Trying a few solutions on a busted PC before giving it the boot!

[Rock Man]

Hey, a lot has been going on so haven't gotten a chance to zero in on this issue until now.

As stated in the original topic my PC has seen better days.
viewtopic.php?p=1541141#p1541141

I will say this though! The shutdowns have become significantly less frequent to a point where I'll maybe see them once a week if that! There maybe life in the old girl. Web surfing is smooth as ever and apps come up normally. The only other weird thing is now I can't download things from the Microsoft App store like "Photos" for example. I did look into that issue and never found a solution.

I suspect I can repair the MS store issue with system restore. As for my main problem here's my current solution - I'm getting another graphics card. The one i'm using is too old (I think it's Nvidia 970 or something) I do have a 1660 super with 6GB. Gonna hold off on using it because I ordered the wrong size by accident and the fans are too small. I recall the shutdowns started happening sometime after acquiring that 1660 super! The shutdowns started occuring, so I swapped to 970 being that's what I hade available and the shutdowns became less and less. The super has great performance but shutsdown more frequently. I traded my friend my old AMD card (6 GB of RAM AMD) for his Nvidia (only 3 GB but every steam game and emulator I used outperformed that AMD card by miles). My guesswork has led me to believe therein lies the culprit for the shutdowns, it's the card I'm using!

So, I'll be ordering another graphics card this time at a reasonable size that fits my machine. I couldn't have picked a worse time to buy a gpu with prices sky-rocketting! This issue is bugging me for a while it's time to put it to bed.

I'll seek something under $250! As for specs I'm looking for at least 2 fans, can fit in a large tower, seeking anywhere from 8 to 16 GB of RAM with displayport and/or HDMI.

Taking recommendations.

One more thing, regardless of if this works or not I'm getting a second PC at some point in the distant future. Money is tight so for now, I'll focus on getting a graphics card.

[Josh128]

Im confused, what are you asking recommendations for here?

[Rock Man]

A graphics card below $250

Something with displayport, at least two fans, and is the standard size for a tower.

[Josh128]

RX 6700XT or RTX 3070. Look on Ebay. If those arent hitting your price points, go for a RX 6600XT or an RTX 3060.

Im currently running a 6700XT for the last 3 years, its been rock solid and plenty powerful for my 180Hz 1440p IPS monitor.

[orange808]

You might consider a Steam deck. I bet your mobo, CPU, RAM, power supply, and storage are ancient.

[Rock Man]

Sorry for late response. I've been researching the GPUs in question. Looks like the normal range is between $270 used and $400 new. My research showed me that the power supply is a vital consideration before swapping psus. Every good Nvidia gpu requires 500w and up, my psu is only 460W!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K6l6Sc ... sp=sharing

I suspect that's to blame for my shutdown troubles. My 970 has a recommend of 500W. The question becomes, what's a good replacement power supply that has 500W for an Inspiron 5675? I need one that will work with any standard Nvidia Geforce card. Something compatible with my specs and dimensions, which are 18.07" (Height) x 8.50" (Width) x 17.23" (Depth).

You might consider a Steam deck. I bet your mobo, CPU, RAM, power supply, and storage are ancient.

I enjoy playing on monitors and television but don't fret. If I get this PC issue behind me I will pick-up a steam deck.

EDIT: I discovered Dell uses some sort of custom power supply for their motherboard. o_O Any recommendations for a proprietary Dell psu or something custom made as such?

[orange808]

You might consider a Steam deck. I bet your mobo, CPU, RAM, power supply, and storage are ancient.

I enjoy playing on monitors and television but don't fret. If I get this PC issue behind me I will pick-up a steam deck.

I'm sorry I suggested the Steam Deck now. They're too expensive at the moment. But, you could wait and buy the LCD model. I am almost certain it will be very cheap as a Black Friday deal this November. You could dock it to your monitor/television. Will they make it down to $249 or less? I think so..

Looks like 2023 ROG Ally is going to be retired soon. I see it's $399 right now. That's not too bad, but I'm waiting for it to go lower. Like a Steam Deck, you can plug it into a display and use it as a Windows PC. If you can wait and strike at the right moment, I bet they'll get cheaper this year. I might grab one if I see the price go low enough. We'll see if they blow them out on Black Friday or sell them cheap in the first quarter of 2026. Either way, I'll be waiting in the weeds.

Your machine is too old. I'd wait and buy a closeout model. Doesn't matter if it's a proper desktop, because what you have is already too old for more upgrades. When will your RAM or CPU become a bottleneck? Do you really want to replace the power supply? Are you sure the mobo isn't causing problems?

For instance, I got an excellent deal on my laptop because the manufacturer wasn't going to sell it anymore. There was also a rumor going around that the Optimus dual AMD and nVidia GPU machines had a ton of lag, but it's not true. The latency is a couple milliseconds. But, misinformation rules on reddit, atariage, the temp, and neogaf... Oh well, their loss was my gain...

I use my laptop as a laptop (not docked as a gaming rig), but that reddit idiot rumor saved me a stack of money. I waited and shopped. Got a brand new ROG Zepherus G15 1TB SSD 16GB RAM RTX3070Ti (laptop version of course) for ~$550 total w/taxes shipped. That was a few months after the RTX 40xx series laptops took over. They weren't going to make them anymore and everyone was grumbling about latency that isn't there. I had to pounce, because they sold out fast. I knew I wanted a new machine, so I looked for one a few minutes on three or four days a week for months. I'm still at it. I didn't know the ROG Ally price by accident. I'm still waiting to pounce.

If I didn't have a lot of money, I'd wait for a good deal on a new replacement for your old machine--instead of throwing more parts at it. It just sucks that it broke down on you completely. It's usually best to start looking when your current rig starts to struggle, so you can be patient.

Patience still wins over. I suggest replacing your rig. I know I sound old. I am.

Good luck.

[Rock Man]

You might consider a Steam deck. I bet your mobo, CPU, RAM, power supply, and storage are ancient.

I enjoy playing on monitors and television but don't fret. If I get this PC issue behind me I will pick-up a steam deck.

I'm sorry I suggested the Steam Deck now. They're too expensive at the moment. But, you could wait and buy the LCD model. I am almost certain it will be very cheap as a Black Friday deal this November. You could dock it to your monitor/television. Will they make it down to $249 or less? I think so..

Looks like 2023 ROG Ally is going to be retired soon. I see it's $399 right now. That's not too bad, but I'm waiting for it to go lower. Like a Steam Deck, you can plug it into a display and use it as a Windows PC. If you can wait and strike at the right moment, I bet they'll get cheaper this year. I might grab one if I see the price go low enough. We'll see if they blow them out on Black Friday or sell them cheap in the first quarter of 2026. Either way, I'll be waiting in the weeds.

Your machine is too old. I'd wait and buy a closeout model. Doesn't matter if it's a proper desktop, because what you have is already too old for more upgrades. When will your RAM or CPU become a bottleneck? Do you really want to replace the power supply? Are you sure the mobo isn't causing problems?

For instance, I got an excellent deal on my laptop because the manufacturer wasn't going to sell it anymore. There was also a rumor going around that the Optimus dual AMD and nVidia GPU machines had a ton of lag, but it's not true. The latency is a couple milliseconds. But, misinformation rules on reddit, atariage, the temp, and neogaf... Oh well, their loss was my gain...

I use my laptop as a laptop (not docked as a gaming rig), but that reddit idiot rumor saved me a stack of money. I waited and shopped. Got a brand new ROG Zepherus G15 1TB SSD 16GB RAM RTX3070Ti (laptop version of course) for ~$550 total w/taxes shipped. That was a few months after the RTX 40xx series laptops took over. They weren't going to make them anymore and everyone was grumbling about latency that isn't there. I had to pounce, because they sold out fast. I knew I wanted a new machine, so I looked for one a few minutes on three or four days a week for months. I'm still at it. I didn't know the ROG Ally price by accident. I'm still waiting to pounce.

If I didn't have a lot of money, I'd wait for a good deal on a new replacement for your old machine--instead of throwing more parts at it. It just sucks that it broke down on you completely. It's usually best to start looking when your current rig starts to struggle, so you can be patient.

Patience still wins over. I suggest replacing your rig. I know I sound old. I am.

Good luck.

You're a class act.

Don't worry I have a plan, I am going to make one more good faith attempt at fixing this thing. Forget the graphics card, I'm just going to replace the PSU, clean the fan and reinstall my 1660 super. If that doesn't do it I'll be moving onto another PC, perhaps a gaming rig that can run Windows 11 preferably a GPU with 12 GB of RAM. Perhaps I'll wait on good ol black friday you talked about.

[tacoguy64]

Looking at your PC, I see you are on a AM4 mobo and running a GTX970, down from the GTX1660 due to PC restart issues? I do like what other have recommended as far waiting to get on a good price on a used steam deck. It should be a good upgrade. Tho I do think there are some decent affordable options to build a new PC (minus the GPU).

But being on AM4, I would check what is the latest CPU your mobo can run. Tho most likely you will be stuck on 2nd gen ryzen, or 3rd gen ryzen if you are lucky. But certain early AM4 mobos could get you up to 5th gen ryzen which is still pretty good for today. The power supply to me seems like the most suspect unit on your build, should upgrade to at a decent 600w one. The memory could also be causing issues, luckily, i think good used DDR4 shouldn't be too expensive. As for video cards, I would not recommend any until the PSU is upgraded. Unfortunately, the GPU market kinda sucks right now and your best bet will be looking at used cards like the rtx 2000/3000 series.

[Josh128]

Looking at your PC, I see you are on a AM4 mobo and running a GTX970, down from the GTX1660 due to PC restart issues? I do like what other have recommended as far waiting to get on a good price on a used steam deck. It should be a good upgrade. Tho I do think there are some decent affordable options to build a new PC (minus the GPU).

But being on AM4, I would check what is the latest CPU your mobo can run. Tho most likely you will be stuck on 2nd gen ryzen, or 3rd gen ryzen if you are lucky. But certain early AM4 mobos could get you up to 5th gen ryzen which is still pretty good for today. The power supply to me seems like the most suspect unit on your build, should upgrade to at a decent 600w one. The memory could also be causing issues, luckily, i think good used DDR4 shouldn't be too expensive. As for video cards, I would not recommend any until the PSU is upgraded. Unfortunately, the GPU market kinda sucks right now and your best bet will be looking at used cards like the rtx 2000/3000 series.

AM4 supports up to Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000 desktop series) only. No AM4 board has ever supported any Ryzen past the Zen 3 architecture. AM5 is for Zen 4 & 5 thus far. Being that this is an OEM build, BIOS availability would be the limiting factor, but technically if the BIOS's are up to date, he could easily go with a 5700X3D or 5800X3D and get unbeatable gaming CPU perf/$, over 100% faster than what his current 1700X will do.

I agree on the memory potentially causing issues. Bad memory can be an absolute pain in the ass. DDR4 is so cheap I would give that a shot before trying anything else, especially if the problems still occur with the older GPU. Its either going to be the RAM or the CPU, but more likely the RAM.

[tacoguy64]

Looking at your PC, I see you are on a AM4 mobo and running a GTX970, down from the GTX1660 due to PC restart issues? I do like what other have recommended as far waiting to get on a good price on a used steam deck. It should be a good upgrade. Tho I do think there are some decent affordable options to build a new PC (minus the GPU).

But being on AM4, I would check what is the latest CPU your mobo can run. Tho most likely you will be stuck on 2nd gen ryzen, or 3rd gen ryzen if you are lucky. But certain early AM4 mobos could get you up to 5th gen ryzen which is still pretty good for today. The power supply to me seems like the most suspect unit on your build, should upgrade to at a decent 600w one. The memory could also be causing issues, luckily, i think good used DDR4 shouldn't be too expensive. As for video cards, I would not recommend any until the PSU is upgraded. Unfortunately, the GPU market kinda sucks right now and your best bet will be looking at used cards like the rtx 2000/3000 series.

AM4 supports up to Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000 desktop series) only. No AM4 board has ever supported any Ryzen past the Zen 3 architecture. AM5 is for Zen 4 & 5 thus far. Being that this is an OEM build, BIOS availability would be the limiting factor, but technically if the BIOS's are up to date, he could easily go with a 5700X3D or 5800X3D and get unbeatable gaming CPU perf/$, over 100% faster than what his current 1700X will do.

I agree on the memory potentially causing issues. Bad memory can be an absolute pain in the ass. DDR4 is so cheap I would give that a shot before trying anything else, especially if the problems still occur with the older GPU. Its either going to be the RAM or the CPU, but more likely the RAM.

You're right, I got my names mixed up, Zen 3 is Ryzen 5000 series which includes the still excellent 5700/5800 X3D chips. AM5 is Zen 4 and Zen 5 which will need a whole new platform than the one he has. I was thinking Ryzen 2000/3000 series chips which would also be very cheap and would most likely work. And X3D chip is still a bit expensive. AM5 is more affordable now, but would cost a lot more since he'd have to get everything again.

I do agree, tackling the ram first would be best since not only is it cheap, but it is the easiest component to replace. Tho I would look at the PSU instead of CPU first, mainly since its the cheaper of the two. And PSU also can go bad. Finally tackle the CPU issue, tho It will eat up a very large portion of the budget. But if the PC is working fine after all of that, he should have a much better gaming experience, even with the GTX1660. Unfortunately, the GPU market really sucks, even used. I guess he can try to sell his cards to try and have some more to spend a better GPU. You can also look at AMD for better value, but their cards are also over priced as well. There is also Intel which their current gen cards are probably the best value you can get if you find one at MSRP. Which there currently is none lol.

[Rock Man]

I finally gave up on that thing and my people got me a better PC. Thanks for all your help guys!