Questions On Upgrading

[CANMAN46]

So I recently decided that I will be upgrading my PC. I am running off of a 2012 business PC, and the motherboard is PCI Express 2.0 Compatible. I've already found out that the processor I'm buying is 100% compatible with the PC, but I have a question about getting a graphics card. A friend told me that if the BIOS versions were different, that I wouldn't be able to use that specific component. So say for instance I slapped a 1070 in here, would it be unable to run with the motherboard I have? Or can I go ahead and use whatever graphics card can fit? Thanks for the help in advanced everybody


http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03500805 This is the page regarding the PC, it has most of the information. If you guys need anymore insight to answer, let me know.

 

[MauveCloud]

PCI Express 3.0 is backwards compatible with PCI Express 2.0, so you can use a pci-e 3.0 card in a pci-e 2.0 slot and vice versa, it will just use the slower bandwidth (pci-e 1.1 and older is where the backward compatibility gets complicated). However, I'm not sure even a gtx 1070 will be slowed down much by running at pci-e 2.0 x16 instead of pci-e 3.0 x16. You should be fine as far as motherboard compatibility.

There are some other things to watch out for, though:
1. The psu from a prebuilt computer is very unlikely to be able to support a gtx 1070. https://forum-en.msi.com/faq/article/power-requirements-for-graphics-cards recommends a 500W psu that can provide 30 amps on the +12V rail to support a gtx 1070 system. The page you linked about the HP Pavilion p6-2317c says it has a 300W psu, which means it can provide at most 25 amps on the +12V rail (and that would require a really high quality psu; more likely you've got something like 15 amps or less available on the +12V rail)
2. An a6-5400k apu could be a bottleneck in many games.
3. The case might not have room for a gtx 1070.

 

[CANMAN46]

PCI Express 3.0 is backwards compatible with PCI Express 2.0, so you can use a pci-e 3.0 card in a pci-e 2.0 slot and vice versa, it will just use the slower bandwidth (pci-e 1.1 and older is where the backward compatibility gets complicated). However, I'm not sure even a gtx 1070 will be slowed down much by running at pci-e 2.0 x16 instead of pci-e 3.0 x16. You should be fine as far as motherboard compatibility.

There are some other things to watch out for, though:
1. The psu from a prebuilt computer is very unlikely to be able to support a gtx 1070. https://forum-en.msi.com/faq/article/power-requirements-for-graphics-cards recommends a 500W psu that can provide 30 amps on the +12V rail to support a gtx 1070 system. The page you linked about the HP Pavilion p6-2317c says it has a 300W psu, which means it can provide at most 25 amps on the +12V rail (and that would require a really high quality psu; more likely you've got something like 15 amps or less available on the +12V rail)
2. An a6-5400k apu could be a bottleneck in many games.
3. The case might not have room for a gtx 1070.

Alright thanks for an answer man! I was just using a 1070 as an example. I'll most likely be upgrading the processor to an a10-5800k and using a GTX 950 as a graphics card.
(And I will be upgrading to a better power supply)