PCI-E question

Enjoy that 13yr old power supply!

Will do. Just have to replace the six capacitors and it's good as new.

Also the air coming out of the supply is still cool so the fan will be fine as is.

When I take it to work to replace the caps I may also at that time wire in the power plug for the USB hub so it gets the +5V from the computer's supply.

Now once I can afford a good video card I'll finish the job.

If the power supply wasn't a quality brand I wouldn't have used it.
 
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Now once I can afford a good video card I'll finish the job.
That thing may or may not have the gonads to run a newer/upgraded GPU. Depending the GPU and it's power demands, Your also running this on an older board, which won't provide the better options for a new video card.
Honestly, I'm not that up to date on the better video cards, but others here may want to let you know what you can do or not do with this
 
I doubt that I'd want the best video card though as the processor is older.

Here's a reply in an older topic I started in 2018.

i'd bet you can fit at least a gt 710 or even gt730 in there with that pcie extender. take a measurement from the rear of the case to the big bulky black cables next to the psu, and that'll determine your maximum gpu length. the 710 and 730 are both half height/half length, so they should fit in just fine. you might even be able to use a gt 1030 if the power can support it...

So I can at least use those and pretty much any card that can run on a 500 watt power supply.

I doubt the motherboard is drawing much power itself as the air coming from the supply seems to be as cool as it was when I tested it yesterday with two CD ROM drives and one hard drive so I should have plenty of reserve power for the video card.

I'm not looking for anything ultra fancy. Just something with HDMI output that is new.

PP Mguire, agreed about the power supply.

Had I not opened the supply up to see about running the fan on the original thermal fan controller I would have never seen those two domed caps and would have used the supply as is.

The second computer like this I need to put back together so I can pull some files off it to put on this computer as I'm spending more time in my 12' X 12' heated and cooled building now instead of my computer room in the house. That way I can have all my games ETC...
 
Tbf my units are Toughpower 1000W and 1350W so quite a bit different. I hammered the hell out of the 1000W back in 2015 and it still kept going. I wouldn't trust the same kind of abuse from an old Antec.
 
I'd probably not run my 500 watt at 500 watts.

That said I did run a high speed 3" fan (moves as much air as a 5") in the supply all its life to keep it as cool as possible so I'm sure that helped extend its life as heat is the enemy of electronics.
 
I'm quite familiar with TT Smartfan 2s. I used to have 6 in a Raidmax Scorpio lol. I also had one on an OG Xbox back in the day with the little fan controller.

I would say the only reason yours hasn't died yet isn't because of the additional cooling, but rather having a low load all it's life. My Trupower died in 2007 living most of it's life in the 300W range in 63F ambient temps. With new components that would have failed either way I'd say it should be fine, just clean out all that dust.
 
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