low-profile AGP video card for Dell GX260 SFF

Did you try the card?  I wouldn’t worry about it.  You won’t find a card that can do what you want it to and have any less power requirements.  I have a pci-e 4550 in a Dell Inspiron 530s.  It only has a 200 ~ 250 watt power supply I believe, and the card works fine.  It might cause the power supply to fail eventually but it’s been working for about a year, and I figure I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.  I don’t have much choice if I want a video card that’s capable of HD playback because I haven’t seen the type of power supply that the Dell uses that has a lot of power to even replace it.

I appreciate the replies.

[quote=htpc_user]Did you try the card?[/quote]

Yes, I have tried the card.

[quote=Mike Garcen]it looks like that Dell has a 250W PSU, but includes a P4 1.8Ghz, 40gb HDD, and 512MB of RAM. A rough calculation shows approximately 166watts required (not knowing extras or which P4), and assuming your PSU has 80% efficiency (which is not a given), that puts you at about 200Watts…meaning you should EASILY have enough headroom for that card which shouldn’t be more than 8-10watts.

If my numbers are correct 🙂 it won’t hurt to try. if it’s not enough, it just won’t power up![/quote]

Yeah, when I tried the card it didn’t power up.  It was about that time when I looked at the requirements on the box and read it requires a 300 watt power supply – DOH!

I’m at work and don’t recall the card manufaturer (i.e. XFX, BFG, PNY, etc.) other than it is Radeon 4350 based.

This box actually has a 2.0 Ghz cpu and currently 1 GB of ram.  There are no “extras” – no floppy and no CD/DVD drive.  I was actually expecting this to have ~145 to 200 watt power supply.  The GX260 has 3 case formats – one “normal” size and 2 smaller, this is the smallest of the 3 case sizes.

The video card does work I am currently using it in a full height case that has 500 – 600 watt power supply in it.  

I don’t expect changing the PSU is an option since it is a non-standard design not to mention it’s a Dell.

I would check the BIOS to make sure the PCI-e slot is set to be the primary port. 

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3515/p/19344552/19742898.aspx

160 watts?  I guess I understand why it’s not working.  My 4550 is on at least a 200 watt power supply, maybe 250.

I appreciate the suggestions.

[quote=Crim]I would just get something else, something that will actually work.[/quote]

Get something else?  is that a different video card or diferent PC? j/k.

Yeah, although I suspect something could be done to make it all work, I didn’t intend for this to be that kind of project.

I did find a web site that had PSUs for Dell PCs with more power.  The real PSU issue is the shape.  This has a “slim line” power supply and has a different shape than a normal PSU.  This has a really small case.  It just seemed like a good canidate to re-purpose as a Sage client.

At work, we have some of these with Quadra 280 (I think) video cards so we can run dual monitors.  However the Quadra isn’t going to do any HA acceleration for HD video.

My solution was to give up and not use this PC as a client.

It maybe that a video card exists that will work in this PC and do the needed acceleration, however I have no idea what card that is.

The power supply is just not going to be up to snuff. And being a Dell of a “certain age” (vintage 2003?) it may have a proprietary PSU. On a long shot, it maybe possible to have the power supply modified so it would work but I expect it would be expensive (presuming it could even be done).

If you had access to a power supply from a GX260 mini tower case, you could at least test the MT PSU (although, if you had access to a mini tower case, you could just use the mini tower case and save the headache of finding a half height card)