Questions about upgrading HP Z440?

[69420ballin]

brethren. i have returned.

So, I'm planning to upgrade my system next month because i finally got the money and my dad's gonna let me if my final school results for the year end up being fine. I could budget out a 2080ti or a 3070 and a xeon e5-2698v4 as upgrades to my system which currently has a xeon e5-1650 v4 and an rx 480. But I wanted to ask, would it be feasible to use the 2080ti and the 480 at the same time because:
the power supply can handle the load (2x6 to 8 pins for the 2080ti and a sata to 8 pin for the 480, i have the power capped to 100 watts so it wont explode)
i've heard that you can just slot in full length x16 cards into x8, x4 or even x1 slots if they're open ended and they'll work fine albeit with reduced bandwith (which isnt a problem because the 2080ti loses like 10% of its performance on x4).

So to me, it sounds like i could be able to plug in the 2080ti into slot 14 and the 480 into slot 16 without any issues, right. Just verifying this with y'all before i actually go through.

Also, I'm going to be using the 480 as a coprocessor for lossless scaling frame generation. Lossless is a program which has a built in feature which can allow you to generate "fake frames" in games and it works optimally if you use 2 separate graphics cards. One to render the game and one to duplicate the frames. I could run forza at 1440p maximum at 82 fps and double it to 164 so that it would max out my monitor.

[DGroves]

I'm not familiar with z440's power supply and for your application it's critically important

most power supplies nowadays are what's called "single rail" meaning the supplies total output is available on each power connector

"multirail" power supplies are made using separate sub section power units that when totaled up equal the total supplies wattage the problem here is that each power subsection has a fixed wattage

look on the side of the HP supply and see what wattage each connector is able to supply

the 2080 TI is not a issue just make sure to use QUALITY 6 to 8 GPU adapters the HP one is the gold standard and highly recommended

https://www.amazon.com/HP-Power-Supply-Adapter-N1G35AA/dp/B011Z74OGW

SATA to GPU adapters are a unknown with many many being a fire hazard due to being constructed as cheaply as possible as such I'm not going to recommend any specific brand

using a dual sata to gpu adapter you should be able to draw just under 100 watts safely  in addition to the 75 watts from the pci-e slot

[69420ballin]

Oh yeah i have the 700w power supply and i think it's a multi rail psu?

Each 6 pin power connector can supply 12 volts at 18 amps which is 216 watts so thats gonna be fine. the 2080ti should work with no questions asked i guess.

About the 480, it can draw 75 watts from the pcie slot and 25 watts from a single sata connector (adapted to 8 pin) which would be perfectly safe since sata connectors are rated for 54 watts, i have it undervolted and it never really goes above 101 or 102.

the 2698 v4 would use 140 watts at max so the total system's power draw under the highest load POSSIBLY achievable would be 300 (2080ti) + 100 (480) + 140 (2698v4) + 70 MAXIMUM for all the other parts, which totals out to 610 out of the 700 available. Power won't be an issue.

I'm more concerned about the physical configuration i should use them in. How would i fit a two to two-and-a-half slot 2080ti and a two slot 480 in the same pc. Do you think that could work and would i have any issues with either the bios being weird or using half-length or quarter-length pcie slots? I'm thinking of using slots 14 and 16 (pcie 3.0 x16 and pcie 3.0 x8 a.k.a half length). I'm still unsure about whether i should put the 480 above the 2080ti or if it should be the other way around, fan noise and power consumption arent issues by the way until they get UNBEARABLE.

Would the bios freak out if i installed these two graphics cards and ran them at once?
I want to use my 480 too because i was like "oh my pc has a bunch of extra pcie slots so i could probably make it work too somehow and then i could use it as a dedicated encoding/recording/lsfg card!"

[DGroves]

i believe the z440 has open ended PCI-e slots, (slots 3 and 4 if i recall right) if so then use a x8 pci-e slot for the copro card

the 2080 card will go in slot 1 (x16 slot closest to the cpu)

[69420ballin]

Are you sure that there won't be any issues with mounting though? I believe everything should work fine but I'll update you guys when I actually get and install the parts in ~2 weeks. If this DOES indeed end up working 100% fine then I'll be surprised to say the least! Fitting a full length x16 card into an x8 slot sounds kinda dangerous but I'm sure it'll work fine to due hp's over engineering.

[SDH]

The Z440 motherboard is basically the Z640 motherboard with a few parts not installed on the existing unused traces, and the Z440 700W PSU has two of those HP above-ATX-standards supplemental power supply cables. You can really soup these up. The 6-to-8 pin HP adapter DGroves showed is the best.

The Z440 also has 2 full power PCIe Gen3 x16 PCIe slots separated enough so that you can get double width video cards in each, and they provide 75 added watts up into the cards from each slot.

18A x 12VDC = 216W, +75W from below = 291W total. More than enough total to power the 2080Ti, which wants 250W. HP makes a beefed up single 6 pin-to two 6-pin adapter so I believe you could use that plus the power from the slot to get what you need. You might need two 6 to 8 adapters depending on what the card wants to see plugged in to its two top 8-hole sockets.

You could also get a HP Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro (first generation) and mount your boot/applications M.2 SSD in its primary slot. A second M.2 documents drive in its secondary slot can come later... a very fast combo. That would go in the PCIe3 x8 slot (#16 on your MB diagram above). At least try to get a single M.2 slot ZTD G2 card and a boot/applications NVMe M.2 drive in it for a significant benefit over a SATA SSD. Regardless, either of those HP cards would want to go in the PCIe3 x8 slot because the PCIe2 x8 slot (#15) would drop bandwidth in half (and be covered up by your 2080 Ti).

You'll also want to add in the Z440 active memory cooling saddle option plus the HP front case cooling fan. They both are quiet and add significantly to the cooling capacity of those workstations. The motherboard may demand either or both.

p.s. We hope your finals turned out good!

[69420ballin]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR RESPONSES GUYS. YOU LOT DONT KNOW HOW MUCH I APPRECIATE IT FR!
Anyways, addressing everything you said:
1: I'll try to find the hp certified adapter but if i can't then ill find another one made by an oem like lenovo or dell, this is because we dont have parts like that here just laying around usually and i literally can't order it!

2: I'll stick with using a sata-to-8pin adapter for my 480 because i know it'll work fine!  In theory, i should be able to use a 129w graphics card AT MAX with that setup (since a sata connector can provide 54 and the pcie slot can give 75), my 480 only uses 102-3 watts at full load because it's undervolted and underclocked so i'm sure it'll work out!

3: I don't really need an nvme drive because i kinda find those useless? Like my sata ssd from 2014 is more than enough for me and it boots in like 15 seconds too, no complaints! Boots faster than my lil brother's pc which has a 3600 and a 3070 with a samsung 860 or smn inside it.

4: About the most pressing matter, do you think that i would be able to, in any way, fit a 2-3 slot 2080ti or a 3070 and a 2 slot 480 in this computer without anything going wrong or any weird glitches? I'm still not sure and having a coprocessor can provide massive benefits to me because i'm using my computer for gaming and i could use lsfg frame generation to play at 1440p ultra at 165hz (doubled from 75 because the 2080ti can provide that and the 480 can interpolate/duplicate it) with this setup if it DID end up working out. Would both of them even physically fit?
5: I could probably buy a front fan but the memory cooler isn't needed. I'm trying to spend my money on stuff that provides performance gains and i (personally) don't have an issue with ramping my fans up AT ALL!

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Additionally, do you guys think that upgrading my 1650 v4 to a 2698 v4 would improve performance in games? Asking because even if the 2698 has 20 cores, they can only boost to 2.8ghz. This is a whole gigahertz lower than the 1650 so i don't wanna ACCIDENTLY lose performance.

Again, thank you so much for all of your help and i'll be forever grateful! God bless.

[SDH]

I'm not doing any gaming now or in the past so I'm not a good resource on that. Sorry!

[69420ballin]

Oh well these computers ARE workstations after all so I get that! I'll be updating y'all when i actually get the parts. Lord bless!

[DGroves]

almost every PC game is unable to use anything over 4 cores and most games have issues still with even using dual cores so for gamming MHZ is king and trumps core count, for applications/non gaming it's a mixed bag, some software can use multi core effectively and some not so much

currently the best value in my opinion for a used general purpose system on eBay is the Lenovo p520 (not p520c) and the HP Z4 G4 systems both are comparable hardware and CPU wise with small differences in configurations