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could my new GFX card be the wrong size?
Jason
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daft question I know ..
I'm upgrading my radeon HD 4350 to a HD 6770. I have the necessary PCI Express slot on my motherboard and worked out the dimensions and it seemed that it would fit in the case just fine.
got it today and it does indeed fit in the slot, but does look a bit big to me - I'll post a few pics when I upload them
anyway I had to put a small amount of pressure on it so I could screw in the back plate to the back of the PC case (there's probably a 'real' name for it..)
Doing that meant it didn't work - I was getting "no signal" from the card. I unscrewed it from the back and just left it as is and it booted up and ran just fine.
the 4350 doesn't have these problems as it slots in and I can screw it to the back of the case ok. does this mean the card is the wrong size or could it mean my motherboard is out of position?
I've checked the screw holes and everything lines up ok.
would there be any issue leaving the card plugged in to the PCI slot alone? there are no internal leads touching it so no danger of the fan catching
a lot of questions I know, but any help most appreciated - Thankyou
I'm upgrading my radeon HD 4350 to a HD 6770. I have the necessary PCI Express slot on my motherboard and worked out the dimensions and it seemed that it would fit in the case just fine.
got it today and it does indeed fit in the slot, but does look a bit big to me - I'll post a few pics when I upload them
anyway I had to put a small amount of pressure on it so I could screw in the back plate to the back of the PC case (there's probably a 'real' name for it..)
Doing that meant it didn't work - I was getting "no signal" from the card. I unscrewed it from the back and just left it as is and it booted up and ran just fine.
the 4350 doesn't have these problems as it slots in and I can screw it to the back of the case ok. does this mean the card is the wrong size or could it mean my motherboard is out of position?
I've checked the screw holes and everything lines up ok.
would there be any issue leaving the card plugged in to the PCI slot alone? there are no internal leads touching it so no danger of the fan catching
a lot of questions I know, but any help most appreciated - Thankyou
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You can try gently pushing/flexing the back of the case (around the backplate area) inwards or loosening the motherboard screws and nudging/rotating the motherboard closer to the backplate before re-tightening the screws. Then pop the graphics card back in and see if it fits better. As long as you use common sense and aren't ham-fisted, you should be ok.
I didn't pay a huge amount for this case to be fair - I think it was about £15-£20 quid.
these are the initial pics of how big the card is inside the case
http://i49.tinypic.com/23jjrk1.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/2wexe8h.jpg
and this is the solution - I've put a screw underneath the card. it does actually secure a tiny bit of the corner of it as well so i've got no real worries about it moving - it's running fine at the moment and doesn't seem to be running hot or anything.
http://i45.tinypic.com/2lbggaw.jpg
I know the card seems big, but it does fit in the case fine and i've sealed everything up as well - nothing is pressing against the sides or any other bits (at least as far as i can see...).
But as long as the card is secured, seated properly and the retaining clip is in place, you should get away with it. Just be careful when connecting the monitor cable or when moving the case.
I've given it a bit of a wiggle as it stands (*snigger*) and the screw that i've put underneath it does appear to be keeping it secured so I think that'll have to do.
Anyway, I've just had what I have to think is my first ever BSOD with the "a clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor" error.
I was trying to copy my music off my iPhone when the program I was using hung - I clicked "wait" and a few seconds later the BSOD appeared.
I've just also rebooted into the BIOS and looked at the "PC Health" option and it told me the CPU was running at 93 degrees celsius which is ridiculously hot so I shut it down immediately.
it's never run this hot before so I'm wondering if the graphics card is the issue? I wouldn't have thought it would have been the hard drive?
My PSU says 680 watts on the side of the unit itself so i would have thought that would have been sufficient?
I'm running the program "open hardware monitor" and it's saying that the temperature of Core 1 is 94 degrees C and Core 2 is 91 degrees C and the CPU load on BOTH cores is 100%
So i'm stumped - i've re-installed W7 fresh onto this new hard drive as well. I'm going to try putting the 4350 back in to see what it does - can't do more than that tonight though as i need to be up early .. argh..
I'm assuming the heat issue caused the BSOD I guess, so I'll have to look in to it tomorrow
#edit
ok, well i couldn't help it and swapped out the cards
the open hardware monitor program still shows the CPU load still at maximum, and the task manager performance tab also confirms this. the temps started at 77 and are slowly creeping back up as it warms up - 85 now.
Really going to bed now .. apart from one last bit of info in case anyone has any ideas.
Just checked the CPU tab in the 'resource monitor' in the windows task manager and it's telling me that the process that is taking up 95% of the CPU's load is "defrag.exe" - which i've never actually run.
I will investigate later today ..
#edit
ok i've cracked it. i found the "defrag" program that it was running and it's in /users/*me*/appdata/roaming/adobe/flash player/file cache.
in the startup tab in msconfig, the windows scripting host procedure is set to run this on each boot
I disabled that, restarted and problem solved ...
That sounds suspiciously like malware. Run the usual scans.
it can't be malware, unless it's been embedded into the flash player - my install is completely clean on a brand new hard drive.
I know i say it can't be - i accept anything is possible online in that respect - but the chances of me picking up malware on a fresh install by downloading official versions of whatever i needed from the official places for them have to be tiny. literally the first thing i installed was security essentials and did a full update and scan with it.
Although it would be just my luck to hit that one copy of adobe flash from adobe's website that's been hacked
http://home.mcafee.com/VirusInfo/VirusProfile.aspx?key=2689989#none
Discovery date was yesterday, so you may have been exceptionally unlucky.
wow.. looks that way ..
I'll read it properly when I get back in but I did actually leave a malware bytes scan running when I came out so hopefully that'll get it.
cheers for that
Also, take a look at the timestamp for the defrag.exe and file.vbs files. See if you can track down what program or website was being installed or accessed at the time.
you know I was actually thinking it would be worth a clean re-do as well. I might also look at something other than Microsoft security essentials as I would have hoped it would have flagged it up - I might go back to avira
anyway, i'm going to copy some stuff back on to a USB stick that i took off last night and when that's done i'll just reformat and start again.
A wonky case doesn't sound like such a big deal in comparison...
Tried re-formatting last night and re-installing windows and each time it took ages to actually start the procedure - I assumed that since the new drive is 2TB, that was why, since my old one was only 500gb.
Kept getting various errors saying it couldn't complete or wouldn't complete, as well as the PC not actually being able to find the hard drive, so kept going back to the partition manager, deleting and reformatting the partitions and starting again.
Even left it on doing a full surface scan when I went to bed
The minute I put my old HD 4350 back in and rebooted, Windows re-installed without a hitch.
You get a list of supported software (e.g. browsers, flash, libreoffice, media players, security software etc. etc.). Just choose the ones you want and you can then download a small executable.
Running that executable will automatically install all your chosen software. Works beautifully.
I periodically update it with all the new versions of things as well, regardless of whether or not I need to. I'm currently up to version 51
The PSU could be an issue I suppose. Anyway, the card is now winging it's way back to ebuyer so we'll see - if they find there's nothing wrong with it and send it back to me, I can always sell it at CEX - I'll take a hit of about a tenner, but I can probably live with that.
Do appreciate all the replies as well - cheers
It fit nicely inside the machine and everything came on fine .. until after a while the PC just hung. I rebooted and got a "Reboot and select proper boot device" error and the BIOS had lost the hard drive again.
So I pulled the card out, put the 4350 back in and once again, everything booted and ran just fine. It makes me think that the common denominator in all this is the fact that the 4350 has no fan and the other two have had fans, so maybe it does mean I need a better PSU as it can't cope with the extra power needed to power the fan?
I can get a GeForce GT610 which also has no fan, so in theory it should work fine, but I suspect it isn't much of an upgrade to the 4350 anyway ..
You did connect any additional power cables to the other cards, correct?
And what make and model is your PSU? Bear in mind that a quality 450W PSU is far better than a cheap 680W.
My PSU is this one ..
http://www.maplin.co.uk/680w-g7-power-extreme-atx-psu-345571
.. the G7 Power Extreme 680W model. The GT630 apparently only requires a minimum of a 300W PSU according to their product page.
http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-630/specifications
I'm loathe to fork out more money for a better one because i've spent enough as it is, but then part of me thinks that if it'll improve the performance overall and allow me to have the card I want, I might have to consider it - especially since when I screwed the PSU back in after looking at what brand it was, i booted up and got the "select new boot device" error again. unplugged and plugged in the SATA cable for the hard drive again and it booted fine.