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Will a GT 1030 make any difference?

Man of Honour
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I have a HP Prodesk 400 G6 SFF which the kids use for school work and some very light gaming (Roblox, Minecraft). It’s a pretty rapid little machine for most stuff but thinking ahead it really isn’t meant for gaming. Despite this I want to give it a go before dropping big money on a gaming rig down the line.

Spec:
i7-9700
8Gb 2666MHz RAM
Intel HD630 graphics
256Gb m2
180w PSU (I’m assuming a proprietary design)
SFF case

My eldest son is showing an interest in some more demanding games. Whilst the Intel 630 does surprisingly well with Roblox and Minecraft at 1080p, I’m guessing it’ll struggle if any more demanding games are tried.

There is a PCIe 16x slot which can take a low profile card, so I looked at the GT 1030. Size and power draw are the limitations and based on some research I think I’ll just about get away with the 1030 on a 180w PSU.

Would a GT1030 provide a noticeable and worthwhile improvement over the Intel 630? I’m not expecting top level gaming performance, just something that would be good enough to run an array of games at 1080p on moderate settings at a frame rate that is relatively smooth.

Are there any alternatives to the 1030 which can match the performance : power draw ratio?

Thanks.
 
A GT1030 will be a huge boost from the Intel 630, although just make sure you get one that has GDDR5 memory rather than DDR4 memory as it performs almost twice as fast:

https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwrevie...1030-gddr5-benchmark-worst-graphics-card-2018

A used GTX750Ti would also be a decent option or I believe there is a rare low profile version of the AMD RX550.

If you did decide to upgrade to a full rig further down the line, the CPU you have is decent, so you could buy a 1151 motherboard, case and standard psu, and retain the existing CPU/RAM/M2

Edit:
Used Nvidia Quadro K620 would also be a reasonable option - similar to a GTX745 (slightly slower than a 750Ti), but available cheapily and often with a low profile bracket

IMO a GT 1030 at the current prices of ~£80 is just too much to spend (given that £80 used would "normally" get you an RX470/480/570/580 or GTX780/970, which are massively higher performance, but obviously aren't suitable for a SFF machine)
 
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Thanks for the comprehensive reply. How do the alternatives compare in terms of power draw? I have used some of the online calculators to determine power draw under load and it reckons my system with a 1030GT will draw 163w under load which is probably okay but tight on a 180w PSU. It looks like a 750Ti would push that up to 192w and an RX550 to 198w. I don’t mind upgrading the power supply but I’m not sure how easy it would be to find one that will fit. On the flip side I have seen reports online of people successfully running a GTX 1060 in the same machine. The calculated load wattage is 254w and I can’t really understand how they are getting away with it.

I agree with you on value for money. Some of these cards seem to have gone up in price a good 30% or more. Although a card and an 8Gb stick of RAM will be a darn sight cheaper than a new case, mobo, power supply etc. on top.
 
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. How do the alternatives compare in terms of power draw? I have used some of the online calculators to determine power draw under load and it reckons my system with a 1030GT will draw 163w under load which is probably okay but tight on a 180w PSU. It looks like a 750Ti would push that up to 192w and an RX550 to 198w.

RX550 (X) should be fine as is mentioned in the official HP Spec sheet
https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/4aa7-5840eee.pdf

RX550X has a 50W TDP, so anything around that should be fine.

750Ti is 60W so might be too much, but TDP isn't necessarily the same thing as power draw, and would also be the worst case figure.

Quadro K620 is 45W TDP so would also be ok.

Not particularly accurate, but as no one really reviews low end cards, here's some idea as to how they stack up:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/...Force-GTX-750-Ti/3540vs2950vs4069vs3757vs2815
 
I just opened up the case to have a look and it’s even tighter than I thought. Not only will it have to be low profile, it’ll have to be quite a slim card due to the proximity of the slot to the PSU. I guess that rules out all of the passive cooled options.
TF4aFwz.jpg

The RX550X seems to be quite rare so my options are even further limited. It’s looking more likely that I’ll need to move to a bigger case if the lads want to get into more demanding games, but if a cheap and slim card comes up I might jump on it to test the concept before spending more.
 
Single slot 1030 should fit in there. I put an EVGA one in a Dell SFF 2500K a couple years ago that's used an HTPC. Alright for light gaming - similar performance to a 750 non-Ti. Just make sure its a DDR5 card. The DDR4 ones are cack.
 
There are rare low profile single slot GTX 1650 and 1050 Ti - maybe you can find a used one.
I have found the ASL G1504 1050ti single slot low profile. Quick look at bench results suggests it’s a big step above the 1030.

I can only find it available direct from China. Unsure if it is worth the risk in case any warranty support is required.
 
I have found the ASL G1504 1050ti single slot low profile. Quick look at bench results suggests it’s a big step above the 1030.

I can only find it available direct from China. Unsure if it is worth the risk in case any warranty support is required.


Depends how much it is?

If it's any more than £100 then I wouldn't be bothering - better to put that money towards a new case/motherboard/psu (~£200), and then pick up any cheap used GPU (7870/7950/7970/270X/280X, GTX670/770) which are all similar or better performance to a 1050ti and can often be had for £30-£50
 
Depends how much it is?

If it's any more than £100 then I wouldn't be bothering - better to put that money towards a new case/motherboard/psu (~£200), and then pick up any cheap used GPU (7870/7950/7970/270X/280X, GTX670/770) which are all similar or better performance to a 1050ti and can often be had for £30-£50
Just under £170 including shipping. I guess it comes down to whether or not it would be good enough for a while or if the need to upgrade again isn’t far off. Ideally I’d like to keep the SFF case as it fits neatly where it lives. But if the 1050ti would ultimately need upgrading in, say, under a year then as you say it would make sense to bite the bullet and move to a bigger case.
 
It's the worst time to buy a GPU - there's a huge demand by gamers with free time, work from home crowd and crypto miners. I think your best options are:
1. Use the integrated Intel graphics for another few months and then, when the market cools down, buy something like a low profile, low power RTX 3000 series.
2. Sell your current PC and buy a prebuild with a modern GPU, e.g. RTX 3060 Ti (if you can find one).
 
I have been looking into this again and came across a Yeston brand Chinese version of the RX550 (~£110) and RX560 (~£140). Both are single slot and low profile.

From what I can see they both should be better than a GT 1030 and I have seen one example of the 560 being used in a SFF HP like mine with the proprietary PSU.

Would the RX560 be worth the extra £30 over the 550? Any other watch outs?
 
A 560 is quite a bit (50%+) faster than a 550. I'm not sure that makes it worth £140 though, given it's still a fair bit slower than a 1050 (non-Ti) in most games. It is around 75-100% faster than a GT 1030 though, depending on the game.
 
Would the RX560 be worth the extra £30 over the 550? Any other watch outs?

It probably is, but the RX560 still isn't particularly great (it's generally slower the 2GB GTX1050, and definitely slower than the 1050Ti it was designed to compete against).

If you're dead set on keeping the machine, then some more easily obtainable options to look at could be either:
~£110-£130 Used - Quadro P620 - 2GB Pascal based, 512 Shaders (So better than a 1030, but not quite as good as a 1050)
~£125-£160 Used - Quadro P1000 - 4GB Pascal based, 640 Shaders (Similar to a GTX1050 but with 4GB of slightly slower ram rather than 2GB)

(Low profile brackets for Quadro's are also cheap/easy to obtain if you get one without)


Again take with a mountain of salt, but some comparison:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/...-vs-Quadro-P1000/3757vs3761vs3708vs3729vs3727
 
Some food for thought, thank you. The more I think about it the more I’m leaning towards just buying the kids an Xbox. It just doesn’t sit right when these GPUs are going for double or more than what they did a while ago.
 
If you do go for a radeon card you can use radeon chill to lower the maximum fps and so the energy draw of the card. Yes a Xbox series s wouldn't be much more and have all new parts, if you want to move on from it to another Xbox or PC in the future then you could have a go at using it for emulation. https://youtu.be/UGAjhjp8dnI
 
I wouldn't risk it on a 180W PSU.

I've not seen the 1030 pull over 35W.

1650's are fine we have them in Prodesk 400's at work. Although I doubt you can get low profile ones now although we also have full size 1650's in Prodesk 400 MT's too.

There are Gigabyte 750ti's low profile still kicking about if you look just seen a couple with a quick search.
 
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