Hurrah! Through the great kindness of a benefactor, who was upgrading to a blisteringly fast 40x series card, I now have a MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12GB graphics-card. I had sort of expected I might be gifted it, but I wasn’t sure until he actually got his new card.
So… for the aid of other perplexed card-wranglers, here is my step-by step guide to how to install a 3060 12Gb card to a HP Z600 workstation PC (with Windows 7 as the OS).
1. First, the happy Z600 owner needs to acquire a 6pin to 8pin PSU cable adapter. A Z600’s PSU has only one cable to power a graphics card, and it’s the wrong sort for a 3060 card. But first unlatch the PC’s case-front, and make absolutely sure the card cable is clipped to the PSU box and is actually available. It should be a small black 6-pin connector marked “P10”. Ok, it it’s there you now purchase a ’10cm PCI Express PCIe 6 Pin to 8 Pin Graphics Card Power Adapter Cable’ for a few dollars, from eBay. This additional cable will adapt the Z600 power supply cable to feed the new card’s 8-pin.
2. You may also need a newer type of monitor cable. My MSI graphics-card has one HDMI out (v2.1, supporting 4k display) socket and several DisplayPorts (v1.4a) sockets. Work out what cable you need and order accordingly, to connect the card to the monitor(s).
3. Ok. Download the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) freeware for Windows. Unless you first uninstall your existing card’s drivers, the new 3060 will send “no signal” to the monitor and the new NVIDIA drivers will also refuse to install. To get around these joint problems we need to first cleanly uninstall everything from NVIDIA, and shutdown the PC ready to fit the new card. DDU does this easily and automatically. Place DDU in its own folder, and extract. Don’t run it yet.
4. Download the NVIDIA GeForce 472.12-desktop-win7-64bit-international-whql.exe drivers for Windows 7. These are recommended on Windows 7 forums, and are also recommended by rival card company GigaByte for exactly the same card specs. Rival card maker MSI just sends buyers to the NVIDIA website and hopes for the best, which… won’t end well with Windows 7.
5. Ok, unbox and unwrap. Gently remove the thin protective sleeve from the card’s PCI slot connectors, to reveal the row of gold ‘teeth’ at the base of the card. These will soon be connecting the card to the motherboard PCI slot. Make sure there are no flecks or damage on these, but try to keep your fingers off them. Place the extracted card on top of its protective wrapper, ready for lifting in and fitting into the PC.
6. Open the PC case. With a flat-head screwdriver, remove the foam-top box. Four screws hold this to the inside of the Z600’s case box. If it’s not removed then the new big card will prevent the case lid from closing, later on.
7. Right, we’re ready. Load the Display Driver Uninstaller freeware, choose the third option (‘close down the PC on finishing, to fit a new card’). The old drivers are then fully uninstalled and the OS cleaned of traces of NVIDIA. The PC shuts down.
8. Now with the PC shut down you ease out the two restraining clips at the back of the Z600, which allows the pulling back of a metal bar holding in the fitted PCI cards. You can now gently ease out the old graphics card, and carefully unclip the end section. Place it somewhere safe. Now remove a second small metal panel-cover from the back of the PC, as the new card is big and needs not one but two panels empty. One rear panel-slot will allow access to the card’s monitor connectors, while the other will vent heat.
9. Fit the new card. It’s heavy, so get a good grip. Ease it in at one end of the slot, then slowly press in the other end until you hear the socket’s clip ‘snick’ home. Close the two clips at the back of the PC, to restore the small metal retaining bar. Once the card is firmly seated and locked in, connect the power cable via the short adapter cable you purchased.
10. Connect the monitor cable to the card, and restart the PC. Turn on the monitor and press on its plastic ‘internal buttons’ to tell it to use HDMI or Displayport, if you were using something else before. If the cables are working and the monitor is in the same era as the card, then you should see Windows starting up. In super-tastic old-school VGA 800px mode! That’s because we don’t have the new drivers installed yet.
11. Ok, now go to your saved 472.12-desktop-win7-64bit-international-whql.exe installer and run it. The installer will (hopefully) refrain from saying ‘not compatible’. As it might have done, had you had tried to install with the old card and drivers still in place. Instead it will now install the new fresh drivers, and then reboot the PC. You have two choices, drivers or drivers plus NVIDIA extras. If you want some control then include the extras. My particular MSI card also has MSI’s Afterburner software (free, download it from their site) which can make it easier to ‘overclock’ the card and also gives you your juicy card stats in a slick GUI.
12. Your new 3060 card should now be driver powered, running properly and driving your monitor. With the full 12Gb of memory detected on the card, too. Make sure all physical connections are secure, and close up the case. In the Windows Control Panel, switch your audio back to ‘via Speakers’ to get it working again. NVIDIA’s own sound driver, installed along with the graphics driver, will have hijacked the audio and that’s why your headphones will suddenly be silent.
That’s it.
I don’t recommended installing later NVIDIA drivers than 472.12 (Sept 2020), for Windows 7. I tried a later installer, but then the software windows and menus became noticeably sluggish and the NVIDIA Control Panel crashed on launch. I used DDU to uninstall, and re-installed 472.12. Everything was nice and smooth again. With these drivers you won’t get the TensorRX speed-up that NVIDIA added to the drivers for generative AI users. But with the magic new LCM Lora that hardly matters any more.
By the way, I don’t know who informed me that Poser 11 didn’t support 30x series NVIDIA cards, but they were wrong. A big 3600px SuperFly render happens in seconds on the new card, using Poser 11. Possibly what they meant was that P11 doesn’t support the advanced OptiX capabilities of a 30-series card.
Update: Some comments from gamers suggested it sounds really noisy. But for even heavy AI generation (a batch of eight) using InvokeAI 3 the card stays whisper quiet. I have no problems with fan-noise, but the fans are on (you can feel the air flow). I can only assume the gamers were running a heavy game at 120fps at 4k, and stressing the card.