Graphics Card upgrade for HP Compaq Elite 8300 SFF PC

[locrieth]

I know this is a fairly old post, but I had an email from a refurb company, selling these reasonably cheap, and was thinking of an upgrade for my wifes aging PC.  I read somewhere about a limit on the wattage that PCIe port could output on the 8200SFF, so a GFX card that ran purely from the PCIe port without any additional 6 or 8 Pin connectors may struggle, so a 750TI or at 1050ti low profile card.  Could anyone confirm if this is a) true and b) if this is true is also an issue on the 8300SFF?

Cheers

[SDH]

Your technical manual is  HERE.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03612798

You can look on page 172 to see the cards HP certified at that time for the SFF Elite 8300.  You certainly can do better than those, from 2012.

That SFF has only a 240W power supply.  HP has been sticking with the ATX standard for the PCIe x16 slot of it being able to provide 75W up to the card, but that is not the whole picture..... you have a limit on the total 12V power from such a small power supply.  That will be on the power supply label.

We use the Quadro K600 or K620 cards in these without issue.  Per nVidia directly those use 41 vs 45W max TDP, and we don't see any better performance from the K620... it just has 2GB instead of 1GB DDR3 and draws a bit more power.

Sounds like you'd be trying to put 10 pounds of flour in a 5 pound bag with the 75W 1050 Ti..... maybe will be fine with the 60W 750 Ti.  These are not gaming boxes.  Turn off on-processor graphics.  Use SSD(s) instead of HDD(s).

There's lots of discussion about wattages of power supplies and max TDP of video cards for you to research via google.  Good news is that the newer cards draw significantly less power for same performance.  So, start as new as possible and work back.  Don't even think about cost....... go for it and let us know.

[SDH]

And..... there are other opinions.  This likely is worth watching, from another post just added today,  HERE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpmhfVZiG48

Not sure what processor you have, but you can upgrade that too.

The Elite 8300 can run SATA III drives..... I'd for sure want one of those for my boot/applications (games) drive in addition to dropping total power usage some.  I also put in a HP SFF eSATA adapter for the backplane and convert the proper internal SATA port to eSATA via BIOS.  We use eSATA here for fast cloning/backup.

Finally, there is a worthwhile Lenovo thread,  HERE.  Make sure the card you use not only is the low profile, but not too long for the inside space available to you.  Maximum memory performance will come from populating all 4 slots with identical RAM.... 4 x 2GB vs 4 x 4GB, and use the fastest MHz RAM that will match your chosen processor.