Upgrading hp slimline s3120n graphics card

[Shaelen]

I'm trying to upgrade my brother's graphics card for his birthday. He has an hp slimline s3120n and from doing some searching it seems like it is possible to upgrade it but it's not ideal. He currently plays warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft but it is really choppy and laggy at times. I read that he could upgrade but it would need to be a low profile card that requires no more than 160 watts of power? I'm not that computer literate so if someone could point me in the right direction of a graphics card that would fit in his computer and hopefully give it a little boost, that would be great. Thanks!

 

[Nashsafc]

Hey, I have a Pavilion Slimline to (s3431.uk though), shame about warcraft though that game makes people addicted. So you are interested in upgrading your card, tell me what card you have now? I upgraded my graphics card to, i'll tell you about it. I had a ATI Radeon 3450 is that what you have now? I went to pcupgrade and asked what was the best graphics card for my computer that would work on 160watts. They recommened the ATI Radeon 4550 and that it was the best possible card to work on my computer. The card manufacturer says that it should be powered by a PSU of 300watts minimum. But pcupgrade told me that the card will work on computers with PSU's as low as 150 watts. This is because they say of the 45nm wafer thin technology, the card only consumes up to 25 watts on full power. The performance should be boosted up slightly have a look at the performance on the charts over here. I suppose it is worth it, such as i play FarCry, before when i had the ATI 3450 i couldn't play it more than minimum settings because of the poor FPS I got out of the game, but now i can play the settings on ultra high. The game has a minimum requirement of 64mb of graphics and i would suggest to sticking to games which require that amount of graphics minimum if you want to get adequate performance out of the card. If you are interested in buying the card i bought mine from play.com for £45. I think the cheapest there is to buy is available on play.com. Please reply to me if you have any more questions. And also to let you know the card is low profile to and is packaged with a low profile bracket, so don't worry about that.

 

[Shaelen]

awesome, thanks for the quick reply. I don't know what he has in his computer right now, it's whatever came stock with the machine. Was the ATI Radeon 4550 easy to fit into the computer? did you install it yourself or have someone else like bestbuy or someone do it? That's interesting that your card doesnt need the full 300 watts, should I worry about it burning out the pc or anything? I just don't want to tell my parents to get this card and upgrade his comp and then have it screw it up heh. Thanks again for your reply, I'm going to look into that one.

Anyone else have other suggestions or does this sound like the best plan?

 

[Nashsafc]

To be honest i would just scrap the slimline. I built myself a new computer. Ok you maybe don't want to do that, but it is very easy. I got a small cube case which is quite small but very upgradable, i can stick a full height graphics card, a standard atx psu and a good powerful processor in it. If you want a more powerful graphics card in it you can't, scrap the computer. Unfortunately for gaming with a pc you will have to spend about 500 pounds or more for something that plays games decently. I would recommend buying an xbox360 or if you have the money buy a new computer, if your in the uk i recommend going on pcspecialist.co.uk. Get your computer custom built of there for a very good competative price. I think acutally you can get a casual gaming computer with a ati 4670 graphics card for around about 300 to 400 pounds. Or a 9600GT, second hand computers are fine to buy.