Finally a new GPU!

Last year, the graphic card of my PC decided to die on me because of blown capacitors .... not one, not two but ALL of them.
Whether this card was affected by the plague or not, the card wouldn't boot, would crash, display weird graphics (inverted!!) and became sooooo frustrating. I had a few caps replaced (top right two in the pic above) but as they continued to explode, I finally gave in and removed the card altogether and have been running onboard graphics until now (thankfully it still has a adequate Geforce onboard GPU which is waaay better than IntelHD options).

I finally bought a new replacement in the form of a nVidia GT430 .... definitely NOT a gamers' card but better than onboard (I don't game that much anyways). Why this particular card? Bad experiences and conflicts in certain video rendering software makes me avoid the AMD 5000s series eventhough they offer better performance/price ratio. Plus if they finally decide to offer GPU programming where I work, I'm ready for it anyways (this card has 96 CUDA cores which is more than enough for simple GPU programming). Lastly, I needed one that was low powered enough so that I didn't have to upgrade the PSU on the PC .... the built-in one runs at a miserly 250W max so this card was the lowest in power consumption (additionally, I'm UNDERclocking it).

I'm happy with it - its silent, improved my WEI score and runs Alan Wake at 1366×768 at mostly medium settings or lower res at higher settings ... not bad for RM195.

P/S: I DO have another 600W PSU but don't plan on using that because its a power hog and generates too much heat.

4 comments:

  1. where u buy your capacitors??

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alliance Electronics .... open weekdays 10-5 only.
    59G Jalan Bdr Satu Pusat Bandar Puchong ... opposite Tesco Puchong

    ReplyDelete
  3. Those caps are Sacon FZ series, notorious for their failing. If you change those caps with Nichicon the card will work again.

    ReplyDelete