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[SOLVED] Dual DVI video card for a cheap old Dell box

1309 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  Tyree
Hi,

I've got an old Dell Inspiron 530 (roughly 4 years old?). It's got I believe a 300W or 350W PSU in it. I recently bought my second HD monitor with the intent to dual-screen, but I realized my current video card (Radeon HD 2400 Pro) is DVI/VGA, whereas I'll need two DVI ports now.

It used to be I just went to Dell's site and put in my Service Code to look for upgrade parts, but the day that my machine left its warranty period they removed my service code and now I'm having trouble.

Any suggestions for cards that fit my needs but won't blow my PSU? Here are some of the other things I have in my system right now:

3GB DDR2 RAM
250GB Seagate hard drive (stock)
500GB Seagate Barracuda (7200rpm)
Linksys Wireless G PCI card
Hauppauge Digital TV tuner (with hardware mpeg2)
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2ghz
A cdrom drive that broke a while ago (seems to happen to me with Dell's comps...)

Thanks. I'd really like to spend around or less than $50 for it if possible. (and I'd REALLY like to not have to upgrade my PSU, i was hoping on trashing this computer in about a year once I build up the funds to custom build)
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Re: Dual DVI video card for a cheap old Dell box

Your PSU will require upgrading to a minimum 550W good quality PSU.
$50 will not get much of a GPU. What is the primary use of the PC?
Re: Dual DVI video card for a cheap old Dell box

You could get a usb gpu that has a dvi port , other then that we are not recommending gpu's with the stock power supply.
Re: Dual DVI video card for a cheap old Dell box

Thanks, its primary use is software development, so that's why I was hoping no significant upgrades would be required (Eclipse doesn't take very much to run), but you're absolutely right, the stock PSU is probably at max load as it is.

Thanks for the help guys.
Re: Dual DVI video card for a cheap old Dell box

You're welcome and good luck.
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