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Bought a cheapo $400 PC for the kids, need a good Video Card under $100.... what to get ?

6K views 32 replies 14 participants last post by  logoster 
#1 ·
I bought a Lenovo H430-57311430 PC. This PC is actually to be used by my kids, mostly for them screwing around with video editing, but I also want this PC to have the ability to play some games. The funny thing is, the Ivy Bridge i5-3330 in their PC, is better than the Sandy Bridge i5-2500k in my personal PC...... right ? Of course, I'm not sure if the memory is any good, or very fast, not sure what kind of crappy motherboard they put in this. I also know that I can't upgrade the ram past 8gb, which really sucks. The power supply is a very weak power supply. So, whatever video card I add to it, it needs to be one that barely uses any power. Otherwise, have to upgrade the power supply right away, which would kinda suck. I mean, certainly, I could upgrade it, but was trying to spend the least amount of money possible. I was really supposed to get a $300 PC, not a $400 one.

http://slickdeals.net/f/5658626-Lenovo-H430-57311430-Desktop-PC-Intel-Core-i5-3330-3GHz-Ivy-Bridge-8GB-RAM-1TB-HD-DVD-Burner-Media-Card-Reader-Windows-8-1-year-warranty-400-AC-Staples-com-and-In-Store




•Intel Core i5-3330 3GHz 6MB Cache Processor

•8GB DDR3 1333MHz Memory

•1TB SATA Hard Drive

•DVD Burner

•Media Card Reader

•Gigabit LAN

•Windows 8




Looking at Tom's Hardware Guide, I've seen the recomendations for the best video card for the money. I'm trying to stick with cards that would be under $100 out the door with tax,shipping, everything. On Tom's, they recommend the Radeon HD 6670 DDR3, as the best video card for $65 or less. I'm not sure how much power this card consumes, and if I could use it safely with the Lenovo. I think I have to get a "half-height" video card, to be able to put it inside the smaller tower.For more $$$ is the Radeon HD 7750. Supposedly these can be found $99.99 somehwere, but with tax and everything, it would go slightly over my $100 limit. I've heard that the 7750 doesn't use very much power, so I might be able to get away with leaving the current power supply in there. I'm not sure how large the card is, and whether or not it would fit inside the Lenovo.


Another thing to consider, is that I'm a bit partial to Nvidia right now. It seems that certain PC games tend to run better on Nvidia cards, plus, because my kids are going to try to do some video editing, I think the Nvidia cards usually are better at that... Right ? I'm not seeing much bang for the buck from Nvidia for under $100 though.




Damn.... I was just looking at Tom's Hardware Guide, and it seems that all of these cards recommend at least a 400 watt power supply,and I'm pretty sure the one currently in the lenovo is less than that. Ouch. Guess, I'm going to have to add a power supply into the mix.
 
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#27 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony1  /t/1444414/bought-a-cheapo-400-pc-f...ideo-card-under-100-what-to-get#post_22886550


I was bumping around the net one day, and I was looking at Sapphire 7750 related stuff, and I ran across some benchmarks for that card. It showed with Battlefield 3 that it was getting about 23 fps running at 1080p, and after seeing that, I was thinking that maybe this card would be a bad idea. Not that I'm a huge Battlefield 3 guy or anything, but it just made me second guess the idea of buying that card.

Most of the BF3 benchmarks at 1080p are run on Ultra settings with full AA/AF.
Quote:
Originally Posted by macks  /t/1444414/bought-a-cheapo-400-pc-f...ideo-card-under-100-what-to-get#post_22889887


If a game isn't pushing the fps that you want then you turn down some of the less needed graphical settings. In a couple years the 7750 will probably be trash though.

Good advice. Tune the game as needed to get closer to 60fps. Look at it this way, even if you run BF3 at low settings at 1080p or Ultra settings at 720p, it still looks way better than the 360/PS3 versions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by macks  /t/1444414/bought-a-cheapo-400-pc-f...ideo-card-under-100-what-to-get#post_22889887


I wonder if it is safe to run even the 7750 with 280w. AMD recommends a 400w psu btw. You have to remember that with time psu's lose power capacity.

With an i5-3330 and 7750, he'll be lucky to break 200W in total system power consumption at max load, which is just shy of what a weak 280W PSU (70% efficient) should be able to output. An i7-3960X+7750 maxes out at 216W according to AT, so he should be fine:
 
#28 ·
I bought the same machine. It was cheap and in addition i got another $75 off on special Promo. Not bad for a 8gb RAM 1TB HD machine with Core i5. when looking to replace the powersupply, i came across this thread. in short, i'm seriously confused. it seems like one should be able to remove the PSU. why do you think its fused to the case?


1. were you able to swap out the power supply? I would ideally like to have 650W PSU. any recommendation?

2. what graphic card were you able to install. i'm not a techy, but id like to be able to install dual monitors. what would work on this Lenovo machine?


let me know your expert opinions.
 
#29 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by mxm104  /t/1444414/bought-a-cheapo-400-pc-f...ideo-card-under-100-what-to-get#post_23031734


I bought the same machine. It was cheap and in addition i got another $75 off on special Promo. Not bad for a 8gb RAM 1TB HD machine with Core i5. when looking to replace the powersupply, i came across this thread. in short, i'm seriously confused. it seems like one should be able to remove the PSU. why do you think its fused to the case?


1. were you able to swap out the power supply? I would ideally like to have 650W PSU. any recommendation?

2. what graphic card were you able to install. i'm not a techy, but id like to be able to install dual monitors. what would work on this Lenovo machine?


let me know your expert opinions.


When I looked at the power supply, it appeared to me that getting it out of there would require WAY more effort than it would be worth. To me, it seemed like the thing was practically fused to the case somehow, and getting the thing out of there would require a blow torch. (just kidding). I'm not the most technically savvy guy anyways, so I don't think I'm going to mess with it.



I was looking at getting a 7750 low profile, but haven't got around to getting one. If I see it on a really good deal I'd probably snag it, but haven't seen any amazing deals for it or anything. Right now, I'm just using the built-in Intel Graphics, and it's actually relatively decent. However, I must say that all the games that I'm playing on this particular PC are older games from 2008 and 2009 that ended up in my backlog for one reason or another. Most of these games are not very demanding of the hardware. My primary PC is in my man-cave, and this is a living room PC that the family uses for various things, so I'm fine with just using the built in Intel Graphics for now.


However, if I was looking to do something, I think what I would do is just get another case and a PSU. You can get cases for like 40 bucks, so I'd rather spend the $40 on a case, then pulling out all my hair trying to figure out how the heck to get that PSU out of there, and fit another PSU in there.
 
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