Upgrade advice appreciated

[Dolee]

Hello, I have a HP Pavillion M9152p with a dead slave drive. As long as I am replacing it, I have decided to do a little more upgrading and I'd like some verification of my thoughts. I am not a gamer but here is what I want to do.

Replace the Seagate slave drive with a WD

Add 2gb ram making a total of 6gb (up from 4gb)

Replace the 350w power supply with ??????

Graphics card currently is Nvidia Gforce 8500GT and I am looking at this one at Newegg HIS H467QR1GH Radeon HD 4670 1GB

My two questions are: Is the graphics card a good choice and I am concerned about a PSU fitting in the mid-ATX case. Do you have a recommendation on how large the power supply should be and perhaps which kind?

The video card would have ddr3 and my current one has ddr2 - does that matter to me?

Thanks for any advice, Donna

 

[red1776]

Hi Donna,

Replace the Seagate slave drive with a WD

Thats a preference deal. If you like WD, go for it. I like Seagate As long as its not the 7000.11 series, price at the time of build plays a large role in a budget build/upgrade for me.

Replace the 350w power supply with ??????

You cant go wrong when replacing a PSU in a OEM machine. They are always of very poor quality. this is a good unit for the money, and will service the HD 4670

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139017

Graphics card currently is Nvidia Gforce 8500GT and I am looking at this one at Newegg HIS H467QR1GH Radeon HD 4670 1GB

That depends on what you want it to do. If you do some light gaming at lower resolution, then the 4670 will do fine

Add 2gb ram making a total of 6gb (up from 4gb)

In this machine, I would not add to the 4Gb. You will realize no difference in performance.

The video card would have ddr3 and my current one has ddr2 - does that matter to me?

Well you get what you get with the card you select, but yes, the card with DDR3 will be significantly faster. If you do more gaming than this, I would start your search from the likes of a HD 5770/GTS 450 and up. If you do, you should post your resolution/CPU/Types of games etc...

Hope that helped

 

[Leeky]

As above...But my thoughts:

Right now I prefer the Samsung Spinpoint series hard disks, which here in the UK I find to be very good money, and the F3 1TB especially, is very well recieved in terms of performance. I currently have my first of several planned SpinPoint F4 2TB hard disks and have been thoroughly impressed with the speeds so far. I definitely plan to get a couple more.

I used to game with the HD4670 and its very capable even for those gaming more frequently. Most games are fine at 1680x1050 resolutions as long as your realistic with the settings. Both of the choices from Red above will be ideal though, and I personally would recommend you save the money by not getting the RAM and get a HD5770 or GTS450 instead.

The Corsair CX PSU I highly recommend again - Our other quad core uses the CX400 version, and I've been very impressed with it so far. 430W is more than plenty to power the GPU as well - I'm not saying you should but I had a 305W OEM PSU powering mine until I recently got a new Corsair unit myself.

 

[rockyjohns]

Seagate is my first choice for HD, although stats seem to favor the Spinpoint F3.

The HD 4670 is a good low end graphics card, but if you are doing all this upgrading it would be nice to get something better.
What games do you want to play and at what settings?
What is the resolution of your monitor?
What is your budget?

For help in identifying system requirements and limitations and features desired, see:

http://www.upgradevideocards.com/criteria.html

For a range of low end (essentially non- gaming or light gaming) cards to consider at less than $100, you can see the recommended models and cards at:

http://www.upgradevideocards.com/nongaming.html

If you are interested in faster cards, you can move on to other pages on upgradevideocards.com covering gaming, reviews and installing video cards.

I think you should at least take a quick look and consider the GTS 450:

https://www.techspot.com/review/315-nvidia-palit-geforce-gts-450/
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/nvidia-geforce-gts-450_9.html#sect1

Note that the later review has a section on multimedia functions missing in most reviews.

Here is a good GTS 450 card- Gigabyte $100 AR - extremely good cooling and quiet

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...25341&cm_re=gts_450-_-14-125-341-_-ProductAnd a review on that particular card:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3562/gigabyte_geforce_gts_450_oc_1gb_video_card/index.html

For a PSU - I agree with the model recommended above, but suggest paying a few dollars more - $5 more - to get a 500w version that will accommodate most mainstream video cards should you choose, now or later, to get something larger than the 4670.

Corsair Builder Serices 500w - $40 AR with free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139018

If you have a 64 bit operating system and 2 open memory slots, then I would add to memory since applications are becoming increasing memory intensive - and especially if you have a memory hungary operating system like Vista or Windows 7. Which do you have?

While DDR2 memory is more expensive then DDR3, I would recommend upgrading with 4 GB - 2 x 2B - if you expect to be using the system longer than a year from now (if shorter make no upgrade and start saving for that new system). If necessary, I would hold off on upgrade to get the extra $40 this would require.

Regarding the DDR3 memory in the video card, or the GDDR5 in a GTS 450, both are compatible with your system. You do not need to match the DDR2 in your current video card or system (mobo) memory.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

I'd second red1776's suggestions. +1