One simply cannot place an Ian Fleming creation (Kinda like James Bond is as well) into anything else but the proper container:
Posted on 12/23/2017 11:19:23 AM PST by Lazamataz
My old home computer died outright sometime mid-December. I use it for some fairly intensive gaming (Fallout 4, (actually all the Fallout installments), Total War: Rome 2 (which required an upgrade to a Nividia GeForce GTX 970 video card) and personal computer-development efforts in Visual Studio 2014 and SQL Server 2012. The computer was bought new from MicroCenter in late 2013.
So I went on Amazon, and a Refurbished Dell caught my eye. Here are the specs:
Processor: Intel Core 7th Generation i7-7700 Processor (Quad Core, up to 4.20 GHz, 8MB Cache, 65W) 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 | Dell Wireless 1707 Card (802.11BGN + Bluetooth 4.0, 2.4 GHz) 2TB 7200 rpm SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive | NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 2GB GDDR3
I assumed it was a full-sized tower, when I got it last night, I discovered it was a minitower. Ok, no worries.
This morning when I began working on it I discovered it has a small-form, anemic power supply (230 watts!) and only one fullsized card slot. The PSU wattage concerned me, but at least I could take out the Nividia GTX 730 and pop in my GTX 970.
Wait, I thought: what about wattage.
So here is my question to those who know all about hardware:
1) Can I find a small form PSU that can get me the wattage I need (400-500) and not cook the insides? Do most small-form PSU's vent directly outside the case, preventing that cooking?
2) Can I find a video card for gaming that will have some horsepower, say 4 gig of onboard RAM, that will either have lower power needs or that will be okay with the higher wattage small-form PSU? And do I have to worry about the higher power video card cooking the insides?
3) Will I be able to run a second hard drive? I will. 2TB is not nearly enough, and I still have to migrate all my stuff from the other drives (if I can, of course, if one, the other, or both, still work)? I understand drives are relatively low-wattage so I am probably okay on power.
or
4) Do I need to return this mini-tower as unsuitable to my needs?
If you still have your old computer, just swap the guts of the newer one into it except the power supply.
Not rich, just into computers. I bought it 2 years ago, depending on what kind of cards you get it ranged from $2500-5K.
I got low end (2) GTX-960 in SLI configuration and paid about $2,700, the case was just too cool to pass up, and every year I just swap out the card.
This is the first year that the price of the card that I bought last year (Geforce Titan X) actually went up from last year. Its all the bitcoin miners that have driven up the costs of the GPU’s.
You can get great frame rates with a GTX 1050-1060 ti, they range from $179-280.
Interesting idea, but I'm not thrilled there is only one full-size slot on the MB. I think I will follow other recommendations and punt this one back to the manufacturers for funding a True Build.
Yeah, I’m kinda figuring the custom build is the way to go.
Did you ping Pong?
I recently had my favorite PC (core 2 quad, 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM) die on me.
Every time I tried to boot it up I got a parity I/O error.
I took all the boards out and tried booting it up with only mother board peripherals. Still no dice.
I swapper out all the RAM and still got parity errors.
I decided it was the motherboard.
I bought a refurbished Dell 3.4GHz, 8-core system with 32GB ram on Amazon for $460. What a sweet system.
After using the new PC for 2 weeks, I went out to the garage and brought in the dead PC. I took the MB out and examined it under a strong light. I found a white cottony spider nest in the card slot for the wifi card. I removed it with a toothpick, put the MB back in the box, gave the heat sink a fresh daub of grease and powered it up.
It came right up.
So now I have a backup system.
I keep mine to the right of my desk against the wall so my beverages (Read: Martinis) are on the opposite side of the tower and mouse. It also allows for easy access to take off the side panel so I can fire up the mini compressor to blow out the dust from the insides.
If you are just questing and moving around the world, the 1050 is more than adequate. World content or raids with a bunch of people can get laggy though.
1 - Whoever built that thing did NOT know what they were doing. A Core i7 Mobo does not go with a 250 Watt PS.
2 - A Core i7 will not get the cooling it needs in a mini-tower case.
3 - If you use it for gaming, AND you have a separate video card, it has to be in a full size tower case. Cooling is important here.
4 - And, to be honest, you do not really need a Core i7 for 99% of the games out there. A Core i7 actually has 8 cores, and all 8 are only used in multi-threaded operations.
"Most" games need only 4 cores, and will only use 4.
A Core i5, a fast one, should have enough juice to run your stuff.
5 - It has to be 350 W or better PS. 16Gb Ram is great.
And in case you didn't know, the Intel line of CPU's have a built in graphics processor for when you use the "onboard" graphics, and it is ignored when you use your own discreet video card.
That's why AMD CPU's are cheaper, no GPU in the chip.
as for a budget gaming computer, i would suggest you view some of the videos on the nvidia 1050 vs 1060 graphics cards, and getting an older i5 2400 or 3450 used or refurbished.
the channel/user name is tech deals on youtube, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCss3QxegBkF8BAetIo0qXA/videos?disable_polymer=1
some videos to look at are:
$250 Gaming PC - Play games at 1080p - what to look for if buying refurbished
$150 Desktop PC - Intel i5-3450 - Amazing Windows Performance - shows what a old cpu with a 1050 could do - has gaming footage
1080p Gaming - GTX 1050 vs 1060 vs 1070 - 23 Benchmarks - some info on difference with graphics card capabilities.
Gaming on a 6 year old PC! - i5-3450 + GTX 1070 + 600W PSU - Upgrade Guide - how to do some upgrades to a refurbished system
the graphics cards 1060,1070,1080, are expensive now, because they are being bought up by people using them for mining crypto currency. don't expect the prices on them to go down for a long time.
I have had great luck with Tiger Direct through the years.
I had a computer built back a while ago for internet broadcasting and they used a gamer’s base and put it extra fans, it was a monster, And it had blue lights too, so I felt like a 16 year old boy!
Make sure you get extra fans. it extends the life of the machine so much, as will an occasional vacuuming of the fan and the computer.
At any rate, an under powered computer will crash frequently and wear out all the components in the rig and it screws with your software. Get at least an 850... they are no bigger and don't actually cost that much. The very last thing you need is an under-powered rig.
I have those! (must clean out this garage one of these days).
I’m more interested in the games... How is Rome 2? Do you like it?
Have you ever played Civilization VI? Or, any earlier versions? Its a pretty fun game.
Home made Martinis belong in mason jars ... ice it down, Dude.
Ahh - Now I remember. Yes - Can slow down like molasses. Fun times though!
Lots of good ideas here and that's what I would recommend. Here is some full build combos from Newegg with decent price ranges. I think they come with everything but the operating system. Some even come with solid state hard drives which I would recommend. The only thing I would do is make sure and research each part to find out if they get good reviews. Here is the link:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=StoreIM&Depa=1359
I’d hit it. ;-)
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