Juan del Real

I’ve had a Dell 4550 for several years now and its been a workhorse of a pc. I never had any problems with the hardware, the OS (Windows XP Professional), or any of the software I’ve installed. I figured now would be a good time to replace the monitor from a big ass 19″ ViewSonic A90f CRT to a flat panel, and upgrade the size of RAM since prices have dropped. I originally ordered my pc with only 512MB of RAM. Back then it seemed like a sufficient amount. So I bought a 1GB of RAM for $79 at Fry’s Electronics. I installed it and my pc works fine.

As for the monitor, I really would have liked to get a DELL UltraSharp 2407WFP Wide-Screen Flat Panel Monitor. I use one at the office and it rocks, but it isn’t within my budget right now. So, after some semi-extensive research, I decided to get the ViewSonic VX2235vm. Its a 22″ widescreen flat panel LCD monitor. When I went to Costco to buy it, they also had a different ViewSonic monitor which I hadn’t seen or read about - the ViewSonic VX2245vm. Its basically the same LCD as the VX2235vm, but the base is different. The base is called the ViewDock and it has a dock for iPods, a mini subwoofer, 3 USB ports, 8-in-1 card reader, a microphone, and a heaphone jack. For $50 more, I got this new model instead.

My frustrations begin

Once I got it home, I fully read the new monitor’s requirements and realized that my video graphics card didn’t support the 1680×1050 resolution. No problem, I figured. I’ll just buy a new graphics card. First I had to find out which card my pc had - PCI, PCI Express, or AGP. I found a website that clearly explained the different graphic cards. After I researched this, I went to MicroCenter and bought a GeForce 7600 GS 512MB AGP Video Card by PNY Technologies for about $136. The box in which the graphic card came in was inside a plastic case for security reasons. The case was removed at the checkout counter. This plastic case blocked a side of the box which had the system requirements, so I didn’t get to fully read them until I got home. The video card requires that the pc have a power supply of at least 300 Watts and an extra 4-pin connector for power. I wasn’t sure, but I thought this might be a problem. I opened up my pc, took a look at the power supply, and saw that its only 250 Watts and there are no extra 4-pin connectors.

So I went back to MicroCenter and I bought a new 400 Watt power supply which was on sale for $39.99. It has plenty of 4-pin connectors. I get home, I opened my pc up, I removed the old power supply — without detaching the cables yet, and I put the new one in place. It fit nicely in there, but the connector for the power cable on the new power supply didn’t line up with the hole in the back of the chassis. It was about 3/4 of an inch off and there was no way it was going to work. My only options were to look for another power supply, or cut the back of the chassis - thick gauge sheetmetal. I figured it would be easier and faster to make the hole bigger, but I didn’t have the right tools. So this part of the project was put on hold for some time. I borrowed some heavy duty shears and I tried to cut the sheet metal, but I wasn’t able to. The sheetmetal was too thick. I ended up having to score the area I wanted to remove and I gnawed bits of with the shear cutters and bent off bigger pieces with pliers. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done.

Now that the hole was bigger, I installed the new power supply, the new graphics card, and I connected all the cables. I connected my old CRT monitor and turned on the pc. Everything worked just fine. The new power supply is much quieter than the original one. Once I was satisfied , I removed the old monitor and connected the new flat panel monitor using DVI cables. Again, everything worked fine. This entire ordeal took me a couple of weeks from start to finish, but now I have a nicer pc. My next project is to upgrade the storage capacity by installing a second hard drive.