Should I Buy A..........

Ipwnedx said:

Okay but, my computer has a 350 watt usage and the HD 5770 has a usage of 129 - 212 watts.
I found this at
Radeon HD 6870 Power Consumption and Thermals | bit-tech.net
I may be wrong or not.
Please help.

That doesn't mean your PSU can handle it. So yours is 350 Watt. It has to handle everything - your CPU (95 watts for an I5 750), graphics card, + everything else. Just your processor and graphics card use up 95+212 = 307 watts. Then there is your Motherboard, RAM, fans, disk drives, etc. etc. The 350 watts isn't adequate. I don't think it is even adequate for what you have now.

Go by the graphics card manufacturer's recommendations. For the 5770 it is at least 450 Watts. Plus your power supply needs to have a 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connector:

http://www.amd.com/us/products/deskt...verview.aspx#3

Dells suck as far as upgradability. Their MB are proprietary, their cases pretty inadequate for cooling and not standard ATX, and their Power supplies are always barely enough for the system as ordered.

-Gene

parabellum said:

I'd get a new PSU and a 6850, although it depends on the games you play. A 5770 is an OK choice. I'd recommend an Antec TP-550 assuming that the motherboard isn't proprietary and un-upgradeable.

The 5770 is more than ok, it is probably the best mid-range card out there.

I agree with GeneO on this as well. I would go a bit higher to 500 though. Even if a 450 is enough to handle the system, PSU's degrade a little over time and its not good to run the PSU at 100% capacity. Allow for enough head room and get either a better fan than your case has or an additional fan. You will need more cooling due to a powerful graphics card being in the case.

Here is a good site for adding up all your components so you can see what your minimum and suggested PSU power would be.

eXtreme Power Supply Calculator

And another resource for cooling:

http://www.heatsink-guide.com/

SlackerITGuy +1 on that, I would also only consider a modular if it's still affordable for the OP. When they out grow the Dell and case the old PSU can go in and the new PSU and GPU can go in the new build.