Specific GPU requirements for a small build

InfiniteNoise

InfiniteNoise

InfiniteNoise

Associate
Joined
3 Feb 2011
Posts
1,258
I was gonna post this in GPU section of the forum but figured it'd be more suited here since it's about a SFF build.

I have specific requirements for a GPU, I'm looking for a GPU that's

- ideally a single slot + low profile, but dual slot normal height ITX card no longer than 150mm is acceptable
- not Nvidia, so Intel/AMD only
- preferably has better performance than a RX 6400/3050/A380
- doesn't cost more than 150-200
- has more than 8GB of VRAM, 6GB is kinda acceptable but it's the absolute minimum
- PCIe power only

But from what I can find, the only thing that meets all these requirements is something like a Nvidia RTX A1000 but it's a Nvidia GPU and doesn't meet the price range.

Last year I had a Sparkle ELF A380, it was acceptable, but it had a major issue of fan control not working properly, it'd stop and start up the fan few times a minute and no amount of messing about with fan control solved this, so I ended up returning it, I feel like at this point getting the A380 but connect the fan to the motherboard instead for fan control that actually works seems like the best option.
 
Last edited:
It doesn't exist.

3050 ====> 5050LP, 4060LP, 5060LP way over budget and needs a power supply connection

A380 ====>
Intel Arc Pro A50 6GB Low-Profile
On pre order, over budget, doesn't have 8Gb ram, only on par with A380 and no idea about driver support vs their gaming cards.

Intel Arc Pro B50 16GB Low-Profile
Double your budget


6400 ====> ....



Cheap GPU's are a thing of the past

Modern gaming cards need more than 75w

Low profile cards are rare and expensive; I wish they weren't as I've used SFF ex business PC's which can be picked up cheap that are fine for day to day use.


Get a better PSU / bigger case, use an dock / external GPU, bodge it and use an external PSU, use a cloud GPU eg GeForce Now.



List of low profile GPUs for small form factor PCs (SFFs) | sentimental µsounds

unix and post-ironic anemoia, µsounds' starlit diary
microsounds.github.io microsounds.github.io
 
Yeah, wish I pre-ordered the B50 when it was up for 299.99 like couple of months ago and now it's 399.99 and it's still on pre-order, at 299.99 I was willing to increase the budget, but not anymore now, it's just out of range.

Unfortunately I can't just go for a bigger PSU, switch to a bigger case or making any further adjustments without spending even more, so I'll have to make do with what's possible, but also I'm kind of doing a challenge where I try to pack the strongest option I can find while on a kinda strict budget, with limited space, and without making too much changes, that's proving to be difficult. :)

Guess I'll have to look around even harder for A40/A50 that's in stock, everywhere I've looked it's either on pre-order/out of stock or from stores that I don't trust or never heard of before.
 
2nd hand market maybe

are you able to explain the no NVidia? is it principle?

could a egpu work for your needs? external to the case?

i feel like your looking at workstation cards maybe.

when i looked int he past it was the 1660 LP 6gb version all i could find. its very knish market
 
InfiniteNoise said:
Last year I had a Sparkle ELF A380, it was acceptable, but it had a major issue of fan control not working properly, it'd stop and start up the fan few times a minute and no amount of messing about with fan control solved this, so I ended up returning it, I feel like at this point getting the A380 but connect the fan to the motherboard instead for fan control that actually works seems like the best option.
Click to expand...
The fan issue was fixed via a windows driver update prior to June last year, all you had to do was install windows and the GPU driver, which in turn updated the card firmware. After that it behaved under any OS.
 
LostCorpse said:
are you able to explain the no NVidia? is it principle?

could a egpu work for your needs? external to the case?
Click to expand...
I'm not opposed to Nvidia, just that it's running Linux so that's one less annoying thing to deal with, even though it's a lot better than it used to be nowadays, that and the Nvidia options I've looked at aren't as cheap as AMD/Intel's options.

eGPU not needed, not really doing anything where I would really need it, I just want it to take up as little space as possible and to be portable enough that I can just easily carry it around.

Avalon said:
The fan issue was fixed via a windows driver update prior to June last year, all you had to do was install windows and the GPU driver, which in turn updated the card firmware. After that it behaved under any OS.
Click to expand...
I had the card in Feb last year, so before the fixes I guess.

Tetras said:
To be clear, are you only talking about gaming here?
Click to expand...
There will be some gaming, but it won't be the main thing, I just wanted something good enough that i won't have to replace for years, it's a 2nd/spare/backup/shared PC, mostly built out of spare parts I've had lying around, just missing the GPU, so for now I'm running off the integrated graphics from Ultra 5 245K, which is more capable than I expected so I'll probably just stick with using the integrated graphics until I find a decent deal on a GPU that fits, it's not high on priority so I'm fine with running it like this for some time.

As for the requirements and why I have them, the case is a SKTC A07 and the PSU is a Silverstone 350w Flex PSU, it does have a 6 pin PCIe power though, but not a whole lot of options that use it in this form factor it seems.
 
There are a couple of youtube videos for that case, someone swapped out the PSU for a 600 watt version and then 3d printed a new case front that gave them 10mm more space.

They then squeezed in an RTX 5050 LP, loaded up steam and played a few games at 1600p.

I haven't linked the videos because they have links to a site where they list the parts they used and earn commision from the sales.


InfiniteNoise said:
There will be some gaming, but it won't be the main thing, I just wanted something good enough that i won't have to replace for years
Click to expand...

The problem is even with all the mods an RTX 5050 is already going to be weak at higher resolutions for AAA gaming so you can't say you won't need to replace it for years even if you go to the expense / trouble that they did in the video.


In another of their videos they built an eGPU dock for a mini PC using a full height HP RTX 4060 single fan ITX GPU which would probably fit in your case without any modifications if you got the 600w PSU.


Its going to depend on what games you want to play, how much time and money you want to throw at it and if you need to use both PC's at the same time. If its just going to sit under the TV in the living room etc then using Steam link with your gaming PC or signing up to Geforce now might be the easiest / cheapest options.



It will be interesting to see how these custom ITX builds compare to the steam machine when its released.
 
I got a m720q with t8500, a1000 and 32gb ram which the kiddo use for gaming in the kitchen. Plays a lot of stuff really well the A1000 is a cracker of a GPU. Hopefully they do a Blackwell version in same size
IMG-20250929-171341.jpg
 
Cyber-Mav said:
I got a m720q with t8500, a1000 and 32gb ram which the kiddo use for gaming in the kitchen. Plays a lot of stuff really well the A1000 is a cracker of a GPU. Hopefully they do a Blackwell version in same size
IMG-20250929-171341.jpg
Click to expand...

The A1000 could be decent for the right use case, it’s just insanely over priced making it a pretty bad choice for a gaming add in card. It’s the type of card that only makes sense if you find it cheap and you have the need of GPU acceleration. You can buy a new Arc B50 for less, than a used A1000 and the Arc card is massively more capable.

IRRC the A1000 is a little faster than a RX6400 in most cases which cost £150 new.
 
A1000 wipes the floor with the rx6400. Had to check countless benches to try and extrapolate the performance difference between the two. The 8gb vram and dlss also offer a considerable advantage.
If the difference in performance was small I'd have got the rx6400.
A1000 can be had for 200 quid which is what I paid. You just got to hunt around for the deals. B50 I'm not convinced since it needs a rebar enabled platform and the A2000 can be had for cheaper
B50 seems to have only 16 rops so it's gonna be slow
 
Last edited:
Cyber-Mav said:
A1000 wipes the floor with the rx6400. Had to check countless benches to try and extrapolate the performance difference between the two. The 8gb vram and dlss also offer a considerable advantage.
If the difference in performance was small I'd have got the rx6400.
A1000 can be had for 200 quid which is what I paid. You just got to hunt around for the deals. B50 I'm not convinced since it needs a rebar enabled platform and the A2000 can be had for cheaper
B50 seems to have only 16 rops so it's gonna be slow
Click to expand...

The a1000 is about 1-2 tflops faster than a rx6400. An Arc b50 is easily faster than both, combined…
 
Last edited:
Tflops don't work out to much in real world gaming performance indicaton.
B50 with it's 16 rops will struggle against the others. Only advantage b50 has is that it has a higher tdp so can pull more wattage.
Ampere GPU being 8nm will not have the efficiency that smaller process nodes can give but architecturally it's superior.
There were rumours of a Rx 7400 with 6gb vram but not seen it come to market in the single slot low profile size
 
Last edited:
Ended up grabbing RTX 2000 Ada, my requirements have shifted, it's for work related and I needed something that does the job, it's kinda one of these "spend it or lose it" situations, so in the end it worked out.

For how small it is and how little power it consumes, it packs a punch, I'm impressed, a bit on the expensive side though but I didn't have to pay for 100% of it, it was partly funded.

Looking at benchmarks, it's not that far behind 3060 Ti gaming-wise, that's impressive, but I won't be able to test out games on it, it's mostly restricted to AI/LLM and rendering tasks.

I do have enough spare parts left for yet another small build, but I think I'm just gonna grab Ryzen 7 8700G for this one, use the integrated graphics and just be done with it.
 
Last edited:
The ada 2000 is very good. I'm on the hunt for a 4000 sff Blackwell but at 1600 quid it's too much for what it is. Shame they don't release gaming variants at this small form factor for reasonable costs
 
Just watched a review of the rx7400 8gb , it comes in dell pre builds only and turns out it's not as good as what it's specs are on paper and costs silly money
 
I just looked up the specs of RX 7400 and it seems to be identical to the one Steam's using for their Steam Machine (RDNA 3, 28 CUs, 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, 128 bit bus width), but with a big difference in TDP (55w for RX 7400 vs 110w for Steam Machine's version), the specs page for the Steam Machine also mentions 2.45GHz max sustained clock, which is higher than 2.3GHz boost clock on RX 7400.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom