[SOLVED] Setting up a Geforce RTX 2070

[kdmeteor]

Hi,

I have the PRIME H310M-A R2.0 Board from ASUSTek (official page). I recently bought a GeForce RTX 2070 grafics card (chip manufacturer is NVIDIA) (im1, im2). The card has two slots for power cables, one with 6 and one with 8 pins (im). My board only has one free connector that fits (front, back, pins, 6 pins as you can see, 3 black and 3 yellow cables.)

When I tried to make the card work, the initial result was that the monitor it was plugged into stayed completely dark. Eventually, I read that you have to change BIOS settings to enable the discrete card as the board also has two slots on-board for monitors. (I've had a two monitor setup for a while using those, which works well.) Since then, I instead get the message "Power down and connect the PCI cables for this video card,", same as the person here. I can't access the BIOS when this appears; however, once I unplug the card, I can boot normally again. The message does not change if I unplug the PCI-E cable.

Other than the 6-slot PCI cable, the only other free power cables I've found on the board are these two, which I don't imagine are useful.

So, what should I do? Do I need an 8-slot cable? A different 6-slot? Both a 6 and an 8-slot? Is there any way to make this work without buying a different board or card?

I don't know much about hardware, as is probably apparent from this description, so let me know if you need other information.

 

[jay32267]

You need to purchase a new power supply.

Here is the PSU tier list.

Article - [psucultists] PSU tier list rev. 14.8 (Final Update Jul '21)

PSU Tier List 4.0 rev. 14.8 (outdated) Last Update: 12-07-2021 Legend : Gray - EoL/obsolete and/or otherwise not recommended for purchase. Green - small form-factor (gold and blue colors are disregarded due to scarcity of SFX PSUs) Gold - best units in the tier (includes requirements for blue...

forums.tomshardware.com

here's a good article.

Discussion - PSU recommendations and power supply discussion thread - Tom's hardware

Below you will find MY standard list of recommended power supplies and beyond that this thread is intended as a landing place for questions or discussions regarding specific units, platforms or related PSU tech, all of which are all welcome to be discussed here. If it's related to power supplies...

forums.tomshardware.com

in general...Corsair and Seasonic are good brands....and I'd go with 650 watts or more (as I like a little overhead) but you can probably get a way with 550.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-psus,4229.html

 

[faalin]

The graphics card needs both the 6 and 8 pin plugged in to work. 90% of power supplies today will come with a 6+2 pin on the cable, you will be able to use the 6 pin (tucking the 2 pins off to the side) for the 6 pin connector on the card. Then use another cable from the PSU that is a 8 pin ( not a cpu/esp cable) or another 6+2 to feed the 8 pin connector on the card

 

[kdmeteor]

Alright, thanks the quick response.

What confuses me a bit is that, if I look for power supplies on amazon, the article descriptions don't include a list of cables. Do I just assume that a modern power supply is going to have all of the cables that I need (and is compatible with the board?) Or do I take the model ID and get the information from somewhere else?

For example, I was just looking at this one (apologies for linking to a german page but shipping) based on Watt and manufacturer. (EDIT: If I go by the recommendations linked here, then this would be it instead.)

 

[jay32267]

The vast majority of PSUs at 650 watts are going to have the right cables.

To make 100% sure....go to the manufacturer's website and look.

 

[jay32267]

The one you linked to has the right cables and that's a good quality power supply.

 

[kdmeteor]

Alright, that makes sense.

The one you linked to has the right cables and that's a good quality power supply.

Is this referring to the first (Corsair RM650) or the second (Corsair CX750) link in my post?

 

[jay32267]

Alright, that makes sense.



Is this referring to the first (Corsair RM650) or the second (Corsair CX750) link in my post?

They're both acceptable. The RM is of better quality and is sufficient as far as wattage.
You really don't need 750 watts with that GPU......but if you wanted to get something like an RTX 3090 you would.

 

[kdmeteor]

Alright, I ordered the RM. It's supposed to arrive tomorrow -- I'll make a post here if I know whether it works.

 

[jay32267]

Alright, I ordered the RM. It's supposed to arrive tomorrow -- I'll make a post here if I know whether it works.

Just out of curiosity....what PSU were you trying to use?

 

[kdmeteor]

Don't know except that it was a XILENCE. I'll probably know once I remove it.

When I bought this PC, I was specifically looking for an offer that didn't include any GPU -- figured that, since I don't care about graphics, I wouldn't need one, so let's save some money there. Probably this selected for a PSU with poor support for GPUs.

What I didn't know at the time is that GPUs are basically required to do serious machine learning.

 

[jay32267]

From what I see Xilence makes some awful units.

Even if it was powerful enough....I wouldn't trust it with my hardware.

 

[kdmeteor]

Not only does the PSU work, it worked on the first try after I set everything up and booted the PC (including the graphic card). Given how unskilled I am with everything related to hardware, I'd say that's at least a medium-sized miracle.

Thanks a lot for the help. I would have never guessed that the Power Supply was the issue. I didn't even really know that it was a component you can swap out.

Old PSU: [1]

Trivia: I had to cut through the CPU cable on the old PSU to get it out of the case. The alternative would have been to remove a part of the case itself, and well screw that.