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Need some serious help with changing out a GTX1070 Graphics card - long story, make a cuppa.

2beor02bmerlin
Protege

Back in the early
Seventies, I bought myself a “Trash Eighty” , the loving
nickname for Tandy/Radio Shack's “TRS-80” aimed at domestic users
and marketed to rival the more expensive Apple.

I EPROM'd my
way through the Eighties, writing my own operating system for what
was, otherwise, a 'brick' which did nothing. I eventually could write
stuff in COBOL and PASCAL as well as Basic and, apart from the
limitations of the Science of the time, could make the thing “Sit
up and Beg” all for the low, low cost of about £2k for printer,
dedicated screen etc. (or six months' pay in today's money.





Now, 40 years later, I
have a system that could, back then, have run the US and Russian
Nuclear programs by itself, and at a fraction of the price.
UNFORTUNATELY, this has been at the cost of an understanding of just
HOW the bloody thing works.

So, I rely on Manufacturer's
Support sites to set me in the right direction when adding to or
upgrading my system. This has been a regular event since my becoming
a computer person.





Here is my sad story.





I recently purchased an
Oculus Rift VR Headset with sensors and touch pads. The numpty who
sold it to me didn't tell me, (despite the question being asked) that
my current system wasn't suitable for the Oculus but would only run
the cheaper VR that had a headset into which you plugged your
Smartphone.





SO – a new PC it was. I
wasn't TOO annoyed at the thought of upgrading to a new Gaming
Monster (I still haven't sold my last THREE PCs). So, well aware of
my limitations, I did my due diligence and was assured that an ASUS
G11CD with a GTX1050 Graphics board was the kiddie for me …....
(this was GOOD news, I'd had three ASUS machine and two ASUS Monitors
in the past and all were excellent quality and brilliant performers,
so ASUS it was) ...........and, if I'd had the OLD version of the
Oculus Rift, then it certainly WOULD have been. Unfortunately, my
Brand New Oculus Rift wouldn't be happy with that and the VR refresh
rates etc wouldn't be good enough so I now needed an upgraded Card,
the GTX1070.

So,after fruitlessly combing through Google
links and watching Youtube videos, I decided to buy a new Graphics
card, a GTX1070 – but, hold on a bit, here, THIS TIME there was
going to be NO mistake about it.





SO, to the MANUFACTURER
this time, no messing about.

Found NIVIDIA's support site
quite easily, clicked on Live Chat, and was soon talking with an
expert (this was about a week ago)

My questions were quite
simple and, initially required a “Yes” or “No” response only
:-

“I have an ASUS G11CD with a GTX1050 card in it. I want
to upgrade it to one of your “GTX 1070” Graphics cards. Is
swapping the Cards over something that someone who has never done
this before can do with success ?”

(these cards, BTW, are
upwards of £400 each brand new, so this is an important
question.)

So, a few tips about static electricity aside, the
answer was loudly affirmative.

Question Two, equally vital to
the success of the whole operation, followed quickly :-

“Are
the two cards completely interchangeable and will the 1070 card work
as it is, in the G11CD”

Answer was “Yes sir, they are Plug
and Play”.

I think my last response before the Live Chat
finished was “That's great news, I'm off to Ebay to pick one up.”.
Which is what, on his advice, I immediately did.

Yesterday the
Card arrived and, as promised, I changed it out very easily using
the small items of tools I had to hand (having said that, it still
took about two hours, some of the screws needing three hands – two
normal ones and a “Donald Trump” hand for the tighter
spaces).

Rebooted the machine and prepared to reinstall the
Oculus software.

EXCEPT – My OS can't 'see' my new graphics
card.

Swopped the old 1050 card back in and it ran perfectly
as it always had.

Went through the swapping out process again
(as said, it was about two hours of fiddly stuff to achieve every
time and I'd now done this THREE times).

BACK to my friends at
Support.

“SHOULD be working fine, sir. You'll have hooked up
your extra PS, of course”
“PS ?”
“power supply, sir.
The 1070 needs a lot more power than the 1050 so you'll need to give
it more. How much power are you giving it at the
moment?”
“Wha,.......?”


Power, how much is it
getting now, sir It will be in Watts”
“Power comes from a
three pin UK plug in a wall socket, a big thick black flex takes
electric to the three pin power socket in back of the machine. THAT's
how much power I'm giving it !!!”





Oh, dear” said the
Customer Service guy.


There is now NO-ONE invloved that I trust any longer to tell me black is black.

Any advice
as to how I should proceed. ?


3 ACCEPTED SOLUTIONS

Accepted Solutions

As a similarly aged former enthusiast I can sympathise. My programming skills only went as far as Sinclair Basic (and BBC) then some assembly at collage which didn't go well.

Anyway, yes, you need to check the connections from the power supply unit inside your PC. Different cards require different amounts of power and that means different connections from the PSU.

Your PSU should have leads with connectors with either 6 pins or 8 pins or 8 pin connectors that can be split into 6+2 and they should all have PCI-E printed on the connectors.

So my card needs a 6 pin and an 8 pin connector. I believe your 1070 needs just an 8 pin (or a 6+2 pin). If you don't have a spare 8 pin (or a 6+2) but you have 2 x 6 pin connectors spare, you can use an adaptor that combines the 2 x 6 pins into a single 8 pin, those adaptors often come with the card but not always.

Hope that helps and good luck!


View solution in original post

flexy123
Superstar
UGH....bad. This is a 300W power supply and I don't think this could handle your PC/CPU and the GTX 1070. Even if it WOULD, it would be very close to tolerance and you will likely run into all sorts of troubles. (Someone else correct me if wrong).
This guy really needs a decent (say, at least 550W PSU), and then a new decent PSU would also have the connectors for the GTX1070.

I know this is not what you want to hear.

Ok I checked out newegg, the cheapest for you would be

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153233

Which is $39,99, it'S a ThermalTake which is actually a good brand. (I have a very old Thermaltake in my PC which still runs today). This PSU would also have all the required connectors.

If you can't replace the PSU yourself, get to a shop or get someone knowledgeable who can do it. Basically, you'd remove the built-in "brick" PSU (which to me really looks more or less worthless), put the new one in, slide it in where the old one was, screw it in (4 or so screws from the outside, back on your tower) and then connect everything as you had before, the larger connector for your bard (24 pins), larger 8pin (2x 4pin) connector on your board, the connectors for your drives, fans etc.,  AND the two 6+2 pin (check "PCI-E" markings on plug!) and plug into your GPU. Bingo.

So rather than spending the few bucks on the adapters and then running of your VERY weak PSU, I'd really recommend you get this.

View solution in original post

2beor02bmerlin
Protege


Looks like if you purchase a power supply it should come equipped with the proper connections . To answer your question , if your old power supply was powerful enough you could have used an adapter like the one I posted. The white end  4-pin molex connector plugs into the other  4-pin molex connectors from your power supply and also mentioned by a few others. I know this is a lot to take in but one you get up to speed you'll be fine , good luck 


No, it appears that my PSU is 300W and the new Card needs 500W  and I don't want to be messing about with swapping PSUs, I don't know enough.

View solution in original post

40 REPLIES 40

bizjer
Expert Protege
you should locate the 6 or 8 or possibly both pin sockets on the 1070 and find suitable cables coming off of ht epower supply and plug them in. you should also go into the bios of your motherboard and disable the onboard gpu. save and reset. install the latest driver and you should be good to go.

bizjer
Expert Protege
for example...............https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ozone3d.net%2Fpublic%2Fjegx%2F201011%2Fgtx480_power_connectors.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geeks3d.com%2F20101108%2Ftips-maximum-power-consumption-of-graphics-card-connectors%2F&docid=S-bgxC7KspM2eM&tbnid=8fnC3uDOluxEBM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjI7_uEv7fXAhWMBcAKHX8JAmgQMwhLKAEwAQ..i&w=493&h=410&bih=647&biw=1280&q=gpu%20power%20socket&ved=0ahUKEwjI7_uEv7fXAhWMBcAKHX8JAmgQMwhLKAEwAQ&iact=mrc&uact=8

As a similarly aged former enthusiast I can sympathise. My programming skills only went as far as Sinclair Basic (and BBC) then some assembly at collage which didn't go well.

Anyway, yes, you need to check the connections from the power supply unit inside your PC. Different cards require different amounts of power and that means different connections from the PSU.

Your PSU should have leads with connectors with either 6 pins or 8 pins or 8 pin connectors that can be split into 6+2 and they should all have PCI-E printed on the connectors.

So my card needs a 6 pin and an 8 pin connector. I believe your 1070 needs just an 8 pin (or a 6+2 pin). If you don't have a spare 8 pin (or a 6+2) but you have 2 x 6 pin connectors spare, you can use an adaptor that combines the 2 x 6 pins into a single 8 pin, those adaptors often come with the card but not always.

Hope that helps and good luck!


Protocol7
Heroic Explorer
What power supply unit are you using? The three pin power socket in the back of your machine is where power goes in, then inside the computer you can see those smaller wires leading out from the power supply unit going to various parts of the computer. Somewhere on the power supply unit it should say how many watts it supplies in total.
Nvidia recommends a 500W power supply unit.

If your power supply unit is suitable then plug the 8-pin power connector from the power supply unit into your graphics card

Plug looks like this
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/aplusautomation/vendorimages/893d23ad-4302-468a-...

The socket is on the right of this photo
https://www.techpowerup.com/img/16-06-03/59c.jpg

Star-lizard
Rising Star
So one thing I didn't see in your post is if you had uninstall the gtx1050 video drivers before powering down and installing the gtx 1070 , as for power supply provided you plugged in the proper 6 or 8 pin connections and your power supply has enough juice to power things it will deliver the proper current needed to run your video card. The power draw will increase as the demand goes up , so if your PC is running but you just have a black screen I'd think it's a driver issue 

Protocol7
Heroic Explorer


EXCEPT – My OS can't 'see' my new graphics
card.



What do you mean by this exactly? Do you get an image on the screen at all?

flexy123
Superstar
Probably something very trivial.

* A GTX1070 should have one, if not two EXTRA onboard connectors where you connect 6pin so called PCIE connectors that come from your PC's internal power supply. Any halfway moden PC power supply should have 1x or 2x of these connectors, and they are usually marked "PCIE" or "PCI-E".  Please check the inside of your PC whether you connected these to your card,

* What do you mean with "the OS can't see the GPU"? Have you plugged in your monitor on the port of the GPU (NOT the other, mainboard port?). If there is a picture, but the OS just "can't see" your GPU, then reinstall the latest Nvidia drivers.

* Otherwise, if all fails, carefully remove and re-seat the card into your PCIEX slot on the board, this can sometimes be finicky.

USUALLY,  changing a GPU is trivial, especially changing/upgrading Nvdia. Normally you don't even need to reinstall drivers.

--> If your card is indeed dead (aka: black screen, nothing, NADA) and you bought from "someone on ebay", I can't exclude you felt for a scammer who sent you some broken h/w. I hope you bought from a reputable vendor.

2beor02bmerlin
Protege
 Okay - thanx for the comments, let's see if I can answer them.

There are two 'cards' on my device manager, one is the one that you find in every computer (in my case a 630).

On top of that, the G11CD Gaming computer I bought ALSO had the GTX1050 already installed. The drivers etc. were unistalled automatically bty my new GTX1070 card's install wizard, which was activated by the NIVIDIA Install CD that came with the GTX1070 Card that I purchased.

Once the software had installed itself (successfully) I went to update the drivers (as instructed by the excellenty install instructions.).

It was at THAT point that the software started looking for the hardware to complete the install and couldn't find it.

When I removed the card and reinstalled the GTX 1050  it was fine, but my second attempt echoed the first - software OK, can't find the hardware.

My PC works fine without the GTX gard, with it or wthout it, the basic functions, including Media players, audio etc. work fine.



2beor02bmerlin
Protege

Protocol7 said:

What power supply unit are you using? The three pin power socket in the back of your machine is where power goes in, then inside the computer you can see those smaller wires leading out from the power supply unit going to various parts of the computer. Somewhere on the power supply unit it should say how many watts it supplies in total.
Nvidia recommends a 500W power supply unit.

If your power supply unit is suitable then plug the 8-pin power connector from the power supply unit into your graphics card

Plug looks like this
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/aplusautomation/vendorimages/893d23ad-4302-468a-...

The socket is on the right of this photo
https://www.techpowerup.com/img/16-06-03/59c.jpg



Okay - ONE question answered at least. I DO, indeed have an eight hole connector similar to the one you show. My Card is an MSI, which is a slightly different design, but I have one in exactly the same place. So, thanx. It LOOKS like I don't hav a supply going to that connector which is causing the problem.

Now, the 64,000 dollar question, how do I do that.....lol.~

But, we're getting there, that's heartening.

Thanx for your contribution to my enlightenment.