[SOLVED] is there a watt limitation on PCI E X16 slot on dell optiplex motherboards

Jul 7, 2020
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Question: is there a watt limitation on some (or all) of the dell optiplex motherboards? I know some motherboards have a WATT limit (often 25 W or 35 W) stamped on the motherboard next to the PCI E X16 slot.

I have an optiplex 3020 SFF and it has no such declaration stamped on the motherboard (like I have seen online). I always thought with video cards, u only had to know that your PSU had enough watt to power the video card. I bought a visiontek 7750 X6 EYEFINITY video card that I had hoped to install in the 3020 SFF. of course, it is clearly to large for the SFF case. but can I use an optiplex 3020 MT (mini tower) and install it in that (I can upgrade the PSU if needed....it has a 290W stock PSU.....and the visiontek 7750 requires 300W PSU or greater). I believe it will easily fit in the mini tower if I relocate the hard drive (which shouldn't be a problem).

but my question is. does the wattage limitation on the PCI express slot (if it even exists) kill my ability to use this card)? if the wattage declaration is not stamped on the motherboard, does that mean there is no wattage limitation on the PCI E slot? or do I just try it and see if it works. this card draws max 55W power (according to the visiontek website). I will be using it for day trading which I have been told will be low watt usage compared to gaming. plus, if you look in the optiplex 3020 Mini tower manual, it mentions AMD radeon R7 250 2 GB (apparently you could order the unit with that video card in it if u wanted). and this card draws 65W which is more than the visiontek 7750 X6 eyefinity which only draws 55 W max. but then again, maybe if you ordered the optiplex 3020 from dell with the AMD R7 250 video card, then they made sure to have a motherboard in it that had no PCI E slot wattage limitation.

so I am a bit confused to say the least.

thanks
 
Solution
Very likely a Optiplex MT supports standard 75W on the x16. Certainly if a particular board has an option of a 65W GPU, that's a good sign.

You typically only run into wattage issues on some SFF systems.