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Hi guys. I'm not exactly an expert computer builder but I have built a few PCs in the past with help from this forum. I've had my computer die on me. It wouldn't boot at all (not even to the BIOS screen) so I assumed my mobo died. I ordered a new one, swapped it out and reformated. Things were okay until I realized that the fan on my video card died so my PC keeps crashing because of an overheated video card. Now, my problem is that my computer is old (built in 2008) and I had been planning on building a new PC in August/Sept because I will be moving from Canada to the US for grad school. I was hoping to buy a cheap part to be able to play videogames until I move and build my new PC, or else I would have bought a laptop to tide me over until then. What are my options right now? Replace the video card with a cheap obsolete one to tide me over? Can I replace the heat sink on my current video card and have it work? Oh yeah, I did disassemble the heat sink in order to reapply some thermal paste onto the GPU. I don't think I broke the fan, but honestly it hasn't been running so smoothly even before that and even if I use a can of duster on the fan it doesn't move. If you need my build: I dual screen 1920x1080 and 1400x900 but obviously I'll probably have to make do with just the one if necessary. ATI HD 4850 2x2GB DDR2 Ram Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 I just installed this MSI G31TM-P21 LGA775 G31 mATX DDR2 PCI-E16 2XPCI Video SATA LAN Sound Motherboard to replace Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L ATX LGA775 P35 1333FSB 1PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 Sound GBLAN Motherboard I'm hoping to spend no more than around 50ish for a cheap video card to tide me over? Or a 30$ cooling system for my card maybe? Or should I just bite the bullet, build my PC now, and move with my PC later? Summary: Mobo died. Replaced mobo. Works! GPU fan died. What are my options?
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Mar 6, 2012 08:36
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Alereon posted:One option you might want to look into is just getting a decent videocard now. The Radeon HD 7800-series is pretty sweet and was just launched, though you won't be able to actually buy them until the 19th, so that may be too long for you to wait. You can use the onboard video on your motherboard for basic desktop use, though granted thats certainly not enough for gaming. Oh that's an interesting idea, I had not considered that at all. Would that be a problem though, using a superior videocard on my obsolete tech? Will that damage the video card? Or will the video card just run fine and basically the rest simply can't extract all of the potential out of the card?
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Mar 6, 2012 17:52
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Rexxed posted:A new video card should run fine in your older PC. You may not get all of the FPS that it's capable of if the rest of your PC is the bottleneck to its performance, but it will work. I replaced my 4850 with a 6870 last year and it was a good performance boost for this PC I built in 2008. When I upgrade the rest of the system later this year I will probably just move the 6870 over to the new build. Ah I see. Is there anything else I should double check, in terms of compatibility between video card and mobo or should it run fine since the only thing I need to check is that they both slot into a PCI-E?
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Mar 6, 2012 18:13
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Alereon posted:I would still recommend you upgrade the rest of your machine when able because of the CPU bottlebeck, but your motherboard should be fine with that card (you probably want to run a memory diagnostic, and if it passes, update the motherboard BIOS first before upgrading cards though), and it should have plenty of longevity so you won't feel bad about dropping it into the new system and using it for awhile. The other two issues are case size and power supply capacity, case size probably won't be an issue because the 7800-series cars are going to be rather small physically, and their power usage is also pretty low so the power supply should be fine too. If your power supply only has one PCI-E power cable and you don't want to upgrade right now, the Radeon HD 7850 should do just fine for you. Hmm. I looked around town today and my options either too underpowered or too expensive for a temporary solution. I looked in the PC building megathread and the impression I got was that the "sweet spot" build is about to be replaced by new things in the pipeline (CPU-mobo in the summer) and the 7800 series? I think your advice sounds like my best route and I'm going to get the HD 7850, that is coming out in like 2 weeks for about 250$? My google-fu can't seem to confirm a release date/price for Canada, so I wanted to make sure there are no issues with international release as there is for electronic gadgets. Come summer when that shiny Intel CPU comes out, I'll probably build a new PC using the video card as well and give my current PC to my parents. Alereon posted:your motherboard should be fine with that card (you probably want to run a memory diagnostic, and if it passes, update the motherboard BIOS first before upgrading cards though) I uh... don't know how to do this / understand why this is needed? (The only things I can do in the BIOS is fiddle with boot sequence). Currently I'm running onboard graphics and will slap in my future card, and then installing its drivers. Are you saying, I can't do this?
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Mar 7, 2012 02:22
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I'm unsure if this question would be best asked in the PC building megathread. So I posted a week or so ago that I need to pick up a new video card for my current PC since my current one has expired which I'll reuse when I build a new PC for the fall (probably after the new Intel chip drops?). I just wanted to confirm that the Radeon HD 7850 is a good pickup right now as I'm finally starting to see them in stock? I've been lurking this thread, the PC building thread and the AMD megathread and there appears to be rumours of an NVIDIA offering in the 200-300$ gaming sweetspot range for GPUs? If it'll take like a month before any significant price drop, I might as well just buy my new card now I think? (I'm sorry if this triggers another argument about the 'best' value). Oh yeah, if it matters I run 1900x1080 and dual screen 1400x900. If the advice is go buy it now, my next question is a dumb question I guess. Should I worry about the specific vendor? http://www.directcanada.com/search/?kw=radeon%20hd%207850 I was going to pick up the ASUS card because that's something I recognize.
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Mar 23, 2012 01:33
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