emachine help

[Porter21]

I went over to a friends house last night and talked to his dad about them upgrading his emachine t3410 witha pci-e 6800xt. They were unable tog et it working. Ive built numerous computers and installed another video card in my brothers emachine. Ive placed the card in my own computer and it does in fact work. Emachines techs even though friendly were worthless. I'm not sure if his pci-e slot is bad, maybe lack of a quality powersupply (180max according to the label on the ps) or what.

Please give me your opinions!!

 

[mechBgon]

The power supply is probably at least one of the problems.

 

[Lord Evermore]

It looks like a 6800XT card needs a 4-pin power connector plugged in, which is an indicator that it's a serious power hog. That cheap emachines power supply is almost assuredly inadequate. If it doesn't list at least 18A for the 12V rail, there's your problem. Even if it does pretend to supply 18A 12V, that will probably be at the expense of power to the other rails so that other components might not get enough power. 180W total is marginal for a machine with a fast CPU and even a video card that doesn't need an additional power connector.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Describe "unable to get it working".

It has been my experience that Emachines uses the absolute minimum psu to run the factory hardware.

Any bios settings that might be important to the upgrade?

 

[Porter21]

We talked to emachines techs about disabling his onboard 6100 and they didn't seem to know where that was in the bios. I was able to disable my video on my brothers emachine with no problem. If I can find another ps I might try that.

Unable to get working means I am unable to get the card detected and its as if it isn't there.

 

[Lord Evermore]

The emachines should have come with a manual that tells you how you can disable the onboard video, or try to download the manual, or see if you can get the model of the mainboard and look up the manufacturer's information. Some mainboards do it automatically if you put in an add-in video card. Some of them you just can't disable it at all, but you might be able to set the BIOS to look for the PCIe card first rather than the onboard first.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Don't know if anyone still does it this way, but some mbs used to require moving a jumper to disable on board video.

 

[deathwalker]

There is a reason why for $299 you can buy a new emachine and 17" monitor at best buy...they are junk!

 

[mechBgon]

Also, your motherboard may be capable of using both the onboard video and the add-in card at the same time, this is a trait of the nVidia chipset that's used in there. But running a high-powered card on a 180W power supply sounds like asking for trouble to me. Maybe they should keep it as-is and buy/build an actual gaming system?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Originally posted by: deathwalker
There is a reason why for $299 you can buy a new emachine and 17" monitor at best buy...they are junk!

It isn't junk if it works perfectly well as it was designed. Overbuilding it so that you can install more powerful components would require that it cost more, where many people would be paying for something they'd never use. There's a reason companies MAKE 299 machines and stores sell them: plenty of people are happy with the moderate performance and reasonable price.

 

[Porter21]

True, they work fine when used they way they're supposed to. Well I have some parts I could give him for me to build him a new pc that's even better. He'll have to purchase an agp card, but either way it would be better. That was the plan from the start, he would order his parts from newegg, but then all of a sudden I find out he went out to Bestbuy and purchased an emachine.