GPU Upgrades For An HP Z440?

JoeyBratton

JoeyBratton

JoeyBratton

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Got me one of those HP Z440 refurb workstations. It came with a Quaddro K2000 and handles basic 1080p gaming OK but I was thinking of upgrading to something with 4 or 6 GB of VRAM. Has anyone got some experience with this particular tower who could shed some light? If I absolutely have to, I'll just upgrade to a modular power supply but it would be nice to know I can just swap out the graphics card and that's it.


Also if you're curious about specs:

32GB DDR4
intel Zeon E5-2680 v4 (14 cores, 2.4Ghz base 35MB Cache)
Nvidia Quadro K2000
1TB SSD
HP Stock PSU and Motherboard (Z440)
 
Does the PSU have a power connector? If it does, then you have quite a few options that are better than the K2000. If it does not, you might be limited to something like a GTX 1650 or RTX 3050 6GB.
 
I went through a minefield of doing this a few years ago, my advice... don't, it never stops at a graphics card and you end up just replacing the entire computer, then realising you have to replace the case as you can't fit the parts in you want.
 
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Theres optional 700w PSU option for this HP but it's 6 pin. But you can get an official hp 6-8pin adaptor.

All upgrades depend on what PSU you have.
 
The issue is the cooling design and pulling too much power from the PCIE slots. Stick with a blower graphics card that pulls the majority of its power directly from the PSU and you’ll be ok.
 
Although the pc may have a decent psu check the 12v rail configuration, i had a z620 with a 1kw unit and popped in a 3080 but was getting horrendous performance, when i checked the psu it had 6*12v rails all split up in 15w rails, basically starving the gpu of power when it was under any kind of 3d load, as it happened i had a few gpu's to hand and found a 1070 upto a 2080ti would work just fine, but the 3080 or more it was a really bad experience.

The pc i had a 6pin pcie and 8 pin pcie cables as standard but i had to use a special 12pin to pcie 8 pin to then run the 3080 via the power dongle, but as above it didnt go well.
 
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Lots of articles online about the cards people have put in their 440s.

It will be CPU bound though so not much point going too far with it.
 
wookiee87 said:
Although the pc may have a decent psu check the 12v rail configuration, i had a z620 with a 1kw unit and popped in a 3080 but was getting horrendous performance, when i checked the psu it had 6*12v rails all split up in 15w rails, basically starving the gpu of power when it was under any kind of 3d load, as it happened i had a few gpu's to hand and found a 1070 upto a 2080ti would work just fine, but the 3080 or more it was a really bad experience.

The pc i had a 6pin pcie and 8 pin pcie cables as standard but i had to use a special 12pin to pcie 8 pin to then run the 3080 via the power dongle, but as above it didnt go well.
Click to expand...

15 amps is 180 watts so any pair of rails would supply enough power. The issue was most likely the heat the 3080 pumps out or its pulling over 70 watts from the slot.
 
Unless you're doing any productivity work that uses all those cores then probably better swapping out to a chip with less cores and a higher base/boost clocks for gaming e.g.

E5-1660 v3 - 3.0Ghz base/3.5Ghz boost, 8 Core (Haswell based)
E5-1660 v4 - 3.2Ghz base/3.8Ghz boost, 8 Core (Broadwell based)
E5-2667 v4 - 3.2Ghz base/3.6Ghz boost, 8 Core (Broadwell based)

(there are other options but most are more expensive, whereas these are <£50)

The 2011-3 i7's might also be options if supported e.g.

i7 5930K - 3.5Ghz base/3.7Ghz boost, 6 Core (Haswell based)
i7 6900K - 3.2Ghz base/3.7Ghz boost, 8 Core (Broadwell based)
i7 6850K - 3.6Ghz base/3.8Ghz boost, 6 Core (Broadwell based)


All depends what you want to play and how far you plan on going GPU wise.

List of Intel Xeon processors (Haswell-based) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

List of Intel Xeon processors (Broadwell-based) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org

LGA 2011 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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The other thing to be weary of, is that despite whatever upgrades you through at it, it's still older tech, and at some point the cost of upgrades is better spent on something newer.

E.g. a £35 2667v4 still gets absolutely demolished (in single threaded performance - a big factor for games) by a £90 i3-12100F or Ryzen 5 5500 (although obviously that's not the whole cost as you'd need a motherboard)


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