Suggest cheaper alternative of ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 graphics card for Toshiba Sattelite A300-23E

Tamanna Hossain

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Mar 19, 2013
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I have a spare Toshiba Sattelite A300-23E laptop which was giving trouble of automatic shutdown with excessive heat. Later it won't even get to Windows desktop, as a matter of fact it doesn't even withstand a minute in BIOS screen. It's been diagnosed I've to change the original graphics card ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 that has 512 MB memory.

I figured out the card will cost over 100 bucks if I buy online & so its counterpart NVIDIA GeForce. Can anyone suggest a cheaper alternative? fyi: I'm neither a gamer nor I wish to use it for anything other than browsing and reading books on computer.

Your valuable suggestion will be appreciated.

Thanks.
 

blazorthon

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Sep 24, 2010
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I doubt that you have many options. Laptops have tight compatibility issues and are usually locked to a specific generation of cards. The 3650 and maybe also a few very similar cards are probably your only options.

That there was a problem with heat might be solvable without replacement. You could try cleaning out any dust from the cooling system with electronics-safe compressed air.
 

dodger46

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Nov 19, 2011
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Your GPU is almost certainly fixed to the motherboard. It sounds as if there is a build-up of dust and fibres within your cooling fan. This may be cleaned with compressed air as suggested, but in my experience best to disassemble the laptop and thoroughly clean the vents. I've seen 10mm mats of dust inside the fan itself on some laptops...
Service Manual
http://www.manualowl.com/m/Toshiba/Satellite-A300/Manual/293116
 

Tamanna Hossain

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Mar 19, 2013
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I've already disassembled the laptop part by part and cleaned thoroughly with compressed air. Didn't find much dust. But the problem still continues. Just wanna give it a try before I throw the system away since aparently that's the only component I could change. Thanks for your reply folks.