Need a low wattage graphics card

AirDemon

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice, I got a pc for free from work so that's why I'm in this situation. I've got a HP 8100 Elite and with it comes a 320 watt psu.

I've got a replacement 600w psu but after a lot of looking at the problem and posts on multiple forums and reading a lot of forum posts by other people who have the same problem as I do I've come to the conclusion that I can't upgrade the psu.

That's where the issue is, the graphics card I have, the 9800 gtx requires more power than I can deliver. So I'm looking for any advice on what graphics card would be good within the limits I have?

I don't want to spend a crazy amount of money so I'd be hoping to max out at say 100-120, preferably a lot cheaper than that if I could.

I'm wanting to run games like the Witcher 2, which I've heard is quite demanding, Skyrim, Left 4 Dead.

Anyway, any advice would be appreciated.

BloodBath

How about this? A little over your budget but 3 free games to sweeten the deal. It's a great card for the money.

It will still need a single 6 pin power connection though.

AirDemon

It looks like that card requires 550W miniminum but I'm limited to 320w.

Also, I don't have the option of using a 6 pin pci-e power connector.

If anyone ever considers buying a HP 8100 Elite.... Don't!

Gumbi

AirDemon wrote: »

It looks like that card requires 550W miniminum but I'm limited to 320w.

Also, I don't have the option of using a 6 pin pci-e power connector.

If anyone ever considers buying a HP 8100 Elite.... Don't!

It doesn't require that at all. They put that in to vover their asses against ****ty power supplies. That card draws 100w at most. Your system will probably only draw 200w at most when everything is being utilised. You probably don't have the best PSU, but it's well within spec so you should e fine.

PyeContinental

I know you've had a discussion about the PSU already but I'd like to hear the reason why you can't replace the PSU. The two possible reasons I can think of are physical space and that the HP motherboard uses a proprietary connector or wiring arrangement for the main power connector to it.

If it's physical space you could get another case or transfer the internals of a new PSU into the existing PSU shell.

If it's a proprietary connector, you could get the pinout datasheet for the HP PSU, compare to a standard ATX PSU pinout scheme, and rewire the connector to suit the HP motherboard.

AirDemon

The problem is the proprietary connector. I've never rewired a connector before, it does sound like a pretty good option though, is it hard and have you got any tutorials on how to do it?

PyeContinental

Well you can look at the solution as having two aspects to it. The first part being getting the wiring diagram for both PSU standards, comparing them and seeing where they differ, and then drawing up a plan of which cables to swap.

The physical part of swapping the cables then at its most basic level could be to simply snip the wires that don't match on the new psu and join them to their counterpart, then use insulating/self-amalgamating tape over the joins. A similar approach but with more rewiring is to cut the entire connectors off both and join the new ones where they should be on the HP connector. That's more work and not as elegant though. The first approach has the advantage of keeping your HP PSU intact, should you need to return to it.

You could get an electrician, especially an autoelectrician who would be used to working with wiring looms to do this job for you if you give him the pinout specification for both types of PSU. He'd be able to use more professional heatwrap insulators over the joins too.

The most elegant solution though would be to see if you can use a small flat screwdriver to prise out the lugs from the connectors that don't match and to fit them into the positions that are needed. That would be rearrangement of the pins, and no cutting and joining of wires.

Now we need to find the HP pinout specification for the HP proprietary PSUs...

PyeContinental

First in the search for "proprietary HP PSU pinouts" was this link, but it's from 2005 so may not be current information any more.
http://www.wirelessforums.org/alt-comp-hardware/hp-psu-pinout-3728.html

I have to go off for most of the day now, but if you can find the wiring specification for your PSU, and compare to the ATX standard PSU wiring specification, then you have the hard part of the problem solved.

By the way, there is another solution to the problem of course. You could buy a new motherboard and case in addition to the PSU, and transfer your CPU, memory, and disk drives across to the new case. It's more expenditure, but it may have other advantages such as aesthetics, space in the case for other upgrades, and it gets you into standard ATX format so that future upgrades are more straightforward.

AirDemon

I think you may be right on the buying a new motherboard and case, it seems like I'm always going to be limited by this setup and I had imagined this as a continuous project that I could continually upgrade and it doesn't seem like it's going to be possible to do that.

I guess the search for a motherboard & case begins.

PyeContinental

Ah ok, well if you were thinking of having a machine that you could upgrade every so often, then getting a new motherboard and a standard case and psu might be the best option. You may also need to get an aftermarket heatsink, as the HP one may be a specialised design to fit the existing case. A standard board would give you more customisable options, such as overclocking too.

You could start a new thread perhaps as a "new build" but answer the question about whether you have any existing parts you could use by saying you have the CPU and memory and disks and monitor from this machine. You might be able to get the OS to work on the new build without reinstalling too. Ask for more advice on this before shutting down the old machine for the last time, as you might need to uninstall chipset drivers from device manager.

I was thinking about this during the day actually, and I remembered that there are converter cables that use two molex connectors to feed into one 6-pin video card power connector. You could try this with your existing setup if you like to see if it works first. Here's one on Amazon if you fancy experimenting to see if your PSU can give enough power and your system remains stable.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00118EWLS
I seem to remember that a graphics card I bought a while back actually came with one of these cables. So perhaps, depending on the card you buy, one might actually come in the box. It will be hard to know for sure before buying though. If it works it will be a cheap and easy solution. You must have two spare molex connectors coming from separate lines on the PSU.