Video card in dell vostro 230

[Jim Collison]

Hello,
I bought the Dell Vostro 230 and want to use a 2 monitor setup. I bought an EV3A GeForce 9800GT and installed the card but didn't have a compatible power supply feed for the card. Dell has a very thin connector that I haven't seen before, available from the hard drive power cable. Neither monitor booted at all... no mouse or keyboard too. Can the 9800GT run Ok without a separate power source and also, do I need to disable the integrated graphics card that came with the computer? This graphics card was an additional feature that I paid for but it has a DVI connector that won't fit either of the 2 connectors I tried to use with the new 19" Dell HD monitor I want to use a a second screen?

 

[Wolfshadw]

Even if you had the proper power connection for the graphics card, it's doubtful it would actually work given your system only has a 300watt power supply (probably needs a 450-500 watt PSU for that graphics card). The thin connector from the hard drive is probably a secondary SATA Power connection.

Your best bet would be to return the card (if possible) and go for a lower end graphics card that does not require an additional power connection. Look for something like a Geforce GT420 or Radeo HD5450.

-Wolf sends

Edit: Oh, and it might help if we knew what types of inputs your monitors have: VGA (D-Sub 15), DVI (apparently not), HDMI, or DisplayPort.

 

[Jim Collison]

Thanks to all of you who offered advice for my problem. I got connectors for the power to the nVidia graphics card I had bought and now both monitors are working fine. I'm using the DVI and VGA outputs. The only issue I am having, and it's not a biggie, is that one monitor has a blue Dell theme and the other always goes to a red Dell theme. If I switch the outputs the monitors reverse themes. I'd prefer to use the blue theme on both. I've gone into the Win 7 "Personalize" options section and changed it to both blue but it doesn't change. I tried using the nVidia software to change the setting with no satisfactory result, also. Is the issue caused by something in the nVidia software? I looked at a few threads and other folks who had similar issues thought it was. Either way thanks for all the help, especially Wolfshadw.
Jim

 

[Jim Collison]

Best answer selected by Jim Collison.