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[wigbill]

Hey Guys,

 

I'm fixing up a small PC for a friend. its nothing special just for his son to use, School stuff, Minecraft and other casual games. he has also mentioned he would like to use it to play turn based strategy games, total war CIV, etc.

 

The problem being that the PSU in the system is a pre-installed one with no spare 8/6pin connectors, and funds are tight so don't want to purchase a new one.

 

So i'm after an PCIe powered GPU that will cope running these turn based games and be sub £70 mark if possible.

 

Has anyone had experience with PCIe powered cards? Comparatively are they as good as powered cards?

 

 

[XTankSlayerX]

Something around the lines of GTX 750 should be fine. I have used a 7750 and 7770 from amd as well. Both pcie powered. Ran games well.

[michaeldeve]

If you are going to get a graphics card the lowest you should go is a GTX 750 or a R7 250x. the 750 is above your budget which means that anything Nvidia is out of reach but the R7 250x is still a decent card and should preform much better than internal graphics with it being able to play games such as battlefield 4 just below 60 fps on medium graphics.

[HardHue]

If you're interested, I recently put a GTX 780 in my friend's computer who had neither 8 or a 6 pin PCIe power. I happened to have some old molex-to-PCIe 6-pin and 8-pin laying around and those did the trick. You can get them cheap from Newegg, or Amazon, etc.

Somehow that 500W no-name-brand PSU is powering a 125W CPU and a GTX 780 right now.

[Imakuni]

If you're interested, I recently put a GTX 780 in my friend's computer who had neither 8 or a 6 pin PCIe power. I happened to have some old molex-to-PCIe 6-pin and 8-pin laying around and those did the trick. You can get them cheap from Newegg, or Amazon, etc.

Somehow that 500W no-name-brand PSU is powering a 125W CPU and a GTX 780 right now.

I can see it happening... green ooze (heavy metal solutions) flowing out of the PSU and causing a chemical incident in your house.

 

Don't follow this guy's footsteps, please. You risk killing your entire system.

[TaBandit87]

I fixed up an older PC for my fiances sons computer, got a 250x http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fsD6NG, that one in the link for 79.99 on Amazon a week ago. PSU seems to be getting warm though, will be replacing that soon.

[PureNutz1984]

if you can get a cheap gtx 650, that will work too ( i know this as i use one )

[SIGSEGV]

Just use a molex to 6-pin connector and get a 9600GT (9600GTs are like £20 now and you can get like 200-300FPS on default minecraft settings)

[snert98]

if you want to go nvidia look at the GT lineup not GTX the GT's are more for etertainment/home computing purposes but still you can game quite good on them 

if going that route look for a gt 730/740 both need no external power and have a TDP under 75w (ps. look for the gddr5 versions preferably asus and some of the 740's have external power so read the specs)

 

if not going for nvidia your best option is the r7 240/250 i think the 250 beets the gt730 but the 240 wont

 

@wigbill

 

[HardHue]

I can see it happening... green ooze (heavy metal solutions) flowing out of the PSU and causing a chemical incident in your house.

 

Don't follow this guy's footsteps, please. You risk killing your entire system.

I'm waiting for that day myself, but I guess having spent only 200$ on the GPU my friend didn't want to invest another 100$ on a decent PSU right away.

While I agree it's stupid to try to power a 400+W GPU off molex and motherboard power alone, what's wrong with a lower TDP card being supplemented by molex? OP's budget already rules out new higher TDP cards. What's wrong with powering something like a 260x or a 77xx, which (I'm speculating) can't draw much more than 100W, off molex and mobo power?

[PureNutz1984]

I'm waiting for that day myself, but I guess having spent only 200$ on the GPU my friend didn't want to invest another 100$ on a decent PSU right away.

 

just out of curiosity......why would you pay $200+ on a gpu and not upgrade your psu? (genuine question)