Graphics Card Upgrade for Z820

[Bassinthemudd]

I've been upgrading my Z820 and have an opportunity to get a Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 for $170. This seems to be a good price (given current conditions.) 

I've been perusing related threads and feel pretty confident that this card should work in my system. But, I'd like to double check. 

My system as it stands now:

Z820 (v1)

BIOS Version/Date J63 v3.95, 6/13/2019

Windows 10 Pro

2×Xeon E5-2690 CPUs

64 GB RAM  8×8GB 2Rx4 PC3-12800R

Samsung SSD 860

AMD FirePro W7000 GPU

1125W PSU

Are there any foreseeable issues with this upgrade?

Also, I'm wondering what graphics card might be a good choice for maximum performance for my system in the future. And, if I did ever upgrade my CPUs to E5-2687W, would that change the recommendation for a peak performance graphics card?

My workstation is used for gaming and amature audio & video production.

[Brian1965 · Accepted solution]

With your current 1125W PSU, you can have up to 3x 225W garphics cards, or 2x 300W graphics cards, regardless of what CPU's are installed, (e.g. 2x E5-2687W). According to the Nvidia website, the GTX 980 card only requires 165W of power so it will run absolutely fine. I'm running a GTX 1080  Ti card in my Z620, and that is a 250W graphics card. (HP states the Z620 only supports up to a 225W graphics card in the primary GPU slot!)

As for future upgrades, any of the newer RTX cards can be used, provided you have drivers for your OS, and the power requirements is below 300W.

Whatever you decide, please be careful of some of the gaming or overclocked graphics card variants. Quite often these cards use larger fans, or sometimes 3 fans, making them larger than the regular 'Founders Edition' variant and don't fit in the Z workstations, i.e. the side panel won't close.

[DGroves]

Brian1965's comment about the hight of cards in the z820 is something you might need to consider as a few pci-e cards are taller than normal due to the cooling solution they use or board height.

depending on the needed height, you can remove the plastic insert from the shroud, that is positioned to sit just above normal height cards

If you need to have the lower airflow shroud cover removed  then you should place a foam gasket that runs from front to back that is placed approx halfway  up from the bottom of the system to maintain the proper airflow also the gasket needs to be of sufficient height to just touch the side cover when closed. Card length is not a issue as the z820 can take extremely long cards without any issues 

99.8% of pci-e cards made will not have any height issues in the z820 and this includes all current video cards that i'm currently aware of

[Bassinthemudd]

Thanks for your response. Very helpful.