Is posible to upgrade the power supply unit of an Aspire TC-895-UA92?

I'm interested in acquiring an Aspire TC-895-UA92 but I'm concerned about the power supply, because it's not enough powerful to provide energy to a dedicated video card (Nvidia GTX 1650) and a PCIe 1x additional expansion card for another M.2 SSD ¿Is possible to upgrade the power supply unit with a standard/commercial unit?

Answers

  • ttttt
    ttttt Member Posts: 1,947 Community Aficionado WiFi Icon
    @Skorpinox
    The PSU is not a standard ATX form factor one, and people say it will be the standard PSU in the future. Currently, people have a hard time finding PSU upgrade for adding powerful graphics card with their TC-895 PCs. For the mean time, if your power supply still have two SATA power connectors open, you still can use a "Y" connector to form a 8-pin PCIe power connector for the graphics card.

    Are you sure you can use PCIe x1 slot to add another M.2 SSD ( a SATA one or NVMe one) ? I use the x16 slot with x4 adapter (note: not x1) to add a M.2 NVMe SSD, but you intend to use a graphics card, so that may not work for you.

    If the graphics card is a two slot card, it may take up the space of both the x16 slot and the x1 slot. That may make the x1 slot useless.

  • Skorpinox
    Skorpinox Member Posts: 2 New User
    ttttt said:
    @Skorpinox
    The PSU is not a standard ATX form factor one, and people say it will be the standard PSU in the future. Currently, people have a hard time finding PSU upgrade for adding powerful graphics card with their TC-895 PCs. For the mean time, if your power supply still have two SATA power connectors open, you still can use a "Y" connector to form a 8-pin PCIe power connector for the graphics card.

    Are you sure you can use PCIe x1 slot to add another M.2 SSD ( a SATA one or NVMe one) ? I use the x16 slot with x4 adapter (note: not x1) to add a M.2 NVMe SSD, but you intend to use a graphics card, so that may not work for you.

    If the graphics card is a two slot card, it may take up the space of both the x16 slot and the x1 slot. That may make the x1 slot useless.

    Thanks, I haven't acquired the PC, therefore I was asking about the power supply, the general specs of that machine are enough for my job requirements, but "built in" graphics not, exporting some training video and rendering a couple of pictures daily would be frustrating without discrete graphics and I own the RTX 1650 (Single slot and low profile with standard bracket), My Macbook pro unfortunately has died a couple of weeks ago and I'm looking for a second option computer, a budget one... Thanks a lot @ttttt probably I'm not going to acquire the Aspire TC-895-UA92 🤷🏻
  • ttttt
    ttttt Member Posts: 1,947 Community Aficionado WiFi Icon
    @Skorpinox

    Out of curiosity I tried to find what a RTX 1650 graphics card is, and I could not find it. Do you mean GTX 1650? As you mentioned it is a single slot, low profile card, I begin to have interest in it.

    I have a TC-885-UA91 (i3-9100 CPU), using the same Intel UHD 630 onboard graphics as the TC-895. I have tried merging two 1080p videos to one with it and I could expect about 1/3 the time of the video duration for composing. I did that before swapping the original x2 M.2 NVMe SSD to a x4 M.2 NVMe SSD, should be faster than that now. The TC-895 PCs use 10th generation CPU and should be 30-35% faster. The amount of data for picture manipulation is no match with video amount, and the PC's processing power should be more than adequate for pictures if it has enough RAM (Oh! I did the video composing even with the original 8 GB RAM). I am satisfied with my PC's onboard graphics.  

    Note: I am not trying to talk you in buying a TC-895, maybe you want a low end gaming PC.
  • AdamJankowski
    AdamJankowski Member Posts: 2 New User
    I purchased the Acer for my business not knowing about the PSU related issues and upgrading graphics cards. The factory GPU was very weak for running Solidworks 2017 and was basically useless. I purchased a older Nvidia Quadro 4000 as it is supported via solidworks and met my budget. I didnt realize that there was a requirement for this graphics card to have external power and that the internal PSU couldn't support it. 

    After doing some research I scavenged a 150w PSU from another computer (old) and tested that it would run the GPU on the nvidia. All I had to do was T the green wire from the 6 pin mother board to the green wire on the 24 pin external PSU together. I now have installed the second PSU inside the case and it is working great. 

    Simple answer is yes you can upgrade a PSU or parallel them for various applications. Long answer is you may need to get creative in doing so. I dont care about pretty or anything, I just need it to work for my application. See pics attached. 
  • ttttt
    ttttt Member Posts: 1,947 Community Aficionado WiFi Icon
    @AdamJankowski

    If you have a similar PC as the person who started this thread (TC-895-UA92), Intel UHD 630 integrated graphics, that Quadro 4000 is just as fast. No performance advantage there. 
    Is the Solidworks 2017 really runs better with Quadro 4000?
  • AdamJankowski
    AdamJankowski Member Posts: 2 New User
    TTTTT,

    I have the Acer TC-895-UA91. Its slightly different but not much. The 92 has a I5 processor and 4 more gigabytes of ram. The Graphics card (on board) is the same. UHD 630. This had hidious performance running solidworks. I would wait 30-60seconds for a sketch to allow editing and 3d rendering was useless. 

    The difference for the quadro 4k Vcq4000v2-t 2gb to the on board is night and day running solidworks. Sketches highlight instantly and 3d rendering is performed in seconds. I chose the quadro vs anything else out there as I had a budget and needed a solidworks supported card. If you are not familiar with solidworks they do not provide suppport for all graphics cards nor do all graphics cards perform well running it. I also didnt want to break the bank so a used quadro under $100 was cheap. 

    What is more important than the card i chose, is that the simple answer is you can upgrade a graphics card relatively easily by adding a secondary power supply. Your choice of card may not be mine as more people are into gaming. Gaming performance is drastically different that solidworks. 
  • ttttt
    ttttt Member Posts: 1,947 Community Aficionado WiFi Icon
    @AdamJankowski

    Thanks for the info.

    I was just curious, because as I compared UHD 630 and Quadro 4000, their benchmarks are kind of close with the Quadro just slightly faster.

    Obviously, Solidwork pairing with Quadro 4K works better. Yes, most graphics cards are for gaming and some cards are better for CAD/CAM.


  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,101 Trailblazer
    Yeah, both Solidworks and AutoCAD really want a Quadro, even an old one like that... They don't care for the gaming cards and definitely don't like embedded GPUs.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.