Hardware Experts! Help with my computer and ways to upgrade it.

12/23/2017 | By Laz A. Mataz

[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?

[AF_Blue]

If you’re a Costco member, take a look at their selection of desktop systems. They usually have something on sale with a $100-$200 discount. You can browse on their website without being a member. I picked up a $900 Dell tower (discounted from $1200) to use while I was waiting for a mobo replacement, and now it’s my dedicated Steam gaming box, to include FO4.

[trisham]

:)

[grey_whiskers]

I am too mechanically
clumsy to assemble my own hardware, but Merry Christmas,Laz!

[MHGinTN]

Agreed, reluctantly. I use three olives ...

[GOPJ]

Bookmark

[dayglored]

FReeper request for computer help ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

Hey Lez, sorry for the tardy Windows List Ping, didn't see your ping until just now (busy Christmas Day!). Merry Christmas!!

[wally_bert]

[dennisw]

You could buy a full size tower case from New Egg. I keep getting emails from them about one that costs $29 total shipped. Transfer all of your new computer’s innards into this new case and buy a normal size 430 watt power supply. Or maybe more than 430watts...you go find what you need.

Problem with mini size computers is finding same dimensions (so it will fit!!!!) power supply but higher wattage....and it might be high priced.

Check newegg and ebay for such mini power supplies

[dennisw]

mini ITX power supplies
https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=mini%20power%20supply&index=blended&link_code=qs&sourceid=Mozilla-search&tag=mozilla-20

Is yours ITX has an ITX mobo?

[Dalberg-Acton]

Was that posted to Lezemtez? :^)

[dayglored]

> Was that posted to Lezemtez? :^)

OMG d@mned autocorrect!! Sorry Laz!

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[grwcfl537]

When it was time to upgrade my old Core 2 Duo, I kept my old regular size desktop and took advice from my son (an Intel engineer). We (son and grandson who is a gamer) decided on 750 watts, 32 GB RAM, i7 as fast as you can afford, 500 GB solid state drive, 3-6 TB HD, GTX 1050 and a 24" 4K monitor.

OS initially will be latest openSUSE and will put something else in virtualbox.