A Project

[Mikey_]

well, its been a lil while since my sister bought her kid a pc. its pretty good. 512MB of ram, 80gig HD, 2.9ghz CPU. i went away for the weekend and bought 2 games: lego star wars (for my 7 y/o nephew) and half life 2 (had it before but its messed up). i installed lego star wars and it said that the video card doesn't have shader pixel v1.1 (or something) and half life 2 wouldn't even install, giving me some error and thats when i knew that this pc had a crappy video card. MY pc on the other hand has a great video card, but low ram, low cpu speed, etc. and so i spoke with my sister and she agreed to my project.

i'm planning on taking my ram and HD and adding it to my nephew's pc and i'd like to replace the video card in his pc with my video card. however, i've never dealt with ram or video cards before, only HD's. so i'm wondering if its hard of complicated to remove/add ram and video cards? the vid card i have is a asus 256MB, something. i know it ran me up almost 300 bucks when i got it so i'm sure it can more than handle anything today that i put on it. the ram on my system and nephew's pc i have no idea, is there a way of finding out without opening up the case?

[pkt-zer0]

It's quite easy, you just take out the RAM and put in the other. They're easily located by searching for 4 identical slots, with these little clamps or whatever on the side which hook into the indentations on the side of the RAM cards. The AGP slot is the big golden/brown thingy. Video card goes there.
You can find the amount of RAM you have by going to the properties of My Computer.

[GODJonez]

Warnings:

You can break memory (and therefore a video card too) if you let static electricity burst to it. So before you handle the RAM modules, ground yourself to unpainted metal, such as the computer cover.

As for installing memory, if it is the same type as the old one, it should go smoothly (unless the Operating System is Windows 98 or 95, since they have limited RAM support to 768 MB). The video card may give you more problems, since you need to install new drivers for it. It would be adviced to delete the old drivers first in safe mode. Safe mode is important, since if you remove them in normal mode, your monitor freezes (yes, I have personal experiences :eyeball: )

[Mikey_]

ok wait...what do you mean ground myself to unpainted metal? i understand about the ram and the old drivers for the current vid card it holds now, though i don't even know what kind of card it is and so don't even know what to look for as far as drivers go. i just know the card itself sucks big time if it can't even play lego star wars. my asus vid card came with the software disc for the drivers though so thats good i'm gonna open up both cases so i can become more familiar with the parts, not really doing anything to'em yet. also am gonna speak with my intro to comp's professor on the video card thing. i feel very, nervous about touching that.

[GODJonez]

Just that your skin usually has some static electricity, because you use clothes (you do, please) and there are fabric and plastic materials around you. So make one part of your skin to touch grounded, unpainted metal (computer case is the nearest one) while touching the memory, so that you make sure that your static electricity potential is at the same level as the component, so there doesn't happen any electrical currents that might break the chips.

RAM chips are the most easily broken parts by static electricity.

[Mikey_]

oh i see. alright, i'll remember that, thanx.

[Soeru]

Just that your skin usually has some static electricity, because you use clothes (you do, please) and there are fabric and plastic materials around you. So make one part of your skin to touch grounded, unpainted metal (computer case is the nearest one) while touching the memory, so that you make sure that your static electricity potential is at the same level as the component, so there doesn't happen any electrical currents that might break the chips.

RAM chips are the most easily broken parts by static electricity.

I should also highly stress doing the same when touching hard disks, you'll easily lose some data on it if you're not careful. You should really do this with any electrical devices, especially complex delicate stuff like computer parts.

[Mikey_]

hard disk = hard drive right? if so, i've handled HD's before without any problems, but i should also take heed to the grounded unpainted metal part for HD's also?

[GODJonez]

Well, in case you don't want to risk breaking it. Of course, if you don't happen to touch but the cover of the HD and the voltage between your body and the drive is not very much, it doesn't damage it. But in case you touch the electronical components or have higher amount of electricity (you can't know it before it bursts out) you risk breaking it.

[Mikey_]

alrighty, i have an update. i opened up my and nephew's pc cases and took a nice gander at the innards of both. off the bat i already saw that my ram isn't compatible with his. i also saw that there would be a problem with the switching of the video cards. i took some screen shots and would like to know just WTF i'm supposed to do with this!?! lol


a pic of the inside of my messy pc


a pic of where the video card goes/went


the bottom part of the card/suite/whatever


its connection type



the front and back of it


the inside of nephew's pc


where i thought my vid card would go except there's no room for it and it seems there's no connection for it either

Soooo, i tried connecting my vid card to nephew's pc and it was a no go. the card is too long and doesn't fit. is this a motherboard issue? i hope not cuz i don't wanna touch the motherboard.

Edit: btw, can someone tell me what kind of video card it is that i have? i was looking through tigerdirect and saw different types like agp, pci, sli, etc. and what kind of card would fit into my nephew's pc a.ka. what type of card should i be looking for as far as connecting goes

[linkinkampf19]

WEll, Venom, I hate to say it, but that is one crap of a computer (your nephew's, j/k ). It's good that you found out that the RAM won't fit. That would've been quite a bad thing...
Secondly, your video card is an AGP video card, while your nephew's computer only has PCI slots. That's why it won't fit. Best thing to do is just to either be brave and upgrade his whole comp (a little pricy still...), or find a decent PCI video card. I have a subpar Geforce FX 5200 PCI video card, adn that's about as low as you'll want to go with gfx nowadays. Also, you might have to find the motherboard specs of his comp (use somethig like Sisoft Sandra 2004, free proggie) and google what that mobo can handle. If it can only handle pc100 or pc133 RAM, I would suggest doing a complete upgrade (that's what I did), becuse that RAM is old, and pricy because of it's age (a stick of 256 will run you upwards of $70-80, whereas today's standard, pc3200, runs at about $40 for a 512MB stick). Wish I could help beyond that, but PM me, or well, reply if you happen to have anymore questions.

EDIT: Also, if you can, find the model number and make of your nephew's comp. Most of the time, brand name computers are severly hurt in all aspects because most people look at how big the numbers are. Yeah, it has a 2.9 GHz processor, but is it a Celeron? The RAM sounds old to, and for a 2.9 GHz processor, they just don't seem to match up... Really, bigger numbers don't always mean better. Sorry to put it to ya like that. And it sounds as if the comp has an integrated graphics card (meaning soldered into the mobo).

[Mikey_]

thats ok. i know ram is pretty cheap now so getting that won't be a problem. now i know what type of video card should be used for his pc. i'm basically looking for a card pci card that'll run half life 2 flawlessly. i've seen some good ones (i think) at tigerdirect. his pc is a eMachine. its pretty good, i mean i'm able to do alot of things on it at once at full speed with no slow down for a long time so i'm not overly concerned about doing full upgrades just yet. but you mention celeron, is that bad?

Edit: ran into this- http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...339387&CatId=0 does that look ok? to run HL2?

[linkinkampf19]

First of , Venom, eMachines: bad. Simple as that... They are not meant to play games like HL2, let alone much else... sorry man. They are only really good for internet surfing and older games. and I suggeest finding a better gfx card than that... Fisrt of... I have the 128MB version, and the 256 is none differnet. The card just is not able to utilize the whole of the memory, and its specs are subpar anyways... and at first I thought it was a good card... it's just cheap. And that is too expensive for it anyways. Look for something a little higher up, or if worst comes to worst, build him a new one... It's not worth buying a name brand comp... unless it's something like Alienware... I wish I could help you out more. But that card will not be worth it in the long run.

Check this link and you will see what I mean:
Tom's Hardware Guide:
2003:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...229/index.html

2004:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...004/index.html

[Mikey_]

what exactly makes them bad? i mean, the cpu speed and ram are sufficient enough to technically play hl2 but the card sucks. that much i do know.

Edit: do these look ok?
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...7037&CatId=319
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...081946&CatId=0

[linkinkampf19]

I guess there's no higher end cards you can find? Also, when I meant that eMachines is bad, I meant overall that I dislike brand name computers. I'd rather have a custom build than a comp I know nothing about. Plus eMachines is a budget end computer anyways, simple as that. That's why I recently built a custom comp; I had a crappy HP Pavilion that couldn't do jack.

As for those cards... I'd go with the cheaper, but that won't be sufficient to run HL2 flawlessly... neiother of them would really... both are pretty junky and quite dated as of now. You wouldn't be able to play Doom3 perchance either. I suggest you really just look over the two links I sent you, and maybe consider finding a possible higher end card. I'll help you search and keep you updated when possible.

I suggest trying these websites:
www.mwave.com
www.pricewatch.com
www.newegg.com } tried already
www.tigerdirect.com } tried already

Simply put, PCI is the past... You will not find any top of the line cards made for PCI anymore. In fact, AGP is soon to be the next PCI, it gonna die soon too.