Optiplex 3050 GPU Upgrade

[Alex_Rogers.36]

I've got a optiplex 3050 and a want to upgrade the graphics card so that I can play some games; Arma 3 in particular. I want to spend around £100-£150. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

My current specs are:

Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
    Intel Core i3 7100 @ 3.90GHz
RAM
    4.00GB @ 1197MHz
Graphics
    DELL S2419HM (1920x1080@59Hz)
    Intel HD Graphics 630 (Dell)

 

[boggy77]

what power supply unit does it have?

[Nathat23]

Which size is it? You won't be able to upgrade any of the the SFF models, and the MT will be limited to a 75w gpu.

[Alex_Rogers.36]

Is this what you mean?

[Kisai]

22 minutes ago, Alex_Rogers.36 said:

I've got a optiplex 3050 and a want to upgrade the graphics card so that I can play some games; Arma 3 in particular. I want to spend around £100-£150. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

My current specs are:

Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
    Intel Core i3 7100 @ 3.90GHz
RAM
    4.00GB @ 1197MHz
Graphics
    DELL S2419HM (1920x1080@59Hz)
    Intel HD Graphics 630 (Dell)

 

You will only be able to use a SFF PCIe GPU in that, which limits your options to usually the low-end ones. SFF machines are not generally upgraded, but they do usually have PCIe slots, just they only take low-rise PCIe cards, which are intended for network cards, not gpu's.

 

With that said. You can find them, but you can only put a 25w GPU in it. So that excludes pretty much everything. You might get away with a GTX 1050 or a 1650

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GTX-1650-OC-4GT/dp/B07ZTXYVMN/ref=psdc_284822_t2_B06X9GLGSC

 

Bear in mind that, there is absolutely no guarantee that any specific GPU can work on a SFF machine since they lack adequate cooling.

 

Also, upgrade that system to 16GB of ram or higher end games will be choked by swap thrashing.

[Alex_Rogers.36]

Thanks for that

[Kisai]

51 minutes ago, Nathat23 said:

Which size is it? You won't be able to upgrade any of the the SFF models, and the MT will be limited to a 75w gpu.

They can, just it's a PITA.

 

This is the system board

 

Note the immediately obvious problem, you can't put a PCIe card that takes two slots in this.

 

Now take a look at the shape of the chassis

 

Now there is a question here if this is just a generic photo, since that's  a DVI GPU and these models don't have that:

However if you put the logical puzzle pieces together you can tell that the PSU has no clearance from the PCIe x16 slot. So that GPU I linked in the previous post? Likely will fit, but not sure if it will fit the 16x slot. There's a guy on youtube who fit one in a 7050, which is the exact same layout.

 

My suggestion to the OP, open the chassis first and check how much clearance there is. If there is only enough clearance for a single-slot GPU, then that's all you're going to get away with. Anything you purchase has to be a "SFF" model which is not as tall, and usually those are still full size cards, they just have a smaller expansion card plate that you have to swap.

 

 

[Alex_Rogers.36]

Thanks for the help. Appreciate it