Successful Studio 540 Power Supply and Graphics Card PSU GPU upgrade

Question

Hi, just wanted to post a successful power supply and graphics card PSU/GPU upgrade to my trusty Studio 540 Q6600 w/ 8GB of RAM.

I used a Corsair TX850W power supply that is backwards compatible to the ATX 2.0/2.01 standard. This was not the V2 of the PSU, but its predecessor which is model CMPSU-850TX. Any of the TX650W, TX750W or TX 850W in that line should work as they do conform to the ATX 2.01 standard, and I can confirm the TX850W went in fine.

Not sure if the newer V2 of these PSU would work so be aware of that.

Just make sure you have some cable ties around as there are a lot of cables on the PSU and I grouped them according to type and they tuck neatly towards the front of the case under the hard drive locations. There is a small bracket in the case under the DVD locations that you can use to secure the cable bundle to so it doesn't shift around too much.

The 8 pin EPS/ATX12v plug indeed splits in half for the 4 pin plug next to the CPU/fan assembly. It was little tight getting the SATA/power plugs into the back of the DVD drives but it wasn't too hard.

Just take your time and mark the location of the old plugs or take pictures as you remove them if you are new to this type of upgrade, there was only two plugs on the motherboard so its not that hard.

I also installed a EVGA GTX 560 OC in the Studio 540 as well and it fit fine, just remove the hard drive temporarily to install it and plug in 2 PCI-e plugs (there are 4 of these PCI-e 6 pins on this power supply) and you are good. The card takes up two slots but fits fine and actually is smaller than the BFG 9800GT I had in there.

Runs fine, very quiet and cool, and no bios upgrade, (I'm runnin 1.09) was necessary.

Playing Skyrim, WOW, SWTOR at high settings without a glitch.

HTH someone looking to do the same, I did some research on the subject and was not able to come up with a definitive upgrade path that worked so posted this here.

RobinBredin · Answer

Double posting is not allowed.

HanoverB · Answer

I realized that and  had already contacted Chris to remove the duplicate post on the other board............

DELL-Chris M · Answer

I like it here on this board. Removed the other one. Great post. Thanks.

iamdavebowers · Answer

Question - Was there any issue with this covering up some of the Sata ports? I already moved the whole PC into another case with loads of room, but my worry is not all 4 ports will be accessible. Could you link to the model you bought for the graphics card?

HanoverB · Answer

EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1461-KR GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

www.newegg.com/.../Product.aspx

I am using 4 SATA devices: 2 HDD's and DVD-RW and DVD-Bluray, so no problem accessing the SATA ports for those devices with that video card in the stock Studio 540 case

HTH

Hanover

souppyy · Answer

What kind of performance improvements did you see with that upgrade? I have the 4670 graphics card in my same studio 540.. I am concerned about spending $300 and not really achieving much improvement in FPS in games.

Kelbear1 · Answer

I cannot imagine that you would not see much improvement since there is a huge difference in performance between the old HD 4670 and the GTX 560.  However, you do not need to spend $300.  You do not need a 850 watt power supply.  You should easily be able to get by with less than $200.  Also, if you have the HD 4670 now, you really may not need to jump clear up to a GTX 560 and could get by with less.  If you don't have an HD monitor that supports a 1920 x 1080 resolution, then there is no point in getting this card anyway.  There are many cards out today that will outperform what you have now.  The HD 7770 may be a good choice and you can get excellent name brand power supplies for $70.  The idea is not to put too much into upgrade costs on an older system.

HanoverB · Answer

Agree with Kelbear 100%. I run dual 28' monitors for some pretty hard core gaming and that's why I chose the GTX 560 ($179)  at that time.  The price differential between the 850W ($94) power supply and the 650W ($79)  power supply was $15 so I upgraded knowing I could use this PSU in a different machine down the line.   I did all my shopping around Black Friday and that had a lot to do with what I was willing to spend to upgrade this machine. I think you can go to a site that does benchmarks to see where the performance of various cards lies and then try to get the best bang for the buck depending on your needs http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html In my situation I am able able to play D3, Skyrim at max setting and WOW at high settings usually without any problems at 1920 x 1080.  I cap my fps at 60, and in really intensive boss fights in a 25man raid, my fps will sometimes drop down to 45-50fps.   That may be a result of my internet connection more than anything else and those games are very CPU intensive as well.  Plus the WOW client has problems as well.   I upgraded from a 9800GT which was dismal and in those 25man raids with a lot of data coming down the pipe I would drop down to 15-20fps with an occasional lock up.   With the new card the 3D depth of the images and smoothness in those boss fights are the most obvious changes I see. HTH

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Successful Studio 540 Power Supply and Graphics Card PSU GPU upgrade

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