Poweredge SC440 bargain .. need video

zod

I bought one of these SC440's for €188 delivered.

I want to run Vista ultimate on it and the full aero experience.

I can get ram here for €26 / GB .. so thats another €50 to give 3GB

Was wondering what graphics card to get .. not a really high one for games but maybe one that will play most games reasonably or at least not slow vista down. According to this site it will accept a 7300 in the PCiE 4x slot .. what do you guys recommend ? I have a budget of less than €100

Also a cheap sound card recommendation would be appreciated.

TerrorFirmer

X1950Pro 512mb is only 100 euro on dabs.ie, and would work fine on a 4x slot, maybe a bit less then if it was full width but nothing too noticable. The only problem being that I have no idea of the case size or the power supply....so you'd have to work that out. But it'd give you, by far, the best performance possible with that budget, with the exception of Crysis, should be good for most recent games on high settings at 1280x1024 down.

Failing that, an 8600GT should work fine as well on any stock dell psu, and can be gotten for 99 euro off dabs or komplett (make sure get ddr3 model). Though its a worse performer then the x1950, still adequate for most new games at mid-high settings at same res as above and again, excluding crysis. And for your budget you could get a nice passively cooled one keeping that machine as quiet as it is now.

a 7300 card is fine, but would suck ass for the latest games, I doubt it would even be able to run some of them even on lowest settings. Would be fine for Aero though. If its only for older games something like 7600gt or x1650pro would be alright and save you a bit of cash, can get cheap models of eitehr card for 60-80 euro and again can be bought passively for silence. Still using that x800 i sold you for your other modded machine?

If the card needs to be low profile (again know nothing about the case) then the 2400XT is only 65 euro, low profile and has hdmi connectivity. Would be more powerful then 7300 too. Is passive cooled also. Not ideal for the latest games though, but should cope with most of them at mid-low settings OK.

zod

HavoK wrote: »

Still using that x800 i sold you for your other modded machine?

I used it for about a year and then gave the PC to a friend where it's still going strong! :D

magicbastarder

HavoK wrote: »

Failing that, an 8600GT should work fine as well

does this involve cutting notches in the slot, as i've seen mentioned elsewhere?

TakeTheVeil

how much of a performance hit would using a X1950Pro or HD2600 take in a 4x slot?

Anti

Nothing really, as its such a low end cpu you wont be able to crank up the resolution to find out. Also, since its a dell mobo dont expect to find any overlcocking options in the bios.

magicbastarder

i went for the 3060 xeon, must check to see how it performs in benchmarks.

TakeTheVeil

Anti wrote: »

Also, since its a dell mobo dont expect to find any overlcocking options in the bios.

Yeah thats why im thinking of getting a new mobo.. i've seen E2160 overclocked to 3ghz easily and up to 4ghz in some cases.. hadnt the money at the moment to go for the Xeon 3060.. but i hear that can do incredible overclocks too

how likely is it to be able to hack the bios to allow some overclocking?

CombatCow

Just bough one of these too


I was looking for ram and shop4memory seems to be a good price. free shipping too.

DELL PowerEdge SC440
http://memory.neon-drive.com/s4m.php?model_num=321&oemid=DEL&thisman=DELL

Another Gig for €31 seems very nice.


CC

floydmoon1

TakeTheVeil wrote: »

Yeah thats why im thinking of getting a new mobo.. i've seen E2160 overclocked to 3ghz easily and up to 4ghz in some cases.. hadnt the money at the moment to go for the Xeon 3060.. but i hear that can do incredible overclocks too

how likely is it to be able to hack the bios to allow some overclocking?

some people have got emails saying that they are getting the xeon 3040

Raekwon

TakeTheVeil wrote: »

i've seen E2160 overclocked to 3ghz easily and up to 4ghz in some cases.. hadnt the money at the moment to go for the Xeon 3060.. but i hear that can do incredible overclocks too

Yep and here's the proof

zod

Is the 8600GT that thick that it may obstruct access to one of the PCI slots ?

So I bought an nVidia based card insted, the above mentioned ASUS EN8600GT SILENT (256MB) card. It fits perfectly in the x4 PCIe slot, no problems with its heatsink. However, you can use one PCI (perfect for a sound card) slots after you insert any of these video cards. So the ASUS card works, but only with the lates nVidia drivers which I downloaded from the nvidia site.

Taken from http://www.davtar.org/blog/?p=24

TerrorFirmer

No, it depends on the card. Obviously, a passively cooled model is going to be much bigger then usual to make up for the lack of fan.

TakeTheVeil

Raekwon wrote: »

Yep and here's the proof

That your own overclocking or from a site? If its your own, what did ya use to raise the numbers? I've read Zaltan CNPS9700 is good for the job..

CivilServant

Raekwon wrote: »

Yep and here's the proof

That's great but last time I checked dell boards aren't really overclockable.

Anti

dell bios's have no overclocking options at all. Unless its a xps system

zod

Thanks for that Havok

Gonna stay with nVidia as there has been comments of the ATI's not working ..and because I don't game really, think I might just get this card ( the 7300GT with DDR3 ) it beats the 8500 and is half the price of the 8600 according to this. Reviewed here also.

seem to be out of stock in dabs though, not sure where else I'd get it?

TerrorFirmer

that's a good price, I've seen them around but the ddr3 model is always so uneconomical as it's really expensive for what it is. You will be able to overclock it easily to come close to 7600gt performance. As for where else to get it, Komplett have a few ddr3 models but again their price is way out of sync compared to the performance given. Could get ddr2 models for that price but no real point, poor performance and no OC will come close to achieving the stock bandwidth of the ddr3 one ( which can be further OC'd again).

conzy

I bought one too and so did Papu

Such great value, is it just Socket 775? Could i put a quad in it in a few months time? or could i puts its Pentium in my machine and clock it till the cows come home?

A good value for money card is this 7600gs, its passive, has vga, dvi and tv-out, pretty decent performance and its only 54 euro

This X1650pro has slightly better performance but its not passive and people have more sucess with nvidia cards in the SC440

Raekwon

CivilServant wrote: »

That's great but last time I checked dell boards aren't really overclockable.

Yeah sorry, I only realized that after posting that last post (I got that image off a website).

Anyway........my Dell PowerEdge SC440 arrived this morning (I ordered it on Friday night).

I was planing on sticking a graphics/sound card into it along with a another gig of RAM and setting it up as a PC in my flat (my old HP is pretty much knacked at this stage). I have a new gaming laptop so my new PowerEdge would be primarily used by myself & my girlfriend for playing music, using Photoshop, interweb browsing and the like.........but nothing too strenuous.

I was thinking along the lines of these:
nVidia GeForce 7600 256MB DDR2
Creative SB Audigy SE PCI

Also, would I need to upgrade the PSU or is the one supplied decent enough?

TakeTheVeil

305W ain't it? I'm not sure if thats enough to support a new graphics and sound card

conzy

Mine arrived this morning also Didnt open it yet...

P.s Raekwon, that 7600gs card is very good value for money and its passively cooled, buy it!

gamer

I FIND the 7300 to be a fine card ,i can play cod4 at medium 1024x768 medium settings,low textures,aa,vsync off.ITS very small with completely silent fan.IF You,r into AV ,dvd or hdvideo ,i,d advise you get 256/300meg ram card with hdmi out,or HDTV out .OBVIOUSLY there are much faster cards out there in regard to playing bioshock, crysis at 1200x1000 resolution.BUT cards like 8800gt are much noisier and use alot more power than a 7300,and demand 22amps power on a single rail from the psu.FOR many users ,a smaller quieter card is best,if you are just a non gamer,or a casual gamer.MY advice is the x1950pro, and sure you,ll get a sound card on adverts.ie 10euro, i find the sb live pci is fine, since your on a budget ,get one there.

Lord Deco

TakeTheVeil wrote: »

305W ain't it? I'm not sure if thats enough to support a new graphics and sound card

It does....

300W Dell PSU = almost 400-450W Generic Power Supply....

You can go all they way up to a 8800gt on that psu (if its the same one as in the desktops ie vostro,inspiron,e520 etc)

Its has more than enough power to put in a decent graphics card like a 8600gt and good sound card

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_video&thread.id=167576&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

TakeTheVeil

thats good to hear.. currently i'm thinking along the lines of 1950x, HD2600 but if the new 8800GT is compatible i'll think about a bigger upgrade..

anyone going to be able to test a 8800 in their SC440 in the near future?

Anti

Ignore lord deco's reply. Dell make absolutly shoddy psu's.

Yes you can run a 8800gtx rig with 2 hdds on a 500w psu. If you have stong enough rails, but dell psu's are known to have crap rails. Also replacing a dell psu can be a pain in the hole, as the use non conventional sizes and fittings. So you may need the access to a dremel to fit a standard atx 2.2 psu in there.

On a 300w psu i wouldnt like to go too much further then a x1950 to be honest.

gamer

you,ll need a 450 or 500watt psu for the 8800 card,with the capability of 22amps on one rail.the 8800 can use up to 310watts by itself for cod4 at 1200x1000 resolution,if your psu supplys 20amps on a rail,then the card WILL not work properly.Check psu specs be4 you buy, theres usually a label on psu case with rail amp rating,and watt rating,eg 400w,whatever.

Chosen

If you are going to replace the PSU with a high-end one, put a €500 graphics card and a €200 processor, then why on earth did you spend €200 for this server?
To get a non-standard case which is not even "sexy" + a couple of 80Gb drives?

conzy

Anyone have any look finding drivers for XP pro, just need them for the broadcom lan card and the SM Bus controller

*edit* Lan Drivers

Lord Deco

Anti wrote: »

Ignore lord deco's reply. Dell make absolutly shoddy psu's.

Yes you can run a 8800gtx rig with 2 hdds on a 500w psu. If you have stong enough rails, but dell psu's are known to have crap rails. Also replacing a dell psu can be a pain in the hole, as the use non conventional sizes and fittings. So you may need the access to a dremel to fit a standard atx 2.2 psu in there.

On a 300w psu i wouldnt like to go too much further then a x1950 to be honest.

And you know this how?


You do know a x1950pro needs only a slightly little less power than a 8800gt?

I have put a x1950pro,7950gt into a 305watt inspiron and it ran perfectly

8800gt works perfectly on a 305watt dell psu....Go to dell community forums and you will see many many people have one in there 305watt system....

Shoddy psu

Lord Deco

Ignore lord deco's reply lmao......

awhir

Lord Deco wrote: »

Ignore lord deco's reply lmao......

dO

Lord Deco

awhir wrote: »

dO

dO WOT?

Anti

How do i know ?

Quite simple, i have been building high end pc's for a long time now. I have 2 8800gtx's and i have tested them with generic psu's from dells, compaqs and even jeantech generic psu's. And only psu's with strone 12v rails will stand up to the test, otherwise you will see bsod's and irratic behaviour.. Also if nvidia reccomend a 450-500w psu why would you think a 305w would be acceptable? Do you think nVidia who have tested the card with hundreds of psu's are lying to you?

And, this is the power that a x1900xtx draws, and this card is a much more hungry card,



And this is what a 8800gtx/gts draws.



Agreed, they do not draw that much power, but its not that wattage you have to worry about. its the 12v rail.

Chosen

Anti wrote: »

Also if nvidia reccomend a 450-500w psu why would you think a 305w would be acceptable?

Anti wrote: »

Agreed, they do not draw that much power, but its not that wattage you have to worry about. its the 12v rail.

You just gave an answer to yourself
Wattage doesn't really matter. A 550W Qtec won't be able to stay up for 5 hours with an 8800GTX. However, the 250W or 300W psu that is inside a Shuttle XPC, will be just fine

awhir

Lord Deco wrote: »

dO WOT?

ahh feck that's what happens when ur trying to play cod4 and type :rolleyes:

btw i was going to say ,as anti said the rails are the most important thing unstable rails = unstable Pc.

anyway just ordered one of these for my bro for and will do a few test's on the psu and see how it performs

TerrorFirmer

I think me and Deco had this conversation before. I agreed that Dell's were under-rated and to be honest, I would disagree with you over their build quality. Just because their rails are weak doesn't make them shoddy, just not suitable for certain uses. But the rails are weak, and I was saying pretty much exactly what you are saying Anti - that most of those Dells psu's only have 18a on the 12v which is insufficient for any half decent card these days (maybe the 7950 but thats not as demanding as x1950pro), yet what Deco is saying is true, google it and you get people saying that 8800's and x1950pro's do work fine on their basic dell power supplies (I think the most common psu is 305w with 18a). So I don't know....are these people lying, or living with occassional lockups etc?? It's hard to imagine that an x1950pro could work flawlessly on that, let alone higher cards. I don't know myself from personal experience, the last Dell PSU I had was never put under much strain.

Anti

Have ordered one of these myself, what im gonna do is when it arives ill test it with a 7800gtx 7900gt 7900gtx 7950gx2 8800gts and a 8800gtx. Will see if i can find a few ati cards lying aroudn in boxes too.

TonyM.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Microsoft_Windows_Server_2008_Enterprise_with_HyperV/1196885352/2

You can get a demo version of windows server 2008 here expires next June.

Is there a collection for Crumlin Hospital this year?

_Kaiser_

Update...

After cutting an extra notch in a Nvidia 7300 LE to fit the X4 slot, the system is up and running correctly

It also seems to reconfigure an existing Windows XP installation correctly as I put a hard drive from an existing system in it and it booted just fine.

At the moment then I'm moving data around so I can completely wipe it and install Vista Ultimate fresh. I'll do some benchmarking before and after though.

conzy

People underestimate how good some power supplies are...

People run Quad core, dual 8800gtx rigs on decent 500watt psus....

And dell psus and their overall build quality is very good, have you seen the Heatsinks they use? They put some after market solutions to shame....

The 8800gtx draws 145 watts or so at Maximum load, the cpu draws 65 watts or so at max load, the ram is about 10 watts, hdds around 10- or 15watts....

So even at maximum load with 2gigs of ram and 2x 500gig Hdds the system is only drawing around 260watts...

Thats perfectly acceptable with around 15% overhead still remaining and I bet Dell rate the psus a bit conservatively also...

So in short, This system is perfectly capable of handling an 8800gtx, but something like an 8800gt would be a better option

*edit* Just remembered its limited to a 4X Pci-express slot, so I dunno how much performance the bandwith hungry cards would lose

forbairt

conzymaher wrote: »

*edit* Just remembered its limited to a 4X Pci-express slot, so I dunno how much performance the bandwith hungry cards would lose

I'm curious how much of a difference bandwidth makes on these cards.

Does anyone have any information on this / stats ? as to the performance drop. I would presume it'd only affect really high end cards ? (but that is me guessing)

I quoted the bandwidth stats on the other thread but I find it difficult to believe it uses all of it ?

TakeTheVeil

Whats the Nvidia price/performance equivalent of ATI HD2600 512mb DDR2?

And how beneficial is DDR3, would it be better to go for the 512mb DDR2 or 256mb DDR3?

Anti

forget ddr2 on graphics cards, you should be looking gddr3 or gddr4, and gddr5 will be out late next year.

*edit*

And for the last time, we are not disputing the power output of a dell psu, we are talking about stable rails espacially the 12v rails and can tey support multiple 22a 12v rails or better!

TakeTheVeil

well i dont think gddr4 is in my scope.. so it'll be either 512mb DDR2 or 256 DDR3

TerrorFirmer

forbairt wrote: »

I'm curious how much of a difference bandwidth makes on these cards.

Does anyone have any information on this / stats ? as to the performance drop. I would presume it'd only affect really high end cards ? (but that is me guessing)

I quoted the bandwidth stats on the other thread but I find it difficult to believe it uses all of it ?

No, your right. Older cards from the 7 series and the X19xx series wouldn't really see much of a performance hit, it would be there but not of major significance. You would definitely notice it with the 8 series. So any card that would actually work with the stock power supply, isn't going to be seriously affected.

Don't bother with 512mb ddr2, ddr2 is far slower then ddr3 and a card like that can't make use of all that ram anyway. 256mb ddr3 will outperform ddr2 of any size in games. you're looking at 400mhz vs 700mhz memory. If it's for non gaming uses then it's fine.

the standard dell psu is 305w with 18a on a single rail

TakeTheVeil

worth going for a ATI HD2600 256mb GDDR3 for €83 or would it take a significant enough performance hit to make it redundant?

TerrorFirmer

The 2600 is a medicore card in the first instance but in anything remotely modern, the difference would be evident, even at higher resolutions and when using AA in older games. If you were playing the likes of Half Life 2 at 1280x1024 for example, the difference would be beyond what you would notice (40fps vs 60fps, for arguments sake) but up that to 1680x1050 and 4x AA and it'll be the difference between playable and unplayable.

What size is your monitor and what do you intend playing?

TakeTheVeil

it'll be 1280x1024 on a 19".. or 1280x720 sometimes.. mostly just to play half-life, stalker and company of heroes.. nothing extremely demanding

_Kaiser_

After reading some more on this, I stumbled across:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161079

Good/bad/indifferent?

TerrorFirmer

At that resolution with no AA the ddr2 Pro card will be OK at 1280x1024 at high settings, max in Half Life 2.

Long as you don't plan playing anything more recent or adding AA you should be fine with the cheaper card. Though if the prices are anyway close, I'd still go with the ddr3 version.

You might look at the XT version as well, better performer and can be gotten for sub 100 euro. Komplett have a nice XT with a Zalman fan for 93 euro. Dabs Value offer a 8600GT ddr3 for sub 100 euro also, and the cheapest ddr3 one on Komplett is about 99 euro. Few extra euro, but much better performance in general.