T610 with a GPU

Question

I have a T610 tower that I want to add a graphics card to. When I went looking through the manual for the server, I found that it says: 'The system supports 25W maximum power for the first two PCIe cards and 15W for the third, fourth, and fifth PCIe cards. The lower-power support on the third, fourth, and fifth cards is due to system thermal limitations and not due to system power requirements.' The thing that interested me is that it says the only issue is system thermal requirements. The total allowable power in the PCIE bay is then (25+25+15+15+15= 95 Watts) for thermal reasons. This is great because GPUs are only allowed to pull a max of 75 watts from the PCIE bus after the 25 -> 75 permission is granted upon boot. The question then remains, is pulling 75 watts from a single PCIE connector okay? The system certainly has the power available with the two 870 Watt PSUs. If thermal stability is still a concern, I can add a slot cooler, or use an external PCIE card tray to fully remove the heat from the system. If I used an external tray, would the system be able to safely supply 2x 75 watt GPUs? Again it would be well within the available system power, but I'm not sure what the onboard distribution can handle. Thanks in advance for your help! P.S. - I know it might make more sense to sell this machine and buy a workstation that more easily supports what I'm trying to do, but unfortunately this hardware has to stay in my possession for various reasons so that isn't an option.

kamburi · Answer

Hi,

I have a PowerEdge T610 and since a few months I´m able to play Call Of Duty MWs on my server because I´ve bought a GeForce GT 710 1GB (PCIE 1x) and I could overclock is to run with Core Clock at 360Mhz and Memory Clock at 320Mhz.

I believe that they said about this thermal limitation because in the part where the PCI cards are placed, there´s no way to get the hot air out of there because the Fans are inside that big black thing that guards the CPUs and Memory, so the fans are taking out the air from CPU and Memory, but for PCI cards, there´s no fan.

I was able to check on that because when I was playing I used MSI Afterburner to monitor the temperature and I could get the card up to 75 degress which is high. Then I needed to remove those metal plates that cover other PCI cards slot in order to get some air out.

Maybe this is the reason, imagine how much hot air would a GTX 1050 produce (even with the cooler).

If someone knows a way to place a GTX 1050 and a Cooler there, place let me know.

Dropp11 · Answer

@kamburi​ thanks for the post! I've been looking everywhere for a clear answer of someone successful with a GPU. Gonna purchase one and give it a try. Not needing it for gaming just to run my own home AI chat and potentially PMS. Thanks!

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