Windows 7: Need help with PCI video card upgrade on and old Dell 4500S

I think one of the main problems besides trying to mount any new "standard atx" supply on an old Dell is trying to run things at too high a resolution for the old boat! A system that old would just be able to handle a 17" at 1280x1024. You might have to shop on EBay to find a card old enought to run on it and that wouldn't see anything much over that res.!

As far as replacing the supply for anything larger don't bother trying! With older Dells you had to buy replacement anything through them! The supplies they used did not fastened in a standard atx pattern as you would find on any standard atx case. They made the bolt pattern different by intent.

The same went for Dell and HP as well as other old system where even the keyboards had to be their brand due to the smaller size of the PS/2 connector. And speaking of older cards the ATI Radeon 9250 PCI card would likely have the best chance the way things are. You can look over the specs on that one at ATI Radeon 9250 Specs (256 MB) - Graphics Cards - CNET Reviews

No it wouldn't be any great for gaming card by any means. But other theh finding an old FX series card by NVidia your options are going to be limited. That particular card was often suggested for a good number of oldies since it didn't require any large supply to begin with.

One c/net review mentioned a 230w supply being used. Some others as well as that are seen at ATI Radeon 9250 Overview & User Reviews - Graphics Cards - CNET Reviews



If the 32bit 7 is going on you may surprised at finding that many XP drivers will still work on 7 as if they were written for 7. While waiting for a board on the present build I dropped a quickie for the 32bit on an old 2003 case. Even the onboard sound(Realtek) worked like the 128mb Geforce FX5200 AGP card. When first installing 7 only one of the two 512mb dimms(DDR333) was even working until popping the two out and cleaning the contacts as well as giving everything a good blast of air cleaner.

The 4500S has a "slim" power supply, and it was 180W. It is their Dell Part# 1N405.

There is a company which sells "slim" Dell 1N405 replacement PSU's with 200W being the standard size. Priced at $40, for an extra $20 they will upgrade it to a 270W version. If it really is inadequate power that has been the problem with the earlier two ATI PCI cards I tried (1GB HIS HD5450 and 512MB VisionTek HD3450), one would expect a 270W PSU to be the answer. Both of these cards failed and have been returned.

I will wait to see what happens with the third card I'm now going to try, that Sparkle 256MB GeForce 8400 GS, which is an nVidia-based product. A Dell owner of their 2350 (which has a 200W PSU) says he uses that 8400GS without any problem. Fingers crossed it will work in my 4500S.

If it still fails, I can always try upgrading the PSU with this replacement at the 270W flavor, for $60. It's a pain to replace a power supply, especially in a slim profile case like for the 4500S. But it can be done.

I know, it seems crazy to invest any significant money in a 10-year old machine rather than just spending about $300 on a modern Dell Inspiron 660s with its i3 CPU, modern graphics, large SATA hard drive, and 4GB of memory. I believe they've been discontinued by Dell but they're still available. I bought one for my mother over the summer to replace her old machine that had died, when I discovered it on sale at Best Buy for $330. Obviously, a terrific value at $300.

Thing is, this all started from the death of the monitor on the 4500S and replacing it with a 20" 16:9 Samsung LCD monitor, and the desire to run it at 1600x900 resolution. There was never a plan to upgrade the whole computer itself when the 4500S was perfectly adequate... mostly, or with just a few hardware upgrades.

I'll decide what next to do when the 8400GS card arrives next week. If it works, case closed and I'm finally done. Otherwise I'll have to stop and ponder the next move.

I still think you will this will be a losing battle! Back then Dell was set on making sure you had to buy any replacement parts from them directly and in later years finally saw their larger supply option as a 350watter! Gee it took that long?!

When the old tinkerbell crt quit that would have been the time to grab a 17" lcd and called it a day. The onboard could have handled it. At the lower resolutions however with vga not HDMI cable used.

Now for simply seeing a fast new build without a major price behind it I can tell what I put into a new mini tower 7 Pro case. Less cost of a hard drive having a spare sata lying around.. $70 for case(NZXT Vulcan with carrying handle), $70 for cpu(AMD Phenom II X2 model), $60 for the supply(Corsair CX600 v2), and one MSI R6450 1gb model 512mb roughly $45-. The grand total less drive and memory which would have been about another $70 more totals at $250.