acer aspire tc-895 upgrade list

puro_the_puppygen

so i want to reformulate my previous post, simply my goal is to make my desktop (acer aspire tc 895-eb11) to make it pass from a good performance business desktop to good performance gaming desktop by addign and changing some pieces so like this i can achieve these goals without to buy a new computer (dont ask me why, i just want to keep my stuff on my hard drive and without usign the windows 11 OS):

play games on high graphics level

record/live stream on hd quality (atleast 720p 60hz) while running a game on high quality

multi task (per example running a few tabs on the browser while running a game)

i got a plan already to be able to do that but i need to get infos i cant find anywhere, so here is the part pieces (from stock pieces to planned pieces)

intel i5 10400 ---> intel i7 10700 k (+2 cores and a top speed of 5ghz (the i5 does 4ghz) on turbo boost mode)

stock 12gb 266 pin dual ram stick ---> 16 or 32 gb dual ram stick kit (from corsair)

intel uhd 630 ---> nvidia gtx 1660 super

300w stock psu ---> 500w to 700w psu

stock 5 blade fan ---> corsair single fan watercooler (or radiator, will be placed on the exhaust fan if possible)

estimated total price: 1000 to 1500 canadian dollars ( can go up to 2000 if extra pieces are needed)

so the main questions is this:

1: what pieces are compactible and what will be not (and what pieces can match the closest performance possible)

2: if the pieces can work, but needs pieces in extra, what are those pieces that are needed (adapter, wires, etc)

also please understand, i wont buy a new pc by the total cost of the upgrade plan, for those reasons

1: i dont want to use any other operating system than windows 10

2: i want to keep my data (games, files, etc) on the same hard drive

3: i want try out that plan and be guided as i want to enter let say, the world of the computer modders, since i want at the same time want to learn more so in teh future i can be able to build my custom computer on my own, give me advices, answers to the questions, so like this i will make sure that i will be able to make my computer work correctly, and consider this as my first ever modification ever done, and that will make me happy

billsey

You will need more of a cooling revamp in order to drop a K chip in. The TDP for your existing CPU is 65W, the K models are 125W, so you need to double your cooling. The Noctua cooler that the folks in the Gaming sections recommend will likely fit and provide enough extra cooling to allow an i7-10700K or 19-10900K. With the i7 or i9 installed you might be able to bump the memory speed up from 2666 to 2933. Note that the BIOS has no provisions for overclocking the CPU, so a lot of the K functionality isn't going to be available. If I were doing a CPU upgrade I'd go with an i7-10700 or i9-10900 instead, since no cooling changes are needed.

Any of the GTX 1660 variants require a 450W power supply, so you will have to upgrade your 300W. The issue there is the PSU you have is an ATX12VO supply, which provides only 12V to the motherboard (via a six pin and either eight pin or two four pin connectors). Those power supplies are really tough to find on the secondary market. Acer does ship some versions of the TC-885 with 500W supplies though, the part numbers are DC.5001H.001 and DC.5001B.009. You search on those numbers to find sources, the only difference between the two are the vendors Acer purchases from.

IIRC the Aspire TC-895-EB11 model comes with a 1TB HDD as the storage. You will get a much bigger boost in performance by adding a SSD into the M.2 slot (your system supports an NVMe x4 SSD which will be four times as fast as a SATA SSD and many more times than your existing drive). Purchase a brand name (I'd suggest a Samsung NVMe x4 3.0 1TB), put it in (you may have to buy the screw, check first to see if it was installed by the factory first) and clone the existing 1TB HDD to the new SSD then use the boot menu to choose to boot from the SSD. Once you are up and running and things are working correctly, use Disk Management to remove all partitions on the old HDD and create a new partition that uses the whole drive for data.

So, if it were me, I'd start with the SSD and do some performance tests within your environment. Next would be the PSU and GPU combo though you might look at the 2060/2070 and 3060/3070 options as well, they all work in a 500W environment. Next would be the memory upgrade, I would go with 32GB using two 16GB sticks. If you are going to upgrade the CPU to an i7 or i9 go with either 2933 or 3200, non-XMP. Acer used 3200 on those systems because they were easier to source than the 2933 for some reason. You may find the 3200 come in cheaper than the 2933 for that same reason. It will end up running at 2933 since that's what the chipset supports. Only last would I do a CPU/cooling upgrade and I'd stick with the Noctua for the cooling since so many people have good things to say about them in the Acer environment.

puro_the_puppygen

ok, so for now i wont get a unlocked performance model of the i7

and for the gpu, the motehrboard has only a pcie slot that are compactible with gtx type gpus only, so we can forget hte rtx gpus for now unless i do a new custom built

and for the hdd upgrade, for now i preffer to stick on the hdd since it might be hard for me to transfer all the data on a sdd after i applied it, for me the thing i search is to search the peak performances for gaming graphics, recording quality, and multi tasking, and the list you gave me literally needs me to buy just an entire custom setup due to the things you said needs a motherboard swap for like the ram sticks and the gpus, which is not what i search, but thank for the advices

billsey

I think you will find that a SSD upgrade will give you by far the best performance boost. 1TB NVMe SSDs can be purchased for under $100 easily. You can put most any GPU in that runs off PCIe power only. If you have the 500W supply a GeForce RTX 3050 should work fine. It likely won't work with the 300W supply, but it's only power that causes that. The earlier RTX designs can also work, as long as they don't need too much power. The same thing applies for AMD GPUs, as long as they don't exceed the power budget they should work.

puro_the_puppygen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1175942#Comment_1175942

ok, because i thought for a moment hte rtx would not work due to the pcie 16x slot, idk what the motherboard of the tc895-eb11 uses as pcie slot but if it a pcie 3.0/4.0, with the new psu this should help by alot in term of graphic performances

billsey

The PCIe x16 slot is 3.0 on a TC-895 model. PCIe 4.0 devices will work, but at the 3.0 speeds. Heck, PCIe 2.0 devices will also work, at 2.0 speeds. PCIe x16 slots themselves don't differentiate between cards, it's the OS that needs to deal with different cards differently.

puro_the_puppygen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1175947#Comment_1175947

ah ok, so i might plan to get an rtx 30-50 with a 500 to 700 watt psu in case if it needs extra power for the cpu, ram sticks and etc, i will see if there is cables compactible to plug on the motherboard and to the gpu itself