Upgrading PC
Community Forums/General Help/Upgrading PC
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| Hi, I have the Dell Studio XPS Desktop 435MT. It comes with a crappy 360W which I'd like to upgrade and also the graphics card. Currently the GC is the Radeon HD4850. This is an ATi based card. The question is can I use GeForce based cards or must I stick with Ati ones? Thanks Jim |
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| You can use any, provided its the same slot type (AGP/PCIE). I have no idea what a "Dell Studio XPS Desktop 435MT" is. A 360W PSU is a bit poor, even for a PC that's a few years old. Without knowing the full spec of the PC I'd recommend minimum 500W these days - even if your current one is holding up. A 500W PSU running at 70% capacity is much better than a 360W one running flat out. |
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| The 360W power supply probably isn't running flat-out, though. My Nvidia GTX260 is supposed to need a 550W PSU, but my PSU is only 350W, and measuring the actual usage at the plug shows that even under full load it only goes to 160 or so watts. The HD4850 should still be quite capable of running new games, though -- it's not that old. Unless you're going for 'super high-end' I'm not sure you'd see that much difference. |
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| Keep in mind that you will need to buy a more powerfull powersupply when upgrading to a faster GFX card. I recently went from a Nvidia eVGA 9600GTS to a ATI 4890 HD and noticed that my 480W powersupply couldn't even give enough power just to see my boot screen. I replaced the powersuply by a 750W powersupply and now everything runs great. Normally it doesn't matter if you use ATI or Nvidia cards in your computer, just remember to deinstall the GFX driver just before you are going to replace the card. |
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| Does Dell still have that non-standard connection from power supply to motherboard? Be sure to check. And if you manage to cram a heftier PSU and GPU in there your mini-tower may be a mini-toaster. |
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