[Belial]

My old hard drive ended up giving a blue screen, three chapters of my book lost. (cries)

so I am between a seagate 1tb hard drive (On sale at newgate) and a western Digital black 1tb(on sale at staples)

Anyone want to tell me which one is better for a Mad Hatter who loves gaming after work?

I figure 1tb could handle many games for a while and my books.

Resolved issue

So I've been using a borrowed computer as my desktops, Graphics card died. The light on the monitor is amber and I get nothing but a black screen.

After three days of google searching I have come up with these three for my XPS 410 dell paperweight.

Ati Radeon hd 5770
ATI Radeon hd 6770
Nvidia 9300

I have also read that if the card is too powerful that it could bottleneck and slow the computer down/ possibly harm the motherboard.

but replacing the 375w to a 600w/650w corsair would be a good choice. I am on a limited budget and can't swing $150/$400 for a single card.

If anyone knows anything about this, the help would really be appreciated.

[Ducky]

I personally have a Radeon HD 6770. don't really think it's a powerful enough card to have any bottleneck issues. I have a600w power supply alon with it and it works fine.

[Echo-chan713]

I've never heard of them...wait are they the ones with hallmark and all you need is the program and a webcam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDmPxCxJtzw

[Ducky]

Originally Posted by Echo-chan713

I've never heard of them...wait are they the ones with hallmark and all you need is the program and a webcam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDmPxCxJtzw

He means a GPU (Graphical Processing Unit), which is a part of a PC.

[Echo-chan713]

oh, nevermind then, carry on.

[Belial]

Originally Posted by Ducky

I personally have a Radeon HD 6770. don't really think it's a powerful enough card to have any bottleneck issues. I have a600w power supply alon with it and it works fine.

Thanks man, I'm leaning on gettin a ATI Radeon hd 6770 with a corsair 600w.

[Renata]

My family is still trying to figure out what happened to the family's desktop because it can't play any games without the monitor receiving no signal after like 5 minutes of playing a game. thought it was the graphics card being fried but it's not that we think it might be the graphics cards fan that's fried has anyone had this problem/could help with any info or ideas?

[Coda]

It does sound like it might be an overheating issue. It's safe to run a computer with the case open, so go ahead and open it up and you can watch the fans to see if they're running when they should be.

If the fan isn't spinning, or if it's spinning slowly, then the fan probably needs to be replaced. If the fan is running at a proper speed, it may be that there's damage to the card itself (potentially heat damage) and it becomes unstable when it warms up, even if it's not technically overheating.

[Hex]

be careful running your rig with the case open if you have any long haired pets though, they can really mess with your internals.

Also if it is the graphic card's fan they are generally easy and cheap to replace...

Here's to hoping its just the fan and there isn't any thermal damage...I just built my new rig and I cringe just thinking about thermal damage to my new baby XD

[hyjin]

its not good to run the case open. if the case makes it over heat you can either install new fans to cirulate air flow or just replace the case and move all the internal parts to the new case.

The graphics cards are decent options i would say go with the 6770 because its a good one. um for the power supply i suggest going for one that has at least 100watts over the recommended graphic cards requirements.

[Coda]

Yeah, naturally you still want to keep the insides clean; gumming up the airflow with dust or hair isn't good for it. But that's nothing a can of compressed air and a vacuum cleaner can't fix.

Edit: I wasn't suggesting running it with the case open on a regular basis, only as a troubleshooting step.

[hyjin]

well yeah i did that for sometime with my desktop.
Just to vent out some of the dust

[Ducky]

if you have access to another graphics card you could always swap it in and see if you still get the same issue. It does sound like an overheating issue though.

[SaekoNova]

Asus nVIDIA 3D GeForce GTX 560 TI DirectCu II TOP Graphics Card (1GB) is my card and it works pretty amazing :3

[Espy]

About those graphics cards...If you're gonna be running games on them, the ATI stuff should be fine. Just don't....don't be like me and try to run Autodesk and engineering crap on ATI. It doesn't work. Go with NVIDIA for any graphics-intensive stuff besides gaming.

[Coda]

That's... kinda unexpected. I've had good results with precision graphics on ATI in recent years.