Hello everyone I am new here, well i have been enjoying the youtube videos for about a year now and love them even though some of the stuff goes over my head. This is the first time i have ever posted in the forum. OK what i have going on, and dont laugh at me i have no money so im trying to do what i can here, i cant build a new computer i only have around $50-$60 to work with. I have on older HP slimline s3220n. It has the athlon 64 x2 5000+ 2.6ghz duel core cpu, 500 gig sata 7200 rpm hdd, 2 gig of pc2 5300 667mhz ddr2 ram, onboard geforce 6150se that shares up to 256 mb of the ram and a 160 watt psu. It has 1 pci slot and 1 pcie x16 slot. it also has a 16x sata dvdrw drive but I have it unplugged to save power if i needed it. The psu went out in it around jan this year so i ordered a 300 watt replacement that had a 6 pin pcie connector and a friend gave me a 9800gt 512mb pcie gpu to put in it to try to play some games and it worked somewhat ok for some game, like burnout paradise, farcry blood dragon, dead space, even outlast, all of them set to the lowest setting. I could not play any online games that i tried though, i tried team fortress 2 and left for dead 2 and they was just unplayable. It worked ok for about 6 months and then after it was on for about 5 min my picture would go black and then it wouldnt come back on even if i powered it off and back on unless i let it set about 20 min.the computer was coming on just not my video. i thought maybe my psu stopped putting out enough power to power the gpu because the fan stopped working in the psu a few months back and i just pulled the psu out and set it on top of the case and mounted a xbox 360 fan on top of it (it had a 90 day warranty which was all ready up) and i figured after a couple of months running like that it just wore out so i went to a local store and bought a cool master elite 342 mATX mini tower case and 400 watt psu combo because none of the standerd psu would fit in that slimline case and the 9800gt stuck way out so i couldnt put the side back on the slimline case. Here is the output specs on the new 400 watt psu:
- DC Power Supply Output:
- +3.3V, 20A
- +12V1, 16A
- +12V2, 16A
- -12V, 0.5A
- +5V, 16A
- +5Vsb, 2A
It has 1 6-pin PCI Express power connector. Now that Ive put everything in this new case and put the 9800gt back in it does the same thing, it will turn on for about 5 min then the picture goes black on my monitor. If i pull the gpu out it works fine with the onboard video but will not attempt to play any of my games so i need to buy a video card to put in it. ive looked around and found cheep cards that are like $35, a geforce 210 and gt 610 but when i look at the passmark scores of these cards(200-300) there not as good as that 9800gt.(725) Im working with $50-$60 and hoping to find something even if its on ebay used.( im watching a radeon xfx 7770 1 gig card on ebay but do not know if this system will handle that card and even if my psu will support it will the rest on my system hold it back so much that it would only preform like the 9800gt did? if this card would work and work good i think it would be a card that i could use later on if i get money to try to upgrade the mb/cpu but that wont be till around Christmas or New years :( ) What card would work comparable to that 9800gt or better with the limitations of this system. My friend plays team fortress 2 alot and left for dead 2 online and id like to be able to play these games also. I can upgrade to 4 gig of ram (2 2gig strips of pc2 6400 800mhz ddr2, this would also be a little faster mem than whats in it and on HP's website it says it is the fastest and max it will reconize ) but that will cost me the $50 and i dont think it would let me play these games. My local store has a xfx core edition r5 230 2 gig for $60 but i cant find passmark tests for this card.( i did find some for an r5 235 that was lower than that 9800gt also) I also had another friend give me an old card he had laying around, it is an evga 8800gts 768mb but when i put it in it has red lines running verticaly on the screen in several places, he said it is probably just the card is bad as old as it is and it has been laying in a closet for years. I dont know if my monitor makes a differance but it is a benq q24 w5 24 inch 1920x1200 native resolution (i found this on craigslist locally for $40 and love it) and i run windows 8 64bit but am thinking about going back to windows 7 64bit because everything seemed to run better with this computer when i was running 7. Thanks in advance for any advice if anyone can help me with this.
-wvoldtimer