Question Optiplex 9010 power draw/GPU upgrade/CPU tdp question?

[jfarms]

I have a Dell 9010 sff. I ran AIDA64 and noticed that the 3rd gen i5 never drew more than 30-35 watts. Is this normal for SFF Optiplexes? Does Dell throttle the CPU like that? (for my purposes, it's a retro gaming rig, so that's perfectly fine).

Main reason I'm asking is because I found a new HD 7750 that has 2gb DDR5 and a TDP of 70W that I haven't hooked up yet.

PSU is only 240w, but running AIDA64, I peaked at 70watts (no dedicated GPU), so I would absolutely have the headroom to use it based on those results.

That said, in Dell's literature, they say tdp limit for the pcie slot is 50w- I was testing the functionality of the slot with a gt 640 and it worked fine (but I never stress tested it).

Is there any reason to believe a 70w gpu will overwhelm the motherboard?

 

[LeviTech]

Yes, it's normal in that tiny pc's that L2 have a limit to keep CPU cool.
BTW, what CPU are we talking about?

 

[jfarms]

Yes, it's normal in that tiny pc's that L2 have a limit to keep CPU cool.
BTW, what CPU are we talking about?

i5 3470. It's interesting- it's my first experience with something like this. The CPU boosts to ~3.39 during stress testing, and one core can get up to 3.5+ a little under its rated max boost clock. So it's not like it's been gimped. For my needs I like the fact that it runs at a lower tdp all said, for heat/power consumption, especially when I'm gonna throw in a gpu that maxes out the pcie power bandwidth.

 

[LeviTech]

i5 3470. It's interesting- it's my first experience with something like this. The CPU boosts to ~3.39 during stress testing, and one core can get up to 3.5+ a little under its rated max boost clock. So it's not like it's been gimped. For my needs I like the fact that it runs at a lower tdp all said, for heat/power consumption, especially when I'm gonna throw in a gpu that maxes out the pcie power bandwidth.

I've got a secundary machine with a 3470T and have the same "issue" as yours. Probably because of L2 power limit. Install HWinfo and check that.