to 500, 500 at most. And I only have one fan in it now and that is the fan on the processor, I can mount more fans in it right? Or like I said, should I just scrap that idea, save the 300 to 500, sell this comp, and try to build a new one?
Sell the current one i suppose. For an $500 budget your looking at a core i3 cpu at best. You would more or less be going up to a higher end dual core cpu. Here was another request for a $500 build. The suggested build came out to about $630 http://forums.v4.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/838462/5056564 Of course thats also newegg canada so US price will fluctuate a bit, but gives you something to work towards. As for fans, yes you can mount more, but thats not the point. The case is an OEM case. Cases made by Dell,HP and so on, are not designed to accommodate the heat generated by such components. Plus you might have a hard time finding a psu that would fit in the case.
Mmk, and the build will only be for the tower. I have a question, I will be re using the monitor I have now, a nice flast screen 20 inch monitor, as well as the speakers, mouse, and keyboard. But question, the light scribe drive that came on my comp I own now 16X DVD(+/-)R/RW 12X RAM (+/-)R DL LightScribe SATA drive Is what is says on the spec page, could I re use, and wipe the hard drive I have and use that as well? Or not wipe it at all? Or can I not re use either of those and would be forced to buy a new optical drive and hard drive. Thanks for all the help thus far though.
You can reuse hard drives and CD/DVD drives, but you will still need to reinstall windows on the new system, and if you don't have another clean HDD to use, you may be better off buying another and using the existing drive as a secondary. Making sure you have backed up all the right data before wiping a drive to reinstall windows is a lengthy procedure. $500 US for a system without a hard drive is easily doable, with a hard drive a little more tricky, but doable. It will not be a high-spec PC by any stretch, but it should be enough to play modern games on minimum settings. The build is pretty much exactly as the build linked to by Xplorer.
Yeah, I am probably going to keep my CD drive, keep the hard drive as a backup or something to pull files off of (can I do that? Use this hard drive as backup storage?) Otherwise I might just scrap the idea of re using the old HDD and just buy a new one But I am going to wait another year or so, at that point I will have more adequate funding, and I will probably do it this winter to catch holiday sales and such.
You can use an old hard drive as extra storage. If you're waiting as long as a year to build though, there is no point recommending anything now, as what will be available after that time will be completely different. Generally 2-4 weeks is the longest I will recommend specifying parts for.
Yeah, I understand that, and I was just thinking, if I am a little bit more patient and wait, I can have more money to spent, 800 to 900 dollars at most, 700 to 800 at least, and I can catch holiday sales and such. Thanks though for all the help guys. But question, as it is driving me insane, I understand I MAY have to put a new power supply in my comp, I think it was 230 or 250w, and the integrated video at the moment is driving me crazy. So I was planning on upgrading to a lower end video card so I could at LEAST play SOME games on low to mid settings. I was looking at a geforce 7900, or 8600, or a lower grade ati like the 4350. I am not planning on doing anything more to this system other than a minor video card and MAYBE PSU if it is needed to power the vid card, but that should do me over fine until i get the new build underway. Thoughts?
As long as your PSU isn't a crappy brand (The most reputable PCX manufacturers like Dell and HP use reasonably good PSUs, just tiny wattage) you can actually already upgrade your graphics to something vastly more powerful than the 6150SE. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102871 You can run one of these cards fine off a 250W PSU (even though it won't say so on the box) and it's 15 times as powerful as modern integrated graphics chips, let alone the 6150 which is older, and probably a fair bit weaker. For $82 it will make a huge difference to your games performance in the interim. The HD5670 is roughly equivalent to the HD3850 and 8800GS of old.
Mmk, I don't know if it is an HP power supply, it is an HP a6203w pavilion desktop but I can take off the case cover tomm and get more info. Will that card work with the PCIe x16 and power chords etc, or do I need to buy anything more? I think I read about some cards needing a PCI power connector or something.
I have deliberately chosen the HD5670 as it does not require a PCI Express power connector. Aside from guaranteeing it does not use much power, this also ensures the card will work with power supplies that don't have PCIe power connectors (most stock HP/Dell systems).
Okay thanks again, you and xplorer were a huge help. Since there are no power connectors, it is just a plug n play? Besides inserting it into the pci slot, what else needs to be done? Do I need to disable the integrated video? And I suppose drivers come with it? And lastly, is there any way to find out how much wattage my computer is using at the moment with all I have on it? I just want to be SURE that when I plug the card up, I won't fry my computer or screw the card up from it not having enough power. Or what would happen if it doesn't have enough power to run the card, just crash?
