Hey all. I’m looking to get into gaming once again with my PC, the problem at the moment is that I only have a Geforce 8600GT in my system and with a lot of new games around this card is utterly useless as most games need far more graphics memory to run smoothly even on lower settings. At the moment I have Dell 531 with the following specs: - AMD X2 Processor 6000+ (3.0GHz) - Memory Dual Channel3072MB DDR2 667 [2x1024 + 2x512] - Hard Drive 1TB Serial ATA Non Raid (2x500GB) 7200Rpm Dual HDD Config - Video Card 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT - Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio - English Windows Vista Home Premium I was looking into purchasing a XFX GeForce 9800GTX XXX EDITION. To replace my current card, however it won’t fit inside my chassis and my power supply is not up to the job either. XFX GeForce 9800GTX XXX EDITION So I decided I am going to buy a new chassis and much more powerful power supply then transfer the remaining components of the 531 over into the new chassis. Can’t decide at the moment whether it is worth buying a new motherboard while I’m at it though. But really I’m making this first post for some suggestions. 1) One thing that is bothering me at the moment is that I am not sure how straight forward doing this would be. As far as I am aware it should really just be a case of unscrewing all the components and then putting them back together inside the new chassis. But I know the new case I will be getting will have the option of a lot more cooling fans, and with fitting a much larger and more power graphics card maybe it would be more beneficial to include another couple of fans. Although From what I can see in my dell it looks like the power cable to the fans plugs directly into the motherboard, which I assume other fans would do the same, but I don’t see any more space to plug fans and such into the board I’m not sure if this is an issue maybe it is powered from a different location that I am unaware of. may i have some advice on how that works please? 2) the card I will be buying is powered by two 6pin PCI Express connectors that plug into the side of it. I need to find a power supply that is capable of powering this but I don’t really know what to look out for, is there a certain type of power supply that is made with these cards in mind that I should check out? 3)The case that I am looking to buy will be a Thermaltake Armor full tower case (with 25” fan) because at first glance it seems to have enough space to fit a 9800GTX card (or two) without to much trouble. What I really want to know here is whether this is a good choice for transferring Dell 531 components into? and could this chassis be problematic in some way? And generally is it a good case? THERMALTAKE ARMOR 4) the motherboard on my dell I’d assume is very average, from what I hear they are not very high performance, although I have no idea if that’s true, I am considering upgrading the mother board to one of the latest boards that are compatible with an AMD X2 processors depending on what the benefits are and whether its worth the aggravation of setting it up and getting my copy of vista working with it again etc. some info on this would be great, especially if you could help me choose a board if it turns out to be worth replacing. I’d like to find one of the best, but don’t want one that’s aimed at extreme Overclockers with lots of features that I wont use, all I really need is 2 firewire ports about 6USB ports and sublime performance. Any other suggestions or ideas are more than welcome, I’ve never really done anything like this before but I’m sure I will be able to figure it out. If there is any common problems that can be caused by doing this it would be nice to hear about it too. There is a link to a picture below showing the connections on the card if you have not seen it before, any info on how I would connect it to the power supply if its not straight forward would be great too. XFX 9800GTX PICS Thanks alot for any help or suggestions that are posted. Chris.
Transferring components from Dell PCs isn't easy, so you need to buy a fair few replacement parts. You will need to buy: Case Motherboard Power supply Graphics card The reason for the new board is because Dell mobos only work with Dell cases, and vice versa. Recommended parts choices: Corsair HX 520W PSU NZXT Tempest case Gigabyte GA-M770-DS3 Motherboard XFX 9800GTX (not the XXX edition)
Thanks for the reply, some nice suggestions. happy you manage to clear the motherboard issue up for me. I quite like the look of the case you suggested, but do you think that case would have enough room to fit a 9800 GTX or two? it doesn't seem to have too much room inside with the shelves where the hard drives go, could they get in the way? The power supply I see is very highly rated too, I don’t know if it would be powerful enough though. I’ve heard that a power supply of 600W is recommended for these types of cards. Is there any more information you could give on why the XXX version of the GPU isn't a good idea? The motherboard seems nice too, also good ratings. Can a mother board effect or change performance in a PC dramatically or does it only effect performance a little in some areas? Oh, one other big issue I wanted to ask about but forgot was… is it possible to change a motherboard without changing my current windows vista install that I have on my drives at the moment. I don’t really want to be paying out for another copy of Vista its quite expensive and would put an end to this idea right away if I had to get a new version. Thanks again
The NZXT Tempest case can be used with a 9800 as long as you use the bottom tray for your hard disks (so only using up to four rather than 8) If you think you'll need five or more hard disks you may want to consider something else. Power supply ratings are pretty meaningless usually, the average gaming PC even with a top end CPU and graphics card like you're using often falls short of 300W maximum load - the reason why power supplies with vast ratings have appeared is for triple-SLI setups (madness) and because cheap nasty units have been going about the market for some time now - when they go up in smoke people assume they need more watts, not the reality which is that they bought a crappy product. Trust me, the 520W unit is plenty. The reason why I don't recommend XXX edition cards is it's usually extra money for a mild overclock which you could probably pull off yourself with rivatuner, and what's more, a lot of these pre-overclocked cards seem to be going wrong lately, it's best to play it safe and lose that literally less than 5% advantage the OC'ed card gives you. Cheap motherboards can harm performance, but it's more to do with build quality than anything else. You don't want the board to go wrong as motherboards are complex and time consuming to swap out. Changing motherboards whilst keeping the OS is part-science, part-luck. If you're keeping all the other hardware the same you stand a good chance, but if the chipset on the board is completely different, you can experience trouble. My advice to you is to back up all your personal documents and be prepared to reinstall. If you don't have to, great, if you do, you're at least prepared.
Thanks for replying, I’ve been looking into everything you have suggested and comparing them with other items, you picked out some very good products there. I’m just about to order the parts but I just wanted to get a seal of approval from someone who know what they're talking about. so I’ve chosen to get: CASE - Thermaltake Shark Black Aluminium Full Tower Case With Side Window - No PSU MOBO - Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 AMD 770 Socket AM2+ 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard PSU - Coolermaster IGreen 600W PSU - 85% Efficiency 8pin ATX12V v2.2 120mm Fan GPU - XFX 9800GTX XXX Edition 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI) HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card The reason I didn't choose the power supply you suggested is because from what I can see it doesn't look like it has any 6pin PCI-E connectors, and I’ll like to try any avoid making it more of a headache by having to buy converters or something to make it work. I did take into consideration what you told me about the XXX card too, however the place where I am buying all this stuff from doesn't appear to sell the standard one and to be honest I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to overclocking, so I think its safer to buy one that is factory overclocked, I just noticed that the xfx 9800 gtx Black Edition is going to be on sale at this site in the next couple of days... maybe I should wait a buy that card instead, what do you think? Would very much like to hear what you think. Cheers.
Cases are, within reason, personal preference and the one you've picked out is fine, but the power supply you've chosen isn't very good, and you really should heed the warning about XXX edition graphics cards. Has it occurred to you that you could use somewhere other than ebuyer for your stuff?
yup i have looked around a few differant UK sites. ebuyer seems to be the cheapest place i came accross so far and the delivary can take less than a day as standard which is great because tomorrow i have the day off and it will give me the time to get stuck in building it. What about this powersupply i know this one is supposed to be great, from what i have read so far: Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W PSU - ATX 12V V2.01 120mm Fan 20+4pin this may be a stupid questiuon considering that the black edition card are even more overclocked.. but would you reccommend one of these cards lol?
No, for the same reason as before. Ebuyer's shipping is no faster than most sites, the only difference being you can order up to 8pm for next day delivery rather than 3-5pm for most other sites. Get this card instead: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143343 As for the PSU, reviews can be misleading. Coolermaster units are generally noisy and not as good as Corsairs. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114945 It's even slightly cheaper than the Coolermaster.
