Palit RTX 3050 StormX OC and old Dell PSU.

[Uriel]

I was planning on upgrading my son's PC with my old Palit RTX 3050 StormX OC. The PC is an adapted Dell T3500 with the original PSU, which is around 500w.

He's currently running a MSI GTX 1050 ti and the fan is getting increasingly noisy, hence considering replacement. I think it's fan bearimgs but this isn't the kind you can oil without removing the heatsink.. It's under a 75w card so doesn't need to be plugged into the PSU directly.

Generally he's happy with his PC's performance for the games he plays.

On closer inspection the PSU has just one 6 pin pci-e connector. The card has an 8 pin socket. Card TDP listed TDP is 130w

Now to my mind 130w should fall within the limits for a PCIe slot plus 6 pin connector (150w). A note of caution is that in the techpowerup review of this card they measured 20ms power spikes up to 156w, though generally gaming use was not far off listed TDP.

So a couple of questions:
1. Will the card work with just a 6 pin connector plugged in or does it need 8?
2. I'm thinking that if it's just 20ms spikes going over the rated max for the cable / pci-e slot by 6w, this is unlikely to cause a problem. Is the most likely scenario if the PSU doesn't cope here GPU instability?
3. Would anyone be concerned about using a 6 pin to 8 pin adaptor or just running off 6 pin in this situation?

 

[Wing-Man]

try it with the 6 pin it could work. i used a duel 8pin gpu with a single 8 pin for months.

 

[Purgatory]

I was planning on upgrading my son's PC with my old Palit RTX 3050 StormX OC. The PC is an adapted Dell T3500 with the original PSU, which is around 500w.

He's currently running a MSI GTX 1050 ti and the fan is getting increasingly noisy, hence considering replacement. I think it's fan bearimgs but this isn't the kind you can oil without removing the heatsink.. It's under a 75w card so doesn't need to be plugged into the PSU directly.

Generally he's happy with his PC's performance for the games he plays.

On closer inspection the PSU has just one 6 pin pci-e connector. The card has an 8 pin socket. Card TDP listed TDP is 130w

Now to my mind 130w should fall within the limits for a PCIe slot plus 6 pin connector (150w). A note of caution is that in the techpowerup review of this card they measured 20ms power spikes up to 156w, though generally gaming use was not far off listed TDP.

So a couple of questions:
1. Will the card work with just a 6 pin connector plugged in or does it need 8?
2. I'm thinking that if it's just 20ms spikes going over the rated max for the cable / pci-e slot by 6w, this is unlikely to cause a problem. Is the most likely scenario if the PSU doesn't cope here GPU instability?
3. Would anyone be concerned about using a 6 pin to 8 pin adaptor or just running off 6 pin in this situation?

The graphics card will probably not start up with just a 6pin, you can get adapters to do 6 pin to 8 pin, I looked on OCUK and couldn't see any but this is what you need here, so you can see what the ends need to look like :-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cable-Matters-2-Pack-6-Pin-Adapter/dp/B01DV1Z32Y

Cable Matters (2-Pack 6-Pin PCIe to 8-Pin PCIe Adapter Power Cable - 10cm​

or

https://www.amazon.co.uk/2-Pack-Power-Adapter-Cable-Express-Black-2-Packs/dp/B07RW9M56C/

J&D PCIe 6 Pin to PCIe 8 Pin Power Adapter Cable (2 Pack), PCI Express 6 pin to 8 pin Adapter Power Cable, 12 inch​

^... looks a bit better than the mustard and black one before, if the case has a window.



If the PSU in the dell is 500w it is more than enough for the 3050, but as stated it may not work with just the 6pin so adapter will be needed to make it an 8pin.

 

[drakulton]

It maybe that the fans are getting noisy because the thermal paste has dried out, and the fans are now having to be running at a faster speed. Disassembly of the cooler to replace the thermal paste is an easy enough job. What are the GPU temps when he's gaming?

 

[Sone]

off topic but when you say adapter T3500 have one sitting in spare room. Have you stuck a standard ATX mobo in there?

 

[Uriel]

Nope still on original motherboard with Xeon w3565 and 12gb RAM. Adapted in the sense of being repurposed for home and gaming use. It was a cheap eBay purchase a few years ago for about £70.

A pleasant surprise when I opened it up was it had a PCIe full fat x-fi in there (which is working fine, and wasn't in the eBay description). Came with W10 installed. Some tiny half height quadro GPU in there replaced with a 2nd hand GTX 1050 ti and it's been quite a capable cheap gaming machine.

It's not fan speed on the existing graphics card. It's a rattle not a whine, is intermittent but happening more frequently. I think it's gone slightly off kilter and is catching on the fan housing. No problem other than the noise while gaming.

A limitation for the RTX 3050 is the motherboard is PCIE 2.0. Definitely not going to be putting a RX 6500 XT in there.

There are a handful of very cheap 6 core 12 thread xeons at decent clockspeeds knocking around on eBay that are compatible with it. May give one of those a go at some point.

off topic but when you say adapter T3500 have one sitting in spare room. Have you stuck a standard ATX mobo in there?