Small case issue

[Unknottypaul]

Hello all, new member here

I've just got into the idea of upgrading my system, which unfortunatly happens to be an Imax 3515, and I have run into a slight snag. After shoving in some extra ram my next step is the gpu and psu, however having eyed up a geforce 260 i soon noticed it's far to big to fit in my machine. I only have 2" past the pciex16 slot, so about 8.6" all together to work with.
I had a bit of a hunt for card dimensions and see that Gigabyte's 8800gt is roughtly 8.5", and would probably squeeze in. My other solution was buying a new case, or even transfereing the contents into a previous Packard Bell case I have lying around.
Any recomendations on what action to take, or of smaller gpu's that would fit my case would be very much appreciated.

 

[Outlander_04]

powerful gaming cards all have big coolers because they need them .

Id swap cases as the best solution , and also consider power supply at the same time . Many oem computers come with fairly restricted wattage psu that wont handle the current draw of the gfx card so you need to check that .

Yu may also be able to fit a radeon 4770 or 4850 in your existing case . There are models of both which are shorter than than the width of the mb

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Last month I purchased an XFX Radeon HD 4770 video card for a special project. The card is only 8.5 inches long. It is an energy efficient card that only requires one 6 pin PCIe connection. When installed the connector on the card is located on the edge of the card closest to the front of a pc case. If there is no drive installed to interfere with the video card connection, then you might be okay. If there is a drive that lines up with the card, hopefully you can move it to an empty drive bay.

The 4770 is an excellent mid-level, energy efficient card. It is not a high end gaming card. However, technical reviews have been very favorable. Here's a link to a recent Tom's Hardware review of the card:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-4770-crossfire,2288.html

EDIT - I just took a look inside my case. The card is almost one inch shorter than a standard atx motherboard.

 

[Unknottypaul]

Thanks for the tips guys, it seems my options are (assuming I don't change case) the palit 4850, or the gainward or zotac eco editions of the 9800gt. All three of these only go an inch or so past the pci-e slot in my comp (and of course all of which are a major upgrade from the integrated 7050 ).

I shall consider these three for the time being, and perhaps change case or even build a fresh system in a year or twos time when I have a bigger budget.