Question regarding vid card.....

[AV1611]

All:

My kids' home-built e5200 system had been acting flaky for quite a while, so I retired it. I found a cheap HP Pro 6000 mini tower business class machine on eBay. The motherboard has two power out sockets. Both are square with 4 pins. My Radeon 3870 has a 6 pin rectangular power input on it. Therein lies my problem. I searched all over the web, but haven't been able to find a cable with the square 4 pin plug on one end for the mobo's power output and a rectangular 6 pin plug for the vid card's power in on the other end. Surely such a beast must exist.

AV1611

P.S.: new system has: C2Quad 9550, 4 GB DDR3 1066, 250 GB HD, nice case with 6 USB ports, external SATA port. Paid $227 after shipping.

 

[Termie]

You must connect the video card to the power supply, not the motherboard, which doesn't supply power via cables. I think what you're looking for is the 6-pin PCIe power cable, but a small machine like that won't have one. What you would then typically do is use a 4-pin molex to 6-pin PCIe adapter. I am concerned, however, about the power supply capacity. Can you check the label on the side of the power supply for both total Watts and amps on the 12-volt rail?

 

[AV1611]

It's a 320 watt total power supply. The sticker on the side of the PS says the CPU rail is 14 amps @ 12.1 v, and the main output rail is 16 amps @ 12.1v.

There are only 2 power cables coming out of the PS. Both cables have 2 SATA power connectors on the end. I'd like to install my Radeon 3870 in this machine, but it does have an Intel 4500 HD for video. Only problem is the onboard video only has VGA outs on it, so if I skipped the discrete vid card, I'd need to buy a VGA cable, as I threw all of mine out years ago when I switched to DVI/HDMI.

AV1611

 

[AV1611]

Would I be better off just selling the 3870 and picking up something like a 7750 that works fine off of what the PCI express slot can provide? The monitor is 1440x900. I'd use the pc for light gaming when my own laptop is being used by the wife.

AV1611

 

[Termie]

Would I be better off just selling the 3870 and picking up something like a 7750 that works fine off of what the PCI express slot can provide? The monitor is 1440x900. I'd use the pc for light gaming when my own laptop is being used by the wife.

AV1611

I believe there are SATA to PCIe converters, but you'd have to look into that. Truth is that if you're just interested in having a digital output, you could get a very inexpensive video card ($20-30). Something like the 5450 or 6450 should work. The 3870 won't be worth much in the used market, by my estimation, but you could always try to sell it.

The best option would be this particular 6570, which is just slightly slower than your 3870, and which happens to be on sale right now: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131496

Also, it won't put any stress on your power supply, while the 3870 could potentially stress it somewhat.

The 7750 you mentioned is another option, but that's a lot of money to drop into an older computer. It's nearly 50% of the cost of your entire system, but if you want to do some midrange gaming, it would be a good match for the quad-core you have.

 

[mfenn]

There are indeed SATA power to PCIe power adapters. I think I'd rather just drop a little more on the $25 6570 that Termie found though.

 

[ElFenix]

you could also swap out the power supply for something like the CX500 which is $25 after coupon and rebate