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Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2015 11:50 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
Since we're on the subject of power consumption, just wanted to mention that the 7750 and the 750ti looked like they were consuming around the same amount of power according to my Kill-a-watt, a bit more for the 750ti. Both were in the 110-120W range while running benchmarks (The 750ti seemed to stay at around 120 longer than the 7750)

Core i3 4130
8GB 1.5V DDR 1600 (2x4GB)
1 2.5" SSD
1 320GB 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD
no optical drive.
FSP220-60LE 220W mini ITX PSU 80+ rated (says 80% at typical full load)

Despite the PSU being only rated for 220W I chose this over other higher wattage PSUs because of the 16A and 10A 12V rails. A lot of the PSUs I looked at were barely giving 10-12A on a single 12V rail.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 12:01 am
by Mr Bigglesworth
deruberhanyok wrote:
That's correct, both AMD and NVIDIA report TDP differently. Intel does, too.

I'm not sure how we could measure power draw directly from the PCIe bus - anyone have any ideas?

An external power meter like a kill-a-watt could estimate the additional power drawn at the wall, and once you factor in an efficiency rating, that might be fairly accurate, but it depends on what kind of comparison you're doing.

For instance, the system I have has an i3-4370 in it. If I measured power draw at load (say, running 3dmark) and then figured in the efficiency of the power brick for the PicoPSU, I might get a fairly accurate idea what the system is using. But if I then added a video card and measured it, it would be different: adding the power used by the add-in video card, but subtracting whatever the onboard GPU used. It might not be much, but I don't know how that would affect the accuracy of the reading.

Do you think that would be sufficient, or do you need something even more accurate?


Oh! How about setting the benchmark to use software rendering only? It should offload the vast majority of the GPU load to the CPU instead. No having to subtract iGPU wattage from the equation. :)

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 12:43 am
by whm1974
Not to be a smart ass, but if you guys avoided SFF/low profile cases you wouldn't have this problem of trying to find decent low profile video cards.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:40 am
by krclvlthn
whm1974 wrote:
Not to be a smart ass, but if you guys avoided SFF/low profile cases you wouldn't have this problem of trying to find decent low profile video cards.


Not to be smart ass, but I find your post lacking.

For now, I cannot justify buying small HDMI-stick-PC(Intel Compute Stick) - price is not very good, limited configuration AND to that v.low performance. Try running 3D Bluray quality video or 4K video on that thing :D
HTPCs are still good in that manner.

Some people like to have small, energy efficient standalone HTPC units below their huge TV screen which can play ANY media, ANY time with no lagging or being resource limited.
And I can play some modern games too, if I want.


Sure, HTPC are going to be obsolete, but looking into the future, it's still good few years from now.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 3:18 am
by whm1974
Some people like to have small, energy efficient standalone HTPC units below their huge TV screen which can play ANY media, ANY time with no lagging or being resource limited.
And I can play some modern games too, if I want.


I suppose I could live with a SFF or HTPC if I could stick a normal size video card in one.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 4:10 am
by krclvlthn
whm1974 wrote:
Some people like to have small, energy efficient standalone HTPC units below their huge TV screen which can play ANY media, ANY time with no lagging or being resource limited.
And I can play some modern games too, if I want.


I suppose I could live with a SFF or HTPC if I could stick a normal size video card in one.

Well, in fact you can. For full sized GPUs you could use riser cards.
If in deficit of power from PSU, you can use additional power unit(like FSP group booster)

But all of above beats the idea behind HTPC - small size, low power, high performance media unit.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 8:38 am
by deruberhanyok
Mr Bigglesworth wrote:
Since we're on the subject of power consumption, just wanted to mention that the 7750 and the 750ti looked like they were consuming around the same amount of power according to my Kill-a-watt, a bit more for the 750ti. Both were in the 110-120W range while running benchmarks (The 750ti seemed to stay at around 120 longer than the 7750)


Interesting! Did you happen to run with the iGPU for comparison?

Despite the PSU being only rated for 220W I chose this over other higher wattage PSUs because of the 16A and 10A 12V rails. A lot of the PSUs I looked at were barely giving 10-12A on a single 12V rail.


I noticed this too - ultimately it was the reason I went with a Pico PSU for my own setup, as it is basically all 12V. I was also disappointed in the guesstimated efficiency rating of the PSU in the ISK 300-150. I figured Antec might have improved it since the case's original release, but no such luck.

Oh! How about setting the benchmark to use software rendering only? It should offload the vast majority of the GPU load to the CPU instead. No having to subtract iGPU wattage from the equation. :)


Not a bad idea, but then you'd be comparing software rendering, which would really tax the CPU, to hardware rendering with the discrete card, so the processor's power use wouldn't be near equivalent. Also... I'm not sure the last time I ran a benchmark and saw an option for software rendering. I suppose I could force it in Linux somehow by forcing it to use the Mesa softpipe/llvmpipe driver. That would be interesting, and also probably make my computer explode. :)

whm1974 wrote:
Not to be a smart ass, but if you guys avoided SFF/low profile cases you wouldn't have this problem of trying to find decent low profile video cards.


Hey, great contribution! However, if I might make one small observation: prefacing it with "not to be a smartass" doesn't hide the fact that you basically just posted "I don't understand the point of this thread, so I'm just going to go and tell everyone participating in it that I think they are stupid and have brought on their own troubles."

I really don't appreciate that.

The point, since you missed it (or ignored it, or simply misunderstood it):

Some us prefer small computers to bigger ones. Some of us like our SFF cases to be smaller than can be done with a full height video card; some have OEM systems that won't take a full height video card. And since the low profile type of video cards don't get a lot of reviews (or even news for that matter), I thought it might be useful to share the info I gathered when I built my system last year, along with the ongoing research I do whenever I check up on my options.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:03 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
deruberhanyok wrote:
Interesting! Did you happen to run with the iGPU for comparison?


Since you asked so nicely, I took out the 750ti and ran Unigine Valley for a bit on the iGPU. :)

The results were quite surprising. The core i3 was bouncing between 44W - 48W with the iGPU (peaked a couple of times almost to 51W) That implies the 750ti was soaking almost 70W of power, coming real close to the PCIe power limit for video cards...

750ti: 43 FPS
HD 4600 8 FPS

Also, I think the 750ti IS thermal throttling at 80C. After about 20 mins of running Valley, I noticed the power consumption slowly slipped down to 110W and refused to climb higher than that.

deruberhanyok wrote:
I noticed this too - ultimately it was the reason I went with a Pico PSU for my own setup, as it is basically all 12V. I was also disappointed in the guesstimated efficiency rating of the PSU in the ISK 300-150. I figured Antec might have improved it since the case's original release, but no such luck.


The PSU in the ISK 300-150 is not good. I junked mine after I tested with 7750. The exhaust coming out of that thing was pretty hot indicating the PSU was being pushed hard. I kept the AC power plug to make an adapter to fit an FSP 220W. (Yeah, I really like those PSUs) It serves as my parent's computer with an Ivy Bridge Core i3, 8GB of ram and an SSD.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 2:56 am
by krclvlthn
That is some serious power draw from 750 :o

But for real, is there huge difference between r7 250 and gtx 750 ti in terms of performance?

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 6:00 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
whm1974 wrote:
Not to be a smart ass, but if you guys avoided SFF/low profile cases you wouldn't have this problem of trying to find decent low profile video cards.


The specific purpose of my build was to use an SFF/low profile case as it is planned to be integrated with an AV cabinet. With the release of products like the Alienware Alpha, my project has been mooted. But I still wanted to finish it regardless.

Edited for spelling

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 6:04 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
krclvlthn wrote:
That is some serious power draw from 750 :o

But for real, is there huge difference between r7 250 and gtx 750 ti in terms of performance?


Yes, going from 7750 to 750ti is roughly double the 3D performance (at least from synthetic benchmarks)

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 8:03 am
by deruberhanyok
Thanks for running those numbers, Mr. Bigglesworth! The actual power draw numbers seem to add up, actually. IIRC, you have to factor in the efficiency rating of the PSU when you calculate it. So 120W drawn at the wall, on a power supply 80% efficient, would mean the system was using something around 95W of power.

It also puts your iGPU usage numbers around 35-40 watts, which I think is about right when you're looking at actual numbers for a Core i3?

Follow the math through and that means the video cards were drawing between 55W and 65W. That matches up with what is expected (remember, have to fudge it a little figuring the iGPU would increase CPU power draw a bit, but then not be used when the discrete card is installed) from both of them - the 7750's official rating is 55W and the 750Ti's is 60W.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 2:02 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
deruberhanyok wrote:
Thanks for running those numbers, Mr. Bigglesworth! The actual power draw numbers seem to add up, actually. IIRC, you have to factor in the efficiency rating of the PSU when you calculate it. So 120W drawn at the wall, on a power supply 80% efficient, would mean the system was using something around 95W of power.

It also puts your iGPU usage numbers around 35-40 watts, which I think is about right when you're looking at actual numbers for a Core i3?

Follow the math through and that means the video cards were drawing between 55W and 65W. That matches up with what is expected (remember, have to fudge it a little figuring the iGPU would increase CPU power draw a bit, but then not be used when the discrete card is installed) from both of them - the 7750's official rating is 55W and the 750Ti's is 60W.



Thanks for pointing that out. I completely forgot to factor in the efficiency for the PSU.

According to wikipedia, the 7750 with DDR3 is rated at 55W, but the GDDR5 model which I used for testing is rated at 75W. In actual gaming use, not furmark, Tom's hardware reported GPU draw at about 52W (I haven't investigated his technique for figuring out GPU power draw yet) which agrees with your math. I figure GPU draw on the 750ti is about 60-65W.

One of the things bothering me is the Unigine reported GPU clock of 1346mhz. That's actually quite a bit outside of spec for 750ti.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 2:19 pm
by anotherengineer
It's too bad they don't take a high end mobile GPU and put it on a small card like that, might be a decent market for it, especially with HTPC, steam machines, etc.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2015 1:10 pm
by vargis14
Follow the math through and that means the video cards were drawing between 55W and 65W. That matches up with what is expected (remember, have to fudge it a little figuring the iGPU would increase CPU power draw a bit, but then not be used when the discrete card is installed) from both of them - the 7750's official rating is 55W and the 750Ti's is 60W.[/quote]

According to wikipedia, the 7750 with DDR3 is rated at 55W, but the GDDR5 model which I used for testing is rated at 75W. In actual gaming use, not furmark, Tom's hardware reported GPU draw at about 52W (I haven't investigated his technique for figuring out GPU power draw yet) which agrees with your math. I figure GPU draw on the 750ti is about 60-65W.

One of the things bothering me is the Unigine reported GPU clock of 1346mhz. That's actually quite a bit outside of spec for 750ti.[/quote]

For one thing Unigine consistently reports GPU clock speeds incorrectly. My 770s alway show at a higher speed than they are actually running. Use GPUz to monitor your graphics cards vitals. Temps, speeds etc.

As for the power draw on a HD7750 with 1GB of GDDR5 I own a HIS iCooler HD7750 "the one with a Arctic cooling heatsink and fan on it that runs at 5 or 6000rpms and is still pretty much silent and has no PCIE power connector. Anyway I am using it in a OEM gateway system OVERCLOCKED when I game to 1125 from 800mhz on the core and depending on game memory from 1300-1400mhz from 1125mhz with the board power up 20% along with the core voltage maxed at 1.2v or something. All powered by a 75 watt PCIE 16x slot. The GDDR5 HD7750 like Tom's hardware stated can only use around 50-55 watts max especially with my massive overclock that I ran FURMARK with. It is mounted in my system equipped with a i3-2120 2c4t CPU with 2 x 4 gb sticks of DDR3 1333, 2x1TB 7200rpm HDD's with a 60GB SSD as a cache drive via this Acer Cache software I found online since my H67 Motherboard does not support Intel SRT. The CPU fan, a 80mm fan, a 120mm fan I added, a Blueray burner I added and dvd burner, A PCIE 1x wireless card, Note i added the second 1TB HDD and the 60GB SSD. All powered by the stock super bobo 300watt Acer/Gateway OEM PSU that does not even have 2 open molex power connectors. But the system has been on 24/7 for as good 3 years and considering I bought it refurbished from microcenter for 309$ for the Mini Tower without the dedicated 7750 I picked up for $80 it is the best HTPC that costed under 400$ money can buy:) I also bought another Gateway refurbished Slim Tower that came with a g530 2x2gb of ddr3 1066 and a 1TB HDD for 219$ and I added a ASUS LP ddr3 based HD 6570 for $40 that I also overclock to 800 from 600 since it has the same GPU as a 6670 with 480sp's it just runs 200mhz slower and does not have Gddr5 Memory and I added a i3-2120 cpu I ended up spending 45$ for and that system has a really tiny 220watt psu and all is well running 24/7.
I bought them both because I could not come anywhere close to the performance for the price even if I built them myself and had 2 free win 7 licenses. Plus i had to replace my 2 dell Zino HD rigs that had 3250e 1.5ghz dual core am2 CPUs in them that were way too slow.Now Over 3 years later of them both serving as HTPC's and light gaming rigs with 24/7 use I could not be Happier.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 6:39 pm
by krclvlthn
Now, time to report.

Also my suggestion is to add information about HTPCs/low power setups in the first page.
It will help people looking for low profile GPUs/will it run? setups.


My setup is:
Intel i5-2400 @ 3.10GHz
8 GB generic ECC RAM
HP Elite 8200 Series Mobo
Generic 7200RPM SATA HDD
Generic SSD
240W generic HP PSU rated @ 98% efficiency. Active PFC
Sapphire R7 250 1GB DDR5 GPU

And to my amazement it is working very nice and stable.
So, it is really possible to run this kind of gpu under 240W PSU. It does consume 55W of continous power under load but nothing more.
I can run most modern games in high/medium settings with good framerate.
It will be my HTPC for a good time until something better comes out.

btw. be careful, there are lot of R7 250's which are not the same, look for SU it should be 512 or more. Anything below is cr*p

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 9:36 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
krclvlthn wrote:
Now, time to report.

240W generic HP PSU rated @ 98% efficiency. Active PFC


Would it be asking too much to check the amp ratings on the 12V rails on that PSU? I also find it a bit hard to believe it's 98% efficient, but that's not on you (unless you typo'd), more a commentary on Dell marketing. :)

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 9:48 pm
by deruberhanyok
krclvlthn, I'll try to add some info to the front post the next time I do a big update - there's already a lot of text in there and I think I'm going to need to scale it back at some point. I think a lot of people would be surprised what you can run off of an "underrated" PSU - a lot of times cards will say you need 350w+ for even a basic video card, which is obviously not true. I know years ago this was done because manufacturers were trying to account for low quality power supplies that were all over the place, but I don't think it's quite as much of a problem as it once was.

At any rate, I'm glad to hear the Sapphire card is working out for you. How are the noise levels? The Powercolor R7 250E I've tested here is pretty quiet when idle, and while the fan speeds up when I'm running a game it doesn't get near as loud as I expected.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 8:28 am
by krclvlthn
Mr Bigglesworth wrote:
krclvlthn wrote:
Now, time to report.

240W generic HP PSU rated @ 98% efficiency. Active PFC


Would it be asking too much to check the amp ratings on the 12V rails on that PSU? I also find it a bit hard to believe it's 98% efficient, but that's not on you (unless you typo'd), more a commentary on Dell marketing. :)

Yes, it was typo.
240W active PFC; 87/90/87% efficient at 20/50/100% load

For amp ratings, I found this info in 8200 elite manual:
Total continous power: 240W Max surge power(10s.) 265W
Amp ratings: 12v main, cpu: 16A max, surge: 18A Max ripple: 120mV




I find GPU very quiet, played Crysis 3 yesterday on high settings and GPU wasn't even hot.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 2:03 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
krclvlthn wrote:
Mr Bigglesworth wrote:
krclvlthn wrote:
Now, time to report.

240W generic HP PSU rated @ 98% efficiency. Active PFC


Would it be asking too much to check the amp ratings on the 12V rails on that PSU? I also find it a bit hard to believe it's 98% efficient, but that's not on you (unless you typo'd), more a commentary on Dell marketing. :)

Yes, it was typo.
240W active PFC; 87/90/87% efficient at 20/50/100% load

For amp ratings, I found this info in 8200 elite manual:
Total continous power: 240W Max surge power(10s.) 265W
Amp ratings: 12v main, cpu: 16A max, surge: 18A Max ripple: 120mV


That is actually a very nicely efficient PSU. The one thing I closely look at in a PSU is the 12V rail. Recently, CPU and GPU take their power from the 12V rail, 3.3V and 5V are now mostly for accessories. I add up the total power draw of my system at the wall and try to fit in under 60-65% of the wattage of the 12V rail(s). That's not taking into account efficiencies and 5V/3.3V usage. My methodology is really for conventional PCs and small 4-bay and under NAS boxes using 2.5" drives. (Once you get into boxes with lots of 3.5" drives, the 5V rail starts becoming more important.)

In your case, your system power draw should be between 110-130W. Your PSU can comfortably handle 192W, 216W max. I would be comfortable going up to about 125-130W of draw. With a bit of testing and experimenting, possibly even 150W.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 2:13 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
deruberhanyok wrote:
krclvlthn, I'll try to add some info to the front post the next time I do a big update - there's already a lot of text in there and I think I'm going to need to scale it back at some point. I think a lot of people would be surprised what you can run off of an "underrated" PSU - a lot of times cards will say you need 350w+ for even a basic video card, which is obviously not true. I know years ago this was done because manufacturers were trying to account for low quality power supplies that were all over the place, but I don't think it's quite as much of a problem as it once was.


Back in the day, PSUs and computers weren't as heavily dependent on the 12V rail as they are now. They were more "balanced". A PSU capable of providing 200+ Watts on the 12V rail usually were found on PSUs of 400W total rated power and above. Nowadays you can find 220-250W PSUs capable of providing the majority of their power over the 12V rail, but you really have to pay attention to the numbers on the side of the PSU.

There is talk in the IEEE community about the future of PSUs going entirely 12V. Something about it being easier to deliver higher amp loads at higher voltage than lower voltage, and power step down efficiencies for DC voltage. If I find the links again I'll post them.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 3:28 pm
by SecretSquirrel
Mr Bigglesworth wrote:
There is talk in the IEEE community about the future of PSUs going entirely 12V. Something about it being easier to deliver higher amp loads at higher voltage than lower voltage, and power step down efficiencies for DC voltage. If I find the links again I'll post them.


Point of load regulation. It comes down to the formula P=I^2 x R. What it boils down to in laymans terms is that power loss when moving electricity is dependent on current and resistance. Voltage does directly play into it. Where voltage has an impact is that P=V x I as well. So, for a fixed amount of Power needed for consumption, the higher the voltage, the lower the current. If you have a converter that drops 12V down to 1V for a CPU that has a dissipation of 100W (100A@1V) that is 95% efficient, you will be drawing 105.3W (8.77A@12V) from 12V. The wires that run from the regulator to the CPU have some amount of resistance. Say the traces from the power input to the CPU has a resistance of 0.005 Ohms. If you power flowing across those traces is 100A@1V, then you will loose 50W (and probably melt the traces too). If the power flowing is a 12V, then you only loose 0.38W.

Back to the OP.

It makes sense for large loads, like the aforementioned CPU and Graphics Cards. For many, perhaps most, power supplies, effciency peaks in the mid range and starts to drop as you reach a high percentage of rated load. It tend to size a power supply by taking Graphics Card and CPU power ratings and ensuring that the power supply can provide that with about 60% of the 12V rail(s). In you case that would be around 115W. The CPU you list has a TDP of 95W and as you note, the Graphics card pulls 55W. That works out to be 70% of the 12V line. Above 80% I would start to think about a new power supply, but at 70%, the only downside is going to be, perhaps, a little less efficiency and given the difference between 50% and 100% efficiency that you list, it doesn't strike me as anything to worry about.

--SS

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2015 12:51 pm
by deruberhanyok
So I just noticed last night while browsing Newegg, the NVIDIA Quadro K1200:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814133587

As a workstation card the price is way out of the range for what we're talking about in this thread, however it is relevant, because, well, check the specs:

NVIDIA datasheet
https://www.pny.com/nvidia-quadro-k1200-displayport
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2641/quadro-k1200.html

Yep, that's a single slot, low profile, 512-core GM107 with 4GB of GDDR5 rated at only 45W power draw. Clock speeds are very close to a regular GeForce 750, GPU config is the same, but rated for 10W less - I'm guessing it's a newer revision of GM107 with some efficiences in power use. Or possibly just the manufacturing has improved to a point where they are getting parts that can handle lower voltage than the initial GM107s.

Anyways, I'm thinking this may be a sign of what we'll see as the lower end GeForce 900 series parts.

Also, if anyone is able to find a place to buy just the K1200's fan, it might be a boon to those who already bought a low profile 750/750ti and want a single-slot fan that can handle it (assuming the mounting screws go in the same place, I can't find a picture of the back of the card anywhere yet).

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2015 8:13 pm
by Mr Bigglesworth
deruberhanyok wrote:
So I just noticed last night while browsing Newegg, the NVIDIA Quadro K1200:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814133587

As a workstation card the price is way out of the range for what we're talking about in this thread, however it is relevant, because, well, check the specs:

NVIDIA datasheet
https://www.pny.com/nvidia-quadro-k1200-displayport
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2641/quadro-k1200.html

Yep, that's a single slot, low profile, 512-core GM107 with 4GB of GDDR5 rated at only 45W power draw. Clock speeds are very close to a regular GeForce 750, GPU config is the same, but rated for 10W less - I'm guessing it's a newer revision of GM107 with some efficiences in power use. Or possibly just the manufacturing has improved to a point where they are getting parts that can handle lower voltage than the initial GM107s.

Anyways, I'm thinking this may be a sign of what we'll see as the lower end GeForce 900 series parts.

Also, if anyone is able to find a place to buy just the K1200's fan, it might be a boon to those who already bought a low profile 750/750ti and want a single-slot fan that can handle it (assuming the mounting screws go in the same place, I can't find a picture of the back of the card anywhere yet).


Damn, that cooler design is pretty much where I'm going with my homebrew, just without the nice touches like a shroud that looks like it was designed for it, or the copper base plate and soldered thin-fins.

The 45W TDP indicates it might be from the mobile line which are probably just better binned GM107 like the 860M, however nvidia does not currently have a 512 SMM part in mobile.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2015 4:18 pm
by jackfrost
Mr Bigglesworth wrote:
So, I got the PNY Quadro 600 today (it was still in the mailbox from yesterday) and realized the heatsink was just WAY too small. It was about the size of an oreo cookie (once removed from the shroud), and weighed about as much...sure It would fit the mounting holes, but...

On a lark, I repasted the heatsink and tossed the Quadro into the system. According to HW Monitor, the thing idles at 54C! After a round of passmark, I saw temps of 90C.
For even the 40W GPU in the Quadro, this heatsink was not adequate, I don't even want to try this on the 750 ti.


You need to either mod the 750 ti vbios to use a different fan profile, or set something like MSI Afterburner to run at windows startup with a custom fan profile... and then it will work great (the whole quadro heatsink+fan). Or at least it does for me. No doubt that a better cooling product would be better, but this is enough for now.

With the lack of worthwhile updates to low profile graphic cards, I've ended up using my method two more times... so I now have 3x 750 TI's using the Quadro heatsink/fan attachments. They all work great, although fan sound can be a problem.

The last time I did this I had to buy the 750 ti off ebay from Taiwan, because I couldn't find it from anywhere... and then I purchased this: newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133561 for its heatsink+fan.

It's still the best option I can find... for a single slot low profile video card anyways.

Image

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 6:59 am
by Mr Bigglesworth
jackfrost wrote:
You need to either mod the 750 ti vbios to use a different fan profile, or set something like MSI Afterburner to run at windows startup with a custom fan profile... and then it will work great (the whole quadro heatsink+fan). Or at least it does for me. No doubt that a better cooling product would be better, but this is enough for now.

With the lack of worthwhile updates to low profile graphic cards, I've ended up using my method two more times... so I now have 3x 750 TI's using the Quadro heatsink/fan attachments. They all work great, although fan sound can be a problem.

The last time I did this I had to buy the 750 ti off ebay from Taiwan, because I couldn't find it from anywhere... and then I purchased this: newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133561 for its heatsink+fan.

it's still the best option I can find... for a single slot low profile video card anyways.


I don't know how you keep your 750tis going with that tiny little quadro heatsink/fan. Even with the beefier heatsink on my mod, I can't keep the GPU from thermal throttling at 80c...seeling your unigine score, I'm pretty sure your 750ti is being throttled far more than mine....my Unigine Valley score at the same settings as yours is 41 fps. with a score of 1739

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 10:38 am
by jackfrost
Mr Bigglesworth wrote:
I don't know how you keep your 750tis going with that tiny little quadro heatsink/fan. Even with the beefier heatsink on my mod, I can't keep the GPU from thermal throttling at 80c...seeling your unigine score, I'm pretty sure your 750ti is being throttled far more than mine....my Unigine Valley score at the same settings as yours is 41 fps. with a score of 1739


My score is probably mostly because I've done absolutely nothing to tweak performance.

I do see some throttling yes (core clock goes from 1202 to 1071, ram clock stays steady), but even with the throttling it's better than the available alternatives. Yes, a better heatsink would be better (I've thought about putting the effort in to design a machined block of aluminium that "wraps" around the card for extra cooling, but honestly it works well enough for me not to bother. I don't really think I see throttling in anything but benchmarks, but I'll check.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 7:40 pm
by deruberhanyok
EVGA has a single slot GeForce GT 740:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... gnorebbr=1

Next update to the main post I'll be including that under the single-slot NVIDIA options. It isn't Maxwell, but it's still a better choice than the GT 730 for the green camp.

Price isn't bad, either, although I don't know why they didn't include a displayport output.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 7:57 pm
by localhostrulez
deruberhanyok wrote:
EVGA has a single slot GeForce GT 740:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... gnorebbr=1

Next update to the main post I'll be including that under the single-slot NVIDIA options. It isn't Maxwell, but it's still a better choice than the GT 730 for the green camp.

Price isn't bad, either, although I don't know why they didn't include a displayport output.

Keep in mind that Nvidia specs dual link DVI-I, dual link DVI-D, and mini HDMI for that card. And they did DVI, HDMI, and VGA (derived from the DVI-I probably). With my 730, nvidia spec'd DVI-I, HDMI, and VGA for the reference card, and that's what I got on my EVGA unit. Not sure how easily vendors can add connectors like Displayport on top of the nvidia design.

Re: Best low profile video cards available (March 2015)

Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 8:26 pm
by DrDominodog51
localhostrulez wrote:
deruberhanyok wrote:
EVGA has a single slot GeForce GT 740:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... gnorebbr=1

Next update to the main post I'll be including that under the single-slot NVIDIA options. It isn't Maxwell, but it's still a better choice than the GT 730 for the green camp.

Price isn't bad, either, although I don't know why they didn't include a displayport output.

Keep in mind that Nvidia specs dual link DVI-I, dual link DVI-D, and mini HDMI for that card. And they did DVI, HDMI, and VGA (derived from the DVI-I probably). With my 730, nvidia spec'd DVI-I, HDMI, and VGA for the reference card, and that's what I got on my EVGA unit. Not sure how easily vendors can add connectors like Displayport on top of the nvidia design.


Most Green Team users buy the GTX line or Quadros not the GT line. The profits generated by GT gpus are not enough to warrant modifications of the reference PCB.