RTX 3080 on Z440?

[ZERR00X]

hello there, I've bought a Z440 recently and i decided to upgrade my GPU to RTX3080

And I have no clue about this upgrade does my PSU can handle it or not, 6 pin to 8 pin connector is safe? No fire? No burning?

My Z440 Comes with 

Xeon E5-2680 v4

RAM 32GB 

1T NVMe kingmax 

PSU 700w 

I just wanna know can i use 3080 with 6 pin to 8 pin connectors?

And also i saw a Indian person that installed 3090 without any issues to his z440, he used one 6 pin to 8 pin and 2 SATA to 8 pin connector 

Is that ok if i do it like that?

I'll be thankful if someone answer me♡

[NonSequitur777]

@ZERR00X,

Welcome to our HP Community forum!

Yes, you can use a 6-pin to 8-pin PCIe power cable adapter, because each of the PCIe power cables can deliver up to 12V x 18A = 216-watt of power. According to industry specs, a PCIe 8-pin power cable (or 6+2-pin) connector must be rated by PCI-SIG to deliver at least 150-watt of power, so you're well above that.

An RTX 3080 with a 320-watt TDP requires a minimum 700-watt power supply (according to TechPowerUp), so you are almost cutting it short, but I believe it should work.

It so happened that I have worked extensively with an HP Z440 Workstation (see my upgrade project), and -what do you know, I did install an RTX 3080 and it worked OK -though the card's performance (20th percentile) shows it was bottlenecked by my Intel i7-6900K -even though this is a very capable processor: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/67546477.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[ZERR00X]

Thanks for information 

But I'm wondering of i use 100% of GPU the 6pin to 8 pin connectors won't get on fire? 

[NonSequitur777]

@ZERR00X,

Why would you assume that there is a fire hazard by using a (quality) PCIe 6-pin to PCIe 8-pin adapter cable?

Again, each PCIe power cable is rated to provide up to 216-watt of power, meaning, even if an RTX 3080 is hypothetically running at 100% aka pulling 320-watt of power, that is [ 320 ÷ (2 x 216) ] x 100 = 74% of PCIe power cables capacity.  Up there, but I don't see an electrical hazard here.

Remember, I showed you that I actually installed an RTX 3080 in my HP Z440 Workstation, and I didn't see any fire or smoke.  Since then, I installed a GTX 980 Ti (250-watt TDP) -because this lower-performing card isn't bottlenecked by my processor, and other than using MSI Afterburner to make sure my GTX 980 Ti's cooling fans run at least at 50% (because this card runs fairly hot), and having installed an additional case cooling fan, there are zero heat/fire issues.  At least in my personal anecdotal experience.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[ZERR00X]

Cuz everyone in YouTube/Reddit says there will be fire or smoke when you use 6 pin to 8 pin connector 

And i just wanna make sure my Z440 is good enough for gaming usage 

Thanks for your support i really appreciate it❤️‍🔥

[NonSequitur777 · Accepted solution]

@ZERR00X,

You're very welcome -I enjoy conversations such as between you and me!

Again, an RTX 3080 will run just fine, but as I showed, because HP Z440 Workstation processors bottleneck this high-end card, you're not getting more out of it, than say, if you were using an RTX 3060 Ti.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[ZERR00X]

Thanks a lot, it was my pleasure to having conversations with you

Just another question 

If i use RTX 3080 at 2K resolution for gaming there will be bottleneck for CPU?

XEON E5-2680 v4

[NonSequitur777]

@ZERR00X,

That's a great question.

The Xeon E5-2680 v4 (14-Cores, 28-Threads, 2.40 GHz up to 3.30 GHz) is a solid Broadwell-EP CPU, but it's still a 2016-era workstation chip. Whilst it performs very well in multithreaded workloads (like rendering, encoding, or simulations), its per-core performance and single-thread speed are notably lower than modern gaming CPUs.

When paired with a GeForce RTX 3080, the amount of CPU bottleneck depends on your target resolution and frame rate:

• At 1440p (2K) – The GPU becomes the main limiting factor in most modern titles, so the bottleneck from the Xeon is moderate. You'll still get excellent performance, especially in GPU-bound games.

• At 1080p – The CPU bottleneck becomes more visible. Frame rates might be lower or more inconsistent compared to what the same GPU would deliver with a newer CPU.

• At 4K – The system becomes almost entirely GPU-bound, meaning the Xeon's lower IPC matters even less.

In short, there will be some bottleneck, but at 2K resolution, I suspect that the impact will be minor in most games. The RTX 3080 is still a good match if you plan to game mostly at 1440p or higher and if you don't mind that the CPU won't fully unleash the GPU's potential in CPU-heavy titles.

For reference, your E5-2680 v4 doesn't performs as well in gaming like my Core i7-6700K (8-Cores, 16-Threads, 3.20 GHz up to 4.00 GHz) -that's why I picked the i7-6900K in the first place, but your CPU truly shines in heavily threaded tasks.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777