Need Help Upgrading Old PC

[_Froyo]

Hello all. I'm trying to upgrade an old family computer we have just for a fun project. It's an Inspiron 530, and I've already upgraded the processor to a Core 2 Duo E8500 without any problems, but things are going bad quick, and I was wondering if anyone here could help.

 

For starters, the computer is not using all the RAM it has. I upgraded to 4 GB (2x2 GB) of Kingston DDR2, but the system says that only 3.24 GB are usable. Even worse, when I try to use it in conjunction with the 2 GB (2x1 GB) of Nanya ram that it already had, it says that only 3.25 GB are usable, even though it sees all 6 GB. Any idea on what to do here? I've tried switching ports around, but that hasn't done anything.

Also, and possibly more concerning, is the new graphics card I'm trying to use with it. I ordered a GTX 645 off ebay which was said to be tested and working (if no one here is able to figure anything out, I'm going to have a word with the seller). I put it in the computer and it powered on just fine, fan spinning and all, but would not output a signal from the DVI or HDMI slots (I don't have a monitor that supports DP so I couldn't test that). Just to try and be sure it wasn't an issue with the motherboard, I tried testing it in my main system and the same thing happened. I've taken it out and re-inserted it several times by now, and I'm worried. Here's a picture of the card:

Spoiler

TL;DR the computer says only like half the RAM is usable and the video card powers on, but doesn't output a signal.

Help with any of this would be much appreciated.

[ElSeniorTaco]

addressing the ram issue here

 

64 bit or 32 bit windows installed?

assuming you have a 32 bit copy of windows,

32bit windows has a ram limit of 4gb if im not mistaken, and you wont be able to use all of it in many cases.

to resolve that you need to install a 64 bit version of windows

 

[_Froyo]

64 bit version of Windows 10 is installed. Sorry for not specifying that.

[ElSeniorTaco]

not to be doubting you here, but are you sure it installed the 64 bit version?

can you check?

I almost always see this issue with computers that are running 32bit

 

[ElSeniorTaco]

check the bios if you can, make sure it sees all 6 gigs

as for the video card

it looks like it pulls power directly from the board

off the top of my head, I would think maybe the psu is not supplying enough power, or the card is dead, or some sort of pci express compatibility issue

Ill have to do some more digging around on this though

[aisle9]

I've spent some quality time with a number of Inspiron 530 PCs, and their close relative the Vostro 200 (sexiest machine ever, btw). Their motherboards are...picky. Use a matching set of RAM, and be careful which RAM you order. Stick to stuff like Samsung, Hynix, anything Dell branded. For whatever reason, those mid to late 2000s Dells are very picky about RAM. I'm impressed you got it to boot with a mismatched set at all.

 

I highly, highly recommend spending $8-10 to get a Q6600, then tape modding it to get it to 2.99GHz. The difference between an E8500 and a Q6600 at 3GHz is night and day, just make sure you have the right motherboard to handle it. If you open up your PC and look for the motherboard model (should be something like G33M02), you can do some quick research and see if your board is quad-capable.

 

Also, reset your CMOS. Sorry, that should have been step one.

 

The card sounds to me like it's a dud, which isn't a bad thing because a 645 is really nothing special. See if you can find a 750 Ti for a much better experience.

 

For reference, I have a Vostro 200 with a G45M03 motherboard and a 750 Ti, with an 8GB set of matched RAM. I'm able to play damn near anything short of the latest AAA titles that are starting to demand more than 8GB of RAM, more than 2 GB of VRAM at even the lowest settings and just need more CPU power than the Q6600 can handle. If you're going to pick a system to use as an upgrade platform, you picked the right one. LGA775 Dells are gold for that sort of thing.

[_Froyo]

1 hour ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

not to be doubting you here, but are you sure it installed the 64 bit version?

can you check?

I almost always see this issue with computers that are running 32bit

 

Spoiler

(using integrated graphics to get this pic)

1 hour ago, aisle9 said:

I've spent some quality time with a number of Inspiron 530 PCs, and their close relative the Vostro 200 (sexiest machine ever, btw). Their motherboards are...picky. Use a matching set of RAM, and be careful which RAM you order. Stick to stuff like Samsung, Hynix, anything Dell branded. For whatever reason, those mid to late 2000s Dells are very picky about RAM. I'm impressed you got it to boot with a mismatched set at all.

 

I highly, highly recommend spending $8-10 to get a Q6600, then tape modding it to get it to 2.99GHz. The difference between an E8500 and a Q6600 at 3GHz is night and day, just make sure you have the right motherboard to handle it. If you open up your PC and look for the motherboard model (should be something like G33M02), you can do some quick research and see if your board is quad-capable.

 

Also, reset your CMOS. Sorry, that should have been step one.

 

The card sounds to me like it's a dud, which isn't a bad thing because a 645 is really nothing special. See if you can find a 750 Ti for a much better experience.

 

For reference, I have a Vostro 200 with a G45M03 motherboard and a 750 Ti, with an 8GB set of matched RAM. I'm able to play damn near anything short of the latest AAA titles that are starting to demand more than 8GB of RAM, more than 2 GB of VRAM at even the lowest settings and just need more CPU power than the Q6600 can handle. If you're going to pick a system to use as an upgrade platform, you picked the right one. LGA775 Dells are gold for that sort of thing.

Really? I do have a G33M02 motherboard, but from what I've read, if an inspiron 530 didn't specifically ship with a Core 2 Quad, then it doesn't support it.

I know the 750 or 750ti would give much better performance, but I'm on a really tight budget with this build so a $30ish GTX 645 seemed like a good deal.

Also, I reset the CMOS and now whenever I plug the computer in all it does is constantly beep. Please help

[aisle9]

4 minutes ago, _Froyo said:

  Reveal hidden contents

(using integrated graphics to get this pic)

Really? I do have a G33M02 motherboard, but from what I've read, if an inspiron 530 didn't specifically ship with a Core 2 Quad, then it doesn't support it.

I know the 750 or 750ti would give much better performance, but I'm on a really tight budget with this build so a $30ish GTX 645 seemed like a good deal.

Also, I reset the CMOS and now whenever I plug the computer in all it does is constantly beep. Please help

How did you reset the CMOS? Did you unplug the system and pull the CMOS battery for 10-15 seconds before putting it back in, or did you use a jumper? (I think the G33M02 has a jumper?)

 

Also, how many beeps and how long?

 

G33M02 is not a quad core mobo, sorry on that one.

[ElSeniorTaco]

Pull everything that didnt come with the computer stock, see if it boots now.

 

As for what cpu it supports, I am unsure, I would be googling around and seeing if anyone else has tried the core 2 quads on it, or if there are specs for that on the motherboard

 

and for the mismatched pair of ram, this could have some weight behind it, but if the computer boots, and bios says you have the full 6 gigs, then generally, windows should see it aswell unless its 32bit or maybe you have an option like the one in the below picture set to a max of 4 gigs

 

[_Froyo]

10 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

How did you reset the CMOS? Did you unplug the system and pull the CMOS battery for 10-15 seconds before putting it back in, or did you use a jumper? (I think the G33M02 has a jumper?)

 

Also, how many beeps and how long?

 

G33M02 is not a quad core mobo, sorry on that one.

Nevermind, I'm just an idiot and forgot to put the RAM back in. Starts fine now, but the video card still isn't seen.

Also, I was wrong in the first post when I said it originally had 2GB of Hynix RAM; it was actually 2GB of Nanya. My bad. 

10 minutes ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

Pull everything that didnt come with the computer stock, see if it boots now.

 

As for what cpu it supports, I am unsure, I would be googling around and seeing if anyone else has tried the core 2 quads on it, or if there are specs for that on the motherboard

 

and for the mismatched pair of ram, this could have some weight behind it, but if the computer boots, and bios says you have the full 6 gigs, then generally, windows should see it aswell unless its 32bit or maybe you have an option like the one in the below picture set to a max of 4 gigs

 

Yeah I've tried going into msconfig and changing that. It didn't do anything.

[ElSeniorTaco]

i would just uncheck it, at the end of the day, you dont want to set a max anything, let windows figure it out

but I dont think we ever confirmed, does all 6 gigs show up in bios? or just 3 or 4 or whatever

it sounds like it shows in windows as 6 with something like 3 usable, but bios might say something different

Edited February 11, 2018 by ElSeniorTaco

[_Froyo]

18 minutes ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

i would just uncheck it, at the end of the day, you dont want to set a max anything, let windows figure it out

but I dont think we ever confirmed, does all 6 gigs show up in bios? or just 3 or 4 or whatever

it sounds like it shows in windows as 6 with something like 3 usable, but bios might say something different

Spoiler

As for the video card, the only other thing I can think to do is disable integrated graphics in the device manager. Do you think would help or should I try something else?

[ElSeniorTaco]

If you get video in bios and then when windows starts you lose video, I would think drivers or something similar

 

If you get no video even in bios,

 

My best guesses are

 

Incompatibility with the pcie 1.1 that is built into your motherboard (the 645 is pcie 3.0), maybe something related to the chipset, as the 645 might have backwards compatibility, but it doesn't mean its guaranteed to work 

 

OR

 

You dont got enough power coming from the PSU

 

OR 

 

And for this one I couldn't find anything in the manuals about your bios,

But there might be an option in bios to enable an external gpu, it might not use that wording, but quite a few factory computers have this option

Look around and see if its set to use the integrated only, if so change it and it should work

Edited February 11, 2018 by ElSeniorTaco
formatting

[_Froyo]

30 minutes ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

If you get video in bios and then when windows starts you lose video, I would think drivers or something similar

 

If you get no video even in bios,

 

My best guesses are

 

Incompatibility with the pcie 1.1 that is built into your motherboard (the 645 is pcie 3.0), maybe something related to the chipset, as the 645 might have backwards compatibility, but it doesn't mean its guaranteed to work 

 

OR

 

You dont got enough power coming from the PSU

 

OR 

 

And for this one I couldn't find anything in the manuals about your bios,

But there might be an option in bios to enable an external gpu, it might not use that wording, but quite a few factory computers have this option

Look around and see if its set to use the integrated only, if so change it and it should work

How do I check if the bios sees the video card?

The PSU is stock 300W. I know it says on Nvidia's website that a minimum 450W PSU is recommended for the GTX 645, but it also says that the card consumes 130W of power. I'm thinking that's a different version of the card, as the one I have has no 6 or 8 pin PCI-E connectors, so it can only draw power from the motherboard's PCI-E slot, which can only output a maximum of 75W.

I don't think anything needs to be enabled to use a dedicated GPU. The one I originally pulled from the system was an Nvidia 9400 GT, and that worked just fine.

 

Given all of this, I think you're right about PCI-E version differences and incompatibility. How can I find out more about backwards compatibility?

[ElSeniorTaco]

Honestly I haven't run into a picture of the 645 with a 6pin connector yet

but generally these slots do not put more then 75watts although I've read that some of the newer pcie slots on certain motherboards put out close to 150w for the pcie slots

not sure how true this is though

 

but from what i read, that e8500 can pull something like 130w or more on its own at max load

You could be running into a power issue if you consider the motherboard, cpu, harddrives, cd drives, etc

if so just pull everything you can from the power supply, like hdd, cd, etc, and just leave your gpu and motherboard connected to the psu

see if it will boot

It still might not, but if its a power issue, you might get lucky and bring it just barely within spec

 

as far as backwards compatibility goes

I've just been googling around what cards people have tried in your specific computers, and some people have had trouble suggesting it was a compatibility issue

Apparently some chipsets are prone to stuff like this

And from what I can tell, it can happen, although it doesn't seem that often of an occurrence

But you are dealing with an older computer OEM/factory as well, that was sort of new to the whole pcie thing especially considering its just pcie 1.1, not even pcie 2.0 

And bigger manufactures like dell , sometimes leave certain features out because it saves them money and time

Where as the "system builders" boards like you see at newegg etc, tend to cover everything, because the more compatible, the more they will be able to sell

You might have to look a little deeper into the card to see if it will handle 1.1 and if the motherboard or chipset is known to have issues with newer cards

 

But thats why I labeled all of these as best guess, some research is to be expected  

Edited February 11, 2018 by ElSeniorTaco
added stuff

[_Froyo]

7 minutes ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

You could be running into a power issue if you consider the motherboard, cpu, harddrives, cd drives, etc

if so just pull everything you can from the power supply, like hdd, cd, etc, and just leave your gpu and motherboard connected to the psu

see if it will boot

It still might not, but if its a power issue, you might get lucky and bring it just barely within spec

I'll give this a try, but

25 minutes ago, _Froyo said:

How do I check if the bios sees the video card?

 

[ElSeniorTaco]

4 minutes ago, _Froyo said:

How do I check if the bios sees the video card?

Honestly I don't think I have ever run into a bios that shows you what video card it see's plugged in.

I know some video cards show their own sort of post/bios message, just before bios comes up.

But I was under the impression you couldn't even get to bios with that card plugged in anyhow?

Like it was all black the whole time

[_Froyo]

2 minutes ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

Honestly I don't think I have ever run into a bios that shows you what video card it see's plugged in.

I know some video cards show their own sort of post/bios message, just before bios comes up.

But I was under the impression you couldn't even get to bios with that card plugged in anyhow?

Like it was all black the whole time

Yeah, it was. I've only gotten anything to show up because of integrated graphics.

I just tried installing the card's drivers, and it said that it couldn't find the hardware. That tells me that maybe the motherboard doesn't even see the card, even though the fan is spinning up.

 

I'm about ready to give up on this. Anything else I can try?

[ElSeniorTaco]

Ah ok got you, so if you boot with a cable plugged into the 645 nothing, but if you swap that cable to the integrated, while the computer is on even it will show a screen.

Meaning that it defaults the video output to the integrated

 

This could be the option I was saying in bios about using integrated or external gpu (if you haven't actually looked for this option in bios, I would start looking as this is exactly what happens when you have this option set wrong..)

But if we have established that this option is not the case then this could be more of a compatibility issue 

 

I am running out of ideas on this one, but I'll try to drop a few more, anyhow this sort of thing (hardware issues) is tricky and is usually only resolved by hours of unparalleled relentlessness  lol

At worst Someone else might have more ideas, its late and things are less active at night, seems like I'm the only one posting to people on here lol. 

 

I'm guessing someone is going to ask if you tried updating bios, If you haven't, it might be something to try.

I would also look into resetting cmos, using the battery or jumper pins, whatever option it has

 

Also, have you already tried this gpu in another computer, to verify it actually works?

 

I assume if its broken, you wouldn't be able to boot anyhow as it could freak the motherboard out, but that is not always the case, and you could very well have a bad gpu and the motherboard just fails over to the integrated, instead of beeping at you.

If you can try it in another computer, do it, so we can rule out a bad gpu in this case

 

[_Froyo]

19 minutes ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

Ah ok got you, so if you boot with a cable plugged into the 645 nothing, but if you swap that cable to the integrated, while the computer is on even it will show a screen.

Meaning that it defaults the video output to the integrated

 

This could be the option I was saying in bios about using integrated or external gpu (if you haven't actually looked for this option in bios, I would start looking as this is exactly what happens when you have this option set wrong..)

But if we have established that this option is not the case then this could be more of a compatibility issue 

 

I am running out of ideas on this one, but I'll try to drop a few more, anyhow this sort of thing (hardware issues) is tricky and is usually only resolved by hours of unparalleled relentlessness  lol

At worst Someone else might have more ideas, its late and things are less active at night, seems like I'm the only one posting to people on here lol. 

 

I'm guessing someone is going to ask if you tried updating bios, If you haven't, it might be something to try.

I would also look into resetting cmos, using the battery or jumper pins, whatever option it has

 

Also, have you already tried this gpu in another computer, to verify it actually works?

 

I assume if its broken, you wouldn't be able to boot anyhow as it could freak the motherboard out, but that is not always the case, and you could very well have a bad gpu and the motherboard just fails over to the integrated, instead of beeping at you.

If you can try it in another computer, do it, so we can rule out a bad gpu in this case

 

Alright, I swapped it with the GTX 1050 in my main rig (a slightly upgraded i5 optiplex 790). The GTX 645 does the same thing it did in the Inspiron 530: spin up the fan, but output no signal. Just for kicks, I put the GTX 1050 in the inspiron to see what would happen, and it started up and displayed stuff just fine. This means the 645 has probably gone bad, but I want to rule out one more thing first.

Both these systems have stock, fairly low PSUs (300W in the inspiron and 265W in the optiplex). Maybe it needs a better power supply, but like I said, it didn't have any PCI-E connectors on it. Nvidia's website says it's rated at 130W, but I don't see how that's possible without one of those slots, as the motherboard's slot can only output 75W to the card. Do you think I should try and get a higher wattage PSU, or should I not bother and just contact the seller about this?

[ElSeniorTaco]

I'm going to go with bad gpu on this one. 

I know the 1000 series uses way less power, but you are able to pass post and get into windows off the integrated on the inspiron while having the 645 plugged in, which is a little fishy if we wanted to consider this a PSU issue.  

 

Something just seems wrong about that 645.

 

And considering how much newer the 1050 is,  and the fact that its working in this inspiron, I'm going to rule out compatibility as well.

 

I would send it back to the seller, as DOA.  

[_Froyo]

Bump / update:

 

Graphics card was a dud, told seller and got refunded. Got an R7 250 for $25 to replace it.

As for the ram, turns out that all the computer needed was a bios update. Wish I would have realized that before buying two other kits of memory, but whatever. The kingston kit I mentioned earlier works fine now, even with the original nanya kit I had.

Thanks to aisle9 and ElSeniorTaco for helping with this