[SOLVED] Suitable GPU for an ACER AX3960

[mccormackjason]

Dear Tom's Hardware Community.

I bought an ACER AX3960 Core i3 including a monitor for the princely sum of £25. It needs a ram upgrade obviously and I'm going to install an SSD, but I wondered if you could recommend a GPU that will both fit in the case and also not draw too much power - I think the PSU is only about 220W. Please note I 'm not a gamer, just looking for something that will output decent HD video and render web pages well. I have another old SFF Dell Optiplex 790, in which I installed an ASUS GeForce GT 710, but the heatsink on this is so huge, even for a low profile card, that it completely prevents use of the second PCI slot on the Dell motherboard - I tried the same graphics card on in the ACER , and the heat sink was too big for the card to fit in either PCI slot - so the ACER case will either need a GPU with a lower profile heat sink, or fan setup. I've had a look at the MSI Geforce GT 710 and it looks like it would fit nicely, but the minimum recommended PSU output for this setup according to the advice is 300W. Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[hang-the-9]

Why not simply use the on-board video from the motherboard?

 

[mccormackjason]

Won't the onboard graphics be a tad outdated now? The integrated Intel HD graphics are at least eight years old? My understanding was that even the most basic of modern GPUs would help this desktop to adequately display modern hd content

 

[hang-the-9]

Won't the onboard graphics be a tad outdated now? The integrated Intel HD graphics are at least eight years old? My understanding was that even the most basic of modern GPUs would help this desktop to adequately display modern hd content

Any i3 CPU will run HD video without issues. You are overthinking things about the system. Did you actually try it out yet?

 

[mccormackjason]

Yes I did and the HD output seems to drop a few frames here and there. Although the system is very under powered (only has 3GB of ram at the moment). I'm wondering if it would be better once I upgrade it to 8gb of ram and switch to an ssd? Maybe I should do that first before changing the GPU?

 

[mccormackjason]

This video offered some advice which seemed useful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b9mGdsL2Vg

 

[hang-the-9]

Yes I did and the HD output seems to drop a few frames here and there. Although the system is very under powered (only has 3GB of ram at the moment). I'm wondering if it would be better once I upgrade it to 8gb of ram and switch to an ssd? Maybe I should do that first before changing the GPU?

I ran HD video from a Core 2 Duo computer with no issues without a video card, the i3 is probably twice as fast. Finish the setup with the RAM and drive, then see how things run. I have not had any issues with onboard video in 1080p with anything Core 2 Duo of faster. Last time I ran into an issue was with a Lenovo T42 laptop that basically had a Pentium 4 in it.