Refurbishing a HP Pavillion 550-170na

[ArowanaGB]

What's up guys.

I recently bought a second hand HP 550-170na for really cheap, I am aiming to get it up and running for smooth and high settings 1080p games, mostly fairly recent ones I should add (R6, DOOM Eternal). Pretty sure everything's stock but I'll list the compnents here for ease:

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz

GPU: Intel HD 530 (Desktop Skylake)

HDD: WD Green 2TB (2012)

RAM: Samsung M378B5173EB0-YK0 2x4GB

PSU: 180W uATX Energy Star 6.0 internal power supply

Motherboard: Pegatron 2B47

Case: Width 16.5 cm Depth 37.8 cm Height 36.4 cm

(sorry im no expert with pc's ask me for anything else)

Main issue I'm facing is the horrendous intergrated graphics, that thing is awful as it brings the whole pc down and means I can hardly run any games whatsoever. Equally, the case it comes in is on the smaller side so I don't know if I have much room for many of the medium or small graphics cards, I read on another forum that I think 17cm/7 inches is pretty much the maximum size GPU which could fit. My friend told me the PSU is way too underpowered for a better graphics card as well. Finally, there is very little information on the motherboard I have so I'm really not sure what to do. Any advice on what I should upgrade to would be great. I reckon the max I would spend is about £350/500.

My best guess would be to change the GPU and PSU, worst case scenario the case as well but I'm not sure.

My very small amount of research has led me to the conclusion that pairing a i7 6700 and a GTX 1660ti would be a good idea but I don't know how I would go about doing it, and most importantly if I even could. I was looking at the smaller version of the EVGA 1660ti black XC or Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti MINI ITX OC 6G as that should fit the case to be paired with an EVGA GM 450 Watt 80+ Gold SFX PSU

.

Some more opinions would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks guys.

[old_geekster · Accepted solution]

@ArowanaGB , welcome to the forum.

WOW!  What a great description of what you want to achieve.   I will begin with a couple of HP Knowledge Base articles that will help you with your decisions:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Knowledge-Base/Upgrade-Video-Card/ta-p/7447100

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Knowledge-Base/Moving-HP-Motherboard-to-a-new-gaming-case/ta-p/...

You are correct that the case is a smaller mid-size.  I like to recommend a full modular power supply unit (PSU) for smaller cases.  They allow you to only install the cables that are absolutely necessary.  When you add a newer video card it will increase the heat a bunch.  HEAT is your enemy.  So, you want to create as much space for airflow as possible.  I recommend a standard ATX PSU with at least 550W for the GTX 1660 cards.  As it states in one of the articles, it is recommend to buy a PSU with 100W to 150W more than the card requires.  You should measure the space where the card will be installed as stated in the article on video cards and measure the current PSU to assure that the one you buy will fit correctly.

If I haven't covered all your questions, please let me know.

Please click the Thumbs up + button if I have helped you and click Accept as Solution if your problem is solved.

[ArowanaGB]

Thanks for the quick response!

Info you sent was very helpful and definitely reassured me, so thanks again.

Any chance you have another copy of the first link about video cards? Doesn't seem to be working anymore.

[old_geekster]

You are welcome, @ArowanaGB!

It is strange that the link works for me, but not you.  Here it is again:  https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Knowledge-Base/Upgrade-Video-Card/ta-p/7447100

If it doesn't work this time, go to the Knowledge Base section for the article.