Upgrade-a-Go-Go

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UPDATE II: Today’s date is April 7, 2012. About a week ago, the graphics card fan on my computer started making these eeerie WOOOooooooOOOOooooo noises, like a cartoon ghost. And then a few days ago, it just stopped running; the fan was stuck and my computer would run for a few minutes before the screen would go black.

So, farewell good and faithful friend. Now I need to figure out what to do next.

My husband David removed the card and reconnected the inboard graphic card back into play. I can do everything I need to do with the exception of Second Life or my little experimental Open Sim world – I can limp inworld to a meeting or to listen to music, but that’s about it. Building or terraforming are out (it was all the terraforming I was doing in my private grid that was probably the last straw).

The solution at this point is either to buy a whole new computer (which is a pain, as I have all these pictures sorted into folders that I use for the church website) or to swap it all into a bigger case with a better power supply.

The latter option looks like the way forward; a new case is about 40.00 and a power supply of at least 500 watts will set me back about 60.00.

It’s a pain, but the upside is if we can get all the computer’s guts swapped over, there will be plenty of room for a truly capable, normal size graphics card – probably an nVidia 550, 560, or similar. I’m kind of waiting for prices to drop as the new 600-series cards were just released last week.

Carry on reading, if you wish to see how I did get the Galaxy GeForce 9600 LP to fit. There are now other low profile, low power options, but this one worked great for far longer than I expected.

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