Upgrade Graphics Card... Upgrade Mother Board?

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

[COLOR=‘Red’]Just want to preface this saying, YES, I bought my gaming rig form a major PC manufacturer. I’ve gotten the lecture already. :stuck_out_tongue: I will build my next PC by myself. Right now that isn’t an option, so I gotta work with what I have. Thanks!

EDIT: I believe it’s now an issue with the PSU, post on that below.

Hey, everyone.
So, I have an HPE Phoenix h9-1250t, and I’m looking to upgrade my graphics card. I currently have a i7-3820 CPU running at 3.60GHz, and a GT 640 GPU (SUPER weak compared to my CPU). I’m looking to upgrade to a GTX 780, it’s really pushing my price range, but the performance seems to be worth the money.

I was all hyped up on buying the thing, until I googled “HPE Phoenix GTX 780” and I found a flood of results saying that most higher-end GTX cards don’t work with most models of the phoenix because the PCI Express Ports on the mother board are Gen 2.0 while the cards are all Gen 3.0. There are no BIOS updates that can fix it, it’s very much a hard-line hardware issue.

So, here’s my question: Can I buy a new mother-board with PCI Gen 3 ports, and just keep the rest of my parts and my case, as long as the board fits in the case?

Here is the board I have:
https://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03132964&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en

Here is the board I’m looking at:
https://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03132942&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en

Similar configuration, same manufacturer, ports are generally in the same location, and it’s the exact same size, so it SHOULD fit in my case, but I’m just not very knowledgeable about compatibility of my parts. They seem to have different CPU SOCKETS, but be able to accept the same CPU chips…

Anyways, thank you for you time. I appreciate any advice you can give. I just can’t start from scratch at this time. As it is, if I were to successfully execute my plan, I’ll be spending around $600+ dollars, and that’s really pushing my limit. :smiley:

#2

you are lucky because you don’t have a Dell, so your old power supply won’t instantly kill your new motherboard, however you bought it from HP, so your IO shield and Front Panel connectors won’t be the same, it will require some scissors and tape to connect at least the power button to the front panel (if you decide to buy that motherboard)

I recommend a generic ASUS/etc motherboard rather than another OEM board, because you’ll run into less compatibilty issues when trying to make all the parts fit

in general I recommend leaving it alone and building a new PC but I know that myself I would not follow that advice if I was in your place

anyway good luck

#3

It looks like the 640 is also PCI-E 3.0 though. In any case PCI-E is designed to be a completely backwards compatible interface, i.e. you could run a 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot, a 2.0 card in a 1.0 slot, etc. I don’t see why it should be incompatible. In fact, I googled “HPE Phoenix GTX 780” as well, and I only saw a couple results where someone bought a new video card for their Phoenix and it wouldn’t boot after that, but that can be caused by all sorts of things. It seemed like the culprit for them was the PSU or something. Some people suggested it might be a issue with the motherboard that actually could be resolved by a BIOS update. I don’t know for sure what it ended up being because the OPs didn’t ever post an update with the answer.

I would say go ahead and get the card, the only thing is it seems like you’d have a hard time cramming a behemoth of a 780 into a mini-tower. Make sure to check the size of the card and measure the space you’ve got inside your case. Also, if you know someone who has that card or a similar one, maybe you could borrow it to test out how it works in your system.

If you’re still not sure, I’d consider finding an older card on ebay or craigslist, or just waiting until you can build a new system from scratch.

#4

Thanks to both of you for the advice.

I’ve been doing some more research and believe Orpheon may be on to something with the PSU. I currently have a 600W, and with the new card I’d be prettymuch maxing it out… which isn’t good.

I’m now considering waiting a bit (as I’m busy now and can’t make do with a work-in-progress desktop at the moment), and I’m looking into picking us a new PSU, maybe around 750W. I hear Corsair is a good brand. As long as it fits into my tower, I’d imagine that would be able to power the GTX 780 with my CPU and other components.

I’m of course gonna continue my research, but if there is any advice anyone could give me, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks again!

#5

I have a Corsair PSU and am very happy with it. I’ve read nothing but good things in reviews for their recent lines of PSU’s.

Well known, well respected and quality components/build (as mentioned by reviewers).

#6

Believe it or not - maxing out a PSU really does matter. I was maxing out a 600-watt PSU for for several months until I bought an 800-watt just recently. When I installed it, the speed of my compooper easily increased by… 50%? Doubled the speed.

Obviously, most of the components were underpowered and therefore not running at maximum speed. With the 800-Watt I’m close to max (750-watts is what I need from my calculations) but the strain on my PSU seems to be gone entirely.

So yes, I absolutely agree that you can’t undershoot the wattage of your rig.

#7

Wattage is important when it comes to powering all your devices - you need a certain amount of watts for each one. So if you have like 3 hard drives, 2 video cards, an audio card, a DVD drive and a BD drive, you’re gonna need a lot more watts than someone only running 1 HDD, 1 video card, and a DVD drive.

So, wattage is first to consider. But more important when it comes to video cards is if the PSU can supply enough amps on the 12v rails, which power the video card. If you’re going to get a Corsair,double check using their PSU finder to make sure you’re getting a power supply that’s good enough to power your system.

#8

Yeah, I’m planning to get a corsair. They’ve been suggested to me by many people, and I like the reviews I’ve heard.

However, after doing even more research, I’ve found more people having difficulty with running the GTX 780 on my model PC. Some people even upgraded to high-end PSUs, and still had no luck. I’m certain now that it’s the motherboard BIOs, and since it’s an OEM board, it doesn’t really have an update to fix it.

I actually AM planning on building a new PC now… but not until december. I’m too busy to be working on a PC now, and I need to save up a bit of cash.

In the meantime, anyone could give me advice on PC building (especially picking a mobo), I’d appreciate it.

I will be doing my own homework on this as well. I’m not a “guise, solve my problems 4 me!!” kind of guy. :smiley: I’m mostly looking for some advice and discussion for me to take into account.

Thanks!

#9

I usually just trust Tom’s Hardware’s “Best [x] for the Money” Articles and the ratings on newegg when I’m researching computer upgrades.

Aside from that, when picking a mobo, make sure you’re aware of which chipset you want, because that will determine price range, what cpus will be compatible with it, and what other features it will support. Make sure it’s of the proper size for whatever case you use. Make sure it has enough slots to put all your add-on cards in. Again, check ratings and reviews once you’ve found a model you like. Take note of what speed of ram it supports, and how many pins the main power connector is (usually not an issue though since most modern psus use a 20+4 connector which will work with either 20 or 24 pin connectors). Check additional features that may matter to you (does it have audio and what kind, does it have USB 3.0, does it have RAID support). That’s about all I can think of.

#10

Some good advice I have for ya…

Get a mobo with an mSATA port, and buy a cheap mSATA (something like a 32GB or 64GB) SSD, and buy a 7200RPM 2TB HDD (these are cheap now a days). The mobo should automatically come with ‘Intel Smart Response Technology’ if it has an mSATA port.

This allows you to create a 20GB partition on the SSD purely windows cache, page filing, hibernation files, and makes booting Windows 1000 times faster, and makes Windows, overall, run much faster.

Then, with the amount of space left on the SSD, make another partition, and install certain programs to it. I, personally, run chrome of a 32GB mSATA SSD. Takes me (around) 80 milliseconds to load a full 1080p YouTube video…

#11

I hate “intel smart X” drivers, they always make a fresh windows install load much slower and sometimes lock up for minutes at a time for absolutely no reason, like right clicking on the desktop for example.

#12

Speak for yourself. Mine loads twice as fast. Plus they allow RAIDing partitions. Of course that won’t gain you any speed, but it’s great for backups (in RAID 1 obviously. Not RAID 0.)

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