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?

[AppyPappy]

Dell has been using bad PSU’s forever. We are always swapping them out.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I would go with option four.

I always buy the biggest most moddifiable (is that a word?) tower that I can afford.

Then I don't have to buy again in a couple of years.

[editor-surveyor]

.
“Covfefe” is a social gathering.
.

[SgtHooper]

Sorry. On your next unit, at least be sure to get the 500 GB or better SSD primary drive. You will not regret it! And of course, the GB Ethernet card (these should come standard anymore) for local solo/clan gamer competitions! ;-) I haven’t clanned for over 15 years, but when I did...loved it! Still have an old Pentium system staring at me, with original Quake. Can’t wait to fire it up again.

[time4good]

Laz,
A few things you can consider - assuming you can’t easily return it.
1. The parts don’t sound bad - decent CPU, etc. First thing is to get it out of that case, then you have options. The problem I’ve had with Dells in the early years was their PSU connectors were custom connectors to the motherboards and the motherboards were custom sizes. If the PSU connector is standard 24-pin, you’re good. So price out how much you want to spend on a case. I paid the most ever in the 35 years of building them on a $223 Deep 6 Silence Nanoxia on Amazon. Best case you’ll need for a long time. Get the 5 for less money if you have to.
2. once you get a case - just migrate the parts and upgrade what you need to when you can - 800W PSUs are cheap enough.
3. spend next $$ on SSD drive for main drive. Like Samsung 850 EVO 500GB or whatever is on sale with 4-5 stars. That’s plenty of room for your boot and dev environment. Use the 2TB for videos and such.

If you *can* return it to Amazon then that’s a different thread - but like others have said - use pricewatch.com and passmark.com for cpu and gpu benchmarks and then pick a motherboard like ASUS that you can get 5 years out of.

[Big Red Badger]

Is Self Emolation in the cards?

[freedumb2003]

Sorry

the last computer I built in the case was a 486 running Windows 3.11

Computers are so cheap I just buy ‘em as I need ‘em. The old ones I take the HDDs out of and then donate the shell.

[Caipirabob]

Hi Laz, you can upgrade the power supply to 400w. The board should take it (Dell Optiplex I assume.) You don’t need more ram. You can then buy a GeFore GTX 1050TI with 4GB and you’ll get amazing frame rates (set max to 60 when you config your ENB) with the Fallout or Skyrim high settings. Make sure you purchase a power supply in the exact same shape as the one you are replacing. The smaller footprint Dells tend to use the long ones. It will work fine and takes minutes to install. For more storage, just but an external USB drive. You can buy them in whatever increments you need and even run your games off them. The performance these days is such that you will not really notice much of a difference.

[Caipirabob]

Geforce GTX 1050TI is recommended as it doesn’t require a lot of power. The 400w supply should do the trick but it will run at lower power, although I can’t recommend that.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/alienware-area51-r4/dpcwy00b4forza?cid=309562&st=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIoqLRkoOh2AIV2BiBCh00-g5-EAQYBCABEgLXifD_BwE&lid=5848363&VEN1=s8T020fS3,183426486698,901pdb6671,t,,DPCWY00B4FORZA&VEN2=,&dgc=st&dgseg=dhs&acd=12309238309501410&VEN3=812704060356981727

Put ur new tax rate to good use

[Caipirabob]

I saw you mentioned the 1050 as well. I thought I was getting max performance but I didn’t realize that Warcraft would be pushing the card. Wow...Maybe higher ram at 4GB? I don’t recommend 2GB cards, go for as high as possible.

[Yaelle]

There are a lot of ping lists I could fake my way onto, but not hardware tech expert. My hardware is a brand new iPad Pro. And I push some buttons and bells ring, angels sing. That is the totality of my tech expertise.

Merry Christmas, Boy. May 2018 be a great year for you.

[usconservative]

I told you so. :-)

[TADSLOS]

You are so screwed.

(™️ Lazamataz)

[stylin19a]

If I didn’t know better, I’m thinking this was really a pop quiz.

Whatever you buy, be sure the slots can handle the max RAM allowed for what OS you are running.(The box you bought looks like it max’d out at 16gb)

Windows 10 Home 32 bit 4 GBs
Windows 10 Home 64 bit 128 GBs
Windows 10 Pro 32 bit 4 GBs
Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 512 GBs

I just advised my son about what to look for, for buying a laptop for his brainiac daughter.
He’s going to costco and the laptops are really are really cheap.
For all their PC’s they give you an extra year warranty and if you use their credit card, they give 2 more years for 4 total.
Their prices are ridiculously cheap.
Their desktops selections are limited

good luck.

Merry Christmas !

[Rome2000]

Return the mini tower, it is a dinosaur.

I bought a Titan X card Pascal last Christmas that fits into my Alienenware Aurora R5, this year I bought a Asus ROG GTX 1080 TI, and it was almost TWICE the size of the Titan.

It did NOT fit in the Aurora, and the Aurora is a midsize case.

Luckily I had an Alienware Area 51 with a large case , so I swapped out the 2 GTX 960’s SLI I had in there and can play Battefield 1 at Ultra settings at 100 -140 FPS on either rig no problem.

If you game, the cards are getting bigger and you want 800W PSU and up.

Get a full size tower and you will be OK.

[Lazamataz]

I am so screwed.

[Lazamataz]

If you can afford an Alienware Area-51, you are rich.

[Alter Kaker]

There's not enough power in those mini towers.

My friend Lars who works at Google tought me a neat trick to get extra capacity out of a second tier graphics card and supercharge your RAM. Take the minitower and insert it sideways into your home microwave.

Microwave it at 80% power (no more or you'll burn it) for about 4 minutes. You'll be ready for the Consumer Electronics Show at no time. The big guys want you to keep buying their hardware and NVidia has been shutting down YouTube videos showing how this works. But there's a reason minitowers are built small enough to fit into a microwave. Good luck!

[Lent]

STOP! Several years ago I stopped buying these cheap underpowered systems having to replace things such as useless PSUs, etc. Look on YouTube there is great videos on putting together your own system. This is how you start - with a nice roomy case

Case -  Thermaltake Core V71. Has Five fans and plenty of room for air flow and to work.

Motherboard - Asus Prime Z270-A

Processor - The processor you have is very good. Still one of the best for gaming - i7-7700k 4.2 GHz.

Memory - 16 GB or 32 GB GB DDR4 Ripjaws

PSU - RM850xCorsair

HD/SSD - ADATA M.2 2280 240GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Cheap and this is where you’ll put Windows 10. Very fast load up. This is a stick which slots into your motherboard

3 TB Samsung or WD internal drive. The SSDs are also good better and faster but more storage space means more dollars.

Cooler - I would recommend a decent and affordable liquid cooler - Corsair H100i v2 liquid cooler.

Video Card - Right now I’d suggest any of Nvidias 1060, 1070, 1080 cards which usually will give you 6GB-12 GB video memory depending on your configuration.

Bottom line, is that you can shop for your own parts and control your own destiny - just like a good conservative.