Can i run it

evan_01

Commendable
Aug 20, 2016
22
0
1,510
Hey, i was looking to upgrade my pc i have a HP Pavillion with a intel core i7cpu 860 @ 2.80ghz with 8GB of installed memory and a 64 bit operating system.

this is my pc - http://imgur.com/a/m2PGf

my model number is HPE-170T

i was looking into the AMD cards more specifically the rx 390x and the rx 480, i have heard that the 480 was less stable or something like that i was wondering if my pc would be able to run the 390 or if there is a nividia model that is similar in comparison that you could point me towards i know a tad bit more on those cards.
 
Solution


If you mean fits by physically fits, then that is easy to determine. Just measure from the card slots at the back of the case to the first obstruction at the front of the case, make sure you measure over the PCI-E slot that you intend to install it in. Compare the measured length to the advertised length of the card in question.

If you are referring to my warning about compatibility, I'd say you are likely 85% safe. There is a small possibility that you will have compatibility problems, but most...

maxalge

Champion
Ambassador


with that power supply a 390x is impossible

you may be able to get away with a 480 IF your power supply has the proper pcie cable

the older cpu will also bottleneck it, so dont expect full usage out of it

does your power supply have a spare 6-pin pcie cable?





 

joex444

Distinguished
You have two things going for you: The case and motherboard can accommodate a PCIe x16 GPU. IIRC, the i7-860 can run PCIe 2.0; modern GPUs are PCIe 3.0 but this is backwards compatible. It's totally fine to run at the older version of PCIe.

The only trouble you'll have is with the PSU. Here it's clear that your +12V is split into 3 "rails" which is why it says 12Va 12Vb 12Vc, and they are 18A, 15A, and 8A. Odds are the 12Vc is for the motherboard's 4 or 8 pin connector and should supply you with power on the PCIe slot itself. If your PC currently has a discrete GPU installed, take a look at what cables are going into it. There may be a 6-pin or 8-pin power cable being plugged into it.

Honestly, multi-rail PSUs are an outdated and terrible idea. You'll have almost no idea if you're overloading one of the rails or if you've distributed the load correctly. The best advice I can give you would be to replace the PSU with a single-rail solution. If you had +12V with 41A (18+15+5 = 41), you would not need to worry about this. You'd just need to make sure you had the correct PCIe power cables and if you did then it could work. Here you need to know where each cable came from and what rail it is ultimately connected to. Then you need to estimate what's being run on that rail and whether you're at risk of causing one rail to become overloaded, which can, in the best case, lead to the PC randomly rebooting while in the worst case can cause an electrical fire which burns down your entire house.

Your CPU is still a 4 core 8 thread Intel; despite its age, that 2.8GHz is probably akin to a modern 2.2GHz. This puts it in the high end laptop category in terms of power. Since the high end laptops can run GTX 980s, which are like GTX 1070s, I think you should be fine with a GTX 1060.

Last thing: if you have a discrete GPU, go figure out how much power it's drawing. Whatever it is using you'll know that your current PSU can handle that without a problem. If you find a GPU you want that uses that much or less power and you have the PCIe power cables to handle it then you should be fine.
 
I agree with all the advice given thus far, especially the PSU, you'll want a decent single 12V rail PSU with a bit more oomph.

Secondly a word of caution. It doesn't happen often, but there is a possibility that you may run into compatibility issues with a new graphics card. OEM motherboards don't always play nice with add in cards, there are cases where they will refuse to POST with certain graphics cards installed. In these cases, sometimes a BIOS update will fix the issue, in other cases, it won't work. That doesn't mean that you can't add a graphics card, it just means you can't add "that" graphics card to the system. I've attended a few threads where this has happened and the OP changed cards to either another manufacturer or different GPU model / maker and they were able to get it to work. So this is just a cautionary post so you don't get blindsided if it doesn't appear to work.
 

evan_01

Commendable
Aug 20, 2016
22
0
1,510
i want to get the gtx 1060 because it can run the video games i want to play, total war warhammer, arma 3 and guild wars so i will likely go for that and hopefully it fits in my case but i really have no idea if it will or not.
 


If you mean fits by physically fits, then that is easy to determine. Just measure from the card slots at the back of the case to the first obstruction at the front of the case, make sure you measure over the PCI-E slot that you intend to install it in. Compare the measured length to the advertised length of the card in question.

If you are referring to my warning about compatibility, I'd say you are likely 85% safe. There is a small possibility that you will have compatibility problems, but most likely not.

The 1060 is fairly frugal on power usage, you might get away without upgrading your PSU, but I'd consider getting something better with a bit more power. OEM supplied PSUs aren't known for their excellent quality and the age of you machine means that PSU is also quite old. As PSUs age, their caps age becoming less capacitive and more resistive. This means that as the PSU ages it is less capable of delivering it's advertised output. Eventually the caps will fail, and many OEM supplied PSUs don't have all the protection circuits like quality PSUs have like OCP, OVP, UVP, etc, so there is a possibility that when it does fail, it could damage other components of your system.
 
Solution