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Video card for poweredge 2900?

R

ranakor

Member
Has anyone had success getting a decent gaming card in their poweredge 2900? I recently bought one to be my home development server. It is there for learning and eventually for own hosting but nothing critical and nothing requiring the stability of a server (the only reason i got it was that with current dell reductions it was barely more expensive and quite a monster compared to other servers i could have gotten once i had tossed windows 2008 on it).

I was thinking of making another main machine of it (so i don't need to keep both on when i'm using the server) but i read everywhere that dell servers make it a pain to setup video cards. I know that the best slot is PCIE-8 on it vs 16 required by cards and that it should still be compatible if i were to cut the card but with mixed results. Has anyone had success with an actual current generation mid-high end card? Would be very interested in buying one if so but else no point spending 250-500 on something that may not work.

Thanks for any advice you may have!

Edit😱ops posted too fast after asking for ram advice and landed in wrong forum. Sorry. Will wait for it to be moved so as to avoid duplicate threads.

Moving this to Pre-builts etc. forum

n7
Memory/Storage Mod
 
It does , it has PCIE-8X. I know people had some success and some failure doing this depending on the vid card (16X card cut to fit in 8X) because dell filters out some cards but i can't find anyone who has tried with current gen cards so that's why i'm looking for more input before i blow 300 on a card that won't work=(

Thanks!
 
just borrow a card. i would not spend $300 on a card for a server. just get something low end like a 8600GT that does not require additional power.

the bios in many dell servers will decline the video card but most o/s do not care. might mean you need to boot to PCI video or onboard then switch to pciE.

trust me start small bust out that $20 8600gt or 7300GS and see if the bios is going to give you heck. then work your way up.

you can return parts to most hardware sellers so you won't blow anything
 
the thing is it's a physical 8X slot so i have to cut the 16X card partly wich is fine (it will forever run at 8X afterward) but probably removes any chance of sending it back to the shop hehe=) , also there are some cards known to work & some not but without much relation beetween each other so my thought was either i can know that card XXX works and i buy it for the server either i upgrade the current main machine but have to settle with using both (and i kinda wanted to make the server the main machine so i wouldn't have to deploy everytime i wanted to do asp.net programming)
 
Originally posted by: IlllI
isnt it the other way around? i seem to remember people modding some dells by cutting off a small plastic piece on the mobo so they could fit 16x video cards in the 8x slot
Click to expand...

You have to have some mighty big cojones to hard mod something like a PE 2900. This is a big, loud, expensive server.
 
hah well if i remember correctly its just removing some plastic bits from the er.. thingy where the card slots in (i wouldnt do it either though lol)
 
most cards need to work with pci-e 4x and 8X because SLI motherboards don't always have two PCI-e 16X. matter of fact many of them run asymetrical even if the connecter is 16X.

alot of workstations did this too. 16X in first slot, 8X or 4X in second/third slot.

i had a 7300GS 256mb i got for $20 that i ran in the poweredge SC420 which was a modded slot. ran perfectly.

back in the days when the SC420 was new many cards were 16X only. that time has come and gone.

if you think about it a pci express 2.0 slot is twice as fast as the original 1.0 spec so a 8x 2.0 card is just as fast as a 16X 1.0 pci express slot. i think they are up to pci-express 2.3 now.

i'd be more worried about trying to pull too much power off the bus on a server
 
pull to much power? could that possibibly damage it or do you mean pull too much power as in pull too much of the bandwidth?
 
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