This was one of the problems with the GTX280 which the Video Card Fairy dropped in my lap. When new, it was bad-assest graphics card available. It consumed a massive amount of power, threw off so much heat that the little niche in the den where my desk was actually got noticeably hotter when I was playing TF2, and, frankly, wasn't very reliable. It was also so large that it probably wouldn't fit into that Gateway case. Oh, and all that heat? That required that the card was equipped with the cooling fan off of a VW Beetle. It was not quiet.

So I paid $120 for a brand new Radeon 7770Ghz. It consumed 1/3 the power, put off very little heat, is rock-solid reliable, and (get this) is actually quite a lot faster. The GTX280 sometimes struggled to maintain 60 FPS in TF2 at 1920x1200 with all settings maxed out. The cheap little 7770 just laughs and does 100+ FPS all day long.

That's why I purchase what conventional wisdom says is an underpowered GPU compared to the rest of my build. When it becomes the bottleneck on newer games (it already is, but I had no problem getting 60fps at medium for the BF4 beta, so no complaints yet), I'll spend another $150 and get one that is twice as fast as the old one.

I WISH I could use my old dvd drive, would have saved me $15. The z77 doesn't have any IDE slots though.

How are you getting 60fps on BF4 beta. I have a an ATI 7970 which I would say is at least midrange, 16gb of good ram, core i7 blah blah, and don't get anywhere near that.

You turn the settings down. I should say I get 60 when I have the time to look at the little dxtory readout in the corner. So during the exciting parts I'm sure I don't, I just don't notice.

I was wrong, it's actually a Core 2 Duo 3.16 and only 4GB of DDR2. Inspiron 530. HD4830 video card.

Ok, I'm going to assume that's an E8500 CPU. Passmark score = 2285: PassMark - Intel Core2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz - Price performance comparison

The gateway I linked to uses a second-gen i5-3330, passmark score 5884: PassMark - Intel Core i5-3330 @ 3.00GHz - Price performance comparison

So more than double the CPU throughput, and double the RAM (less paging).


Not sure if gaming is important to you, but the Radeon 7770 I linked to earlier is more than twice as fast as the 4830. Not that the 4830 is a bad card, but you're looking for breathing room, yes?

Inspiron 530.

I have two drives in it, both SATA. One is 250GB and houses my programs/installations. The second is a 500GB WD that houses my photos and music.

It's 4 sicks of 1 GB DDR2 RAM.

Has a DVD drive I never use.

And I've already upgraded the RAM and CPU as high as it will go. I think I could put a quad core in it only if I changed the PSU. Oh wait no, there's some 60 watt limiter in the MB itself that won't allow for the quad core to be installed.

I had to hack up the PSU wiring to install my HD GPU and second drive.

I just want a decent CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a good video card. I would prefer to keep my current drives and not have to worry about reinstalling programs but I'd also like to get a new one as I have a feeling mine's on its way out the way the computer is acting of late.

Although that only has Vista installed on it and there's a few programs I cant use cause they need at least Win7, but I also don't want to have to go to Win8.

I can probably spend upwards of $1K on this setup, but that doesnt mean I need to spend it, if I could get away with it for less, then I could also get a new monitor cause mines shit as well.

So it sounds like you only really need a new mobo, cpu, ram, psu, and a pirated copy of window 7, assuming the dell case has standard atx mounting holes. You should be able to get into a at least a nice i5 and 16gb of ram for that with $1k. Then get the new HDD and video card when funds turn up later.

I do like what Joe linked. Pretty cheap considering. I just worry a GPU wouldn't fit in there, with the RAM being so close to the GPU port.

That's a fairly common placement in current-gen LGA1155 motherboards- mine (a genuine Intel) is exactly the same. You do have to remove the GPU in order to add or remove RAM (the latches on the DIMM slots open into the GPU's space) but aside from that they fit just fine. Remember that the heatsink, fan, etc., on the GPU all face "down" when installed in the case.

Here's a shot of my case when I had a GTX280 in it; one of the largest consumer-grade video cards ever created:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1341290116

And the newer cards are about 15" shorter than that card. :p

Yeah, no kidding. You can see from the image above that the GTX280 is protruding into my hard drive bays, and it is also completely covering the SATA ports on the motherboard (forcing the SATA cables to all make a hard 90° bend right at the base of the connector.)

I don't have an in-situ shot of the HD7770, mostly because it was fairly unremarkable. But it's a much smaller card, with a much lower power / thermal footprint, that runs much quieter and much faster.

I've learned my lesson. When it comes to video cards, buy something from the middle of the range at the most current generation. It'll perform just as well (if not better) as if you spent the same money buying whatever the ultimate-awesomeness was from two years ago, and it'll run a lot quieter and cooler, with fewer problems in general.

man. geforce cards need/consume a lot of energy. Was just looking at a few (GTX 560 Ti) and it runs on 300w vs 95w of most ATI and recommends a 700w PS. intense.

Yeah, as much as I don't respect AMD on the whole, their ATi division does seem to have its act together. They've essentially conceded the "top 10%" of the market to nVidia, and seem to be doing an excellent job of making the best possible GPUs for all the rest of us who live in the real world.

I have no knowledge of video card magic, but ATI must be doing something very different than Nvidia. ATI cards are the clear loser in all out performance for gaming. But in a much smaller market, cracking passwords using GPUs, the ATI cards outperform even the best Nvidia cards by a large (very large) margin.

how's this look?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($209.98 @ Outlet PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.98 @ Outlet PC)
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G45 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($113.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus Radeon HD 7770 2GB Video Card ($120.90 @ Outlet PC)
Case: Thermaltake VL80001W2Z ATX Mid Tower Case ($21.99 @ Microcenter)
Power Supply: Raidmax 730W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($87.98 @ Outlet PC)
Monitor: Asus VH238H 23.0" Monitor ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $964.77
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-10-21 12:42 EDT-0400)


this is probably not the best prices on everything, like the GPU joe linked was $79.99. I'm still debating if I just reuse my current case and HDDs, just get a MB/CPU/RAM/GPU and call it a day or doing something like Joe linked (the gateway machine).

You probably want an OS better than home premium. I can link you to a nice custom version of 7 that started as ultimate and had a bunch of useless junk ripped out that runs faster and takes up less hard drive space.

How is crucial ram these days? I've been a fan of G.Skill since they came out. Cheap price, solidly reliable, varying overclocking ability, mid range performance. And is that specific model number of ram on the approved list for your MOBO? With these new intel chips it seems like, "if it fits it works" doesn't really apply any more.

Uhhhh, no.

Setting aside cost, where AMD cards typically offer better bang for the buck, Nvidia is certainly not the "winner" in overall performance. The best cards on the market, the GTX690 and HD7990 are very close in performance.
Not that it matters, those cards like like $1000, which most people wont spend.
Down in the $200-300 you will find that the majority of the time you are better off with an AMD card.

Although I would like to pick up a GTX770 for my next card.

Gskill ram is fantastic. They make some pretty high performance stuff now as well.
Ive bought some Kingston and Corsair in the past but Ive been convinced recently that GSkill is the best value out there right now.

i dont want to spend a penny on OS to be frank. I'd prefer to keep my current drive, but it's old. Any way I could just copy it over to something new? I have a ton of shit that I don't want to have to reinstall.

Serious question: Why?

Honestly, unless he wants to join a domain, host a time server, etc., I can't think of anything that the Home version wouldn't offer. I actually use Home Premium on some of my work machines.