I’ve been fighting with some issues on my unraid server recently and I’m at a point where I need a graphics card to see the actual video out as the machine boots. The psu in the chassis has no additional connectors that I could use for additional power to a graphics card.
Can someone point me in the direction of a super cheap graphics card that will be used for console only and not 3d graphics or gaming.
Get a used SFF office PC low profile card off Ebay. They often have chipset wattages around 25 or so and easily run on slot power only
Something like this: https://www.ebay.com/p/1958445856 (idea only, not endorsing this seller).
Anything of a semi modern format with a pcie interface thata not an outright scam card will be fine for VGA no-driver video output. IME older AMD/ATI cards seem to boot better than oder NVidia cards…
I’d love to have gone that route, but was looking for a quick solution which ended up being the Nvidia GT 710
If it works, it works. Really any old cheap pcie card will work, if you just need video out of any kind the card type need not be specific. Glad you got it to work.
The nVidia GT series are cheap, the 710 series are the cheapest new cards that I have found.
That would be my suggestion. They only take a single slot and some are even passively cooled.
This is exactly the route I decided to go down. Should be arriving this evening :D Thank you
Alot of servers have at least one built in video output head but if it’s an older device you might need to look for an HD15 VGA port… Some servers might have had some sort of micro port or proprietary port/dongle setup as well. Might refer to the documentation for the chassis/motherboard first… It’s possible you have what you need already.
While a great idea, and I would love to do so. This is a desktop motherboard in a server chassis, with no serial/usb output. It is a Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4. I ended up picking up a Nvidia GT 710.
Oh fantastic, sorry if I missed that detail in the original post. Thought you might have had an old eBay blade server or something. Hope you got it working!
Not yet, the new card should arrive tonight. It’s actually a SC847BE2C supermicro chassis but it’s getting close to being ready for a new motherboard/cpu/ram
Check your local Craigslist or other classifieds for cheap old GPUs. Or if you have another PC, borrow the GPU and power supply just to get it to boot.
