hi. this is jason from hp customer care. thanks for joining our how-to video series. today we are going to talk about replacing a video card and configuring that video card. i have some special guests with me. bill, randy, and kevin. thanks for joining me, fellas. if you are watching this video live and have questions, please feel free to add those to the comments stream in the youtube video.
if you have access to twitter, you can also ask questions via our hashtag, hpexpertday. today, may 14, we have an event called hp expert day. we are in addition to our normal volunteers on consumer support forums. we have hp employees standing by. so if we do not touch on a question you have, please join the conversation on the support forums at hp.com\expertday. we are going to talk about replacing video cards. earlier in the day, we talked about replacing ram, and we talked about replacing hard drives.
those are both things i have experienced as a computer user for ten plus years. but, replacing a video card, probably not as common, probably not something that everyone has done. the first question i have is, "why?" what would prompt you to replace your video card? why not? it's video, so it is graphical things. if you want to watch more or connect to different output devices, monitors, tvs, things like that.
so it is about what you are looking at. so if improve how a game plays, or editing videos, or working with visual media, 3d drawings, cad drawings, 3d rendering, all of those things require a lot of processing power from the video card. standard video cards are not as good for that versus an upgraded card. probably the biggest audience is your gamer geeks. those are the guys that want to upgrade video cards the most because frame rates are everything. how goes the games . . .
you can get 60 fps (frames per second). i have a simple application for you. i have a monitor that is newer than my computer. the resolution of the monitor is higher than my computer will output. will that also be something that i could fix? there are a lot of different aspects of the output capability. we have a couple of video cards here that show you the output ports. dbi, hdmi, display port, vga, all of these are things that you are going to want to make sure if your monitor is going to be able to connect to them.
is it digital? is it analog? what resolution do you want? if you have a new, big, 50-inch hd monitor and it has a set resolution that it needs to perform at to look the best, and your video card does not reach that level, that is an example of where you would want to upgrade. that is why i said it is about what you are looking at. if the visual display you are looking at needs to match better, then change the video card. let's start at the beginning.
i have an hp computer and i think i fall into one of these categories. i would like to improve the video output of my computer. how do i go about figuring out what i want to buy? in terms of an upgrade or replacement. where do i start? the simple thing is, if it is not about video games, to your point of a different type of port or something like that. like you have got a dvi but your monitor or tv is hdmi, you may not have to change your video card, you can get an adapter.
to change it from one port, you get a little adapter that switches it to another port. but then you are getting into some of these other areas. if you have an all-in-one and you just want to connect that or a notebook pc that you cannot upgrade the video card to, but you want to connect it to a monitor, you can get a usb adapter, an adapter like this but in a little plastic case. we have one. if you could grab it, kevin. it is in that little box over there on the table. you just connect it in.
it serves as one of these adapters. and you connect a dvi or a vga port. this is pretty common out there too. people have an all-in-one computer, but they want to have multiple monitors. show them the connections on both sides. this is an hp usb graphics adapter. this is something you can purchase from hp shopping. you can see it has a micro usb connector here.
on this side it has a dvi, which means it has all the connectors for analog and digital. it also comes with this adapter here so you can connect it to vga. does that help your graphic performance or does that just give you the connection that you need? it does not increase the graphical capabilities to make it process better. but it does give you more screens. it is a very common question on all-in-ones because they do not have the video out. they only have video in and people will come in and say,
"hey, i have this touchsmart and i cannot make it work on my other monitor. i am plugging it into the video port." and we say, "no, that is the video in. that is for if you were trying to recieve video. like connecting a camcorder or something else." to have two monitors or to have video out, you have to use an adapter. the caution you are giving me is that if you want to add an additional monitor, you may not have to go to the expense of a video card. there are adapters.
and much cheaper to go this route. and easier. there are all kinds of applications. one application is if you are in a teaching environment or demonstration environment, you just have to connect your laptop to another tv, most laptops have an output. you can use one of these to make the connection. bill, let's assume we want to get better output performance. i think you have a couple of examples of video cards here. how do i decide what i need to get? you want to do the research and find out what your pc can actually handle.
one of the things you want to do is make sure that you have an open slot on the motherboard. on the motherboard that we have here, we have a couple of different types of slots. what is most common today is a pci express x16. you are looking at a longer slot than these three smaller ones here, which are x1s. this slot is going to match pretty well with what you have here on this card. this is a pci express x16 connector here. there are different versions of pci.
pci version 2 and 3. we even had some questions today on the forum related to this and what it could actually do. when you go out and purchase one of the high-end video cards, it is brand new. a brand new video card uses pci express 3.0. a lot of times it will not work correctly in a pci 2.0 slot. it depends on the manufacturer of the card.
those are some of the issues that we could talk about a little later. you want to make sure that you have an open slot if you are going to add one. or if you replace it, you want to make sure that the slot that you, have that you will be replacing it in, matches correctly to the card that you purchased. in order to find out what pci eversion slot you have, that is kind of difficult. you can go to www.hp.com, type your model number in and the word "product" and "specifications",
those keywords, and you can bring up your product specifications. and in there is motherboard information, and you can also give a motherboard spec that is linked. and in there, you can go to the slot information. hopefully, in there will be the version number of the pci extension. and it will show you the types of slots you have on your motherboard spec. it will actually show you what that whole thing looks like
without you having to open it. it points to labels which say, this is this port. you have a pci 16, so you know you have that port in there. it is important to know that because a lot of our pcs show it with the port inside, but they do not actually have a video card in them. they have the video built into the motherboard. if that is the case, you need to be aware of that because you can only run one at the same time. some people think they can just add the card and they can run two video out
but it does not work that way. it goes back to your question about if you just want to add a monitor. on the motherboards that we have, you have different connectors that are available. this one actually has two dvi ports on the motherboard that you can connect to the monitor with. this one was built for two. you have two connectors here. basically, both of them are live at the same time.
you can put two monitors on it. if you add a video card, the majority of motherboards today will not support onboard graphics as well as a discreet graphics card. one or the other. the computer will see that you have put that in and say, "oh, you have one here." and it switches. it does it on its own. i have gone to hp.com. i have done my research.
i have looked a the specs. i think i know what kind of video card i want. do you recommend physically looking inside the computer before going forward? is there any clearance issues or other considerations? absolutely. look at the size of this guy. talk about these two. there are a lot of different sizes of video cards. we have brought a few here to show you the different dimensions. these are basically double wide cards.
that means that they are going to take up two slots on the back of your pc. they are going to be a lot taller and they have big fans to keep them cool. this one has a shroud on it so dust is going to stay away from it a little bit better. inside the chasse you can find out how to open your chasse on hp.com. if we can get an overhead shot of this one. you will see that the card inside here is a little bit of a smaller card.
it is right here. there we go. this card is only a single wide. it is not as wide as the two that i brought in here. we are going to remove this card and put in one of the wider cards. a couple things to keep in mind: when you add a video card, sometimes you will require power. higher power that what you have in there. that will be part of the research as well.
make sure that, whatever power supply you have, it will be able to handle it. you will almost always want to upgrade your power. not always, but generally. most of them are set to the components that it came with. not with one that takes twice as much power. if you are adding a new graphics card, generally, because more graphics requires more power, you need to look at the spec on that card.
if it says it requires 300 watts just for itself and you only have a 300 watt power supply, you need to go up. the spec you are looking for is called tdp. and to get to your point, jason, when you look inside the chasse, you want to make sure that you have room for what you are putting in there. in this case, we do have enough room for a double wide slot. it really depends on the chasse.
if your chasse is not like this, if you have an all-in-one, if you have a notebook, you cannot add to the video cards. video card upgrading is really going to be done on a tower. you are not going to be doing it much on an all-in-one or anywhere else. on some of the smaller towers, there is clearance issues like with the power supply. the big guy will not fit in but the little one will. that is where it really pays to open up your chasse and do the research. especially if you have a small form factor desktop as well.
like a slimline. there is going to be a specialty height requirement if you do replace that graphics card. you can put one in, but it will be a low profile. it will not be able to hold one of those big ones. that is the right term for the slimlines. low profile. you have given a great visual demonstration here of why you need to look before you leap, as they say. i want to welcome everyone who is watching on youtube.
if you have a question based on what we are talking about, please leave a comment and we will try and incorporate your question into our dialogue. if you are on twitter, feel free to tweet a question to #hpexpertday. or, if you have arrived here and you need help with a different topic, please join the conversation at our hp consumer support forums by going to hp.com\expertday. we have talked about doing the research and figuring out which card they should get by checking out their product specifications, first of all.
secondly, we have said that it is not just the specs of the video card and the slot, but you also want to make sure your system has enough power. that is one of the things to investigate. you want to visually inspect to make sure you have enough clearance. i am anxious to see you fit that big guy in there. you have done your research and you are ready to make it happen. obviously, you want to make sure you turn the power off on this guy. are there any special handling considerations? i see the hp electrostatic bags here.
any advice there? not only turning it off but actually pulling the plug. do not have any power going into it. touch the metal so that you ground yourself. make sure that it does not have static discharge. do not work over carpet. work on a hard, solid, flat surface. your kitchen linoleum tile works pretty good. no fuzzy slippers on the carpet.
you know how you can rub your feet and shock someone? you do not want to do that when working in there. you have just killed your computer instead of upgrading it. bill, please take us through the next steps. when you are changing the video card, you want to look on the back. you can see on the back of this one that we have a bracket that we keep the cards in here. i will switch it around to this side.
if we can get a shot into the front here. this is just a bracket that holds all of the cards in place. you can see that i already tapped out this slot. some remodeling here. just to make it easy, there is a single screw that we undo. does this require any special tools? it does. it requires a screwdriver. the screws that we use are actually a torques 15
and they are also slotted for flathead. so you can actually use a flathead screwdriver. torques makes it easier so it does not slip as you are turning it. with a flathead, it sometimes slips. this is the bracket that holds the cards in place. i will set that aside. from the inside, over here i will show this as well.
i will set it in front. we are looking at the pci express slot right here. at the back of it, there is a little clasp that holds this little lip in there as well. there are all sorts of little things that you need to keep in mind. this right here -- let's see if i can get it right -- this guy right here is the little clasp and you are going to push it down. i am pointing that out because it will be difficult to see
inside the chasse when i unclip it. i have seen different styles of those. i have seen some that you push down, some that you pull over. some cling like memory. this one that we have inside here, you can see it, it is right here, it is this little clip. it pulls over to the side just like that. you have to pull up on the back just a little to get it past there.
and now it is out. you have to be very careful in there with the wires and everything else. you do not want to accidentally slice another wire or pinch one or something like that because that would cause something to not work in your computer. did you have to disconnect any cables, bill, or did it just pop out of that slot? it pops right out of the slot. you do not want to have your monitor connected.
when you are working inside the pc you want to disconnect everything so that there is nothing on the outside. i have seen some video cards that do have little cables. we are going to get to that. oh, okay. what we are doing here is we are disconnecting this guy. we are going to replace it with this big one. there is a pretty significant difference.
hefty hefty hefty. one of the key things about this video card is that it requires external power. so, i will turn it upside down here. you can zoom in on this little spot right here. that is actually power. it is a six-pin power connector that is required to drive this video card. and that six-pin actually comes off of the power supply.
we will have to add that after we plug this in. if you have to upgrade your power supply because of the tdp value, you are putting in this bigger video card, and you have a 300 watt power supply in there, and you go to a 600 watt power supply or greater, and you want to make sure that it has that connector so that you can drive that. very important. that is where your research comes in.
you want to make sure that all the connectors that are required for that are also going to be met. okay. all right. we are just going to go ahead and put this in. like kevin and randy have pointed out, there is a lot of cables in here. i even pulled on out here as i was pulling this card out. so you want to make sure that they are all back in place. i am not going to worry about getting this one back in place right now.
but you want to pull them out of the way so that you do not set the card down on anything. you actually have another cable challenge in here. there you go. and then you position it over the slot. this part can be a little tricky. and then you are going to listen to it click in. if i get it in the right spot. you can see that it is seated really nicely here.
that is because that is what it is designed to do. if it is not sitting nicely there, you probably do not have it in the right spot. what happens if you do not have it seated correctly? you will probably have a problem. no video. or you will have some beep codes. more than likely, you will not have video because you will have it plugged into a spot that does not have video.
the last piect that we will put in is the little bracket here. we will put the one screw back in. for the double wide, that is where the air is going to be blowing back in so you want to make sure it is not obstructed because it is blowing the heat back out from the card. that reminds me. some of these upgrades that we have been talking about today, especially this guy,
generate heat. and in your case, you have only got just so much space for this air to swim around. you want to get that hot air out of there and draw in more cool air. so, in addition to the power supply and the big video card you may also want to upgrade to a bigger fan. or add another case fan. depending on the upgrades. and depending on the card too.
this one has a pretty good fan with it. but if you put in one that did not have such a good fan, your pc already gets pretty warm, you can buy a slot fan or another case fan. you just want to make sure you are increasing the flow in there. usually you are spending a lot of money on higher grade components. case fans are one of the cheapest things you can buy. it is worth it. it saves you a lot.
power supplies generate quite a bit of heat. and so do video cards. when the heat goes up, that is when things can become damaged. one of the questions that we see is, if i am not comfortable doing any of these changes that we talked about, is there anything i can do software-wise to help increase performance? we have an ice article, depending on your operating system, on hp.com that you can use. if you go to www.hp.com
in the search field in the upper right, type: increasing performance without adding memory. that will give you all kinds of tips and tricks that you can use to improve the performance of your pc. like decreasing how much graphics you use. things like that can affect the performance. i think you guys are talking about performance in speed. ultimately, the resolution or output of the device is going to be hardware, right?
there is no piece of software that will improve your output? the only thing software-wise you can do, jason, is go to the latest video drivers. the drivers may do it, depending on the card. a lot of times, the card is set at what it does. some might have that ability to upgrade, but not all. your default specifications will be listed on the product spec page. if you are looking to change from 720 to 1080 p, there is not much leeway if your video card does only a certain resolution.
there is just not a way to do it unless you change the video card. that is one of the things you want to keep in mind. make sure that what you are trying to do is possible with the hardware. most of the time, it is not. the key with increasing performance is looking at what you have and what you want to do with your pc and adding that component. we talked earlier, in the last series, about memory. this is one area that memory and video kind of cross over.
if you are trying to increase performance but you are not doing a lot of video rendering and things like that and your video resolution is what you want, those things are all fine but you do want your pc to perform faster, maybe it is memory you want and not a video card. honestly, a lot of it can be your own personal habits. my son has a tendency to have youtube going in the background, like we are doing here today. he also has music playing and he has a video game going.
and he is wondering why his frame rates are dropping. close down what you are not using and that will increase your memory. it will free up the load on your whole system so your video can perform better. i want to welcome the folks who might just be tuning in. you are joining our video how-to series and partnership with our may 14 expert day. we are talking about how to replace a video card and installing it in the computer and getting it all set and connected.
if you have a question for us, please leave it on the comments field in the youtube stream. otherwise, if we are not addressing the question that you have, consider visiting our consumer support forums. we have a lot of great volunteer experts as well as hp employees who are participating today, standing by to answer your questions. you can get there by going to hp.com\expertday. bill, we have got the new video card in the machine. you were going to talk about power.
that was one of the exceptions or differences between that. let's talk about that and then talk about what happens next. so you turn the thing on and where you go from there. after we have added the video card, we have plugged it all in, and you make sure you have the power connected and everything, so the video card you are using has power connected to it, and then you power on. you go from there.
the adventure continues from there. if you get video on your screen, you did something correct because now you have a signal coming through. we have this interesting new thing that is played out with windows 8. windows 8 has some special requirements. one of the things that can happen is when you boot up there is no video. and you are installing an older video card. there is probably a reason for that. one of the new requirements that windows 8 wants is secure boot.
and some of the old hardware like video cards are not compliant with secure boot. so what you have to do, if that is the case, you pop the video card in and you fire it up and you get a blank screen, you may have to install the old video card. temporarily. then you have to enable legacy mode. there is documentation that will help you with this on hp's website. go to www.hp.com. type in secure boot as your key word and you can find some good inormation on how to go in there
disable secure boot and enable legacy mode in order to get that older video card to work with your new system. to clarify, it is a much less common thing. you would run into it if you bought a pc that is already with windows 8. if you upgraded to windows 8, this is not a problem. but if you bought a new, windows 8 pc, and it has the secure boot setting, so you are taking your old card from your windows 7 pc and putting it into your windows 8, that is where you would run into it.
i see it when someone has bought a basic tower pc and they are thinking, "i have this older, cool video card and i can just get this basic pc, pop the cool video card in it and now it is going to work." and it does not. i you are going to use it, you have to go back into legacy mode in order to use that card. that was a pretty specific example of windows 8. what are some of the more general challenges people might run into? what are the tips and tricks there?
if you are going to boot up and it works, we booted up and it worked, and now you are in windows and your resolution looks really bad what that is doing is using the default windows driver. you need to update the driver for the video card in windows so that it will start using that driver. you want to make sure you have the driver on hand from the website or whatever, beforehand. because your icons are going to be off the page, it is going to be big.
the easiest way to do that is to go to the manufacturer's website and install the driver specifically for that card from their website. intel, invidia, ati, etc. thosenames.com. can you install the driver before you install the new hardware? you can download the driver and you can install the software that will install it for you. but, until it is detected, there is really not a way.
windows has to recognize it and innumerate it, put it in so it says, "hey, i see this card." and then you can use that software. what are some of the other common issues that folks might run into when they install a new video card? we saw some today in the forums. we were talking about them earlier. we had a customer post there they tried to install a graphics card that basically just gave them a blank screen.
that is going to be really common. trying to understand all of the differences there. there are so many different pieces to this puzzle. it can sometimes be difficult to figure it all out. the motherboard supported the video card. but, based on the processor, based on the processor's capability, our pci slot went from a 2.0 to a 3.0, pci version.
what we are talking about is an intel motherboard that uses sandybridge, which is their second-generation processor. i do not want to get too geekie here. this is where the term "expert day" comes in. this is not a common challenge but it is one that you might run into. the key issue with this one is that the processor was upgrated to a newer processor. the pci slots are going to stay at 2.0. and not go to 3.0. and he had a 3.0 card, which it did not recognize because it was looking for a 2.0 card.
so you look at a lot of different little . . . the research in video cards is very important to understand. and it does not stop at the video card. it is processor, motherboard, and all the different combinations. it is getting more common with today's architecture where the cpu that you put in there will affect all the other ports. i did not know this data port thing today. i knew that it affected the onboard graphics. if you put in a certain processor, like you said, sandybridge,
then you get a different type of onboard video. your video is controlled by the processor itself. and sometimes that can be a good thing. if you upgrade the cpu, you also upgrade the onboard graphics. all right. are you getting lost, jason? i think we need to summarize. because we started with an order of operation. and i think we realized some things that we should have included up front. let's bring it back and summarize.
basically, if i have an hp computer, i can get my specifications by going to hp.com and entering the model number of my product and product specifications, then, i want to understand the type of slots i have, in terms of a pci slot or something else. i want to understand the power rating for my power supply. which is on the logo, here. i want to do some research on video cards i might be interested in.
and then do a physical inspection to understand where things fit. also, while you are on hp's website, you can look up "upgrading video card" and it will give you the exact steps, if your pc is capable of upgrading the video card. including taking it apart? yes. it takes you from the very first thing you remove all the way down to how you do all these other things we talked about that is specific to your model. "video card" or "expansion card" are the two key phrases you want to search on.
hp.com is a great resource for your research and walking through each step. so i have picked out my video card and i have done a visual inspection. it sounds like one of the steps we are suggesting is, before you start the install process, go and download the latest software from the manufacturer. you may not be able to install it fully. but having it here on the desktop or somewhere accessible in the event that you turn on your computer and get the weird . . . that is the most common. people come in and say,
"my computer does not look right. the icons are huge or blurry." it is usually because of that. they need to install latest software. you always want to just use the updated driver. it is just what you do. that is basically it. the first part that jason mentioned here, about the research and making sure the slots are correct, that is the issue that we were addressing there.
the slot was correct but you need a different processor to do that. most video cards are backwardly compatible. they work with a 3.0 or a 2.0 port. it depends on the manufacturer. it might be amd or it might be invidia as the manufacturer of the chipset, but the manufacturer of the video card is not normally invidia or amd, it is going to be a different manufacturer that puts those chips onto the card they have certain specifications. you really have to do research, even more so,
in knowing what card you are getting. with that, i would like to remind everybody that if they have a question that we did not get to today that they should go watch our hp support forums. we have lots of experts just like yourselves standing by ready to answer questions. we will be online for the rest of the day if you have any other questions. please tweet us at #expertday.
i want to thank you guys for your time. as i mentioned up front, a little more intimidating than ram or a hard drive. i think you guys have laid out the critical steps. really, it is about doing your research up front. do not be affraid to look inside your machine and look at what you have inside there and what kind of room you have. it is not that difficult to take your computer apart. it is probably one of the easiest steps. we have step-by-step instructions on how to do that. it can turn it around for you. i've seen on the forums where someone says,
"i don't know what to do in there." i sent them the link to the document that showed all of this. and they said, "this is the easiest case i ever worked on. thank you. it made it easy." it really helps to have something that is specific to your computer. hp towers are excellent case designs. they have this great thing. for video cards especially. it is designed so that all of the heat comes up and flows out. i think that is patented too.
if it is not now, we will do it immediately. and if you run into issues where you do have questions, ask the forums. like you said, you've heard about us talk about just today, we were out there dealing with some of these questions. and it is expert's day. bill, randy, kevin, thanks for joining me. this video will be archived on our youtube channel. go to youtube.com\hpsupport.
we have a lot of other great videos out there. you do not want to miss out. thanks everyone for joining us today. hopefully, you learned more about your video card from this conversation. i want to thank the experts for joining me. thanks for joining our how to video series. have a great day. thanks
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