DOS76 Posted February 3, 2016 Author Share Posted February 3, 2016 I have a slim desktop Dell 660S with a 220w power supply and absolutely no room to add in a graphics card or really to power it either with the current PSU (but there isn't anyway to upgrade the PSU due to room consttictions). I was thinking of getting a 16x pcie riser card and running it from a GPU outside of the case to the inside ( will mod the case and feed the riser out of the slit I'm planning on adding now my only issue is how will I power the card outside of the case. I'm looking at this here but I'm waiting to hear back on if it can work externally Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 It can be done, I currently have a GPU (GTX670) running on a PCI-e 16x riser cable like this: I have it powered by my internal power supply now, but I did experiment with using an old Xbox360 power supply, which is a 12v 200W unit, and connecting it straight to the 6 and 8 pin power connectors on the card. As long as you power up the card before the main PC, it worked great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Is it feasible to get a Micro ATX case and move it in to there? At least with that it's still really small and you might be able to fit an Micro ATX style GPU inside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 It will probably be a propriety motherboard that does not fit any standard case, I have had a few of the small form factor Dells, and almost nothing is standard! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 You'd be surprised at what you can mod. If you're already willing to hook things up from outside the case you can just get brackets, hot glue and a decent case, even if you have a lot of extra space. Make your own screw holes. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 I certainly agree with that, and you can fit a lot in a small space when you are motivated! This is the custom PC that I am currently working on that uses the riser extension cable to make it a very small footprint! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 As long as that's an Nvidia card that is a good compact. ;) :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Of course! I have never had any good experiences with AMD, this is a GTX670 that was left over from the upgrade to GTX970 in my main gaming desktop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Yea she has an AMD card in her PC right now, and it gives us nothing but trouble every step of the way. Their CPU's aren't too bad, they're still behind Intel in some respects, but ever since they bought ATI their GPU's have been really bad. They had to play serious catch up with Intel but I am more than happy to be the price difference. My first gen i7 is really starting to show its age now, but it's a champ! It is still going. Same thing with Western Digital. I started getting Seagate drives, and they all started failing except for my 500GB OS Drive, that has had so many partitions written and destroyed on it, with countless of OS installs that I am honestly surprised it still functions. A Seagate drive would have died from that kind of abuse years ago, and I've had this drive for 8 years... I really need to replace the damn thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Ha Ha, I have had very similar experiences, had a bunch of Seagate drives all start dying a few years ago, replaced all them with WD, and haven't had a single failure since! My server has 5 WD drives in it and 3 of them are over 5 years old and are still going strong, running 24/7 for the whole time. Drives are monitored and checked by Stablebit Scanner, and there has not been a single SMART error on any drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 4, 2016 Author Share Posted February 4, 2016 I've yet to have a Seagate drive fail but have had many WD Greens bite the dust on me. StableBit Scanner is a nice piece of software though I don't have the email warning setup though and my WHS2011 and WS2012R2E boxes are so stable lately that I rarely ever log on to either of them. I looked into moving it into a different case but read that it wouldn't work. I have two PC's with the same socket but if I were to move components around it would screw up my licenses (Windows 8 they introduced the ability to swap drives between machines and then in 10 they killed the practicality of it). @CADScott how did you connect the XBox power straight to the card? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Oh no avoid WD Green Drives. Blue, Red or Black only and I think Blue are being discontinued? Though the new Green drives are supposed to be "better". Caviar Green might be the new one or the alternate one? Just straight "Green" is their power saving model that wasn't supposed to be all that good. I am looking at this drive for my PS4 with the Nyko adapter to allow for 3.5" drives. http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Green-Desktop/dp/B004RORMF6/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1454315153&sr=1-2&keywords=western+digital+3tb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 4, 2016 Author Share Posted February 4, 2016 Yeah I knew a lot less than I do now when I bought them I still have a bunch that are still kicking but there have been some casualties along the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 I have had no issues with the green drives, they are the ones that have lasted for ages in my server, BUT I have used the wdidle3 program to set the head parking from the default 8 seconds to 5 minutes, this is what is supposed to kill the green drives. @DOS76 to connect the Xbox360 power supply I actually hacked the female power connector from a very old dead Xbox motherboard, and wired an 8 and 6 pin PCI-e cable extension to it, very simple, and still allowed me to use the Xbox power supply with another Xbox. You have to bridge the power enable point on the connector to get it to work, but this is easy to do with a switch, and gives you an easy way to turn off the power supply when not in use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted February 4, 2016 Author Share Posted February 4, 2016 Nice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CadetStimpy Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Graphics Card outside the case? How 'bout this: Alienware Amplifier Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 10, 2016 Author Share Posted March 10, 2016 I believe that you need an Alienware computer to go with that which I don't have. I'm thinking of mounting the board to an actual board and adding a real PSU first I have to check if the board has a regular Power supply connector or if it is a special pin size I didn't look into last time I had the case open. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CadetStimpy Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 DOS76 said I believe that you need an Alienware computer to go with that which I don't have. Oh, never mind, then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CadetStimpy Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Ah-ha! This doesn't seem to be as proprietary as the Alienware Amplifier. AMD XConnect Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 Just the fact that I need to buy a AMD card is a deal breaker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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