I want to buy a pci express graphics card for around $150, but i only have a 300 watt power supply.can u help?

Question

Ya i only have a 300 Watt power supply and i dont want to get a new psu, so what are the best cards for around $150? I would also prefer a 512mg card

Answer 1

I am running the PNY version of one of these on a 300Watt power supply, and it does not need an available 4 pin molex connector. Woks pretty good for gaming. Oblivion, Never winter Nights 2, Doom 3, Half Life 2 all run good. I paid 200.00 6 months ago.

Answer 2

I would personally advise you upgrade the power supply. The closer you get to the maximum output of a power supply, the less efficiently it runs, the hotter it runs, and the less time it lasts. You can get a 400-500 watt power supply with pci express connectors for $50 or $60 (of course more is better). The power supply is the most overlooked and most IMPORTANT part in your pc. Tossing a video card that sucks down power (my X850XT eats around 65 watts all by itself) into a system with a too-small power supply is asking for trouble. Will spending $150 on a video card and $0 on a power supply REALLY be worth it when your computer can't play through a game without shutting itself down or restarting on you? That doesn't sound like fun gaming to me...

Answer 3

Dude, you're just gonna have to buckle down and get a new PSU. in your price range you'll be looking at either a GeForce 7600 or an ATI 1600 series. Both of those will require a minimum of 350W. You NEVER want to run the minimum as it will burn out your PSU faster. You can get a good 430W PSU for around $39 on www.newegg.com and still have enough left over for a Geforce 7600GT 256MB or an ATI X1650pro 512MB.

Don't get hung up and the amount of RAM though. That will only be a factor if you are running at extremely high resolutions.

Answer 4

That would be hard. PCI Express Graphic Card uses a lot of power. If you really don't want to get a new PSU, then the only advice I can give is remove power to any drivers except the hard disk.

Games can't run without a disk? Well that's a sign of upgrade (buy psu) or wait for a crack.

Answer 5

None of the GOUs can run unless you use the full PSU they recommend!

I have seen some for as little as $10.99 on pricewatch.com

You could rig it to run two PSUs, one for the GPU, as an extra, and leave the original to run the computer. I would probably split the drive load, if you have more than one hard drive.

Many cases can actually hold two PSUs, like my older Server towers...

Grounding to the same case is important for it to not blow up!
The mainboard needs to have common ground with the PSU that runs the GPU so there are no ground loops.

Answer 6

Depending on the rest of your system specs, this may not be an issue at all. What are they? Preliminarily, I would try an nVIDIA GeForce 7600GT for the price. You won't need 512MB unless you are doing video editing and crazy things like that, and most of the 7600GTs are well under 150, and have 256MB of memory, which is plenty for modern gaming.

Answer 7

Most don't require more than 300W in my experience at that price range. The only time you'll need significantly more power is if you have an SLI machine and are running $1000 in terms of 2 $500 graphics cards.

Hope this helps!

Answer 8

Dude - spend another 50 bucks for a power supply - you don't have to be a rocket scientist to install one. Just take your old one out - watch or write down where everything goes - put in the new one.

Answer 9

specific it does count i might improve to a minimum of something extra effective a minimum of 500 watts. seek around i understand there's a area that tells you the way lots capacity you desire. Like in case you're working a number of no longer ordinary drives and extra beneficial than one dvd or cd rom. additionally internet cams and different usb units take in capacity.