Posts by frozenpanther

Is the Dell OptiPlex actually enough?

Look, I didn't realize the 9800 and GTS 250 were such absolute garbage—so, naturally, I found a GTX 460 for about $100. According to YouTube, this thing can handle basically anything on high or medium settings without breaking a sweat. Now, the real headache is whether my motherboard actually supports it—it’s some Gigabyte GA-ME61-S2L or something like that, I think I blanked on the exact model 😉—so if anyone knows of another solid card for $83 besides the GTX 460, let me know. I'm definitely no hardware expert, and since I'm out of town for the next few weeks, I can't exactly order anything to my house because there's nobody home to grab the package 😉.

So, here’s the situation—I’m rocking a Corsair CX400, an Athlon X2 running at 3 GHz, and 4 gigs of RAM. I’ve decided to hunt around eBay for a used GPU, ideally staying under about $83. My first thoughts were either a 9800 GT or a GTS 250, but I'm stuck. I just want to play stuff like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Crysis, and Project Cars at a 1600x1050 resolution. If anyone knows of a better card than those two, please, hit me up. When I was upgrading my rig a couple of weeks back, some mods on a forum suggested I grab an HD 4830, but honestly, it didn't really do it for me. So, what can I actually get for $83 that won't suck?

So, will this thing actually be able to run anything? And do I need to mess with the BIOS for the graphics card, or is it just plug-and-play? Also, will the card fit on the motherboard, and is my power supply up to the task... sorry if I'm being a total pain here—I don't really know much about computer hardware, so please don't judge me too hard. 🙂

A Corsair 400W unit and a Radeon 4830 512 mb—is that really what you're linking me? 😉.

Just one more thing... since my bank account isn't exactly looking like a Fortune 500 company right now—not that I'm complaining, just being realistic—is it actually okay if I grab the power supply and the GPU first, and then deal with the CPU and RAM down the road?

Windows 8.1 32
. Thanks.

Yeah, but you guys found an AM3 processor—my socket is AM2, so if there's actually any connection there?

Alright, I'll hit you up tonight with my specific BIOS version since I'm not home right now. Besides, which BIOS does that processor actually need?

So, how can I figure out if this works for my BIOS? Do I actually need to fire up the PC and dive into the BIOS settings to check, or should I just go ahead and grab either 2 or 4 gigs of RAM right now?

Alright, I’m feeling good about the RAM, and the processor seems solid enough. The power supply is actually great—if it happens to have that 6-pin connector, we're golden, because then I can finally run this graphics card too. Thanks for the help here, honestly, I feel like I snagged a bit of a bargain. If you could just double-check whether that PSU has the right pin, I’ll go ahead and verify if the processor is a perfect fit for my setup.

Kimberly Gomez34, I actually dig that first Athlon—but that’s for an AM3 socket, if that even matters—and I can't quite make out the GHz, though it looks pretty solid given the price and those 3 cores. Bryan Taylor6, if you've got any leads on a better low profile card in that same budget range, let me know. Any recommendations? P.S. I'm running at 1680x1080 or something like that.

So, the CPU I’m looking at cooling is the Amd phenom x4 9500 am2 am2—which my motherboard actually supports—but I’m not exactly trying to run the latest AAA blockbusters here. I’m talking more along the lines of Euro Truck Simulator 2, League of Legends, and that kind of stuff. Do you think I need to swap out the power supply immediately? I already mentioned the GPU I'm using is a Radeon Low profile 6450 1 gb. If I just slapped all of this into the rig without touching the motherboard and threw in 4GB of 800 MHz DDR2 RAM, what would the situation look like? Would it actually handle running Euro Truck Simulator 2 and those other games, or am I looking at an urgent need for a new power supply?

So, I ended up swapping it out for this Lenovo laptop I've been using—mostly just for surfing the web, definitely not built for any real gaming, much less my desktop. My plan is to put together an upgrade so the rig can actually handle some decent games. Do you think the platform is just too old to bother with? Like, is an upgrade even worth the effort at this point?

So, here’s the deal—my motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2L with an AM2 socket, and I'm running a deluxe KY-400 ATX power supply. I've got about $200 to work with. I spotted a Phenom quad core for 250, some RAM for 200, and a graphics card for $67, but then I stumbled upon an Athlon 64 x2 2.8 ghz from a buddy for $50. I was leaning toward the Phenom since I really don't want to swap out this motherboard, but if the Phenom isn't a fit, I might just go with the Athlon and the DDR2 RAM instead. Also, I'm wondering if that power supply can actually handle the whole setup.

So, I picked up this desktop about seven years ago—though, let's be honest, it’s mostly just gathering dust at this point because I switched over to a laptop. But lately, I've been thinking about actually doing something with it, maybe an upgrade, and now I'm stuck wondering where to even start. Right now, I'm running an Intel Pentium 4, I've only got 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, and I don't even have a dedicated graphics card—just some ancient Nvidia Geforce with 64 MB that struggles just to keep the desktop running. The power supply is a 400W unit. I was planning on swapping out the CPU, GPU, and RAM all at once, but since my bank account won't allow for a total overhaul today, I need to prioritize. For the new parts, I'm looking at an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.2 ghz 95watt AM2 socket, 4 GB of 800 mghz Samsung DDR2, and a Radeon 6450 1 gb card. I'm genuinely torn on the order of operations here—will upgrading the CPU first be a waste if the RAM is still choking the system? Or should I grab the RAM first and see zero difference? Or maybe I go for the GPU only to find that games still crawl because the CPU and RAM can't keep up. What's the move? 🎉