Z2 G9 Tower Upgrades - WIFI, GPU and RAM

[98Martin]

I recently purchased a second hand, sealed in box Z2 G9 Tower that I got a for great price. It is a relatively basic configuration with an i7 13700, 16GB ram and a 512GB M.2 SSD. Importantly it has the 700w power supply that gives me enough headroom for a GPU upgrade up to a RTX 3080 according to the supported options in the quickspecs.

The upgrades I'd like to do is fit a supported WLAN card into the associated M.2 slot but have done the research on the topic and found that it would be a 50/50 chance that an intel AX211 would work out of the box but an almost guarantee that a AX210 would work. I've found a couple of options on eBay that I am considering, the first being an internal antenna kit which was removed from a Z2 G8 tower but I believe would work with the newer G9? The WLAN card would need changed to either of the previously mentioned models (AX211 or AX210) but otherwise I imagine the antennas would be a direct fit with the included hardware. The second option is an external antenna kit from a Dell branded machine.

As for the RAM I'd like to up the capacity to 32GB either with another matching 16GB stick from HP which doesn't seem like a cheap option or by buying two new sticks of DDR5-4800 MHz from a supplier such as MrMemory in the UK. This supplier also sells SSDs that I would be keen to fit as the motherboard supports a total of 3 M.2's with only one currently occupied that could be reserved for the OS and other background apps.

Lastly for the GPU as mentioned the tower could be fitted with up to a RTX 3080 which I will keep an eye out for on eBay as either a founders edition card or a HP OEM card to ensure compatibility.

Please let me know if any of my plans won't work or if there is a better alternative available, thanks!

[98Martin]

The PC arrived yesterday and I dove straight in to looking at the upgrades that I mentioned after taking a good first look at the computer as the ad only showed a picture of the sealed box so everything other than what I could get from HP PartPicker was new to me. Wonderfully and unexpectedly it came with the larger 125w CPU cooler although having as far as I'm aware a i7 13700  which would normally come with the smaller 65w cooler but I'm happy. Likewise it has the front fans installed but no dust filter on the front bezel so I've ordered the part 141L3AA from Amazon to slow down the dust inhalation of the tower. I haven't fired it up yet as I don't have a display port cable so can't confirm the processor or it's function for that matter.... but I digress. 

For the Wi-Fi I have ordered a universal Intel AX210 desktop kit after reading a couple more posts which does come with a PCI-E bracket for installing the antennas, however, if the cable is too short or stretched diagonally across the motherboard from the WLAN M.2 slot I will remove the motherboard and drill out the original mounting points at the top of the motherboard I/O shield so that it looks cleaner and won't interfere with the GPU. 

I've also ordered two sticks of Crucial 16GB DDR5 4800MHz RAM so that I won't have to upgrade anytime soon and hopefully it should be compatible as it cost far less than the cost of an original HP stick. Likewise I intend to replace the existing single 512mb M.2 SSD with a 2TB version from Crucial again that I ordered at the same time. The current card is located underneath the GPU PCI-E with a fairly tall heatsink in the slot marked SSD1, however I feel that moving the new card to a slot further from the GPU should reduce it's temperature and won't worry me with clearance. Would using only one SSD on the slot marked SSD2 and leaving SSD1 vacant cause any problems?

Lastly, I'm currently bidding on an HP RTX 3080 and am aware that it is a card that runs notably hot on a case even with fantastic airflow, this makes me worry that with the G9's somewhat limited intake and exhaust it might thermally throttle somewhat often. This has lead me to investigate the hole in the PCI-E support bracket that I can only imagine was punched out for a fan and after some quick research I found a part number (2B1D4AA) which is the same bracket with a blower fan installed. It seems that this was only available on the G5 tower and for many caused problems after installing a GPU and not having it installed as it threw a code on boot for a missing fan. I've had a thorough look over the G9 motherboard and there is no additional 4-pin fan header for the blower to connect to, however I feel that it could be a worthy upgrade if it's possible to increase the airflow over the GPU and hopefully aid in cooling it. My thoughts are to purchase the bracket complete with blower and a Noctua Y-split fan cable and connect both the rear case fan and blower to the motherboards CHFAN2 header using the split cable. I'm hoping someone could give me advice on this as I know there is warnings about overloading fan headers on the motherboard but I'm not sure these two fans would do it, or if it would be worthwhile at all.

Thanks again!