Power supply increase

[dek48]

i have a p5s800-vm mother board i want to fit new graphics card but my power supply is to small (250w) am i able to increase it to 550w with this motherboard

 

[hunter315]

The motherboard doesnt care how big of a power supply you connect to it, PSUs provide a fixed voltage and the components draw the current they need, you could plug a 1kW unit in and it wouldnt matter to the board. Your board takes a 20 pin main and a 4 pin aux power, so make sure you find one with a 20+4 pin main connected.


One thing im noticing as im looking at your board, it only has PCI and AGP slots(unless yours is a different model than the one i found), if that is really the case your upgrade options are pretty limited since all recent cards need a PCI-E slot
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131521

 

[hang-the-9]

The type of Power Supply you can use is based on your case more than anything else. If it is a standard ATX power supply in there now, you can upgrade to pretty much anything on the market. Some vendors have custom PSU shapes, hole placement in the case, etc... that make it hard to upgrade a PSU, you need to get some info on your computer model and vendor, look at the power supply and see it it is shaped the same as others online.

As hunter said, if you have an AGP slot, you will be hard pressed to find a good video card now, new, or expect fast game play.

 

[dek48]

The motherboard doesnt care how big of a power supply you connect to it, PSUs provide a fixed voltage and the components draw the current they need, you could plug a 1kW unit in and it wouldnt matter to the board. Your board takes a 20 pin main and a 4 pin aux power, so make sure you find one with a 20+4 pin main connected.


One thing im noticing as im looking at your board, it only has PCI and AGP slots(unless yours is a different model than the one i found), if that is really the case your upgrade options are pretty limited since all recent cards need a PCI-E slot
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131521

The main reason i want a new graphics card is because my grandson wants to play sims 3 so i need a card with at least shader 2
I myself dont play on any computer games


Thanks very much for the other information

 

[hang-the-9]

The main reason i want a new graphics card is because my grandson wants to play sims 3 so i need a card with at least shader 2
I myself dont play on any computer games


Thanks very much for the other information

SIMS 3 is actually a fairly demanding application. I have it running on a dual core laptop in one of the kid's rooms with a (lower end) pro nVidia Quadro card, and it's slow at the 1440x900 resolution the laptop runs on.

Depending on how much you want your grandson to be happy, you may need to look at getting a whole new system, for about $400 you can get/build a computer that will run SIMS 3 well.

This http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883155134 and this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102875 will run SIMS 3 just fine.