Is this computer good enough for WoW?

[efabbs]

So any ideas for good graphics cards and PSU's?

 

[SNGX1275]

For like $160-170 you could get a Corsair 600W PSU and a Sapphire Radeon HD 5830.

BUT

Inside that HP case its almost certainly incredibly cramped, and the 5830 is a huge card.

So my point is, you'll have to find (or someone suggest) a decent performance card that is small, perhaps even a low profile card. PSU size may also be a problem - not sure if the PSU in that comp is a normal length or not.

Switching cases is an option, but in one of the somewhat recent HPs I've seen moving the card reader to a new case will be problematic. The processor might require a new HSF because sometimes HP has some wind tunnel type thing from the case over the heatsink rather than a normal HSF setup.

 

[CajunBard]

Look at the attached image. Would it be possible for you to measure the length of the card pointed to by the arrows? It appears you need a pretty short card from the image provided, though I could be wrong.

If there's not much room, here are a couple that *should* fit.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127573

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510

Power supply wise, try this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9019&cm_re=corsair_psu-_-17-139-019-_-Product

 

[SNGX1275]

If that is a 92mm fan on the heatsink, the current card length is about 210mm. It looks like you could go to about 224 before hitting the metal cage for the hard drive. But it also looks like the card may go just barely under that cage, if so, you really have no size limitation.

Again, if the fan is 92mm, the PSU appears to be 190mm long. Looks like you can go bigger, but not too much because the wires coming out have to bend down before the CD drive. I wouldn't go past about 230.

I don't have time right now to check your links, sorry.

Also, if that is an 80mm fan on the heatsink, then just scale down my measurements appropriately.

 

[CajunBard]

Well, doing it that way (not sure why I didn't think of that...)....

Just "assuming" the case fan is 80mm (as I have a similar system here that uses an 80mm fan) that would make the cpu fan 80mm as well, making the power supply roughly 5.5" long. The Corsair PSU is 5.5" long, so that works.

That would also make the video card roughly 6.5" long, meaning we gotta pray that anything we put would fit under the hard drive cage. Both of the above cards are roughly 8" long and should slide to about halfway under the hard drive cage, leaving room for the PCI-e power connector, though you definitely wouldn't want that to be touching the drive cage in any way.

EDIT:
I just doubled checked the measurements by the case. Newegg lists the case as being 16.54" x 15.16" x 7.60". Using that as a scale, the above measurements should be pretty close.

 

[SNGX1275]

Cool. Does it look like a card would fit under the HD cage?

Yeh I didn't know the size of the fan, so I googled and saw what appeared to be a stock fan and it claimed 92mm, even though I thought that was probably too big. Then I just used ImageJ to set the scale based on that and measured the other things. I had to go meet a couple people for lunch or I would have also done the measurements based on an 80mm fan.