PC Newbie help (with old pc)

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Discussion

Gammble

Original Poster:

20 posts

172 months

Wednesday 19th May 2010
quotequote all

To cut to the chase, a friends pc "blew" a couple of nights ago. He said there was scorching around the PSU and it won't turn on or show any signs of life at all.

His basic specs are indeed pretty basic, it was a 500w power supply and his graphics card is an older 9400, and an e5400 dual core processor.

In a moment of impulse buying, he logged onto ebay and bought a psu that was ending within a couple of minutes, it was only just over a fiver and the same for postage so thought was worth the punt.

The question is, is it too old / outdate to be of use?

Thermaltake Purepower 480w
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/44/Thermaltak...

He lives in another country to me so i'm not much help to him, i'm pretty sure his graphics card doesn't require power from the psu like the newer cards? or am I wrong?

I'm hoping it will suffice to get his system up and running again but if he goes to upgrade graphics card in the future then he'd need t new psu with the 6pin connecters etc?

Any (useful) comments would be very much apreciated, just wanting to make sure he hasn't ended up with a £5+p&p paperweight.