GPU compatibility to my motherboard HP 158A

[kdanielmorais]

hi, I want to upgrade my graphic board to either RTX 3070 12gb RAM.

Is it compatible to the Z620 workstation?

Thanks for the support.

Cheers,

Daniel K. Morais

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

questions such as yours have been asked/answered quite a few times and a quick search of this forums  previous posts on this subject would have provided you your answer

some examples from the "search" query:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Would-A-Rtx-3070-T...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Can-I-install-a-rt...

[kdanielmorais]

Guys, after looking into the previous posts about upgrading the graphics card in the Z620, we bought the RTX 3070 Ti.

The problem we have now is that the PSU from the Z620 only has 2 6-pin cables spare, and the RTX 3070 Ti requires 290 W, that should come from 2 8-pin plugs. The 2 6-pin cable can only supply 150W (75W each), plus 75W from the mother board (PCIe x16 Slot), that amounts for 225 W. Therefore, even though the Graphics card lights up, the CPU cannot detect it and it doesn't work. We believe it is a lack of Watts. We saw that there is a 4-pin plug that comes from a spare HDD that we don't need anymore, but we would like some confirmation that we can use this 4-pin with an adaptor to give the board the extra Watts. Do you know if this would work?

Our alternative is to return the graphics board and get the RTX 3070 (no-Ti) that can run on 225 Watts and a single 8-pin plug.

Reference for the amount of power the cables can deliver:

https://www.cgdirector.com/gpu-power-cable-guide/

Picture of the open Z620 with the RTX 3070 Ti

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XOfpE2RU1FfNUA4F7qG1dyQWHlxE8TeV/view

Cheers,

Daniel

[SDH]

Daniel,

You're considering the Z620 workstation to be built to consumer grade "ATX standards"... wrong.

You need to read up on the several HP power supplies available for your custom engineered HP workstation, and also on the HP supplemental PCIe cables and adapters. Start HERE :

Solved: HP Z620 +980Ti = melty PCIe power cables - HP Support Community - 8033287

If you have a low power HP power supply in your Z620 you can buy a plug-and-play higher wattage one on eBay, recycled, for a very reasonable price. Pick the higher wattage version to search for, then look at the power supply's label shown in many of the ads, and if you look for the "Date Code" and see something like 1419 that means it was manufactured in 2019, week 14. That label will also show the "Revision" number... I generally would look for a higher number there.

I've rarely had to replace one of these power supplies for our enterprise's Z620s and have never gotten a bad recycled one from eBay.

Z620 800W power supply

[kdanielmorais]

Hi, thanks for answering SDH!

Got a few more questions now.

1) Is my power supply is the problem? Do I really need a new/extra one?

2) How would I know if an HP adaptor 4pin to 8pin would solve my problem?

3a) Should I just plug it and test? I

3b) Is there an risk of breaking something?

4) What should I do?

5) Where to put the extra PSU if I buy one?

Cheers,

Daniel

[SDH]

Daniel,

Answers:

1. I don't know. If you have the 600W version, then I'd get an 800W one to replace that with. If you currently have an 800W version then I'd stick with the one you have. You can't use two power supplies.

2. There is no such thing. What you'd want is a 6-pin to 8-pin very high quality adapter. HP makes them. DGroves in the post I linked to above provided a quality source for one that is easily found, made by Startech. And do you get the math I mentioned about Power = voltage times amperage? Did you see the wattage that HP has engineered into their 6-wire PCIe supplemental power cables? 12Volts DC x 18 Amps = how many watts? Do you know that a PCIe slot provides 75W up to the card and then with a high quality adapter you can get 216 more watts into the card, and then there is the second cable for 216 watts more. 216 x 2 + 75 = 507 watts. Not that the card would ever use that much, but you see why you'd want an 800W HP power supply and not a 600 W one.

3a. Only if you get two of those 6-to-8 pin very high quality adapters.

3b. Yes, of course, if you don't get two of those 6-to-8 pin adapters.

3c. You sure you don't want to get a competent computer shop to help on this? If so make sure they only use two of those Startech 6-to-8 pin adapters or the ones made by HP just for this purpose.

4. See 3c above.

5. You could sell the extra 600W PSU you take out of your Z620 case on eBay (assuming you upgraded to an 800W PSU). There is no room or connections for a second PSU...

EDIT: Here's a company you can trust for the HP ones which were engineered by HP to do what you want:

https://www.provantage.com/hp-n1g35aa~7CMPI11M.htm

[kdanielmorais]

Hi SDH,

Thanks for the time spent on this.

I have an 800W psu.

We have 2 6-pin plugs that come out of the PSU. We added the adapter that comes with the RTX3070 ti Phoenix (6-pin to 8-pin) and even though the RTX board lights up, the CPU cannot detect it. We thought it was a problem of too little watts being delivered and bought an adapter (2x 6-pin to 8-pin) and still the motherboard didn't detect the RTX card. But after seen your link about the 6-pin plugs being able to deliver 216 Watt it seems the problem is somewhere else. 

Do you have any advice?

Cheers,

Daniel

[SDH]

Daniel,

The picture of the open Z620 with the RTX 3070 shows your adapter to be a two 6-pin to one 8-pin adapter plugged into the back (away from the case's front) 8-pin port, with the front 8-pin port empty.

The advice has not been to do that. It has been to buy two of those HP or StarTech one 6-pin to one 8-pin adapters and use one of those to feed into each of the card's 8-pin sockets.

Don't use the 4-pin spare connector higher up in your picture... your workstation was engineered to use both of those 6-pin/6-wire PCIe supplemental power cables that come out of your excellent 800W power supply for that purpose. Here is a link to the StarTech web page for that product. I've given you my preferred HP source above, and I'd spend the few extra dollars for the HP ones if they have those in stock.

https://www.startech.com/en-us/cables/pciex68adap