Acer x3400 graphics card?????

Well im stuck here and im hoping someone can help but here we go,my mother bought a acer x3400 and plays a few games (yeah i know),so i looked at getting a graphics card and heres the problem i cannot find one that physically fits,i have searched for people with problems with this and to no avail,i even took the tower to our local pc shop and he even said hes never seen a design like it and he had no avail in coming up with a answer,so i come to my bible for pcs here,plz help thank you for reading my problem.

 

Here are the specs
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/585105/review/aspire_x3400.html#specs

Then I found this

Source: http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=9266

so apparently your local pc shop has never heard of nor seen a low profile video card.

 

Thank you for your reply,but yes we saw this and he actually had one of these cards in stock which we tried and yup it did not fit,im really stuck about this one for sure.

 

I just bought the same PC. It was a decent little machine but I have thrown in some upgrades. Here's what I am going to do. i am going to tell you everything I did to it instead of telling you that you absolutely need a new power supply and case like the rest of the planet.

Now, I have ordered a new power supply but so far without it I have installed another 4 gigs of Ripjaws gaming ram. Now since that ram has cooling fins on it the dvd drive rest on the fins pushing the drive out the side of the case a hair meaning you have to either squeeze the cover back on barely which I did or cut/bend the wasted aluminium in a bit that covers the DVD drive. Anyway, the extra ram actually helped a little bit playing games like Crysis and TF2.

Okay, for the GPU. I put a new Asus ENGT430 in it and so far it is great. I am still using the stock PSU and even pushing Crysis on high with the new video card it is still running great. The card just fits in the PCI-e x16 slot and the cooling fins heat the top of the case a bit but it never gets hot enough to do damage and runs games great in 720p.

Sorry for the long post and rant I am just tired of people saying you can't upgrade this PC or play any games on it. I AM playing Crysis and Starcraft 2 on high as long as AA is off and I am loving it. If you want to get a new PSU like I said I ordered a 300 watt TFX style PSU which will be here next week even though the stock 220 is working just fine.

 

Right first of all thx for the reply i appreciate it,i am not a pc genius,so could u tell me where bouts do i get the hardware from,and is it easy to put in i have done graphics cards before but thats about all i have done,again srry but i am a bit of a noob.I have just looked at the Asus ENGT430 and i assume it fits ok??.

 

Okay so you can actually find this card at most local computer shops. If you want to buy online I would say try this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...4121397&cm_re=engt_430-_-14-121-397-_-Product

As for if it will fit the answer is yes. I will attach a picture to show you my X3400 rig with this card inside. As you can see it tucks nicely under the top of the case. Make sure you buy the low profile card and it is very easy to install. No external power cables or nothing it runs of the boards power as you can see in the picture.

When you first get it you will have to change the face plate on the video card with one that is in the box to make it low profile. This is just one standard phillips screw and then you have to take out the two nuts beside the DVI port. If you buy this at a local PC store they can even do this for you but again, it is extremely easy to do yourself as I had never done it before either. It comes with two face plates and you can choose which you want to put on. If you choose to put the DVI/HDMI plate on then you can disconnect the VGA port from the graphics card itself and put it in the box for safe keeping. It is meant to do that so don't worry they designed it with that ability.

The card as I mentioned sits close to the top of your PC case and will make the top of the case warm when it is under full load but this is good as it is more space to disperse the heat and the X3400 case has an air vent on the top that sits over top of this cards fans beautifully. You might have to angle the card slightly to get it in the top of the case but trust me it fits as if it was made for this PC. As you can see it is on as I am writing this and you can see the stock power supply. It actually doesn't cripple the power supply and the system still runs very stable surprisingly even after hours of playing L4D2 on high

Let me know if you have any problems! Your going to love this card and it will turn your media center PC into a great gaming PC for the price. I mean this is one of the cheapest Crysis playing rigs you can find anywhwere!

 

Thank you so much i honestly thought this was a no go,may i ask u said before u got 4gig ripsaw,do i need that or will the card be ok??

 

edit srry but is this ok or not
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb...+Ready+Low+Profile+Ready+Video+Card&x=20&y=24

 

Perfect that's the exact card I am using. As for the 4 gigs of Ripjaw ram I installed you don't need that. The PC has 3-4 gigs of stock ram anyways. I just picked it up because I like to do a lot of video editing and went a little overkill lol.

Good luck with the card I know you will love it!

 

Dude, i've registered just to thank you for this post, i'm stuck with this PC for a while and i really thought i'm gonna be stuck playing 2d games for the whole time thinking no GFX card would fit the stupidly cramped case, but i took your advice and i have a quite good gaming pc now, i'm just hoping the stock 220w will hold out, but i think i might be able to just rig my full size 600w PSU into the MB and keep it outside the case.

once again, thanks!

 

Awesome glad to hear it's working good for you. Great plan upgrading the PSU. For me at the time I didn't have piles of money to purchase a full on gaming machine so I have been building it slowly from this rig.

Since my last post I purchased a Corsair 600T case which is cheap and a 650watt PSU during the boxing day deals. I have a GTX 460 in it now and in the next week or so am upgrading the mobo.

Anyways I'm glad to hear it's working out and definately good idea with swapping to a larger PSU. Only advice I have is maybe get a cheap bundle deal with a PSU and case together. Having a PSU outside your case will work as long as it has very long cables.

Moving it all to a new case is very simple and I could help if you have any questions. Just make sure the case supports ATX and mAtx form factor motherboards as the one you have is an mATX board. Please reply if you need help or have any questions!

 

Thanks I don't seem to be having any problems with the current rig after a few days so i may just keep it at that. I've being monitoring the voltage and heat in my case for a while and it all falls under the normal thesholds so i think i'll just leave it as it is. Great little card i must say, not quite up to running crysis over 1280x800 but i never liked that game anyway :-D

I would move everything into my midsize but i like the current case if i'm honest, and i don't have any enclosure for the media tray at the front anyways rolleyes

 

i have the same pc but i have bought a new case and rigged it up i know a bit but obv not as much as you guys, just wondering will this pc support any pci express card then cause i have the space for a bigger card just wondering what one you guys would recommend. looking for something with a good bit of power to run todays first person shooters at a decent frame rate .

i have not upgraded the stock 4gb of ram or processor also would this motherboard support a faster processor or would i have to swap the mainboard out ?

thanks for your help just new here as well first post awesome site !

 

jesterf15, welcome to MajorGeeks.
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