not sure what the RX 6400 has to do with Plex since it has no VCE. That being said, it's probably the fastest card one can fit into the SFF 3020. I want to get one for giving mine the best chance it has at gaming (currently using a GT 1030 and it's meh). But I think older cards that have VCE or NVENC hardware support like the RX 550 or T600 might be better suited to Plex for transcoding down high quality streams to lower quality ones 'on the fly' for less capable devices like older phones and tablets. For high quality transcoding from BluRay, the software route (which you have shown) is best, though. Takes a lot more time but the quality is so much better, and it's something you only need to do once per file. I found it slightly amusing that you went out of your way to keep the internal DVD drive (same thing I did, SATA card) yet still went external for a BD reader. What, you couldn't find an internal that would work? Or did you want to keep the ability to burn DVDs?
You’re exactly right. Just picked up a T600 and will make another video and do whatever editing TH-cam allows to this one b/c I don’t want anyone to be misinformed. I’ve pinned your comment. And yes, I couldn’t find an internal BD reader that wasn’t also a BD burner. The external was both more cost effective and allows me to use MakeMKV on a Blu-ray and Handbrake on a DVD at the same time, saving me a little time.
@@OptiGPU Nice, I've never been pinned before. Oh wait, yeah there was wrestling in high school. Not that kind. LOL Good choice with the T600. After looking around a bit I found that VCE isn't the greatest with Plex, so it's good you went with nVidia. Heck, even intel QSV is better than VCE (from what I read). So theoretically you could set up a Plex box with no video card at all (though it's probably better to have the nVidia card). I haven't really played with Plex that much (probably because I only have a GT 1030 which lacks NVENC) and I don't currently have a need to stream videos to other machines, but I'm interested in this topic for future reference when I do get into the position of needing to know this... anyway, I know a little about it so I felt the need to bring up the issue of the RX 6400's lack of encoding. It's a banger of a gaming card, though, and probably best utilized as a 3020 SFF's last possible upgrade if the primary purpose is gaming.
I bought the XFX RX 6400 LP, you have to removed the Front audio connector on the 3020 SFF unit, which will cause an Alert I/O failure that will prompt you to press F1 at every startup, Get a Sapphire Pulse Or Power Color RX card with a gap between the bracket and heatsink for the cards to fit properly, Do not but the Yeston RX 6400, it's the same as the XFX RX 6400 variant with the same fully housed heatsink shroud that will hit the connector on board! Those fully housed single fan GPU's run hot to the touch.
HEVC capable tablets, which exist since many years don't cost a thing. I don't think it's needed to transcode at home, if not streaming over bottlenecked internet. Yeah software encoding has higher quality ofc. Good question, maybe it's just a matter of price, when internal SATA BD drives may be more expensive than USB ones? Personally I'd like to add a hotswap 2x 2,5 " SSD instead of the slim DVD, but that hotswap case costs more than the whole used SFF PC, lol. So I think I just use 3x SSD internally or a 2nd PC with HDMI+KVM switch instead of swapping SSD/HDD. 2-4 TB Samsung or SanDisk SSD seems to be a good sweetspot nowadays. I'd like to add the 30 TB Intel SSD, but it's a bit more pricey, lol. I've thrown out the HDD, because it has nasty vibrations and sth. lik 250 or 500 GB is cheap in SSD nowadays and saves more power, too. Oh, one more thought I forgot in the other post: What about the 35 W lock on the PCIe slot? It's not 75 W in the SFF formats, so it's being throttled. You need to use the DT or MT cases to use the full 75 W I think or use a GPU with external SATA power conn and preferably more than the std. 240/255 W PSU.
Those workstation cards are very interesting, may be faster, even cheaper. I mean avg. GPUs are so expensive, no real changes since 2017 actually. The RX 6400 should cost like 40-70 bucks, tbh. What's the problem with BD burners? From CD and DVD era I always had better reading compatibility with burners than with readers. The price difference ofc. makes sense.
I have a DELL 7070 with i5-8500 CPU and an RX-6400 graphics card. My computer desk is located not far from my living room couch (6.75 feet), and so I have my TV listed as a second monitor, and due to the closeness, my mouse is still being picked up from that distance at the couch, and thus I have computer control from the couch. Plus I found a website that basically has everything that NETFLIX has, plus more, and it's 100% free. No registration required as either. My collection of movie DVD's are played on my separate good old DVD player which handles Blu Ray as well.
Cool setup! If you plan on using only the living room TV for playing personal media, it can keep you from having to convert formats for steaming and can give you a better picture quality.
@@OptiGPU I try to keep my Computer/Entertainment system as simple as can be. ( I am still using my 2009 Samsung TV that cost me $9.95 to repair. Its power supply had eventually died.) Currently I am in the process of watching the Stargate TV series, since it's available at the free TV/Movie website, plus I pickup as many as 50 free TV air channels here in Toronto with my tiny Terk Amplified Indoor HDTV Antenna, and an external 15dB RF amplifier. I also added a Samsung 980 PRO 500GB PCIe NVMe 4.0 M.2 Internal SSD to my system and then duplicated the Win11 OS that was on the computers 1T HDD. The 1T HDD was then disconnected for protection purposes. So if the OS on the 980 Pro is corrupted, I can still have the system up and going in mere minutes by booting up from the HDD once it is reconnected. In the past I have used USB flash drives for recovery purposes, but I then found out twice that if the flash drive is left with no power for a long time period, either data is lost, or all access is blocked off altogether.
What’s the brand? The PowerColor brand is a single width card and would work, but the MSI appears to have fans that stick out too far, and thus would only work in setups that would allow it to be seated farther from the power supply, like in the 7010.
Dell may limit it to 35 watts. 3010, 7010, 9010 have more space between GPU slot and PSU than 3020, 7020, 9020 it seems. But xx20 have USB 3 and possibly M.2 or was that the xx40 series with M.2?
data.technimax.cz/attach/artilky/Dell-OptiPlex-7020-technical-guidebook.pdf page 17 PCIe x16 7020 SFF maximum wattage is 35 W. MT (and probably also DT, if it exists in this variant) are rated at 75 W PCIe x16. So in a 7020 SFF a very slim and short RX 6400 actively cooled card should work, but not optimal. It's not Gen. 4, so 20 % slower and 35 instead of 50 W power also is slower. Expect it to be like 50-60 % of native speed it could have in a 75 W PCIe x16 Gen. 4 slot. But it should work and be a bit cooler with 35 W than with 50 W ofc.
Do not buy a fully housed low profile card like the XFX Radeon RX 6400 card, the heatsink housing plate will hit the Front Audio, I/O connector on the Dell 3020 SFF board, I took it off and I got an "Alert! front I/O cable failure" every time I boot up. The Power Color and Sapphire RX 6400 cards will fit fine because of the heatsink gap! And also Dell makes stupid proprietary designs on their motherboards to piss you off by not letting you use dual low profile slot cards on most of their Sff cases with the PSU's close to the PCIe x16 slot!
Yeah my passive dual slot GT 1030 GDDR5 also hits the cables hard, so the front fan doesn't even cool it right. The 7010 SFF and similar older Dell cases have the old order, where a dual slot GPU fits, while the 7020 SFF, 3020 SFF and similar newer variants swapped the PCIe slots. So either there's some propietary Dell cards with mirrored PCB/heatsink? or you only can use single slot GPUs inside and a passive single slot LP card will produce much heat ofc, unless modding with a PCIe flex or riser cable. The DT/MT cases have some more space, but I think also a small distance to the PSU in newer cases. Not sure, have to check any mainboard pic to see it. It would be interesting to see a speed diff between PCIe Gen. 3 and 4 with this card. Somewhere I read it's like 20 % slower with Gen. 4, is that right? Could a 1050, 1050 Ti from 2016 or 1650 from 2019 be undervolted and downclocked to like 50-60 W max. to have a similar speed like this RX 6400 50 W equivalent card? But the most interesting question for me is about the idle power consumption. A GT 1030 GDDR5 eats up minimum 12.5 W idling in Windows desktop regarding HWiNFO (two different passive 1030 GDDR5 cards in two different mainboards, one with C2D and one with i7). So w/o any 3d calculations the 1030 is wasting 40 % of its max. power. For a 30 W card this is pretty much. I hope the RX 6400 and any other new GPU will need only 5 W idling, which would save much power and give more room for undervolt+overclock+ some 10-20 more free FPS.
@@sebastianebert4295 My XFX 6400 ran hot in my Dell 3020 sff, above 70*C in light gaming with High Performance turned on in windows and 53*C during idle or watching TH-cam, I was like WTF this card sucks in this Dell OptiPlex, and it's still winter, just imaging during the hot month no thanks! lol I think the full cover heatsink shroud had something to do with it as much as it being in a tight space close to the PSU which Dell should have had a rocket scientist figure out the PCIEx16 slots should have been moved closer to the cpu on any of their OptiPlex SFF MB's to take advantage on the 2 slots for the double slotted gpu bracket specially with Gigabyte's RX 6400 that have. The Low Profile Sapphire Pulse and Power color RX 6400 GPU's have the uncovered gap's between the bracket, to where the heatsink/fan starts, this is much better for cooling the exposed caps from my observation. As far as wattage on the RX 6400 on idle it is 2.0w on idle, while observing it with the TechPowerup GPU-Z software. I also have the MSI GT 1030 card W/GPU Temps at 34.5*C Using MX-6 Thermal Paste and it draws 12.5w Board Draw power/ PCIe slot power, PCIe slot Voltage 10.4V on idle any windows power setup. I am looking to replace this Dell Optiplex 3020 SFF board with a mini ITX AMD Ryzen AM4 board with at least a "65W" GPU or APU, with only 1 PCEIe gen 4.0 slot, hopefully close to the CPU as to have to have room for dual bracket fit on case and utilizing a 24 Pin to 8 Pin ATX PSU Power Adapter Cable connector. I Also have the HP Pavilion Slimline s5-1224 that is 3rd gen i7 3770s w/16GB of ram and dual slot GPU's like my GTX 1650 fits perfectly, soon replacing it with a Lo Profile RTX PNY A2000 GPU with they say it equal to a RTX 3050 with either a 6GB or 12GB Unit! I plan on changing that MB with what I mentioned.
@@scruffy7443 That's what I feared as sb. said use a GTX 1650 (75 W TDP) or RX 550 (50 W TDP) instead of the my 2x GT 1030 GDDR5 (30 W TDP), which I have both in Dell 780 MT and Dell 790 SFF, both passive cards with huge aluminium heatsinks. I mean 30 vs. 50 vs. 75 watts is a difference. When thermal throttling at 65 °C max. I even see 5-10 °C lower temps when the GPU needs 20 instead of 30 watts. It's a difference, but mine isn't actively cooled, the front fan does the work and there's cables in between the GPU and the fan turning at 3,000-ish RPM max. If the SFF case wouldn't look so good I'd just let the side door open and add a cheap 8 cm fan, lol. I'm idling with 12.5 watts in Windows about 40 °C and we have winter here (ca. 22 °C room temp). In Anno 1404 History Edition and other games like X-Plane 10 or Playdead's Inside I had like 68 °C or even more. I used MSI Afterburner / Riva Tuner to 1st limit the framrate to 30, which ofc. let it use way less ressources and the temp went down while gaming. 2nd attempt with MSI Afterburner was to set a temperature limit to 65 °C and also power limit to 85 % (both to minimum possible settings), but ofc. 85 % power means it runs slower. 3rd attempt today was to set only temperature limit, but keep power limit and add HWiNFO64 to set their Fan Control popup and change the Fan2 (Mainboard or front fan) values to the following: Fan2: Custom Auto: Sensor 1: None/Off, Sensor 2: GPU [#0] NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030, Temp. 2 source: GPU Temp. 1. 0 °C, 0 RPM (means it's minimum RPM or like 1,100 RPM), 2. 40 °C also 0 RPM, 3. 45 °C 1600 RPM (you only can set 3 values 0, 1600 or 3100 here), 4. 50 °C 3100 RPM, 5. 70 °C 3100 RPM, 6. 80 °C 3100 RPM. So I think the fans, which otherwise idle both at 1,600 RPM go to 1,000-1,100 RPM when cold. I set CPU fan separately, because many old games let the CPU run at 40 °C, lol. So it's very quiet when idling or playing youtube. Maybe in summer I have to adjust it again, 5 °C less or so. That means my settings for GPU temp. will stay like Dell auto settings up to below 50 °C and from 50+ °C or what's a bit higher than surfing the net or not gaming, it runs at full speed, while gaming. This way the GPU temp went down from 68-70-ish °C to just 65 °C w/o limitimg the power with MSI Afterburner. But you can add this to throttle it ofc., to force it run at max. 65 °C for longevity. I'd test use Riva Tuner to run specific games at 30 FPS and high settings or 60 FPS and lowest possible settings. This way at least older games run flawlessly fine. I have to check out games which really use my i7-2600 at 100 %. So far the GT 1030 ofc. is the bottleneck for most "newer" games, but ofc. Cyberpunk 2077 or other high-end games won't run on this 30 W card I think. Using HWiNFO I set also Fan1 (CPU), Custom Auto, Sensor 1: CPU [#0]: Intel Core i7-2600: DTS, Temp. 1 source: CPU Package, Sensor 2: NONE/OFF to: 1. Temp. 1 0 °C, 0 RPM (it's running at ~1,000 RPM instead of like 1,500-1,000 RPM), 2. 40 °C, 0 RPM, 3. 50 °C, 1600 RPM (that's the Dell auto value it otherwise would use), 4. 60 °C 3300 RPM, 5. 70 °C 3300 RPM, 6. 80 °C 3300 RPM. I didn't see a CPU temp. of more than 68 °C using Cinebench. But this 95 W TDP CPU seems to be limited by Dell in the 790 SFF to like 65 W, because either HWiNFO and Argus+Argus Mini app shows 66 watts under 100 % load of all 8 threads. In summer I expect it to be like 5-10 °C higher, but this fan does a very good job. One more hint: When using the Fan Control of HWiNFO, don't close it, but click Minimize all or it goes back to auto values. I then set it to start minimized on Windows starts, so it's adjusted to run at 1,000-1,100 RPM when idling and surfing the net and separately front fan goes full speed when gaming, but CPU speed is separately, keeps low. My front fan pushes air outside of the case. I've seen in the PDF that Dell has it other way round, front in, back out. I may try that soon, but so far it works good enough. I think pushing air out the front is a bit more inefficient, but has 2 other pros: In winter it pushes warm air to your feet if standing on the floor and it doesn't suck in so much dust over time, but that's just hypothesis. I may exchange front fan (which is quite loud at 3,100 RPM...maybe the ball-bearing is just worn-out?) for a silent Noctua or Arctic Cooling one. I've read many people rely on Noctua nowadays. But I 1. dunno at which speeds/througput they run and 2. what about the Dell-specific adaptor, you might to make or buy an adaptor for the PWM 3, 4 or 5? pin. I also thought about adding a PCIe LP internal fan on the outside to push air inside. This would work for the 790 SFF one, because there's one slot left between the PSU and the PCIe GPU. But this would push dust inside for sure and looks a bit crappy, lol. Another fix would be to use a 3rd (radial or axial) fan internally, pushing air onto the GPU from the back of the PCB, which should help to reduce the temp. by 5-10 °C at least I think. Better than nothing. --------- I use optimal settings, not adaptive or maximum in Nvidia Control Center. But I haven't checked all possibilities yet ofc. I think the most impact is just to use MSI Afterburner to set an independent 65 °C temp. limit and/or use Riva Tuner to limit some games to 30 FPS or turn down the ingame settings to lowest values, whatever is acceptable for you. Then I like to watch the temp, FPS and wattage values of the overlay of Riva Tuner. So f.e. Anno 1404 and 1800 may run fine at 30 FPS or 60 FPS with lowest graphics settings. Old retro games like NFS 6 HP2 I crank up with dgVoodoo2, having 100s of FPS with no load, lol. ---------- Yeah there can be much wrong engineering on the design. Like heatspreader not attached to the chip, but with like 0.5 mm distance. We've seen such in the past. Or just inefficient airflow. Tbh., I like passive cards with huge heatsinks and just add a cheap big 8 cm radial or axial fan I took out from old PCs to those to get a better result. Yeah the tight space to the PSU also has to be an issue. I'm afraid to use a 7020 instead of a 7010, f.e., because of this tight design. The question is what's best between big distance to PSU, but having USB 3.0 internally at least. The DT (2nd biggest, 3rd smallest) instead of SFF cases may be better for this having like 4? PCIe slots, but there's literally 10 different versions like 790, 3010, 3020, 7010, 7020, 9010, 9020, 9040 or whatever, have to look at all pics and research for some days where the GPU slot is located. Another thought: The DT case has a big 5,25" drivebay, where you can add a slim DVD + 2x 2,5" SSD hotswapping device, which would be cool, but ofc. no need. I also may just buy another PC and a HDMI+USB KVM switch, when using multi-boot instead of swapping SSD/HDD. Yeah an uncovered back of the card is wayyyy better, so the front fan can support active cooling! ----------- Wow, 2 W idle is very good! Actually I didn't expect that. I have like 45 °C watching youtube in Chrome, checking Argus Mini app. But as said, I don't use the maximum performance settings from Nvidia Tool, but optimized ones aka most power-saving. So 53 °C isn't thaaat high, when using performance mode, it's normal I think. You may switch profiles or use Game mode, when playing games. I never used Game mode yet, have to test it. GPU-Z, HWiNFO and also Remote System Monitor for Windows+Android show 12,5 W idling and watching youtube for my GT 1030 GDDR5. Way too much for not doing anything special and using only a FHD TV. I never tested 4K yet, I guess it's only good for 2D desktop and youtube maybe, some HEVC videos, but not for gaming, lol. 34 °C is nice for 12,5 W idling. I guess it's an actively cooled card. Mine are in Desktop PC: Gainward passive and in the SFF Gigabyte also passive, both with dual slot big heatsinks. But I never disassembled the heatsinks, didn't use a different thermal paste. I think on mine it wouldn't make such a difference, while an extra fan would do wonders ofc. Yeah a dedicated PCIe Gen. 4 slot should add another 20 % speed for your GPU. Otherwise you could try a 3010 SFF, 7010 SFF, 9010 SFF, if those have more space to the PSU or the DT models with 4 slots, but those are PCIe Gen. 2 or 3 only. I think I'll keep my 1030 and check another card in like 5 years or so, hopefully a 30 W equivalent to a 1060 6 GB or similar, lol. 65 °C thermal throttling and 30 FPS lock on some games does the trick for now, maybe a 3rd case fan for the GPU, powered by SATA or USB, an 8 cm 12 V fan running with 5 V USB or SATA should be very silent. That's interesting, didn't know there's an A2000. 70 W TDP is a bit high for SFF PCs, tho, needs good cooling ofc., but it's 2-3x more FPS ofc. Maybe in some years Intel Arc is proven to be good, compatible and stable. Nice to see a competition to AMD and Nvidia. But for now I won't set on this yet unknown horse, while AMD and Nvidia run good with games for decades. Whatever, I play more retro games with dgVoodoo2 to set up high res, force FSAA. Or Indie games. I don't like the effects in most of the new games, creating eye-cancer for me, lol.
@@scruffy7443 Oh, one more thought I forgot in the other post: What about the 35 W lock on the PCIe slot? It's not 75 W in the SFF formats, so it's being throttled. You need to use the DT or MT cases to use the full 75 W I think or use a GPU with external SATA power conn and preferably more than the std. 240/255 W PSU. Do you see in the overlay with Rive Tuner or GPU-Z, HWiNFO, Remote System Monitor or whatever, that your RX 6400 can use 50 W or is it limited to 35 W? Because I read that Dell limits the PCIe x16 power of the SFF cases to 35 W and the small PCIe slot to 25 W. My i7-2600 runs at max. 65 instead of 95 W, btw. So that's another thing to look at, may be a huuuge throttle next to PCIe Gen. 2/3 vs. 4. It could run at 70 % speed and this 70 % speed should be like 20 % slower than with PCIe Gen. 4. If this 35 W throttle is real, then the 30 W GPU makes more sense actually, if not the 50 or 75 W cards throttled at 35 W are faster and cheaper ofc. Ofc. you may be able to undervolt/underclock a 1650 from 75 to 60 or even 50 W.
not sure what the RX 6400 has to do with Plex since it has no VCE.
That being said, it's probably the fastest card one can fit into the SFF 3020. I want to get one for giving mine the best chance it has at gaming (currently using a GT 1030 and it's meh). But I think older cards that have VCE or NVENC hardware support like the RX 550 or T600 might be better suited to Plex for transcoding down high quality streams to lower quality ones 'on the fly' for less capable devices like older phones and tablets.
For high quality transcoding from BluRay, the software route (which you have shown) is best, though. Takes a lot more time but the quality is so much better, and it's something you only need to do once per file.
I found it slightly amusing that you went out of your way to keep the internal DVD drive (same thing I did, SATA card) yet still went external for a BD reader. What, you couldn't find an internal that would work? Or did you want to keep the ability to burn DVDs?
You’re exactly right. Just picked up a T600 and will make another video and do whatever editing TH-cam allows to this one b/c I don’t want anyone to be misinformed. I’ve pinned your comment.
And yes, I couldn’t find an internal BD reader that wasn’t also a BD burner. The external was both more cost effective and allows me to use MakeMKV on a Blu-ray and Handbrake on a DVD at the same time, saving me a little time.
@@OptiGPU Nice, I've never been pinned before. Oh wait, yeah there was wrestling in high school. Not that kind. LOL
Good choice with the T600. After looking around a bit I found that VCE isn't the greatest with Plex, so it's good you went with nVidia. Heck, even intel QSV is better than VCE (from what I read). So theoretically you could set up a Plex box with no video card at all (though it's probably better to have the nVidia card).
I haven't really played with Plex that much (probably because I only have a GT 1030 which lacks NVENC) and I don't currently have a need to stream videos to other machines, but I'm interested in this topic for future reference when I do get into the position of needing to know this... anyway, I know a little about it so I felt the need to bring up the issue of the RX 6400's lack of encoding. It's a banger of a gaming card, though, and probably best utilized as a 3020 SFF's last possible upgrade if the primary purpose is gaming.
I bought the XFX RX 6400 LP, you have to removed the Front audio connector on the 3020 SFF unit, which will cause an Alert I/O failure that will prompt you to press F1 at every startup, Get a Sapphire Pulse Or Power Color RX card with a gap between the bracket and heatsink for the cards to fit properly, Do not but the Yeston RX 6400, it's the same as the XFX RX 6400 variant with the same fully housed heatsink shroud that will hit the connector on board! Those fully housed single fan GPU's run hot to the touch.
HEVC capable tablets, which exist since many years don't cost a thing. I don't think it's needed to transcode at home, if not streaming over bottlenecked internet.
Yeah software encoding has higher quality ofc.
Good question, maybe it's just a matter of price, when internal SATA BD drives may be more expensive than USB ones?
Personally I'd like to add a hotswap 2x 2,5 " SSD instead of the slim DVD, but that hotswap case costs more than the whole used SFF PC, lol.
So I think I just use 3x SSD internally or a 2nd PC with HDMI+KVM switch instead of swapping SSD/HDD.
2-4 TB Samsung or SanDisk SSD seems to be a good sweetspot nowadays. I'd like to add the 30 TB Intel SSD, but it's a bit more pricey, lol.
I've thrown out the HDD, because it has nasty vibrations and sth. lik 250 or 500 GB is cheap in SSD nowadays and saves more power, too.
Oh, one more thought I forgot in the other post: What about the 35 W lock on the PCIe slot? It's not 75 W in the SFF formats, so it's being throttled.
You need to use the DT or MT cases to use the full 75 W I think or use a GPU with external SATA power conn and preferably more than the std. 240/255 W PSU.
Those workstation cards are very interesting, may be faster, even cheaper.
I mean avg. GPUs are so expensive, no real changes since 2017 actually. The RX 6400 should cost like 40-70 bucks, tbh.
What's the problem with BD burners? From CD and DVD era I always had better reading compatibility with burners than with readers.
The price difference ofc. makes sense.
I just want to upgrade the RAM so I can run ProTools on it. Could you point me to what RAM updates I need? And what else I may need
I have a DELL 7070 with i5-8500 CPU and an RX-6400 graphics card. My computer desk is located not far from my living room couch (6.75 feet), and so I have my TV listed as a second monitor, and due to the closeness, my mouse is still being picked up from that distance at the couch, and thus I have computer control from the couch. Plus I found a website that basically has everything that NETFLIX has, plus more, and it's 100% free. No registration required as either. My collection of movie DVD's are played on my separate good old DVD player which handles Blu Ray as well.
Cool setup! If you plan on using only the living room TV for playing personal media, it can keep you from having to convert formats for steaming and can give you a better picture quality.
@@OptiGPU I try to keep my Computer/Entertainment system as simple as can be. ( I am still using my 2009 Samsung TV that cost me $9.95 to repair. Its power supply had eventually died.) Currently I am in the process of watching the Stargate TV series, since it's available at the free TV/Movie website, plus I pickup as many as 50 free TV air channels here in Toronto with my tiny Terk Amplified Indoor HDTV Antenna, and an external 15dB RF amplifier. I also added a Samsung 980 PRO 500GB PCIe NVMe 4.0 M.2 Internal SSD to my system and then duplicated the Win11 OS that was on the computers 1T HDD. The 1T HDD was then disconnected for protection purposes. So if the OS on the 980 Pro is corrupted, I can still have the system up and going in mere minutes by booting up from the HDD once it is reconnected. In the past I have used USB flash drives for recovery purposes, but I then found out twice that if the flash drive is left with no power for a long time period, either data is lost, or all access is blocked off altogether.
Can a rx550 gpu 2gb lp work on this 3020 sff ?
What’s the brand? The PowerColor brand is a single width card and would work, but the MSI appears to have fans that stick out too far, and thus would only work in setups that would allow it to be seated farther from the power supply, like in the 7010.
@@OptiGPU its a powercolor rx 550 low profile bro
Dell may limit it to 35 watts.
3010, 7010, 9010 have more space between GPU slot and PSU than 3020, 7020, 9020 it seems. But xx20 have USB 3 and possibly M.2 or was that the xx40 series with M.2?
Rx 6400 Optplex 7020 its ok?
data.technimax.cz/attach/artilky/Dell-OptiPlex-7020-technical-guidebook.pdf
page 17
PCIe x16 7020 SFF maximum wattage is 35 W. MT (and probably also DT, if it exists in this variant) are rated at 75 W PCIe x16.
So in a 7020 SFF a very slim and short RX 6400 actively cooled card should work, but not optimal. It's not Gen. 4, so 20 % slower and 35 instead of 50 W power also is slower.
Expect it to be like 50-60 % of native speed it could have in a 75 W PCIe x16 Gen. 4 slot.
But it should work and be a bit cooler with 35 W than with 50 W ofc.
Yep. Similar configuration inside as the 3020.
Do not buy a fully housed low profile card like the XFX Radeon RX 6400 card, the heatsink housing plate will hit the Front Audio, I/O connector on the Dell 3020 SFF board, I took it off and I got an "Alert! front I/O cable failure" every time I boot up. The Power Color and Sapphire RX 6400 cards will fit fine because of the heatsink gap! And also Dell makes stupid proprietary designs on their motherboards to piss you off by not letting you use dual low profile slot cards on most of their Sff cases with the PSU's close to the PCIe x16 slot!
Great insights! Thank you
Yeah my passive dual slot GT 1030 GDDR5 also hits the cables hard, so the front fan doesn't even cool it right.
The 7010 SFF and similar older Dell cases have the old order, where a dual slot GPU fits,
while the 7020 SFF, 3020 SFF and similar newer variants swapped the PCIe slots.
So either there's some propietary Dell cards with mirrored PCB/heatsink? or you only can use single slot GPUs inside and a passive single slot LP card will produce much heat ofc, unless modding with a PCIe flex or riser cable.
The DT/MT cases have some more space, but I think also a small distance to the PSU in newer cases. Not sure, have to check any mainboard pic to see it.
It would be interesting to see a speed diff between PCIe Gen. 3 and 4 with this card. Somewhere I read it's like 20 % slower with Gen. 4, is that right?
Could a 1050, 1050 Ti from 2016 or 1650 from 2019 be undervolted and downclocked to like 50-60 W max. to have a similar speed like this RX 6400 50 W equivalent card?
But the most interesting question for me is about the idle power consumption.
A GT 1030 GDDR5 eats up minimum 12.5 W idling in Windows desktop regarding HWiNFO (two different passive 1030 GDDR5 cards in two different mainboards, one with C2D and one with i7). So w/o any 3d calculations the 1030 is wasting 40 % of its max. power.
For a 30 W card this is pretty much.
I hope the RX 6400 and any other new GPU will need only 5 W idling, which would save much power and give more room for undervolt+overclock+ some 10-20 more free FPS.
@@sebastianebert4295 My XFX 6400 ran hot in my Dell 3020 sff, above 70*C in light gaming with High Performance turned on in windows and 53*C during idle or watching TH-cam, I was like WTF this card sucks in this Dell OptiPlex, and it's still winter, just imaging during the hot month no thanks! lol I think the full cover heatsink shroud had something to do with it as much as it being in a tight space close to the PSU which Dell should have had a rocket scientist figure out the PCIEx16 slots should have been moved closer to the cpu on any of their OptiPlex SFF MB's to take advantage on the 2 slots for the double slotted gpu bracket specially with Gigabyte's RX 6400 that have. The Low Profile Sapphire Pulse and Power color RX 6400 GPU's have the uncovered gap's between the bracket, to where the heatsink/fan starts, this is much better for cooling the exposed caps from my observation. As far as wattage on the RX 6400 on idle it is 2.0w on idle, while observing it with the TechPowerup GPU-Z software. I also have the MSI GT 1030 card W/GPU Temps at 34.5*C Using MX-6 Thermal Paste and it draws 12.5w Board Draw power/ PCIe slot power, PCIe slot Voltage 10.4V on idle any windows power setup. I am looking to replace this Dell Optiplex 3020 SFF board with a mini ITX AMD Ryzen AM4 board with at least a "65W" GPU or APU, with only 1 PCEIe gen 4.0 slot, hopefully close to the CPU as to have to have room for dual bracket fit on case and utilizing a 24 Pin to 8 Pin ATX PSU Power Adapter Cable connector. I Also have the HP Pavilion Slimline s5-1224 that is 3rd gen i7 3770s w/16GB of ram and dual slot GPU's like my GTX 1650 fits perfectly, soon replacing it with a Lo Profile RTX PNY A2000 GPU with they say it equal to a RTX 3050 with either a 6GB or 12GB Unit! I plan on changing that MB with what I mentioned.
@@scruffy7443 That's what I feared as sb. said use a GTX 1650 (75 W TDP) or RX 550 (50 W TDP) instead of the my 2x GT 1030 GDDR5 (30 W TDP), which I have both in Dell 780 MT and Dell 790 SFF, both passive cards with huge aluminium heatsinks.
I mean 30 vs. 50 vs. 75 watts is a difference.
When thermal throttling at 65 °C max. I even see 5-10 °C lower temps when the GPU needs 20 instead of 30 watts. It's a difference, but mine isn't actively cooled, the front fan does the work and there's cables in between the GPU and the fan turning at 3,000-ish RPM max. If the SFF case wouldn't look so good I'd just let the side door open and add a cheap 8 cm fan, lol.
I'm idling with 12.5 watts in Windows about 40 °C and we have winter here (ca. 22 °C room temp).
In Anno 1404 History Edition and other games like X-Plane 10 or Playdead's Inside I had like 68 °C or even more.
I used MSI Afterburner / Riva Tuner to 1st limit the framrate to 30, which ofc. let it use way less ressources and the temp went down while gaming.
2nd attempt with MSI Afterburner was to set a temperature limit to 65 °C and also power limit to 85 % (both to minimum possible settings), but ofc. 85 % power means it runs slower.
3rd attempt today was to set only temperature limit, but keep power limit and add HWiNFO64 to set their Fan Control popup and change the Fan2 (Mainboard or front fan) values to the following:
Fan2: Custom Auto: Sensor 1: None/Off, Sensor 2: GPU [#0] NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030, Temp. 2 source: GPU Temp.
1. 0 °C, 0 RPM (means it's minimum RPM or like 1,100 RPM), 2. 40 °C also 0 RPM, 3. 45 °C 1600 RPM (you only can set 3 values 0, 1600 or 3100 here), 4. 50 °C 3100 RPM, 5. 70 °C 3100 RPM, 6. 80 °C 3100 RPM.
So I think the fans, which otherwise idle both at 1,600 RPM go to 1,000-1,100 RPM when cold.
I set CPU fan separately, because many old games let the CPU run at 40 °C, lol.
So it's very quiet when idling or playing youtube. Maybe in summer I have to adjust it again, 5 °C less or so.
That means my settings for GPU temp. will stay like Dell auto settings up to below 50 °C and from 50+ °C or what's a bit higher than surfing the net or not gaming, it runs at full speed, while gaming.
This way the GPU temp went down from 68-70-ish °C to just 65 °C w/o limitimg the power with MSI Afterburner.
But you can add this to throttle it ofc., to force it run at max. 65 °C for longevity.
I'd test use Riva Tuner to run specific games at 30 FPS and high settings or 60 FPS and lowest possible settings.
This way at least older games run flawlessly fine.
I have to check out games which really use my i7-2600 at 100 %. So far the GT 1030 ofc. is the bottleneck for most "newer" games, but ofc. Cyberpunk 2077 or other high-end games won't run on this 30 W card I think.
Using HWiNFO I set also Fan1 (CPU), Custom Auto, Sensor 1: CPU [#0]: Intel Core i7-2600: DTS, Temp. 1 source: CPU Package, Sensor 2: NONE/OFF to:
1. Temp. 1 0 °C, 0 RPM (it's running at ~1,000 RPM instead of like 1,500-1,000 RPM), 2. 40 °C, 0 RPM,
3. 50 °C, 1600 RPM (that's the Dell auto value it otherwise would use), 4. 60 °C 3300 RPM, 5. 70 °C 3300 RPM, 6. 80 °C 3300 RPM.
I didn't see a CPU temp. of more than 68 °C using Cinebench. But this 95 W TDP CPU seems to be limited by Dell in the 790 SFF to like 65 W, because either HWiNFO and Argus+Argus Mini app shows 66 watts under 100 % load of all 8 threads.
In summer I expect it to be like 5-10 °C higher, but this fan does a very good job.
One more hint: When using the Fan Control of HWiNFO, don't close it, but click Minimize all or it goes back to auto values.
I then set it to start minimized on Windows starts, so it's adjusted to run at 1,000-1,100 RPM when idling and surfing the net and separately front fan goes full speed when gaming, but CPU speed is separately, keeps low.
My front fan pushes air outside of the case. I've seen in the PDF that Dell has it other way round, front in, back out.
I may try that soon, but so far it works good enough. I think pushing air out the front is a bit more inefficient, but has 2 other pros:
In winter it pushes warm air to your feet if standing on the floor and it doesn't suck in so much dust over time, but that's just hypothesis.
I may exchange front fan (which is quite loud at 3,100 RPM...maybe the ball-bearing is just worn-out?) for a silent Noctua or Arctic Cooling one. I've read many people rely on Noctua nowadays.
But I 1. dunno at which speeds/througput they run and 2. what about the Dell-specific adaptor, you might to make or buy an adaptor for the PWM 3, 4 or 5? pin.
I also thought about adding a PCIe LP internal fan on the outside to push air inside. This would work for the 790 SFF one, because there's one slot left between the PSU and the PCIe GPU.
But this would push dust inside for sure and looks a bit crappy, lol.
Another fix would be to use a 3rd (radial or axial) fan internally, pushing air onto the GPU from the back of the PCB, which should help to reduce the temp. by 5-10 °C at least I think.
Better than nothing.
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I use optimal settings, not adaptive or maximum in Nvidia Control Center.
But I haven't checked all possibilities yet ofc.
I think the most impact is just to use MSI Afterburner to set an independent 65 °C temp. limit and/or use Riva Tuner to limit some games to 30 FPS or turn down the ingame settings to lowest values, whatever is acceptable for you.
Then I like to watch the temp, FPS and wattage values of the overlay of Riva Tuner.
So f.e. Anno 1404 and 1800 may run fine at 30 FPS or 60 FPS with lowest graphics settings.
Old retro games like NFS 6 HP2 I crank up with dgVoodoo2, having 100s of FPS with no load, lol.
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Yeah there can be much wrong engineering on the design.
Like heatspreader not attached to the chip, but with like 0.5 mm distance. We've seen such in the past.
Or just inefficient airflow. Tbh., I like passive cards with huge heatsinks and just add a cheap big 8 cm radial or axial fan I took out from old PCs to those to get a better result.
Yeah the tight space to the PSU also has to be an issue. I'm afraid to use a 7020 instead of a 7010, f.e., because of this tight design.
The question is what's best between big distance to PSU, but having USB 3.0 internally at least.
The DT (2nd biggest, 3rd smallest) instead of SFF cases may be better for this having like 4? PCIe slots, but there's literally 10 different versions like 790, 3010, 3020, 7010, 7020, 9010, 9020, 9040 or whatever, have to look at all pics and research for some days where the GPU slot is located.
Another thought: The DT case has a big 5,25" drivebay, where you can add a slim DVD + 2x 2,5" SSD hotswapping device, which would be cool, but ofc. no need.
I also may just buy another PC and a HDMI+USB KVM switch, when using multi-boot instead of swapping SSD/HDD.
Yeah an uncovered back of the card is wayyyy better, so the front fan can support active cooling!
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Wow, 2 W idle is very good! Actually I didn't expect that.
I have like 45 °C watching youtube in Chrome, checking Argus Mini app.
But as said, I don't use the maximum performance settings from Nvidia Tool, but optimized ones aka most power-saving.
So 53 °C isn't thaaat high, when using performance mode, it's normal I think.
You may switch profiles or use Game mode, when playing games. I never used Game mode yet, have to test it.
GPU-Z, HWiNFO and also Remote System Monitor for Windows+Android show 12,5 W idling and watching youtube for my GT 1030 GDDR5.
Way too much for not doing anything special and using only a FHD TV.
I never tested 4K yet, I guess it's only good for 2D desktop and youtube maybe, some HEVC videos, but not for gaming, lol.
34 °C is nice for 12,5 W idling. I guess it's an actively cooled card. Mine are in Desktop PC: Gainward passive and in the SFF Gigabyte also passive, both with dual slot big heatsinks.
But I never disassembled the heatsinks, didn't use a different thermal paste. I think on mine it wouldn't make such a difference, while an extra fan would do wonders ofc.
Yeah a dedicated PCIe Gen. 4 slot should add another 20 % speed for your GPU.
Otherwise you could try a 3010 SFF, 7010 SFF, 9010 SFF, if those have more space to the PSU or the DT models with 4 slots, but those are PCIe Gen. 2 or 3 only.
I think I'll keep my 1030 and check another card in like 5 years or so, hopefully a 30 W equivalent to a 1060 6 GB or similar, lol.
65 °C thermal throttling and 30 FPS lock on some games does the trick for now, maybe a 3rd case fan for the GPU, powered by SATA or USB, an 8 cm 12 V fan running with 5 V USB or SATA should be very silent.
That's interesting, didn't know there's an A2000. 70 W TDP is a bit high for SFF PCs, tho, needs good cooling ofc., but it's 2-3x more FPS ofc.
Maybe in some years Intel Arc is proven to be good, compatible and stable. Nice to see a competition to AMD and Nvidia.
But for now I won't set on this yet unknown horse, while AMD and Nvidia run good with games for decades.
Whatever, I play more retro games with dgVoodoo2 to set up high res, force FSAA. Or Indie games. I don't like the effects in most of the new games, creating eye-cancer for me, lol.
@@scruffy7443 Oh, one more thought I forgot in the other post: What about the 35 W lock on the PCIe slot? It's not 75 W in the SFF formats, so it's being throttled.
You need to use the DT or MT cases to use the full 75 W I think or use a GPU with external SATA power conn and preferably more than the std. 240/255 W PSU.
Do you see in the overlay with Rive Tuner or GPU-Z, HWiNFO, Remote System Monitor or whatever, that your RX 6400 can use 50 W or is it limited to 35 W?
Because I read that Dell limits the PCIe x16 power of the SFF cases to 35 W and the small PCIe slot to 25 W.
My i7-2600 runs at max. 65 instead of 95 W, btw.
So that's another thing to look at, may be a huuuge throttle next to PCIe Gen. 2/3 vs. 4. It could run at 70 % speed and this 70 % speed should be like 20 % slower than with PCIe Gen. 4.
If this 35 W throttle is real, then the 30 W GPU makes more sense actually, if not the 50 or 75 W cards throttled at 35 W are faster and cheaper ofc.
Ofc. you may be able to undervolt/underclock a 1650 from 75 to 60 or even 50 W.
Does this use hardware acceleration?
If you’re talking about transcoding, see the comment by SeeJayPlayGames pinned at the top.
TV too hight