City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

I njust finished speaking with a dell rep and I asked him about videocard upgrades

Father Xmas

By Father Xmas,
Posted on: 2010-09-03 09:20 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

I do agree that a 300 watt PSU in a a bit anemic for higher end video cards. For example, an ATI 5770 has minimum PSU requirement of 450 Watts. I was unable to find specifics about your system's power supply, but unless Dell's power supplies do not conform to a standard form factor I see no reason why you couldn't buy a quality higher wattage power supply and install it yourself.

 

Posted

Two parts to the question. Firstly, the Inspiron 570 is a Dell mini-tower. They're not know for excess space, but as best I can tell from the picture it still uses a fairly standard power supply. The odds of you being able to get a more powerful replacement power supply that will fit in your case than Dell will sell you are pretty good, but Dell isn't going to tell you that; and it may void your warranty or at least cause extra problems (ie, have to put original back in before getting service).

It used to be that Dell used a non-standard pinout on the power connector for some systems, and you couldn't use standard power supplies at all. As far as I know, an I570 should easily be new enough that it doesn't do that, but it can't hurt to check the support pages or do some more research.

Even if you have to get one of the smaller-scale power supplies (some mini-ATX have the standard back format, but are short for instance), those are available substantially better than 300w. Carefully measure the existing power supply and any available extra clearance behind it and do some shopping.

As for what card you can reliably run, 300w is fairly limiting; I'd suggest starting by shopping carefully for a better power supply, and then once you've gotten that picked out come back and ask what your video card options are. You're also going to have to take some care about cooling in a small factory-stock case; remember, if more power goes in, more heat has to come out.

Edited to add: In case you didn't know, with modern systems and especially better graphics cards (GPUs) the amperage on the +12v rail(s) and how/if they are split up are probably more important than the overall wattage of the supply. If you check the sticker on your current power supply, it should hopefully have a breakdown of the power available in various ways; you'll need to know the +12v rating(s) to get detailed GPU recommendations.

One possible example would be this; it's an extremely compact $30 power supply that should fit into almost any case, nominal 380w and rated for 19A on a unified/single +12v rail. You can probably do better than this, but you should be able to do at least something similar.

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Posted

Because he's Dell.

Because it would violate the warranty, if it had any left.

They don't want to be bothered if you mess up the swap. It's awful cramp in there. You may dislodge other cables while you doing the swap (the pesky case button and LED cables as well as the front panel connectors).

A fair number of PSUs in a reasonable wattage range actually exceed the depth (length?) of a standard size ATXV12 power supply (140mm/5.5"). According to Dell's service document, there is a clip that is located behind the PSU that may help hold the PSU in place, besides the standard four screws which is likely at that depth (lenght?).

Then there's the problem of containing the excess PSU cable lengths to keep the airflow clean (cable ties and duct tape?) since nearly all PSUs now have cable long enough for most full size cases but this is a cramp microATX case.

That's what I can think of off hand why they are trying to dissuade you. There may be other reasons. At least the 570 appears to be a "standard" microATX tower case instead of the microBTX cases of old.

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