Hi, I've been upgrading my computer with the goal of playing World of Warcraft on max settings with a high resolution, while maintaining high FPS. My computer is a Dell Precision Workstation 450 w/ 2 dual core xeon processors, 2.5gigs of RAM, and a 360w PSU. The problem I have been running into is finding a high quality graphics card that is in the power range of my PSU, they all seem to be 400w and up. Does anyone know of a card that will accomplish my goal and is compatible with my computer?
Just knowing the wattage of that PSU won't tell you much, do you have any other info on it? You could just drop a 5770 or GTS 450 into there, they don't draw all that much power, but there's no guarantees. Does the mobo even have a PCI-E x16 slot? Depending on which Xeons those are, I would just scrap the rest of the computer and start over with a build using those CPUs. IIRC PC Power and Cooling has (or had) a line of PSUs specifically made for Dell upgrades. I'm currently using a Dell Precision 360. It had a bad PSU (among other things), so I just dropped a Corsair CX400 into it and it works fine. The cases look fairly similar, I only had to cut a bit of the metal around where the power plug goes into the PSU to get it to fit.
That is a very strangely shaped PSU, I'm glad mine was standard. :s * Input: 100-127V~/5A 50-60Hz o 200-240V~/2.5A 50-60Hz * Output: +5V~/1-35A MAX. +12VB~/0-15A MAX. o +12VA~/0-15A MAX. -12V!/0-0.8A MAX. o +5VFP~/0-2A MAX. +3.3V~/0-30A MAX. * Combined Power On +5V and +3.3V rails not to exceed 240W * Combined Power On 12VA and 12VB rails not to exceed 288W These are the specs, I don't know enough about PSUs to give you details on what card you need..
You could actually get a supplementary PSU which goes into a 5.25" drive bay. Thermaltake made 450W and 650W models, there were others too.. Not sure why they don't seem to exist any more, but it seems like they might've solved your problems. Damn Dell and their weird form factors.
A supplementary drive bay PSU may very well solve this. Thanks for the suggestion, time to do some researching.
Well I'd recommend a 4670 or 5670 simply because they're so damn efficient so they only pull power from the slot. Assuming your motherboard has a PCI-E slot then they're the most pain free bet. Get a half decent micro ATX case from Novatech for like £20, put in a CX400, get the graphics card and you're set for future upgrades.
