Confused Dad needs help with Video Card

[FUBAR_DAD]

Hello all,
I recently did a stupid thing. (Well a few of them actually) My eldest son (14) asked for a gaming computer for his birthday. His mother and I agreed to this and we went online looking for a cheaper gaming desktop for him. (My 1st mistake is purchasing a cheap system) After purchasing this desktop and telling my son about it, he went online to look at the reveiws and came back to us and said that he will need a better video card in order to play games on there. Of course, I then went and purchased a NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti to fix this problem. (My second mistake is not seeing if this video card will work on this system before purchasing it) He is now saying that his computer will blow up or something if he uses this with his current Power Supply....

The computer that I had purchased is a Cyberpower Ultra Gamer. GUA380 Desktop.

http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-GUA380-CYBERPOWERPC-FX-4300-NVIDIA/dp/B00I9FVTT4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1432669583&sr=8-3&keywords=gua380

The power supply says its a 350W but no specifics on the website on what kind or anything else.

So the question I have is will the Video Card that I purchased for him (NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti 2GB) work on this system?

Any help would be awesome!

 

[coolcole01]

could you link to the 750 ti you purchased but i bet it will work just fine

 

[boosted1g]

It comes down to what card and what psu.

If the 750 ti does not require power directly from the psu then it should be fine.

If it requires a connection from PSU then that depends on the PSU.

Just because the PSU says 350w does not mean that they had to have it certified to that, there is no regulation requiring a "600 w" psu to even be able to sustain 400 w. Those budget pre-built are priced cheap because they save money on getting low end psu's and motherboards.

Worse off, the cheaper the power supply the less protections it has, so when that 350w psu fires because you had a 250w demand, it has no circuitry to prevent it from frying the whole computer.

Seasonic, XFX, EVGA, Antec are good brands.

 

[timeconsumer]

It's likely enough power, the 750 Ti is a very efficient card.

However, if you could take a picture of the label on the side of the power supply (open the computer) and show it to us. Or just tell us how many amps it has listed under 12v that would help us give you a more definite answer.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Unless he's overclocking something, the 750ti should be ok as long as it's one of the newer 'Maxwell' chips. Those were designed with a sub-75w power envelope and should have no external PEG connectors (6 or 8 pin connections for power) on the back or side.

If it is the correct 750ti, then it should draw a maximum of about 60watts vs the Nvidia GT610 which pulls about 30watts at full load. System draw for a FX-4100 is about 140w (cpu/mobo), about another 40w for fans/hdds. All in all, you're at a max load of about 240-280w which is well below your 350w PSU threshold. In other words, you probably picked the best GPU to do this with, and it should be fine (again, unless he's OC'ing the machine).

I would do the following.

1) make sure he's not overclocking.
2) remove the old GPU.
3) put the new GPU in.
4) power on the machine and watch/listen.

If the unit won't power on, or you hear coil whine from either the PSU or GPU, shut it down immediately. If it sounds good and boots, run some light games on it.

 

[FUBAR_DAD]

Thanks for all the info everyone. The system and video card hadn't come in yet but when it does i will post pics prior to installing.

Also what does over clocking mean?

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Overclocking is the process by which you push the CPU harder than what it was rated at. When AMD makes a chip, they run tests on it and see what it's capable of from a frequency/power perspective, then brand the chip to roughly what it runs at it's 'safest' settings to fit within a particular power target. For example, a particularly well made chip (sometimes just the luck of the etching) can run at a higher frequency than the one made right beside it while still fitting within the same power rating. That's how they get (for example) the FX8350, and the FX8370, and the FX8370E. All the same chips, but the 8370 is rated to run at 4.0ghz (4.3 turbo) while the 8350 is rated to run at 4.0ghz (4.2 turbo) but are both rated at the same 125watts, while the 8370E is rated to run at 3.3ghz (4.4!!! turbo) but at only 95 watts.

These ratings are developed by using the stock cooler. So, if you have an aftermarket cooler (ie: bigger), you could turn the clockspeed up and because of your extra cooling capacity with the bigger cooler, the chip won't overheat. And, with certain caveats, faster == better.

Thus: OVER clock.

The thing is with overclocking:

1) too much power == toasted chip. That's bad.
2) power usage goes up exponentially. That means going up the same amount uses progressively more power (and heat).
3) overclocking requires both a robust motherboard, robust cpu cooler, robust airflow (fans) and a robust power supply. Using budget ANYTHING can result in that toasted chip we were talking about.
5) sometimes overclocking is the luck of the draw. Every chip is different.