any advice on mixing parts from two pcs pc's?

Bsrz

Rising Star
at home I have my pcs built gaming pc 2014. it consists of an i5 cpu 8gb ram and a gtx 780 with I believe an 850w psu.
at the office I have my older pcs built pc - late 2012 early 2013. i7 16gb ram gtx 780 sound card 1050w psu i believe.


what I want to do is remove the ram gpu sound card and psu from the office pc and put that into my home pc. I then want to take the ram and the psu from the home pc and put that in the office pc. meaning less power consumption for office work and more power for home pc. any advice on how to do this. I know you have to remove the components before anyone says it lol. just thinking of transportation and disconnection / reconnecting both psus?

would be good if I could strip down my pc tonight psu and ram. and then tomorrow in work replace them in the work pc. and then tomorrow night rebuild my home pc with the extra parts.


it would benefit both my pc and the work pc.

if the components can be transferred with out the extra power eg: if sli 780s and the 16gb ram and the sound card will run off of the 850w psu, that might be easier than having to disconnect both psus.
depending on how hard this is from a total noob to try depends if I will swap the psus.

cheers.
 
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SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
The only red flag I can see cropping up is that to run SLI graphics, the cards need to be the same manufacturer and model. You would need the 1050W PSU on the SLI rig. Lastly, you'll need an SLI bridge to bridge the two graphics cards once they're installed, this should have been supplied with you mobo. Also, is there any overclocking set on either machine? If so, it may be worth backing up the current settings from the bios, and then turning overclocks off before installing the new components. Then once they're in and stable, you can reapply if need be.

All depends what PSU you have on each, are they modular (I'm guessing they are), if so, best advice is to take a photo of the existing connections and perhaps draw a little map of the components they connect to. There haven't been any advancements in technology on connections to the psu in that time, so it will be just a case of plugging all components back in, it's dead simple, you can't really go wrong.

Memory I'm guessing is dual channel ddr3 on both machines, this shouldn't be an issue at all to swap them over between machines.
 

Rakk

The Awesome
Moderator
The only red flag I can see cropping up is that to run SLI graphics, the cards need to be the same manufacturer and model.
I didn't think they both have to be the same manufacturer, but they do need to be the same model and have the same amount of VRAM - as far as I know.
 

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
The only red flag I can see cropping up is that to run SLI graphics, the cards need to be the same manufacturer and model.

Im pretty sure you can run SLI with two different cards as long as they are from the same chip range i.e. MSI GTX 780 with an EVGA GTX 780 however they will run at the lowest options. If you have an MSI at 3GB VRAM and an EVGA at 4GB VRAM it will run at 3GB max for example.
 

Bsrz

Rising Star
they are both the same cards as I origionaly had them in the same rig that I bought from pcs. I had the i7 4770k with the 16gb ram and the sli 780s but with the 1050w psu.

I then sold that pc to my step dad who I also work for and then removed a gpu gtx 780 and put it in my new pc the i5 with the 8gb ram.

just been on a website called pc parts picker and put in all the parts I want to swap and it says its only going to use 703w out of the 850w psu I currently have at home. that's with everything swapped into that rig both gpu's the ram and the sound card.

so based off of that website I have no reason to swap the psu's, Both are fully modular corsair psu's and the memory is the same ddr3.

am I right?
 
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Androcles

Rising Star
they are both the same cards as I origionaly had them in the same rig that I bought from pcs. I had the i7 4770k with the 16gb ram and the sli 780s but with the 1050w psu.

I then sold that pc to my step dad who I also work for and then removed a gpu gtx 780 and put it in my new pc the i5 with the 8gb ram.

just been on a website called pc parts picker and put in all the parts I want to swap and it says its only going to use 703w out of the 850w psu I currently have at home. that's with everything swapped into that rig both gpu's the ram and the sound card.

so based off of that website I have no reason to swap the psu's, Both are fully modular corsair psu's and the memory is the same ddr3.

am I right?

When working out how big a PSU you need I would recommend always adding at least 25% to the total to cover any issues, so if you calculate you need 703 I would recommend you need a PSU with a minimum of 878, but that's just personal preference, I like to be semi-future proof.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
they are both the same cards as I origionaly had them in the same rig that I bought from pcs. I had the i7 4770k with the 16gb ram and the sli 780s but with the 1050w psu.

I then sold that pc to my step dad who I also work for and then removed a gpu gtx 780 and put it in my new pc the i5 with the 8gb ram.

just been on a website called pc parts picker and put in all the parts I want to swap and it says its only going to use 703w out of the 850w psu I currently have at home. that's with everything swapped into that rig both gpu's the ram and the sound card.

so based off of that website I have no reason to swap the psu's, Both are fully modular corsair psu's and the memory is the same ddr3.

am I right?

Looks ok, so long as you included peripherals like fans, usb devices etc? The thing with PSU's is they run better and tend to last longer when they've got say 20% headroom, so personally I'd swap it out.
 

LFFPicard

Godlike
Would it not be easier to simply swap the Hard Drives round and then bring your Work PC home, and your Home PC to work.
Effectively doing what you want.

Another note would be that Windows installs are OEM if I remember. So if you change more than 3 major components then you will need to re-activate windows (If memory serves).

But the simple solution to what your wanting to do is just swap the hard drives round. That is of course if the cases are both the same or your happy with the aesthetics of both cases.
 

Bsrz

Rising Star
just removed the side panel of my pc case and apparently I must have decided to buy the corsair rm 1000w psu for my home pc instead of the 850w so plenty of power there for the sli and future upgrades happy days.
 

Bsrz

Rising Star
I am having a bit of a problem - im at the office now I removed the cables from my 780 and plugged a dvi and hdmi cable from the mobo into the monitors but no signal.

I have removed the 8 + 6 pin power connector and it still has not worked? do I need to fully remove the gtx 780 from the pc before I can use the mobo to output to the monitors??

really confused cant see why it wont work?
 

Androcles

Rising Star
The onboard graphics may be disabled in the bios, while you still have the graphics card installed and plugged in go into your bios and enable the onboard graphics there, then you can reboot and plug your monitor into the onboard ports.
 

Bsrz

Rising Star
The onboard graphics may be disabled in the bios, while you still have the graphics card installed and plugged in go into your bios and enable the onboard graphics there, then you can reboot and plug your monitor into the onboard ports.

ah didn't think of that thanks I will give it a try now!
 

Bsrz

Rising Star
ok I have got the cables Working however the display is mirroring. so its showing the same screen on both monitors? anyway to fix this?
 

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
If you goto display properties there should be an option to "Extend these displays" instead of mirror

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Sorry i have XP and work :(
 
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